Your topic is an interesting one and strikes close to home for me. There are bus loads of smart communicators and strategists out there that are recommending enterprise collaboration tools. GREAT! Now who is going to lead the change?

Each of these E2.0 service/product companies will best serve their customers by installing a representative to work with an internal project manager for the purpose of navigating the fear, decent, politics and roadblocks that stand in the way of adoption.

Depending on the customer, this can be a long process… but a fun one.

I have to disagree slightly with rotkapchen's comment. “Driving end user adoption” may not be ideal wording, however, gaining adoption in an F100 company with more than 100,000 potential users means that the service/tool/product needs to do more than just fit into workflow and solve a problem. Gaining adoption requires the understanding, usage and endorsement from leaders at many levels of the organization. In addition, employees and leaders in the organization will not likely pause to “check it out” long enough to adopt it virally. A structured plan is needed.

Chris – I think your points were illustrative of what I was suggesting vendors need to do in the first point. The salesforce needs to take the time to really get to the heart of the buyer's need. It seems that too often buyers see collaboration as the end as opposed to the means to an end. Thus, they throw technology – in this case social technology – at their workforce with the hope that they will figure out how to use it. You don't purchase and deploy a CRM system in that manner, so why do it with social software? Your willingness to work with the client to identify where the tool can benefit not only generates buy-in from the decision-maker, but it puts you on the path to selling him something that his employees will actually see the benefit in because there is clearly a purpose for its use.

rotkapchen – It is an interest question that you pose about how we describe a business challenge relates to the success of social technology adoption. I'm of the belief that it does; as I mentioned above, social technology, and all of collaborative technology, is too often framed by business as a way of “being more collaborative” without any definition of what that means. In that way, the language that is often used is at a tactical level instead of a strategic level. And I believe this is not necessarily an IT problem, but a business problem — business is telling IT what it needs (“collaboration”) and IT is executing (“let's buy a wiki package”). And here's where I believe that vendors can help themselves and their customers by driving the conversation back to the strategic level (“what are you actually trying to achieve?”). Once that is done, I think the light goes on in the mind of the buyer and on the realistic conversations about what needs to change organizationally to meet the real goals — and how a social technology can help you get there.

Chris – I think your points were illustrative of what I was suggesting vendors need to do in the first point. The salesforce needs to take the time to really get to the heart of the buyer's need. It seems that too often buyers see collaboration as the end as opposed to the means to an end. Thus, they throw technology – in this case social technology – at their workforce with the hope that they will figure out how to use it. You don't purchase and deploy a CRM system in that manner, so why do it with social software? Your willingness to work with the client to identify where the tool can benefit not only generates buy-in from the decision-maker, but it puts you on the path to selling him something that his employees will actually see the benefit in because there is clearly a purpose for its use.

rotkapchen – It is an interest question that you pose about how we describe a business challenge relates to the success of social technology adoption. I'm of the belief that it does; as I mentioned above, social technology, and all of collaborative technology, is too often framed by business as a way of “being more collaborative” without any definition of what that means. In that way, the language that is often used is at a tactical level instead of a strategic level. And I believe this is not necessarily an IT problem, but a business problem — business is telling IT what it needs (“collaboration”) and IT is executing (“let's buy a wiki package”). And here's where I believe that vendors can help themselves and their customers by driving the conversation back to the strategic level (“what are you actually trying to achieve?”). Once that is done, I think the light goes on in the mind of the buyer and on the realistic conversations about what needs to change organizationally to meet the real goals — and how a social technology can help you get there.

Chris – I think your points were illustrative of what I was suggesting vendors need to do in the first point. The salesforce needs to take the time to really get to the heart of the buyer's need. It seems that too often buyers see collaboration as the end as opposed to the means to an end. Thus, they throw technology – in this case social technology – at their workforce with the hope that they will figure out how to use it. You don't purchase and deploy a CRM system in that manner, so why do it with social software? Your willingness to work with the client to identify where the tool can benefit not only generates buy-in from the decision-maker, but it puts you on the path to selling him something that his employees will actually see the benefit in because there is clearly a purpose for its use.

rotkapchen – It is an interest question that you pose about how we describe a business challenge relates to the success of social technology adoption. I'm of the belief that it does; as I mentioned above, social technology, and all of collaborative technology, is too often framed by business as a way of “being more collaborative” without any definition of what that means. In that way, the language that is often used is at a tactical level instead of a strategic level. And I believe this is not necessarily an IT problem, but a business problem — business is telling IT what it needs (“collaboration”) and IT is executing (“let's buy a wiki package”). And here's where I believe that vendors can help themselves and their customers by driving the conversation back to the strategic level (“what are you actually trying to achieve?”). Once that is done, I think the light goes on in the mind of the buyer and on the realistic conversations about what needs to change organizationally to meet the real goals — and how a social technology can help you get there.

Chris – I think your points were illustrative of what I was suggesting vendors need to do in the first point. The salesforce needs to take the time to really get to the heart of the buyer's need. It seems that too often buyers see collaboration as the end as opposed to the means to an end. Thus, they throw technology – in this case social technology – at their workforce with the hope that they will figure out how to use it. You don't purchase and deploy a CRM system in that manner, so why do it with social software? Your willingness to work with the client to identify where the tool can benefit not only generates buy-in from the decision-maker, but it puts you on the path to selling him something that his employees will actually see the benefit in because there is clearly a purpose for its use.

rotkapchen – It is an interest question that you pose about how we describe a business challenge relates to the success of social technology adoption. I'm of the belief that it does; as I mentioned above, social technology, and all of collaborative technology, is too often framed by business as a way of “being more collaborative” without any definition of what that means. In that way, the language that is often used is at a tactical level instead of a strategic level. And I believe this is not necessarily an IT problem, but a business problem — business is telling IT what it needs (“collaboration”) and IT is executing (“let's buy a wiki package”). And here's where I believe that vendors can help themselves and their customers by driving the conversation back to the strategic level (“what are you actually trying to achieve?”). Once that is done, I think the light goes on in the mind of the buyer and on the realistic conversations about what needs to change organizationally to meet the real goals — and how a social technology can help you get there.

