The result was keep. The arguments for deletion are not to my mind persuasive, and it turns out that rather than being a neologism, the term has in fact been around for some time. There is no question that we need an article about this subject, and AFD is not the forum to discuss the appropriate name. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 09:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC) reply
not considered notable by Sleepyhead81 and Lectonar. +sj + 23:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC) reply
It is true that Enterprise 2.0 has become a marketing buzzword, but it did not start that way. My article was the first use of the term (aside, I believe, from a single Technorati tag), so the term originated in an acceptable secondary source (as discussed more below), not in a marketing brainstorming session. It subsequently become a buzzword because of its resonance and popularity in some quarters, but the same is true of 'Web 2.0' and 'disruptive technology,' both of which have long WP entries not currently flagged for deletion.
It is also true that Enterprise 2.0 is a neologism, as are Web 2.0, grid computing, and Web Services, all of which have WP entries. WP's guideline on this seems quite clear: "If the article is not verifiable (see Reliable sources for neologisms, below) then it constitutes analysis, synthesis and original research and consequently cannot be accepted by Wikipedia... Support for article contents, including the use and meaning of neologisms, must come from reliable sources. Wikipedia is a tertiary source that includes material on the basis of verifiability, not truth. To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term."
My SMR article (which is clearly referenced in the current entry) was entirely devoted to explaining what the term meant. SMR is a well-regarded and peer-reviewed journal, intended for both practitioners and academics. It seems to easily meet WP's criteria for appropriate sources, and for verifiability: "One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand that they must refer only to facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims, opinions, and arguments that have already been published by reputable publishers." "Reputable publications include peer-reviewed journals..." "The goal of Wikipedia is to become a complete and reliable encyclopedia. Editors should cite reliable sources so that their edits may be verified by readers and other editors." It seems to me that the current entry does exactly this; anyone who wanted to could verify both the existence and content of the SMR article. I appreciate that this article is not freely available on the Web, but I don't see anywhere that verifiability must stem from free, universally available, or copyright-free sources. At any rate, an abstract of the article is available here: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2006/spring/06/. Other sources include the numerous blogs, my own included, listed in the current entry, as well as stories in Business Week ( http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2006/tc20060605_424102.htm) and other mainstream publications. I read in WP's policies that "Research that consists of collecting and organizing information from primary and secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia." Aren't we doing exactly this sort of source-based research with the current entry?
In short, after spending some time familiarizing myself with WP's policies and guidelines, I come away puzzled as to why many of the commenters here seem to believe that the inclusion of any entry on 'Enterprise 2.0', let alone the current one, violates policy on verifiability and/or original research. As argued above, it seems that the topic passes all of the relevant tests for inclusion in WP (other comments here have addressed concerns about notability). Most of the current entry's editors are, like myself, WP newbies and so have certainly made some mistakes in preparing and structuring the entry, but I don't see how these are grounds for deletion. Instead, I would hope that the WP community would use the entry's talk page as a forum to help us sharpen the entry over time.
Another set of comments here and on the entry's talk page ask about folding Enterprise 2.0 concepts into WP's existing 'Web 2.0' entry. I can think of two main reasons not to do this. The first is the same reason that information about Chihuahuas is not subsumed under the entry for 'dog.' In other words, even if Enterprise 2.0 were purely a subset of Web 2.0, it might well have sufficiently distinctive history, features, and/or other characteritics to merit a separate entry in an encyclopedia. But I and others believe, and have previously published on the topic, that Enterprise 2.0 is not simply a subset of Web 2.0 -- that use of these technologies plays out behind the corporate firewall quite differently that it does across the entire Internet (see, for example http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/03/06/an_adoption_strategy_for_social_software_in_the_enterprise.php and http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/does_web_20_guarantee_enterprise_20/)
I hope these comments are helpful. Thanks for giving me a forum to post them, and for having such a transparent AfD process. Amcafee 18:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC) reply
I see nowhere in WP's policies that multiple sources are required, but they do exist in this case. The Business Week article excerpted by Rossmay below (and available to anyone with Web access) places the phrase "Enterprise 2.0" very close to a quote identifying the trend as "... the biggest change in the organization of the corporation in a century." This seems like the opposite of a dismissive or trivial tone. The reporter does appear to tweak those of us who use the "Enterprise 2.0" neologism, but new concepts often demand new labels. This article, the title of which is "Web 2.0 Has Corporate America Spinning" is not about Web 2.0 as it's commonly and broadly defined. Instead, it's about nothing but the use of Web 2.0 technologies behind the firewall; it is, in other words, a full-length mainstream magazine article about Enterprise 2.0. It is also completely independent of me; I was not contacted by the reporter or referenced in the article.
So I remain highly puzzled as to how this concept could be seen to fail WP's verifiability policy, which states: ""Verifiable" in this context means that any reader must be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source,"
To respond to some of the other points raised by Brian fairsing.
Of course I have an interest in the outcome of this AfD process, and of course I have passion and bias. I have the same interest in publicizing this concept that all academics do in advancing their theories, and I think that it would be great if a Wikipedia entry on it existed. This is why I'm spending time to understand WP's policies, and to demonstrate that they're all being followed.
As part of this demonstration I'm engaging in the distasteful activity of self-citation. I don't like it, but I can't see how else to proceed. And I cite my blog because, as WP's guideline on reliable sources states, even though blogs are largely not acceptable as sources "Exceptions to this may be when a well-known, professional researcher writing within his field of expertise, or a well-known professional journalist, has produced self-published material. In some cases, these may be acceptable as sources, so long as their work has been previously published by credible, third-party publications, and they are writing under their own names, and not a pseudonym." My blog meets all these criteria.
Brian writes that he takes "a dim view of a person who coins a term also being the person that is the main editor and follower of that term's wikipedia article." A glance at the Enterprise 2.0 entry's history page would show that I have not in fact edited it at all. I have no way to see if I'm the article's "main follower," but I suspect I'm not.
It was a mistake for me to refer to this AfD discussion as a 'vote' in my blog. I should have known better, and I apologize. Amcafee 23:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC) reply
An academic at a respected institution attemps to coin a new term in an article published in a respected journal (SMR). Fine, but all this means is that there is a new neologism on the block.
The same academic starts promoting the term on his blog. Fine again, but does not establish verifiability of the term.
Other blogs pick up the term. Nothing wrong with this, but these are very weak sources for verifiability according to WP:RS.
There is anecdotal use of the term by people who work for various software companies. Ok, but again does not pass WP:RS.
No other academics (that I have seen cited here, at least) have started to use the term in their own research.
No mainstream business publications have published a non-trivial article regarding the term (that I have seen cited here). The BusinessWeek mention is trivial, and vaguely derisive at that.
The academic begins to campaign to get readers of his blog to come to Wikipedia and "vote" to keep the article in this AFD ("every vote counts"). But voting is explicitly *not* the purpose of an AFD discussion.
Several new WP editors consequently show up to "vote" in this discussion, several anonymously, several of whom have never edited Wikipedia before. Almost none of these postings make a coherent argument using Wikipedia criteria (notability, verifiability, etc.): some because they are new and don't understand these, and others don't even try, they just "vote".
Also, because you potentially stand to gain personally if this term wins currency in the business community (respect among your peers, consulting engagements, etc.), you are inherently biased on the topic. So, although I respect your position and your passion for this subject, your comments here, and those of your blog readers can't overcome the fact that this term fails WP:V. I wish you well personally and if your term does become legitimately verifiable as per WP:V in the future (or additional citations are posted here), I will gladly support the inclusion of this term in the encyclopedia. But for now, it just doesn't pass muster. Fairsing 21:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC) reply
The development we want to build a WP entry about is the use of a novel set of communication and collaboration technologies within organizations, i.e. within the Intranet as opposed to across the Internet.
This is a development that the NYTimes and the WSJournal, and BusinessWeek have deemed worthy of reportorial and editorial energy: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/business/yourmoney/26mgmt.html?ex=1301029200&en=0d90ed5116e769d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F60612F8395A0C7A8DDDAC0894DB404482 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB109105974578777189-email.html http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2006/tc20060605_424102.htm
It's also been the subject of some academic publications in addition to my SMR article. Papers and conference proceedings on intra-organizational use of blogs and wikis include: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110534832/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 http://osddp.org/files/issues/WP_WikisBlogs.7.pdf http://www.editlib.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Reader.ViewAbstract&paper_id=21597&CFID=31149304&CFTOKEN=50547184 http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1525-1594.2004.29005.x http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1149453.1149472&coll=portal&dl=GUIDE&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618 http://bir.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/4/269
Papers on intra-organizational tagging include: http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=344&page=1 http://domino.watson.ibm.com/cambridge/research.nsf/242252765710c19485256979004d289c/1c181ee5fbcf59fb852570fc0052ad75
In addition, Wikipedia's parent foundation found the development notable enough to include it as part of the 2006 Wikimania conference.
