Enterprise 2.0 is ‘the use of Web 2.0 by companies to collaborate and connect people together’, as written by Jason Watson. But to be more ambiguous, Enterprise 2.0 is a very broad term and can mean a lot of different things.
A popular method for analysing Enterprise 2.0 is to follow the SLATES Paradigm, from the book ‘Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration’ (mmm.. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard it’s good!) by Andrew McAfee. Slates describes a list of tools and technologies are a good guide for using Web 2.0 tools in the business, these include Search, Links, Authorship, Tags, Extensions and Signals.
To give an example, I’ve been reading up on the Royal Dutch Shell company. Shell has undergone projects with Moreover Technologies, and to put it as short as I can, as a result of these projects Shell’s employees have access to real-time news and blogs directly from their intranet, they can search for news, retrieve saved feeds, and read feeds (RSS) setup by the central office. There’s more on these projects at the Moreover website.
Shell is also now using wikis for all of it’s official documentation (pretty major considering the size of the company), RSS feeds for employees and for the public, and Twitter (which I’d expect of any large company now).
There’s another book, ‘Wikinomics’ (no I haven’t read it either… as yet) written by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, about how the use of mass collaboration and use of open source technologies can be used to continue to grow (or create) a successful business. There are a few concepts in the book I want to touch on, and have a look at how people have applied them. These concepts include peering, being open, sharing and acting globally, plus a few more.
Another cool use of Enterprise 2.0 would be by Dell, who setup a site called IdeaStorm specifically for anyone (customers generally) to write down their ideas for new products, or to improve existing products. and also vote on other people’s ideas. I guess this is a really good example of a company Being Open (referring to Wikinomics) by allowing it’s customers to have their say on their services and products. Pretty cool! Check it out here. Also, there’s a short YouTube video below (an ad for it).
Matt Higgins' Blog 
What a great blog post I think u have here Matt.
I am really impressed with the IdeaStorm features implemented by Dell. It is a great way to hit customer satisfaction because they are the one that use the hardware/software which allows them to collaborate ideas to improve on what they are using. The feature that they implemented is slightly forum style and what I think is brilliant to encourage users to provide feedback, thoughts and new innovating ideas.
Keep up the great ideas with subsequent good posts!
Very informative post! I really like Dell’s idea of having the open platform for people to contribute ideas for new products. That is truely a great example of harnessing the collective intelligence. It will be interesting to see which companies follow suit with jumping on the online collaboration bandwagon, I have noticed there has been a bit of hestitation from many smaller companies from embracing the web 2.0 trend as it is still early days. But I think the future of enterprise will rely on web 2.0 and that alot of businesses will soon change their minds.
I think Dell have it the nail right on the head… to be a successful company you need to be creating products that you market users actually want to use… so if theres a demand for something why not implement it. Another aspect of you post that i believe will grow in the future is large organizations such as Shell using Wikis to keep the knowledge within the business and providing employees with that ability to gain access to information when they need it.
I had no idea about Dell’s new feedback / collaboration tool so thank you for bringing it to my attention. I’ll have to go and check it out! I’m going to go and see what other companies have implemented similar tools, hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised :).