[australia] strategic experimentation & engaging contributors?

[Warren James Crosbie]

In response to Marius’ original question, this post offers that “strategic experimentation” (Narayanan, 2006) might be a good way to improve the success rate of database-centric CM projects, especially knowledge-sharing initiatives that aim to engage informal social groups like communities of practice (CoPs). I think content managers need to get access to content creators, or at least the statistics of users using social media inside the firewall.

Point number one: the creation of content in blogs and wikis is largely voluntary. That is it’s a bottom up phenomena. When we speak about content management do we really mean content creation? (Others might like to explain the distinction?) Are we ready to engage with projects where users can voluntarily contribute their content, without hierarchal control?

Failure in engaging users in content creation might be the key factor behind the failure of so many knowledge sharing initiatives and related CM implementations. We could speculate that this won’t change any time soon. Gartner recently predicted that: 
“By 2008, the majority of Global 1000 companies will quickly adopt several technology-related aspects of Web 2.0, but will be slow to adopt the aspects of Web 2.0 that have a social dimension, and the result will be a slow impact on business.” [e.g. http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=99546]

Recently in Melbourne we discussed how organisations might use Web 2.0 technologies to achieve 'social media inside the firewall' (SMIF) [e.g. see: http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/~crosbie/wp/?p=520; http://www.melbournekmlf.org/?p=21]. Could the solution to the issue of investing in content creation lie in providing users with fun applications to “play with”, each application with a limited in scope, budget and risk? V.K. Narayanan would call such a process “strategic experimentation” (2005, cf Narayanan, et al. 2002). I wonder if experimentation could be relevant to choosing and implementing a CM application, especially for when the CM project aims to achieve knowledge sharing within a community of users? Do you know of any published case studies?  

In particular I am interested in ANY case studies of social tagging (a la Del.icio.us, or CiteULike.org) for content creation ‘inside the firewall’. 

I no expert, but I suppose CM does have something to offer knowledge managers seeking to understand how social media technologies (e.g. blogs, wikis, RSS, mash-ups) can evolve behind the firewall. What I’m less certain about is how and where content managers and decision makers can get talking. The challenge is to understand users, to engage with them and learn about what they do and how they do it. This information needs to be collected and provided as evidence to decision makers who can used it to learn what they need to know in order to feel safe before they select the project most deserving of scarce organisational resources. How can content managers apply strategic experimentation to the development of small experimental projects, in order to first engage users in content creation? The advantage might be that decision makers would be provided with the evidence and time they need in order to better understand benefits of CM 'inside the firewall' (and not merely outside the firewall, like Del.icio.us, Wikipedia, whereis.com.au, Flickr, digg, last.fm, or Technorati … from where a lot of hype seems to come). 

Finally, I think content managers need to get access to content creators. But first you have to get past the IT gatekeepers, then maybe the head of marketing or HR. Good luck!

References
The Economist, May 11, 2006: Web 2.0: The enzyme that won. http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=6911109
Hinchcliffe, Dion June 18, 2006. Is IBM making enterprise mashups respectable? http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=49 
Ives, B., & Gilson, K. (2006). Preparing for Intranet 2.0: How to integrate new communication technology into your intranet. In Transform your intranet into the time-saving, value-creating tool it was always meant to be. London, UK; Chicago IL: Melcrum.
Narayanan, VK (2005), Strategic experimentation and knowledge management, in The Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Idea Group Reference, PA.
Narayanan, et al. (2002), From Strategic management to strategic experimentation, in Luis Joad (Ed) IT-Based Management: Challenges and Solutions, Idea Group, PA.  
Stumpel, Bob et al. Everything Web 2.0, via sacredcowdung.com/archives/2006/03/all_things_web.html

For more references see: 
http://www.citeulike.org/user/wcrosbie/tag/strategic_experimentation


Marius wrote: 
> Over the past 10 years, our industry has (largely) mastered the technology and processes to successfully implement Content Management Systems. However, in many cases, those systems still fail to engage those who have most content to contribute.

> Why is that? How can our success rate be improved? How do we balance "process" with "creativity"? Can we leverage the success of Weblogs and that of Wikipedia?