Most of these references do not use the neologism 'Enterprise 2.0,' but they are all about the development for which the term is a shorthand -- the development we'd like to build a WP entry about. I can find no WP policy or guideline stating that every reference for an entry must contain the same words as the entry's title, and it's not hard to find entries where this is not the case. The following, for example, are references included in WP's entry on citizen journalism that do not use the neologism 'citizen journalism.' http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1060217106.php http://www.cpn.org/topics/communication/civicjourn.html http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/010705.html http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php
We want to build at WP entry about this development for the same reasons that the reporters, editors, academics, and researchers referenced above devoted their energy to their publications: we think the development is important and noteworthy enough to merit our attention and effort, and we'd like to inform a larger audience about it (For whatever it's worth, a number of entrepreneurs, executives, analysts, financiers, and bloggers apparently concur.). We also think it's distinctive enough to not be subsumed into a broader entry, just as WP's 'citizen journalism' entry is not subsumed into 'journalism,' and 'global warming' is not subsumed into 'climate change.'
This entry needs a title. We've been using 'Enterprise 2.0' to date because that neologism has become the most frequently-used shorthand for the development. People may or may not like the neologism (I'm coming to wish I'd chosen a different one), but what does everyone think of the development? Are its advocates right or wrong in thinking it's an appropriate subject for a WP entry? Amcafee 19:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC) reply
article. But right now, as it stands today, I don't see how we can have a brand new article with the title "Enterprise 2.0" and have it pass the verifiability hurdle. At some point in the future, when/if the term has been picked up by other academics and the mainstream business press with substantive treatments of the term, then an article with this title would be appropriate. Fairsing 23:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC) reply
Of course, you won't find a lot of published references in dead tree media about Enterprise 2.0 yet. It still takes a year or so to get a book published and scholarly articles take months to be vetted and published. (I would point out that the words "Web 2.0" "Ajax" and "podcasting" did not even appear in the 2005 Gartner Hype Cycle report, published only a little over a year ago. Obviously, they are all over the 2006 report.)
Enterprise 2.0 is not an isolated concept that came out of nowhere. There is a long and rich intellectual trail of work done on participation and collaboration within large organizations before the advent of these new technologies and these are part of the evolving Enterprise 2.0 story. For example, consider all the groundwork done on "communities of practice," which is also shorthand for research across many disciplines and has its own full and rich Wikipedia entry.
I refer you to such seminal works in CoP area as:
Wenger E, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Wenger, E, McDermott, R & Snyder, W.M., Cultivating Communities of Practice, HBS press 2002. Saint-Onge, H & Wallace, D, Leveraging Communities of Practice, Butterworth Heinemann, 2003.
In the field of social networking, which is also part of the E2 story, see this example which available online:
Hanneman, Robert A. and Mark Riddle. 2005. Introduction to social network methods. Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside published in digital form at http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/
Enterprise 2.0, as shorthand for the collision of participative technologies with hierarchical organizational dynamics, also encompasses scientific notions like complexity and emgergence. See, for example, Paul B. Hartzog of the IGERT Fellow Center for the Study of Complex Systems who writes:
"Technologies that allow us to work together in new ways make possible an era of “do it yourself” cooperation. That means people being able to help each other without relying on hierarchies do things for them. These anarchical networks are best understood within the framework of complex adaptive systems.
"So, this means we have to study new phenomena like open source, wiki, and social software, but it also means that we have to look back to the roots of civilization: tribes, gift economies, communities, and political theory."
