I think it’s great to have a panel called “Is Enterprise 2.0 a Crock?” at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. Much like SOA conference panels addressing “Is SOA Dead?”

Dennis Howlett posed this question in his blog, entitled Enterprise 2.0: What a Crock. The summary paragraph is quoted here:

Like it or not, large enterprises - the big name brands - have to work in structures and hierarchies that most E2.0 mavens ridicule but can’t come up with alternatives that make any sort of corporate sense. Therein lies the Big Lie. Enterprise 2.0 pre-supposes that you can upend hierarchies for the benefit of all. Yet none of that thinking has a credible use case you can generalize back to business types - except: knowledge based businesses such as legal, accounting, architects etc. Even then - where are the use cases? I’d like to know. In the meantime, don’t be surprised by the ‘fail’ lists that Mike Krigsman will undoubtedly trot out - that’s easy. In the meantime, can someone explain to me the problem Enterprise 2.0 is trying to solve?

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe there are legitimate technologies that can help organizations collaborate and gain significant advantages. But the Enterprise 2.0 crowd for the most part do not show the kind of sophistication about the Enterprise that is needed. OF course there are many many counterexamples of people who are very sophistcated, @ITSinsider @Nenshad @PhilWW @Mastermark and others.

But when I hear panelists say things like:

* The way that business is organized is fundamentally changing, period
* we are breaking down silos
* I don’t know who goes into offices anymore
* Email “reply to all” costs $250,000

I really wonder if there’s enough healthy debate on this topic. It would be nice to see @dahowlett on the panel.

The concept that Silos are something that can be “broken down” shows the ignorance of the people saying it. I wont point a finger at the panelist who used the phrase, and I hear people saying this throughout the conference. But this is a completely wrong concept, and dangerous.

Silos, both organizational and technological are an emergent property of Enterprise. As I defined earlier in the week, the Enterprise can be defined as an organization whose mission requires longevity, size and growth. Longevity creates technology silos, growth creates organizational silos.

Christopher Allen cites Robin Dunbar very well in this post about the famous “Dunbar Number.” We are hitting fundamental limits to human social scalability in the Enterprise.

Until Enterprise 2.0 folks gain a deeper understanding of the day to day reality of the Enterprise, this will continue to have a superficial impact on the Enterprise. If we look back at Enterprise 2.0 in 20 years and can see lots of Enterprise 2.0 “legacy applications”, we can consider this effort to have been a success.