Penny Edwards blogs atWikiConsulting.com

Another addition to the open-source participation economy is the contest for the creation of new futures contracts. It is being staged on MarketsWiki - an online open source knowledge base for current and historical information about the global exchange traded capital, derivatives, environmental and related OTC markets, with idea and opinion contributions being encouraged from investors and traders alike.

The ‘Great Contract Challenge‘ provides another illustration of the prospective benefits of crowd sourcing. In other words, tapping the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ offers greater innovation potential than traditional approaches which have viewed and relied on exchanges as the source of new/novel financial instrument creation. Prospective customers’ involvement in the design and selection of those instruments which appear most promising, should also constitute a form of natural selection and help ensure only the fittest new products make it to market.

Aside from the shift in mental models, the contest also underlines the departure from traditional approaches to control - of information and processes - and a move towards participation, transparency and democratised decision-making. Admittedly, the contest is being staged in the public domain, where such ideas have already found fertile ground, and social networking and idea-sharing sites, and technologies in support thereof, are now relatively commonplace. Nevertheless, there’s also increasing evidence of this type of change occurring in many professional service organisations, not least of which being their growth in the adoption and adaptation of social tools tailored to suit their business purposes.

Even if those organisations don’t subscribe to an ‘innovate or die’ approach apparent in the derivatives sector, they still need to pay careful attention to the strong steady changes fostering teamwork, dialogue and learning, being nutured by their more adventurous competitors. To that end, we’re now seeing ever increasing interest in the customisation and use of tools such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, tagging and RSS to help better connect knowledge workers with current relevant information and expertise to extract value from complexity and commoditisation alike. Those same tools which support MarketsWiki and other collaboration environments.

As noted by Bruce MacEwan in his recent blog about law firms, billing hours and complexity:

“There will always be both ['expert' and 'commoditized service]. That said, I think what constitutes either will evolve. Some of what is viewed as expert now - will devolve into commodity. New areas (unseen before - maybe new types of financings to emerge from the current crisis) may be the new “expert” (i.e., the always-sought-after high value engagements) areas.

To lubricate this information -> knowledge transformation cycle, and for firms extract value from it, they need to make it far easier for their staff to generate, find, share and use information and expertise. One straightforward way to do this is through systems which flex, shape and emerge depending on what people are trying to do. Systems which not only give people a better platform on which to work, but which can also make use of the trails people create as they search, bookmark, rate or view things - all very simply stuff focusing on supporting and gathering intelligence from people’s interaction with the system. And when these individual activities are aggregated, they provide powerful indicators of what is most useful or important to people across the breadth of the organisation. Another example of crowd sourcing - but this time applied internally - to tap the wealth of (informal) sharing which often occurs in casual exchanges, via email or other channels, and can so easily be lost in organisations which fail to innovate, or at least improve, their current information and technology environments.

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Last week, I went along to the RSA to listen to Charles Leadbeater talk about his book “We Think”, research and thoughts on the web and the web’s effect on mass creativity, innovation and collaboration.  He indicated how the web has created new vantage points on old questions (e.g. effect of technology on societal change and the scale of such change) and new dichotomies (e.g. sharing vs making money, and autonomy vs authority, where online collaborations create new hierarchies and different forms of ‘control’).  This provided the context for the central themes of his book, namely

• Ethic of Participation:* Prior behaviour characterised by ‘work during the day’ and ‘consuming or engaging in social pursuits by night’ is becoming more complex, and being blurred by people (who are ‘amateurs’) creating things in their leisure time (traditional ‘consumption’ time) to a very high standard, and using those outputs during work time (e.g. open source s/w).
• New ways to collaborate:* Involving hierarchies, but of a different kind to those which we are accustomed, being more meritocratic, transparent and fluid.  That is leading to new forms of organisation, which allow us to imagine how we can get stuff done together, as well as giving us new perspectives on control and value chains - now being more like hives or nests.
• New motivations: Which asks us to look at why people are contributing to the content and community of the web.  Some motivations revolve around recognition.  The implication being, that if businesses/organisations don’t get it, they are not going to be creating environments where people will contribute (creatively and innovatively), nor will the businesses/organisations themselves be contributing (or able to do so).
• Ethic of Sharing:* How wealth in the broadest sense gets generated in an economy of ideas.  He suggested that the above three themes invite us to think about wealth creation in entirely new ways, and to depart from traditional models of closed investment/ownership/private property (historically) being the necessary ingredient for the development/exploitation of primary goods, labour, ideas and innovation.

