Inside Conversation

I have been picking up on a theme over the past few weeks, that is the divide between the 1.0-er’s and the 2.0-er’s. And the $64,000 question is how to bridge the divide.

• Euan Semple pointed to James Gardner’s excellent post on the subject.
• Cord Silverstein noted how online professionals keep writing to each other and not to those that could most benefit from new 2.0 approaches.
• Andy McAfee has a great essay.
• Sam Lawrence at Jive Software put out a call to fellow 2.0 vendors to do a better job of understanding and marketing to enterprise clients (even pointing back at me as an example).

Maybe we need to stop being the hammer looking for the nail, and start doing what we as social media proponents claim to hold most dear, LISTEN.

Let’s approach the 1.0-er’s (i.e. everyone else) by listening to their needs and stop trying to push 2.0 wagon. Now I believe, as you probably do too, that many solutions needed by enterprise clients will have at least one foot firmly planted in 2.0 soil, but there is no need to shovel that dirt in the door first thing.

Enterprise clients operate with mission statements and marketing messages; sales leads and employee satisifaction; business improvement and project management. So if that is what they want, then let’s give it to them. They don’t care if the answer is 1.0, 2.0, AJAX, or the back of a napkin. They just want results.

There is room here for business solution integration(or whatever you want to call it), a role that sits between 2.0 technology know-how and business need.

Hmmm, … sounds like this could be an interesting job…

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: e2.0divide, enterprise 2.0 | 2 Comments »