Building Vibrant Human Networks While Business Blogging

These two articles from Harvard reflect what we've been talking about, along with many others for the last two years. There are lessons to be learned from the open source software communities that will impact the way groups work together in organizations. What I've learned, my personal experience, from the open-source movement is that people want to contribute to endeavors of mutual benefit.

Collaboration Rules from Harvard, by Philip Evans and Bob Wolf

Extraordinary group efforts don't have to be miraculous or accidental. An environment designed to produce cheap, plentiful transactions unleashes collaborations that break through organizational barriers. Corporate leaders seeking growth, learning, and innovation may find the answer in a surprising place: the open-source software community. Unknowingly, perhaps, the folks who brought you Linux are virtuoso practitioners of new work principles that produce energized teams and lower costs. Nor are they alone.

Building Vibrant Human Networks from Harvard Business Review,

Companies laying the groundwork for high-performance collaboration should follow these principles:

Deploy pervasive collaborative technology[social networking software]. Keep it simple and open: small pieces loosely joined, in Cluetrain Manifesto coauthor David Weinberger's felicitous phrase.

• Keep work visible.
• Build communities of trust.
• Think modularly.
• Encourage teaming.

Hat Tip to James Dellow, Chief Technology Solutions for the links to the HBR articles.

CROSSING THE CORPORATE BLOGGING CULTURAL DIVIDE: THE CULTURAL CHASM by Stephen Turcotte, Backbone Media, Inc.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - With all of the buzz around corporate blogging, we wanted to understand the real value of it for companies. Why would a company want to start blogging, who should blog, what makes a blog successful, and how can a company use this type of website to make a positive impact on business?