Chris – I think your points were illustrative of what I was suggesting vendors need to do in the first point. The salesforce needs to take the time to really get to the heart of the buyer's need. It seems that too often buyers see collaboration as the end as opposed to the means to an end. Thus, they throw technology – in this case social technology – at their workforce with the hope that they will figure out how to use it. You don't purchase and deploy a CRM system in that manner, so why do it with social software? Your willingness to work with the client to identify where the tool can benefit not only generates buy-in from the decision-maker, but it puts you on the path to selling him something that his employees will actually see the benefit in because there is clearly a purpose for its use.

rotkapchen – It is an interest question that you pose about how we describe a business challenge relates to the success of social technology adoption. I'm of the belief that it does; as I mentioned above, social technology, and all of collaborative technology, is too often framed by business as a way of “being more collaborative” without any definition of what that means. In that way, the language that is often used is at a tactical level instead of a strategic level. And I believe this is not necessarily an IT problem, but a business problem — business is telling IT what it needs (“collaboration”) and IT is executing (“let's buy a wiki package”). And here's where I believe that vendors can help themselves and their customers by driving the conversation back to the strategic level (“what are you actually trying to achieve?”). Once that is done, I think the light goes on in the mind of the buyer and on the realistic conversations about what needs to change organizationally to meet the real goals — and how a social technology can help you get there.

Focusing on adoption changes the perspective of everything considerably. Part of the symptoms you've identified are due to classic methods — IT has been focused on the wrong elements of reuse. The most critical elements of reuse are the evidences of the business and its operation — real-world research and evidences of what it takes to make things happen, by the people making them happen.

The 'innovation' you speak of is borne from this context of each business. We're dealing with 'disruptive technologies' imposing impact well-beyond the 'thing' itself — the entire business macrocosm must adapt to adopt. This is alluded to somewhat in #2, but it goes beyond process — the same reason I challenged a recent Gartner leader looking for a new BPM analyst, BPM is an 'old' answer, insufficient.

So, are vendors responsible? If IT is ill-equipped to respond, can vendors provide relevant services as part of their overall offering? Would the offerings be viable? “By and large, a disruptive technology is initially embraced by the least profitable customers in a market”, Clayton Christensen.

“Drive end user adoption”? That's exactly the wrong way to consider the goal. It is the solution that must adapt for 'fit', not the other way around. Any solution with the appropriate 'fit' is naturally adopted…again, how much 'sales' is required for an iPhone app?

Might the language we're using, which frames where and how we start tackling a challenge, be a major hindrance to our progess?

Focusing on adoption changes the perspective of everything considerably. Part of the symptoms you've identified are due to classic methods — IT has been focused on the wrong elements of reuse. The most critical elements of reuse are the evidences of the business and its operation — real-world research and evidences of what it takes to make things happen, by the people making them happen.

The 'innovation' you speak of is borne from this context of each business. We're dealing with 'disruptive technologies' imposing impact well-beyond the 'thing' itself — the entire business macrocosm must adapt to adopt. This is alluded to somewhat in #2, but it goes beyond process — the same reason I challenged a recent Gartner leader looking for a new BPM analyst, BPM is an 'old' answer, insufficient.

So, are vendors responsible? If IT is ill-equipped to respond, can vendors provide relevant services as part of their overall offering? Would the offerings be viable? “By and large, a disruptive technology is initially embraced by the least profitable customers in a market”, Clayton Christensen.

“Drive end user adoption”? That's exactly the wrong way to consider the goal. It is the solution that must adapt for 'fit', not the other way around. Any solution with the appropriate 'fit' is naturally adopted…again, how much 'sales' is required for an iPhone app?

Might the language we're using, which frames where and how we start tackling a challenge, be a major hindrance to our progess?

Focusing on adoption changes the perspective of everything considerably. Part of the symptoms you've identified are due to classic methods — IT has been focused on the wrong elements of reuse. The most critical elements of reuse are the evidences of the business and its operation — real-world research and evidences of what it takes to make things happen, by the people making them happen.

The 'innovation' you speak of is borne from this context of each business. We're dealing with 'disruptive technologies' imposing impact well-beyond the 'thing' itself — the entire business macrocosm must adapt to adopt. This is alluded to somewhat in #2, but it goes beyond process — the same reason I challenged a recent Gartner leader looking for a new BPM analyst, BPM is an 'old' answer, insufficient.

So, are vendors responsible? If IT is ill-equipped to respond, can vendors provide relevant services as part of their overall offering? Would the offerings be viable? “By and large, a disruptive technology is initially embraced by the least profitable customers in a market”, Clayton Christensen.

“Drive end user adoption”? That's exactly the wrong way to consider the goal. It is the solution that must adapt for 'fit', not the other way around. Any solution with the appropriate 'fit' is naturally adopted…again, how much 'sales' is required for an iPhone app?

Might the language we're using, which frames where and how we start tackling a challenge, be a major hindrance to our progess?