The evolution of Wikipedia from a Lean perspective

The evolution of Wikipedia from a Lean perspectiveWikipedia is perhaps the most monumental achievement brought about by social collaboration tools. Its tale has been told many times, and it was actually used as one of the examples of the new paradigm in Andrew McAfee’s groundbreaking book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges that was published in 2009. Comprehensive accounts of Wikipedia’s history are also available online on Wikipedia itself and in the form of Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger’s memoir on its early history on Slashdot.[ii]

A brief recapitulation of the story is necessary for our purposes, but the main goal is to inspect the story through a Lean lens in order to visualize what Lean might have to offer for social collaboration.

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Are Lean thinking and social business compatible?

Are Lean thinking and social business compatibleThe short answer is, it depends. There are many ways to interpret Lean, just as there are many ways to interpret social business, and some of the tools used under these names are not compatible with each other. However, the thing I am most interested in is their compatibility on a very fundamental level, on the level of their core premises from which the various tools are but imperfect manifestations.

Just like value-stream mapping is not the same thing as Lean, crowdsourcing is not the same thing as social business. While a toolkit approach to Lean or social business may produce results, it is usually very difficult to retain those results unless the toolkit is based on something more and ingrained into the corporate culture. In order to explore the compatibility of the paradigms, it is necessary to explore their core.

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On online collaboration and friendships

On online collaboration and friendshipsI recently read an interesting article on building collaborative office spaces. Its main argument was based on research from late 1940s, when scientists discovered that “friendships are likely to develop on the basis of brief and passive contacts made going to and from home or walking about the neighborhood.” But what about online collaboration and friendships?

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How to alienate your fan base: HBO Nordic launch in Finland

How to alienate your fan baseA few months ago things seemed bright for the Nordic online consumer: on-demand streaming services were in a race to announce their coming to the Nordics with both Netflix and HBO announcing their arrival and energizing the existing providers like Viaplay to ramp up their marketing campaigns as well.

The service with clearly the highest expectations from consumers and the best value proposition was HBO: we were supposed to get all back catalog series as well as all new episodes within 24 hours of their US premiere via the internet on demand service. The promises were outstanding. Unfortunately, they were cut short and now HBO faces a difficult struggle to rebuild its brand in Finland (and from the little I have read, also in the other Nordic countries, although I am not as well-informed about them).

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On long-form thought, networked knowledge, and books

On long-form thought, networked knowledge, and booksDavid Weinberger has recently argued for networked knowledge and claims that books are not an ideal format for thought and that, indeed, long-form thought such as books is not wide enough for deep thinking.

In this post, I will argue that much of Weinberger’s idea of networked knowledge is not particularly new and does not have the consequences he claims it to have.

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The death of the peer-reviewed article

The death of the peer-reviewed articlePre-publication peer reviews became the dominant paradigm within the academia in the 20th century. In recent years, the system has been criticized and some attempts to correct the weaknesses of the system have been made, such as ventures into open post-publication peer review. However, the scientific community at large remains relatively satisfied with the prevailing paradigm.

In this post, I will examine the peer review paradigm from a point of view that I have not seen used in this context before, and which points at a potential for paradigm shift. This point of view relies on a combination of three key elements: Total quality management (TQM), Lean thinking, and social collaboration.

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The process approach to social business design

The process approach to social business designSocial business is more than just conversation. If implemented properly, it can be a route to more effective operation and, by extension, higher profits. Most companies are nowadays managed through processes, and in this post I will explore the ways social business can be designed with a focus on process improvement.

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Social business enthusiasts need to leave straw men behind

Social business enthusiasts need to leave straw men behindWhen exploring what benefits becoming a social business can provide for the enterprise, it is important to make a serious comparison to a viable alternative. Attacking straw men is useless and can only hurt the adoption of social as an important part of the enterprise.

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Boost the productivity of internal meetings with social collaboration

Boost the productivity of internal meetings with social collaborationMeetings are an unending source of debate. Some feel they are essential, others consider them a huge waste of time. Most tend to agree that, at the very least, many meetings could be run in a more effective manner. This is where social collaboration platforms come into play.

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Enterprise 2.0 is the Total Quality Management of the 21st century

Enterprise 2.0 is the Total Quality Management of the 21st centuryIn the 1950s, Japanese companies began their path to glory based on a new form of thinking largely built on the ideas of W. Edwards Deming. The age of quality had begun.

In this post, I will argue that there are significant parallels between the ideals of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Enterprise 2.0, and that technology is finally ripe for an even more thorough application of many of Deming’s ideas.

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