Enterprise 2.0 is an important concept that is going to go away simply because it does or does not meet the Wikipedia gatekeepers' criteria for inclusion at this time. It represents the most important and potentially disruptive business challenge since the advent of modern management. 162.83.218.25 22:58, 27 August 2006 (UTC)Jerry Bowles reply
The result was keep. The arguments for deletion are not to my mind persuasive, and it turns out that rather than being a neologism, the term has in fact been around for some time. There is no question that we need an article about this subject, and AFD is not the forum to discuss the appropriate name. HTH HAND — Phil | Talk 09:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC) reply
not considered notable by Sleepyhead81 and Lectonar. +sj + 23:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC) reply
It is true that Enterprise 2.0 has become a marketing buzzword, but it did not start that way. My article was the first use of the term (aside, I believe, from a single Technorati tag), so the term originated in an acceptable secondary source (as discussed more below), not in a marketing brainstorming session. It subsequently become a buzzword because of its resonance and popularity in some quarters, but the same is true of 'Web 2.0' and 'disruptive technology,' both of which have long WP entries not currently flagged for deletion.
It is also true that Enterprise 2.0 is a neologism, as are Web 2.0, grid computing, and Web Services, all of which have WP entries. WP's guideline on this seems quite clear: "If the article is not verifiable (see Reliable sources for neologisms, below) then it constitutes analysis, synthesis and original research and consequently cannot be accepted by Wikipedia... Support for article contents, including the use and meaning of neologisms, must come from reliable sources. Wikipedia is a tertiary source that includes material on the basis of verifiability, not truth. To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term."
My SMR article (which is clearly referenced in the current entry) was entirely devoted to explaining what the term meant. SMR is a well-regarded and peer-reviewed journal, intended for both practitioners and academics. It seems to easily meet WP's criteria for appropriate sources, and for verifiability: "One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand that they must refer only to facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims, opinions, and arguments that have already been published by reputable publishers." "Reputable publications include peer-reviewed journals..." "The goal of Wikipedia is to become a complete and reliable encyclopedia. Editors should cite reliable sources so that their edits may be verified by readers and other editors." It seems to me that the current entry does exactly this; anyone who wanted to could verify both the existence and content of the SMR article. I appreciate that this article is not freely available on the Web, but I don't see anywhere that verifiability must stem from free, universally available, or copyright-free sources. At any rate, an abstract of the article is available here: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2006/spring/06/. Other sources include the numerous blogs, my own included, listed in the current entry, as well as stories in Business Week ( http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2006/tc20060605_424102.htm) and other mainstream publications. I read in WP's policies that "Research that consists of collecting and organizing information from primary and secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia." Aren't we doing exactly this sort of source-based research with the current entry?
In short, after spending some time familiarizing myself with WP's policies and guidelines, I come away puzzled as to why many of the commenters here seem to believe that the inclusion of any entry on 'Enterprise 2.0', let alone the current one, violates policy on verifiability and/or original research. As argued above, it seems that the topic passes all of the relevant tests for inclusion in WP (other comments here have addressed concerns about notability). Most of the current entry's editors are, like myself, WP newbies and so have certainly made some mistakes in preparing and structuring the entry, but I don't see how these are grounds for deletion. Instead, I would hope that the WP community would use the entry's talk page as a forum to help us sharpen the entry over time.
Another set of comments here and on the entry's talk page ask about folding Enterprise 2.0 concepts into WP's existing 'Web 2.0' entry. I can think of two main reasons not to do this. The first is the same reason that information about Chihuahuas is not subsumed under the entry for 'dog.' In other words, even if Enterprise 2.0 were purely a subset of Web 2.0, it might well have sufficiently distinctive history, features, and/or other characteritics to merit a separate entry in an encyclopedia. But I and others believe, and have previously published on the topic, that Enterprise 2.0 is not simply a subset of Web 2.0 -- that use of these technologies plays out behind the corporate firewall quite differently that it does across the entire Internet (see, for example http://many.corante.com/archives/2006/03/06/an_adoption_strategy_for_social_software_in_the_enterprise.php and http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/does_web_20_guarantee_enterprise_20/)
I hope these comments are helpful. Thanks for giving me a forum to post them, and for having such a transparent AfD process. Amcafee 18:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC) reply
I see nowhere in WP's policies that multiple sources are required, but they do exist in this case. The Business Week article excerpted by Rossmay below (and available to anyone with Web access) places the phrase "Enterprise 2.0" very close to a quote identifying the trend as "... the biggest change in the organization of the corporation in a century." This seems like the opposite of a dismissive or trivial tone. The reporter does appear to tweak those of us who use the "Enterprise 2.0" neologism, but new concepts often demand new labels. This article, the title of which is "Web 2.0 Has Corporate America Spinning" is not about Web 2.0 as it's commonly and broadly defined. Instead, it's about nothing but the use of Web 2.0 technologies behind the firewall; it is, in other words, a full-length mainstream magazine article about Enterprise 2.0. It is also completely independent of me; I was not contacted by the reporter or referenced in the article.
