We are living in a new world where if we want people to get excited about an idea/concept, we give it a version number. We started with Web 2.0 and now we are discussing Enterprise 2.0, and some of our cutting edge technologists are already discussing what feature would be part of Web 3.0! I am not in complete agreement about the versioning numbers, as Web is something that has been around for less than 20 years, but enterprises have been around for 100’s of years and to put everything till now as 1.0 is not doing it justice (I know, I know, you need to start somewhere, but we could have started with Enterprise 9.0 as well).

I was reading about Enterprise 2.0 conference and came across their definition of Enterprise 2.0, it seems pretty good, but I felt one of the main statement of this definition can cause confusion on what Enterprise 2.0 stands for, this is the part of definition that could be confusing “Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email.”

At first, I didn’t understood why email is a bad productivity tool? I am a Blackberry junkie and my work life depends on email, so how come it is bad? As I thought about it, I understood this is trying to explain (among other things) that legacy way to communicate information in a top/down manner is Enterprise 1.0 and now your email consumers would like to see this communication in a way that your consumers have choice of reading or participating in conversation, not just with you but people like them are reading it. This also brings them to your web-site and keeps them engaged, where you can tell/sell them more!

This does not take the email away, it is still useful for communication with one person or a small group, but as your group size gets bigger and communication is/was more formal, Enterprise 2.0 has tools for you to make this communication effective (hint - it is called Blog in Web 2.0).