These themes in turn raise considerations about freedom and its relationship with creativity - where one is perhaps derived from experiencing the other and forms part of the new ‘motivation’.  It also raises the question about how deep the participation culture will go when, for example, ideas are circulated and one organisation alone profits from their exploitation.  In other words, where people are choosing to do things in different ways, and are participating in new modes of on- and off- line collaboration (made possible by the web and the variety of technology available to users), what type of sharing models are available in a world based on wealth, and how do we innovate the business models themselves (not only the products and processes)?

In one area, new models have been facilitating the flow of resources and action to issues that need addressing even where there is no (or little) money to be made.  Take Kiva for example.  Kivais the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.  Guy Kawasaki explains that Kiva’s model involves a minimum $2.50 voluntary fee that lenders pay when checking out their “shopping cart.”  Consequently, lenders receive no interest and pay a voluntary fee to Kiva in order to loan money.  Great business model!  Relying as it does on people’s motivation to share and participate in the building of an online community (and to pay to do so).  Here, innovation in technology (web) and the business model itself has facilitated pockets of local action, which collectively, are having a tremendous global effect.  This type of thinking and action is also behind many climate change initiatives, not least of which being Do The Green Thing.

In other areas, the discussion surrounds the organisation, and its generation and exploitation of ideas and knowledge.  Chesbrough explores these ideas in his recent book “Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology“.  He discusses the departure from prior models which relied on creativity within the firm, to the need for innovation in the business model itself (i.e. models of ‘open innovation’) which enable firms to tap ideas of customers and users and involve customers as co-producers.  It also requires ideas to flow - into and out of the business - requiring a different approach to control and the creation of value.

Proctor and Gamble is perhaps one of the more famous examples of open innovation, actively seeking user-community participation in developing new product ideas.  Another interesting ‘environmental’ example, promoted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and IBM, is the “Eco-Patent Commons”.  That initiative makes available patents to “encourage researchers, entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes in any industry to create, apply and further develop their consumer or industrial products, processes and services in a way that will help to protect and respect the environment”.  Then, there’s Free Beer (thanks for the reference Eliot!).  It’s ‘free’ in the sense of “freedom”, not beer give-aways.  The organisation is using Creative Commons licences to give public access to the recipe and brand (for pleasure or profit).  Usual terms apply: “If you make money selling their unique beer, you have to give them credit and publish any changes you make to the recipe under a similar license”.  All the writing about ‘wisdom of the crowds’ suggests that the Free Beer recipe could be the best one yet!

Coming back to the themes above, about motivations, sharing and profiting from ideas, Leadbeater is suggesting that it’s unlikely that people will be satisfied with being anonymous contributors to a company’s ideas - they want a certain level of autonomy/freedom to create and to be appropriately recognised for their contribution.  And this is where many organisations are still getting it wrong by not understanding what is motivating people to participate, collaborate and share their thoughts.  As illustrated in the above examples, for this to happen, companies have to give away control to allow ideas and creativity to flow (and perhaps control over a range of their IP) which is probably counter-intuitive for many organisations.