So I remain highly puzzled as to how this concept could be seen to fail WP's verifiability policy, which states: ""Verifiable" in this context means that any reader must be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source,"
To respond to some of the other points raised by Brian fairsing.
Of course I have an interest in the outcome of this AfD process, and of course I have passion and bias. I have the same interest in publicizing this concept that all academics do in advancing their theories, and I think that it would be great if a Wikipedia entry on it existed. This is why I'm spending time to understand WP's policies, and to demonstrate that they're all being followed.
As part of this demonstration I'm engaging in the distasteful activity of self-citation. I don't like it, but I can't see how else to proceed. And I cite my blog because, as WP's guideline on reliable sources states, even though blogs are largely not acceptable as sources "Exceptions to this may be when a well-known, professional researcher writing within his field of expertise, or a well-known professional journalist, has produced self-published material. In some cases, these may be acceptable as sources, so long as their work has been previously published by credible, third-party publications, and they are writing under their own names, and not a pseudonym." My blog meets all these criteria.
Brian writes that he takes "a dim view of a person who coins a term also being the person that is the main editor and follower of that term's wikipedia article." A glance at the Enterprise 2.0 entry's history page would show that I have not in fact edited it at all. I have no way to see if I'm the article's "main follower," but I suspect I'm not.
It was a mistake for me to refer to this AfD discussion as a 'vote' in my blog. I should have known better, and I apologize. Amcafee 23:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC) reply
An academic at a respected institution attemps to coin a new term in an article published in a respected journal (SMR). Fine, but all this means is that there is a new neologism on the block.
The same academic starts promoting the term on his blog. Fine again, but does not establish verifiability of the term.
Other blogs pick up the term. Nothing wrong with this, but these are very weak sources for verifiability according to WP:RS.
There is anecdotal use of the term by people who work for various software companies. Ok, but again does not pass WP:RS.
No other academics (that I have seen cited here, at least) have started to use the term in their own research.
No mainstream business publications have published a non-trivial article regarding the term (that I have seen cited here). The BusinessWeek mention is trivial, and vaguely derisive at that.
The academic begins to campaign to get readers of his blog to come to Wikipedia and "vote" to keep the article in this AFD ("every vote counts"). But voting is explicitly *not* the purpose of an AFD discussion.
Several new WP editors consequently show up to "vote" in this discussion, several anonymously, several of whom have never edited Wikipedia before. Almost none of these postings make a coherent argument using Wikipedia criteria (notability, verifiability, etc.): some because they are new and don't understand these, and others don't even try, they just "vote".
Also, because you potentially stand to gain personally if this term wins currency in the business community (respect among your peers, consulting engagements, etc.), you are inherently biased on the topic. So, although I respect your position and your passion for this subject, your comments here, and those of your blog readers can't overcome the fact that this term fails WP:V. I wish you well personally and if your term does become legitimately verifiable as per WP:V in the future (or additional citations are posted here), I will gladly support the inclusion of this term in the encyclopedia. But for now, it just doesn't pass muster. Fairsing 21:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC) reply
The development we want to build a WP entry about is the use of a novel set of communication and collaboration technologies within organizations, i.e. within the Intranet as opposed to across the Internet.
This is a development that the NYTimes and the WSJournal, and BusinessWeek have deemed worthy of reportorial and editorial energy: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/business/yourmoney/26mgmt.html?ex=1301029200&en=0d90ed5116e769d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F60612F8395A0C7A8DDDAC0894DB404482 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB109105974578777189-email.html http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2006/tc20060605_424102.htm
It's also been the subject of some academic publications in addition to my SMR article. Papers and conference proceedings on intra-organizational use of blogs and wikis include: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110534832/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 http://osddp.org/files/issues/WP_WikisBlogs.7.pdf http://www.editlib.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Reader.ViewAbstract&paper_id=21597&CFID=31149304&CFTOKEN=50547184 http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1525-1594.2004.29005.x http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1149453.1149472&coll=portal&dl=GUIDE&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618 http://bir.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/4/269
Papers on intra-organizational tagging include: http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=344&page=1 http://domino.watson.ibm.com/cambridge/research.nsf/242252765710c19485256979004d289c/1c181ee5fbcf59fb852570fc0052ad75
In addition, Wikipedia's parent foundation found the development notable enough to include it as part of the 2006 Wikimania conference.
