PaidContent has been following the little-noticed story of a very smart enterprise that has opened a window into its internal struggles with a Web 2.0 strategy. It's a rare insight and makes for fascinating reading.
Basically, earlier this year The Economist magazine gave total freedom to an internal group of employees to spend 6 months brainstorming an entirely new online service using any content from within the Economist group. The project's failure to produce a business plan or venture provides interesting lessons in how not to run group collaborations, some of which are quite counter-intuitive.
Most amazingly, the team's shambolic process has been exposed to the public throughout, via the project blog, which was actively covered on Slashdot. When the project was finally buried a few months ago, the group's leader, Economist CIO Mike Seery, wrote a detailed memo drawing out its lessons and making seven recommendations for future projects of its type.
The paper a seldom seen glimpse into the internal struggle that many companies must be going through in one guise or another. It also usefully explodes some myths about the correlation between the degree of freedom and openness a working group is given and their capacity to innovate. Worth a read for any CIO.
The Economist is my favourite newspaper, but this sounds like a real trainwreck. Some of my personal highlights from the report:
The subtitle 'A story of innovation'. Sir Humphrey: "Always get the difficult bit out of the way in the title. It does less damage there than in the main body."
Page 7, we haven't even got onto their recommendations and they're whining about the size of their office.
Page 8, the team go sightseeing around London on the company's dollar and the company's time. Nice work if you can get it.
Page 10, tip number 3 is "Abrogate all responsibility for your ideas because it'll all end in tears otherwise." Now there's an innovative environment.
Page 18, Arctic Monkeys reference. Wow, these guys are cool. I bet they listen to two iPods at once.
In short, sounds like a corporate out-of-the-office strategy brainstorming day, only it lasted six months. Six months of trying to think of bland, pointless nonsense to write on a flipchart (the box-out on page 7 is a masterpiece of dross). This isn't a white paper, it's a vision of hell.
Posted by: Naane | November 30, 2007 at 10:30