This post has been originaly published in french on 01 Business. During the last enterprise 2.0 summit, there was a weird felling of where are we going or not going. A kind of downturn of the concept. If there is not really a downturn that’s true that we are at a turning point.

A Crossroads ?

During the summit, a speaker explained to me that we are at a crossroads, with two types of experts and enterprise 2.0 which will emerge soon. The first named  » idealist  » (basically care bears attitude) and second  » productivist  » (business centric). Sure, many speeches highlighted the need to meet a business objective as Solvay for instance. Just keep in mind that if Solvay for the first part of their managerial mobilization focused mainly around a pure conversation system, the second one was more focused on exchanges around documents (more 1.0, but effective). So yes the business part is key and should be the engine of this type of social project. Otherwise which interest for the company ? Digitizing existing practices, is it enough ? No. Because the other big topic was the mobilization and engagement of employees, and there is one way to go. In this case, the  » idealist  » who think that the company needs to change its power relationships to re- engage employees is right too. The issue of employee engagement is key, regardless of the business model that will come (as holacratie trendy right now). Oriented business structures – they will also be forced to defend an alternative model of organization and management.

Outstrip social washing

Other chat, with another « usual suspect » in those conferences, explained to me that companies adopt more and more the speech of the  » experts.  » But the walk the talk is not really there. The study presented by Emanuele Quintarelli, shows that many companies have not specifically dedicated resources to collaboration (budget, job positions …) which represent a real obstacle to their transformation. Similarly, a real transformation of the management and labor mode is still quite anecdotal. This is probably why the presentation of Poult company, wich made cookie, has been loved so much, especially around the concept of rotating leadership.

So end of the model, take off … We see more and more companies launch an e-ambassadors or brand advocates program with employees to manage the scaling up of social media. So it needs to make sense, organization and management will also have to evolve. Just as the external led to the concept of Enterprise 2.0, it’s still the external pressure that will finally succeed. Here have come full circle.