Presented at the Accenture Global Convergence Forum 2007 by Don Rippert , Chief Technology Officer, Accenture.   Teenagers today have no concept of a world that is not connected via the internet. How they live and operate in that connected world, using collaborative, social networking platforms and creating and sharing content that they manage, tag and recommend to their peers can provide enterprises with some valuable lessons to apply within their own organisations.
Corporate knowledge management sites lag behind the services that these teenagers use - and by considerable distance. Don Rippert, Accenture's Chief Technology Officer, compared the experience of looking for documents and content on an average corporate knowledge management site with the way that teenagers will use interactive and collaborative services. These include platforms such as de.licio.us which provides the ability for social bookmarking; allowing users to tag content that they find online and make those tags available to others who may be interested in the same areas. Other services such as Flickr allow users to share photos, but also provide a means to socialize the most popular categories of photo subject by using 'tag clouds', which represent indicating the most popular tags by the relative size of the typeface, providing an instant and graphical overview of the most commonly referenced terms. In the media rich world, increasingly, other forms of content also need to be easily accessible. YouTube users can search in videos posted to the site using any number of means. The search capability means that any video can be found and others directed to it. In comparison, said Rippert, a vast amount of video content that enterprises routinely capture and store is never seen, as enterprise users are unable to find it unless they know its precise title and location. Other examples abound. The use of wikis – most notably in Wikipedia – are changing the way that knowledge is developed and presented. Using wikis can empower and encourage a rich community of users to contribute their knowledge and expertise. Rippert contrasted this to the often bureaucratic and cumbersome normal knowledge management processes within an enterprise. Other forms of social networking, such as Facebook allow individuals to find their ex-schoolfriends and colleagues and reconnect with them. A much richer experience the average corporate directory provides. Other businesses normally associated with the consumer space are also creating services explicitly aimed at the enterprise market. Google, for example, is providing corporate email services and making online productivity software such as word processing and spreadsheets available that encourage and enhance collaboration. And Google is building a phenomenal infrastructure, using between 500,000 and 600,000 servers that it builds itself (making in the fourth largest server manufacturer in the world) to support all the services it provides to both consumers and increasingly enterprise customers. The secondlife experience - more commonly thought of as a consumer experience - is now being used by some businesses, providing a new channel for retailers and advertisers. Overall, the wealth of innovation and collaboration contained in the services that teenagers, the internet generation, use to manage and navigate their world, interests, content and relationships is far more sophisticated, flexible and relevant than the vast majority of systems serving enterprise users. But, according to Rippert, these benefits are available today, and can achieve significant results in a short period of time. Accenture itself has implemented a number of these innovations in its internal knowledge management systems and is already seeing the benefits for its 146,000 employees around the world. Collaborative tagging, video indexing, and a social network for global employees are some of the early manifestation of the approach to helping Accenture people to find the information they need, collaborate and develop content together. There are clear differences between corporate and individual requirements, not the least of which are the regulatory and security standards which enterprises must meet. But the opportunity to create more efficient and effective working processes and interactions is available now and all enterprises should understand how they can take advantage today. For those looking for the right answers, they might start by asking their teenagers. Read other presentations from the Accenture Global Convergence Forum 2007. Next: Speaker Bio |