We need to unify structured data and unstructured content as a Big DB and then make it collaborative while organizing it well for easy and meaningful discovery, write Sumeet Anand and SM Nafay Kumail
Social computing seems to have come full circle. The euphoria has been replaced by serious appraisals. The hype is fading and hubris not taken as gospel anymore.
It overshot even what its inventors probably had in mind. From letting friends know what you are doing and connecting with friends, it effected big political changes. Businesses also started experimenting with it—looking at it as an opportunity as well as a threat. Companies first banned it, fearing loss of productivity and critical information flying out with ease, but they also began offering their increasingly younger workforce some sort of enhanced intranet. Some solutions were internally conjured up while others were acquired from the sundry social technology solutions or legacy upgraded versions.
Two things happened. In response to banning, people took more fiercely to social media, often trying to solve their work-related problems out in the wider public networks. People also did not like the hurriedly cobbled together in-enterprise networks that companies offered. These tools ended up as bulletin boards for whining and for other less meaningful activities. This led business leaders to doubt the utility of in-enterprise networks and social platforms.
While this was variously happening, several challenges emerged. The solutions to the problems employees faced were often not within but ‘out there’. So every employee took the long and arduous journey, trying to find the relevant but sans motivation and facility to collaborate. Search and organizing stuff in a discoverable way just in time, have also been getting increasingly difficult.
In this rather collective confusion, some clear trends and specific solutions are emerging.
Social yet secure
If you put many constraints and ask people to share only the relevant up front, it is not going to happen. If you don’t make the cycle of expression, organization and discovery seem like a breeze, it is, again, not happening. However, in an enterprise context that needs to follow compliance, the solution should be flexible in the way that you can define access to content and data. It should allow people to express freely but securely.
Unification and intelligent discovery
Information discovery is a complex issue because information is ubiquitous and in many forms, while discovery needs to be unified and intelligent. The problem is not information overload but failure to filter. We need to unify structured data and unstructured content as a Big DB and then make it collaborative while organizing it well for easy and meaningful discovery.
We should allow people to pull information from the web, legacy data, and from their own wider networks. Once they have begun sharing stuff, you will have to sift through it and organize it for them. And, finally, allow easy and just-in-time access to the comprehensive and evolving knowledge.
Higher relevance for easier adoption
For communication to turn meaningful, promote a culture of openness and collective learning. The tool should build higher relevance by being closer to people’s work needs. Companies should put new and legacy data in a form that enables people to access it across the ecosystem. The framework should allow people to see value of their contribution in solving business problems and improvement in personal productivity. Organizations should see people’s contribution as an important performance indicator. This is being done with varying degree of success. The sooner we mainstream it the better.
Sumeet Anand is Founder CEO and S.M. Nafay Kumail is Co-Founder of Kreeo (i-nable Solutions)