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In an earlier post I indicated that wiki ‘adoption’ refers to the stages through which users typically progress before committing to a new technology, with different adopter ‘types’ (e.g. innovators, early and late adopters) progressing through the stages at different times and speeds. Perhaps an even simpler (although less scientific) way of categorising users lies in the distinction between those who are technical (e.g. technologically familiar or curious) or non-technical, with ‘technical-users’ more readily adopting wikis and associated concepts of teamwork, knowledge capture and sharing, and learning therefrom. ‘Technical users’ tend to be ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’ often comprising people from technical companies and engineers. In fact, my survey of 102 companies corroborates this generalisation, with the greatest proportion (37.26%) of participants coming from the IT sector followed by the professional services sector, and 22.55% being IT engineers and 15.69 being consultants.

The survey results indicated that high levels of self-learning (69.93% of responses) have been supported by peer-to-peer learning (18.18%) with very little targeted/tailored training (1.40%) or issue of best practice/usage guidelines (10.49%). Popular mechanisms used to supplement self-motivated usage and ‘unlearning’ of older inefficient yet familiar habits include information being placed on to the wiki, people being involved in projects using a wiki and emailing links to the wiki. Those mechanisms moved users rapidly through the first adoption stages of becoming aware of the wiki, to understanding through trial/experimentation with the wiki.

The Wiki Adoption Spiral depicts how ‘technical-users’ move through adoption stages and spread wiki usage virally to later adopters. It reflects that:

• adoption stages for ‘technical users’ (constituting the first adopter categories) are shorter and converge as they proceed quickly through initial (awareness, understanding and trial) stages, creating their own ‘transition mechanisms’ involving self-learning and experimentation with wiki use.

• adoption categories and processes are fluid, as different users can be drawn into the process without early categories having completed the ‘typical’ cycle. For example, due to organic growth other categories maybe made aware of the wiki prior to its ‘adoption’ (e.g. through involvement in projects wikis), and commence their adoption process.

• progress through stages can be halted (i.e. no growth through abandonment or rejection) if there is no perceived ‘need’ to use the wiki and/or barriers are not overcome.

Whilst early adopters more readily enter the adoption process because they are more technically competent/inquisitive, the implication from the above points is that top-down support /facilitation is equally important for developing good ‘wiki’ practices within the initial adopter group as for later adopters. Such facilitation involves generation of a shared understanding about collaboration goals, wiki purpose, responsibilities and ‘gardening’ practices. The experience/knowledge of those adopters can then be coupled with other transition mechanisms (e.g. more ‘technical training’, involvement in projects using a wiki and information being made available on the wiki) to accelerate the diffusion process to other adopter categories.

The high level of ‘learning by doing’ and peer-to-peer support illustrates an opportunity for users to participate in a collaborative learning experience, which provides an ideal platform for encouraging communication and collaborative behaviours in general (e.g. helping transfer knowledge/ideas throughout the company, working across organizational boundaries and learning from past experience/best practices of others).

Although reliance on email and familiarity of other tools may illustrate a reluctance to ‘unlearn’ habitual less effective work practices, there needs to be a balance between directive wiki usage and support for different communication styles as people become accustomed to using wikis and the different capabilities they can provide. That also requires responsiveness to feedback and anlyses of ways in which existing tools can be integrated with wikis to best support people in their work.

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There are a number of ways in which new collaboration technology may be introduced into an organisation, including:

1. An ‘inside-out’ approach which focuses first on the business needs and capabilities to be developed, then on identifying the technologies which can support those needs/capabilities (McAfee approach - “Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology” Harvard Business Review (2006)).
2. Continuous scanning for innovations/new technology and matching promising innovations with relevant problems (Rogers’ approach - Diffusion of Innovations (1995) Free Press, New York).
3. Operating a ‘me-too’ approach as a result of ambiguous goals and a volatile/uncertain environment, whereby the implementation of new technology is influenced by/modelled on what other organisations are implementing or the current technology adoption trends in the market (Mimetic Isomorphic approach - DiMaggio and Powell The Iron Cage Revisited American Sociological Review (1983)).