Most of these references do not use the neologism 'Enterprise 2.0,' but they are all about the development for which the term is a shorthand -- the development we'd like to build a WP entry about. I can find no WP policy or guideline stating that every reference for an entry must contain the same words as the entry's title, and it's not hard to find entries where this is not the case. The following, for example, are references included in WP's entry on citizen journalism that do not use the neologism 'citizen journalism.' http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1060217106.php http://www.cpn.org/topics/communication/civicjourn.html http://www.npr.org/yourturn/ombudsman/010705.html http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php
We want to build at WP entry about this development for the same reasons that the reporters, editors, academics, and researchers referenced above devoted their energy to their publications: we think the development is important and noteworthy enough to merit our attention and effort, and we'd like to inform a larger audience about it (For whatever it's worth, a number of entrepreneurs, executives, analysts, financiers, and bloggers apparently concur.). We also think it's distinctive enough to not be subsumed into a broader entry, just as WP's 'citizen journalism' entry is not subsumed into 'journalism,' and 'global warming' is not subsumed into 'climate change.'
This entry needs a title. We've been using 'Enterprise 2.0' to date because that neologism has become the most frequently-used shorthand for the development. People may or may not like the neologism (I'm coming to wish I'd chosen a different one), but what does everyone think of the development? Are its advocates right or wrong in thinking it's an appropriate subject for a WP entry? Amcafee 19:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC) reply
article. But right now, as it stands today, I don't see how we can have a brand new article with the title "Enterprise 2.0" and have it pass the verifiability hurdle. At some point in the future, when/if the term has been picked up by other academics and the mainstream business press with substantive treatments of the term, then an article with this title would be appropriate. Fairsing 23:39, 29 August 2006 (UTC) reply
Of course, you won't find a lot of published references in dead tree media about Enterprise 2.0 yet. It still takes a year or so to get a book published and scholarly articles take months to be vetted and published. (I would point out that the words "Web 2.0" "Ajax" and "podcasting" did not even appear in the 2005 Gartner Hype Cycle report, published only a little over a year ago. Obviously, they are all over the 2006 report.)
Enterprise 2.0 is not an isolated concept that came out of nowhere. There is a long and rich intellectual trail of work done on participation and collaboration within large organizations before the advent of these new technologies and these are part of the evolving Enterprise 2.0 story. For example, consider all the groundwork done on "communities of practice," which is also shorthand for research across many disciplines and has its own full and rich Wikipedia entry.
I refer you to such seminal works in CoP area as:
Wenger E, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Wenger, E, McDermott, R & Snyder, W.M., Cultivating Communities of Practice, HBS press 2002. Saint-Onge, H & Wallace, D, Leveraging Communities of Practice, Butterworth Heinemann, 2003.
In the field of social networking, which is also part of the E2 story, see this example which available online:
Hanneman, Robert A. and Mark Riddle. 2005. Introduction to social network methods. Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside published in digital form at http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/
Enterprise 2.0, as shorthand for the collision of participative technologies with hierarchical organizational dynamics, also encompasses scientific notions like complexity and emgergence. See, for example, Paul B. Hartzog of the IGERT Fellow Center for the Study of Complex Systems who writes:
"Technologies that allow us to work together in new ways make possible an era of “do it yourself” cooperation. That means people being able to help each other without relying on hierarchies do things for them. These anarchical networks are best understood within the framework of complex adaptive systems.
"So, this means we have to study new phenomena like open source, wiki, and social software, but it also means that we have to look back to the roots of civilization: tribes, gift economies, communities, and political theory."
Enterprise 2.0 is an important concept that is going to go away simply because it does or does not meet the Wikipedia gatekeepers' criteria for inclusion at this time. It represents the most important and potentially disruptive business challenge since the advent of modern management. 162.83.218.25 22:58, 27 August 2006 (UTC)Jerry Bowles reply