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On Corporate blogs and wikis

Hemant tells me that Satyam has a whole blogosphere inside the corporate intranet - which Satyam intends to use as a Knowledge management tool - I think it does the same things as what Prof. McAfee describes as "above the flow wikis" - knowledge management outside the day to day flow of work.

Hemant also tells me hat some blogs are immensely popular and act as incentives for others also to blog about their work - indeed Satyam has found some way to overcome " the challenge of getting people to use above-the-flow wikis".

Read on - the quote below is interesting ...
Source: Why Not Widen the Flow? by Andrew McAfee

One of Michael's first posts was about the distinction between using wikis and other social software 'in the flow' of work versus 'above the flow.' As he explains:

  • In-the-Flow wikis enable people do their day-to-day work in the wiki itself. These wikis are typically replacing email, virtual team rooms, and project management systems.
  • Above-the-Flow wikis invite users to step out of the daily flow of work and reflect, codify, and share something about what they do. These wikis are typically replacing knowledge management systems (or creating knowledge management systems for the first time).
Michael's experience has shown him that in-the-flow wikis get heavily used (especially, I'd add, if they actually do replace previous collaboration technologies) while above-the-flow ones attract more sporadic contributions. He makes the great point that:... the challenge of getting people to use above-the-flow wikis is an above-the-flow thing, not a wiki thing. Left to their own devices, people don't collaborate very much in above-the-flow ways. That was one of the great (if depressing) learnings of the Knowledge Management movement.

One conclusion I take away from Michael's insight is that business leaders, if they're serious about Enterprise 2.0, should think of ways to put contributions in the flow, as opposed to above it. There are a couple ways to do this. The first, and most obvious, is simply to say something like "This project will be managed via a wiki, not email, project management software, etc." This doesn't redefine anyone's job; it just changes one of the tools used to do the job.

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