In an effort to determine which approach businesses favour and the consequence of the approach in terms of wiki adoption, I asked survey respondents to identify the drivers behind their wiki implementations and how they are actually using their wikis, to gauge if there was a correlation between the two. The key business ‘needs’ identified spanned three broad areas of supporting collaborative work practices (27.88% of responses), increasing the effectiveness/efficiency of existing tools (22.68%), and improing the ability to locate or retain information/knowledge (23.05%). Few responses indicated (or admitted?) that the wiki had been implemented simply because it represents something of a new trend in collaboration technology.

In terms of what the wiki is actually being used for in the workplace, responses indicated their primary use as knowledge bases (22.53%), for ideas generation (16.21%) and project collaboration (16.21%). With the primary need being to support collaborative work practices, higher actual uses for ideas sharing and project collaboration might have been expected instead of the wiki’s predominant use as a knowledge base. Of course, it could be inferred that the primary need is being satisfied through a variety of wiki uses, of which the knowledge base currently predominates, with actual uses for ideas sharing and project collaboration increasing as people discover other uses the for the wiki.

What’s intersting about this however, is that wikis are being employed mainly for internal purposes, and not for marketing and collaboration with clients (a mere 3.85% of responses indicating use for this purpose). On the one hand, given the relative newness of many wikis (remember that 47% of the 102 wiki implementations survey were under a year old) the responses may suggest that wikis and capabilities regarding their use/management are still being developed internally before being extended outside the organisation. Alternatively, given the importance of collaborations with customers, it may suggest that businesses are not in fact applying the wiki to key needs, which requires the development of capabilities so as to be better able to deliver what it is the customer wants. Integral to that is the ability communicate quickly and effectively with customers.

During the interviews I conducted, I asked Suw Charman what ‘needs’ were driving the implementations (e.g. inefficiency/ineffectiveness of existing tools, inability to locate/retain information and/or knowledge, better support for collaborative work practices, etc). She noted that “there is a difference between what businesses need and what they think they need”. She went on to indicate that due to their popular public uses (e.g. Wikipedia) businesses implement wikis to help employees find and access past/current information, instead of thinking about issues surrounding efficient work, and better collaborative, practices. Consequently, “they tend to look at the problem the wrong way around … since it is not about sharing knowledge and the introduction of a new technology per se, but about getting work done quickly and easily”. Her comments reflect the practicalities of the Rogers’ approach and the imitative selection processes that create a form of ‘pressure’ as a result of the Mimetic Isomorphic approach, which approaches may not in fact focus on the collaborative behaviours/capabilities which need to be developed and engender requisite/appropriate managerial support to do so.

In light of the reported barriers to wikis’ use (e.g. time to contribute/maintain content, reliance on email, lack of managerial support, culture, lack of clear purpose for the wiki and wiki not being integrated with other tools) it seems that reliance on the Rogers’ approach or the Mimetic Isomorphism approach is resulting in a lack of commitment to the change process integral to the adoption of this style of collaborative technology, undue reliance on voluntary adoption and insufficient support during the adoption process, and loss of opportunity to recognise why such tools like wikis are being introduced to the business and their potential to help resolve issues with existing knowledge management/work practices and develop collaborative capabilities both internally and externally. In other words, a more holistic ‘inside-out’ approach.

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I was curious to discover whether wikis are acting as more than just a technology enabler for information dissemination within organisations, and if they could serve a deeper function of facilitating changes to culture and stimulating organisational learning practices.

Consequently, I asked survey repondents and interviewees (i) what factors facilitate collaboration in the company, and (ii) whether those factors were prerequisites for successful wiki implementations or if wikis could be used as a means to develop better collaborative work practices. Common threads throughout the responses to (i) highlighted the need for organization-wide communications, access to/sharing of information/knowledge and a willingness to contribute/collaborate. In respect of (ii) views diverged. Some interviewees considered that, whilst wikis can provide a solution to the problem of locating information, they simply support existing information sharing/communication practices, since politics and cultural issues often hinder wiki usage. However, others considered that wikis encourage transparency by “questioning how people are thinking” and “can be used to increase awareness of people’s contribution to the workplace”.

Ross Mayfield of SocialText concurred with the latter view stating that “the best thing a wiki can do is to make transparent an existing culture. It can change culture overtime but if you try to introduce it into a controlling environment too quickly the entire notion of it will get slapped down”. That emphasizes the importance of ‘managing’ wikis’ incremental implementation so as to build towards a supportive user-community.

I also asked survey respondents to characterize their companies before and after the wiki implementation based on factors derived from the literature review. The overall picture is one of change towards ‘learning organisation’ characteristics (even if only slight in some areas). The greatest shifts occurred in relation to the level of information flows and new ideas being sought/tried, and people’s willingness to help one another carry out work. These changes appear to have occurred in a relatively short timeframe, with 47% of wiki installations being under a year-old. Most respondents considered that the wiki implementation has a minor (27.72%) to moderate (30.69%) impact in shaping companies’ characteristics.

Furthermore, the apparent benefits to be gained from wiki implementations in relatively short periods seem to have rather modest barriers/disadvantages, where survey respondents considered time to contribute (11.67% of responses), and reliance on email (11.67%) to be more significant barriers to wiki usage than culture (9.05%) and lack of managerial support (7.14%). That maybe partly attributable to the climate of openness and trust, and other learning characteristics, which organisations were considered to possess prior to the wiki implementation.

Consequently, the evidence suggests that wikis have improved organisational information flow, enabled people to work/communicate more efficiently and effectively, learn from past experience and share knowledge/ideas, in organizational contexts which are not averse to collaboration and learning. Accordingly, wikis have provided platforms for collaborative and emergent behaviour, which could not satisfactorily proceed through existing technology.

Time will tell whether the reported changes in certain organizational learning characteristics continue to grow and become more pronounced as wikis mature. Certainly, the level of grassroots’ implementations, facilitation and organic growth, illustrate instances of people at operational levels challenging mindsets regarding work practices and the utility of existing systems, experimenting with new solutions and adopting individual/team practices (including peer-to-peer learning) conducive to double-loop learning.

To grow this behaviour across the company and tap people’s “massive undeveloped potential” (Moss-Jones (2005)), management must be more alert to those initiatives and address barriers which inhibit wiki use. To that end, undertaking activities proposed in the wiki management cycle offers managers opportunities to engage in organizational learning practices and develop corresponding capabilities.

So, whilst there is much more to organizational learning and much more than can be supported by wikis alone, I think their use/management maybe informed by practices associated with the ‘learning organisation’ which in turn may facilitate changes to culture and stimulate organisational learning practices, making wikis more than a mere technological enabler for wider information dissemination.

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Having survey 102 companies, and interviewed 10 companies and 9 consultants, I compiled the following recommendations regarding the management of wikis in business:

1. For new implementations, consider the needs to be addressed/capabilities to be developed, how people currently work and changes that maybe necessary to routines/behaviours, as well as the nature of the culture, structure and other organisational subsystems, which initially will have to be worked within whilst gradual change is encouraged. For existing implementations, evaluate their impact (if any) on the foregoing factors, and who is (and is not) using wikis and why (including issues users have in respect of wikis and their work processes).

2. View the implementation as a change process and allow for planned emergence during adoption and growth/maintenance, and encourage evaluation throughout.

3. Involve a broad cross-section of people in the definition of flexible (collaboration) goals, and the consideration of how the wiki should be designed and people’s behaviour altered to (better) meet identified needs. Use those goals to guide and evaluate how well the needs are being met.

4. Consider the tasks being undertaken and the level of user competence when deciding whether some flexible structures/templates would help to avoid the wiki appearing chaotic and content being hard-to-find, as people learn how to create their own structure/maintain content.

5. Identify key ‘technical’ users (with needs corresponding to those identified) who can form pilot groups, or who can expand wiki usage to other areas/projects. Encourage experimentation to discover how the wiki can be used to best suit their needs and uncover issues with its design, integration with existing tools and/or impact on other subsystems.

6. Don’t rely solely on the self-motivation of the initial adopter groups. Develop and support good practices from the outset by supplementing self-learning with targeted training and best practice guidelines to help users understand the goals and wiki practices necessary to facilitate more effective/efficient work.

7. Recognise that later adopters may need greater support helping them understand how to use the wiki and work more collaboratively. Engage existing users in this process to grow the wiki organically. Focus on and demonstrate the uses/benefits of wikis’ use for everyday work (with knowledge collection being a by-product of wiki usage rather than an end in itself).

8. Allow people time to develop their skills with the wiki and gradually move them away from use of inefficient tools by constantly and subtly promoting its use (e.g. through moving tasks/information onto the wiki, sending people links/referring people to wiki pages and involving people in projects using wikis). However, support different communication styles and recognise that using a wiki may not be suitable in certain circumstances.

9. Encourage user delegation, and rotation of, a wiki gardening role to people within their respective communities of practice, whilst developing more dispersed habitual gardening practices amongst users.

10. Be alert to how people are using the wiki and seek feedback continuously to learn how people can best be supported in their work. Ensure that any measures used during the evaluation process are aligned with the needs which are driving the implementation. Assess/refine the implementation goals, process and wiki itself even if that means relying on soft data.

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The original wiki design principles (Wiki Design Principles) encourage emergent work and do not impose structure, process or rules, contrasting applications characterised by a top-down command-and-control mentality. That can allow people to work together in self-directed ways, encouraging levels of openness, autonomy and knowledge sharing which other systems (i.e. all systems in the organisation including cultural, managerial, structural and operational systems) could not well support. Consequently, a wiki implementation should be viewed as a change process rather than the introduction of a new technology per se.

Since cyclical process frameworks have been suggested for technology management in general - i.e. as means to aid consideration of technology’s role, effects on the organisation and nature of managerial activities/involvement, from existing literature I derived a wiki management framework to help assess how in practice businesses are managing wiki implementations and the utility of such a framework for managing the change process.

That framework includes the following processes: ‘Need’ Identification, Planning, Adoption, Maintenance and Evaluation. During my research I posed a range of questions to interviewees and survey respondents regarding their practices in respect of each of the processes. I’ll be discussing the responses in a later post.

Wiki Management Cycle

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Numerous blogs, industry and academic literature reflect the considerable correlation between the concepts related to the adoption of innovations, development of a ‘learning organisation’ and successful management of wikis in business, including:

• development of a receptive culture and managerial support;
• role of leaders in promoting interaction, dialogue and feedback;
• top-down and bottom-up approaches to learning and management;
• widely shared vision for what is required, and the teamwork, adaptiveness and creativity necessary to advance that vision.

A little while back there was an interesting debate which sparked considerable comment about the ability of social software/Web 2.0 to effect organisational change. In other words, whether Web 2.0 technologies can act as more than a mere technology enabler for wider information dissemination/communication in organisations and their use/management stimulate organisational learning practices and culture change.

One school thought maintains that Web 2.0 (including wikis, blogs, bookmark managers and network/micro-blogging services) will not address or substantially change the barriers that prevent organisational learning e.g. free flow of knowledge, lack of trust, missing incentives, power differentials, unsupportive cultures and the general busyness of employees (Davenport) . The other school (including McAfee, Suarez and Hinchcliffe) recognises that technology by itself won’t resolve the dilemma, but view the increasing use of Web 2.0 as a catalyst for change.

Proponents of the latter view consider Web 2.0 to be a radical departure from previous generations of collaboration/knowledge management tools, since they are easy to learn, deploy and use, giving people the ability to self-organise and collaborate in ways which best suit their needs. They consider that well-executed wiki adoption and management, couples with a growing need for businesses to focus on supporting innovation/collaboration, will encourage organisational learning.

That debate fed a second string to my research, i.e. the extent to which use/management of wikis may contribute to improved organisational communication and collaboration making them potentially useful tools for encouraging practices associated with the ‘learning organisation’. It also highlights the twin-edged nature of the problem, since using a wiki effectively in the workplace may itself depend on the extent to which the organisation is able to cope with complexity/change, learn and continuously improve.

Consequently, since the clear message is that implementing wikis (and any Web 2.0 technology) is as much about understanding organisational culture, learning, collaboration practices and human behaviour as it is about the technology itself, I also investigated:

1. how themes of the ‘learning organisation’ can aid and be reflected in the management of wikis in business; and
2. the extent to which such management can in turn encourage organisational learning and foster collaborative behaviour.

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Increasingly, wikis are being implemented in businesses to address concerns with knowledge management, collaboration practices and limitations of existing systems, and to:

• Reduce email traffic;
• Provide a common platform (rather than a private channel) for collecting, organising and sharing knowledge and experience of all stakeholders;
• Provide a flexible tool adaptable to a range of uses including knowledge repository, project/action tracking and intranet;
• Facilitate swifter more widespread and effective communication.

However, their use in the workplace maybe inhibited for a variety of reasons including:

• Potential lack of clear purpose since wikis may not replace existing systems or processes;
• Lack of content or too much unmanageable content if not refactored (i.e. editing/organising pages);
• Bureaucratic command-and-control organizational (sub-) culture(s) and structure which stifle knowledge sharing, openness and trust;
• Risk of abandonment if users do not perceive a clear need for, or benefit from using, wikis or other barriers to their use are not overcome.

Those difficulties raise specific issues about wikis’ management and use, the effect of organisational context (i.e. structure and culture) on wiki uptake, and more generic issues about adoption of innovations. Similarly, a business’s ability to collaborate effectively reflects issues at the heart of technology management, namely improving the effectiveness of an organisation and its people through the application of concepts and techniques for operating, improving and integrating an organisation’s systems, and introducing innovatory systems.

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As part of my MBA in Technology Management with the Open University Business School, Milton Keynes, UK, I have been researching the use and management of wikis in business. During my research I set up a research wiki to record various elements of the research, including the survey, interviews, findings, conclusions and recommendations. You can read more about my research in the Final Report - Managing Wikis in Business - September 2007

Here’s a snapshot of what the Report covers and concludes:

The study investigates how businesses can manage wikis to facilitate collaboration in the workplace. In doing so, it describes a process framework for managing wiki implementations and analyses how ‘learning organisation’ themes can aid in that process. It also considers whether a wiki can act as more than a mere technological enabler for wider information dissemination, by providing an independent mechanism whose management and widespread use can encourage organisational learning.

Based on interviews and responses to a web-based survey, this study found that wikis are relatively new phenomena in businesses, whose use, management and growth, to date, have been dependent largely on grassroots initiatives of self-motivated technical users. Those users are typically technologically familiar, more venturesome, well-networked and able to cope with uncertainty during early adoption stages.

However, to sustain wiki-usage and grow it to other user groups more active/responsive managerial support is required to help develop a shared understanding of, and the skills/practices required for, wiki usage, and to overcome key barriers to wiki adoption. Furthermore, each stage of the wiki management cycle should be informed by, and provides opportunities to engage in, organisational learning practices, involving systems thinking, leadership, learning, teamwork and feedback.

It also indicates that wikis have provided platforms for collaborative and emergent behaviour, enabling people to work/communicate more efficiently and effectively, learn from past experience and share knowledge/ideas in organisational contexts that are not averse to collaboration. Whilst it has not been possible to conclude whether changes to organisational learning characteristics have resulted from wikis’ fostering of such collaborative/emergent behaviour, or will become more pronounced as wikis mature, it does highlight scope for longitudinal research in this area.

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