Business Knowledge-Bases - The Corporate Wiki
A good article on corporate wikis from BusinessWeek.com. It has some great data on internal wiki use by major corporations, including Intel, Xerox, Microsoft, Sony and Motorola. There are also a few good sidebars about use of wikis as customer-facing content communities.
I’ve worked on a few business wikis and have found that the software is not as important as integrating a process of collaboration and content entry by the users/holders of the information. Knowing when to enter content is as important as knowing what to enter. You’ll have enthusiasts that enjoy capturing information, but others that resist, either because they don’t want to share their hard-earned info, or they just don’t like to write.
One wiki project that I was involved in at an ad agency had very detailed entries on several clients, their organization and even personal contacts… From high level organizational relationships, down to the beverages key contacts preferred when having drinks after hours, and their hobbies outside of work. Some of it would certainly be embarrassing if anyone on the client’s team saw it, but it was very useful in getting to know those contacts… it gave real insights into how to best work with them.
Over time though, even the valuable info on those clients became outdated and generally useless. It takes a lot of team work to keep them up to date and effective.
But as the article points out, the success or failure of a corporate wiki comes down not only to the personal level, but also to a corporate culture that supports collaboration.
Others question whether large corporations are ready for wikis. “Most people and most companies don’t really have a culture of collaboration and never have had one,” says Alan Pelz-Sharpe, principal at CMS Watch, a research firm in Groton, Mass. “If you don’t have it, all the software in the world won’t give you one.”
Intel’s Moriarty says the tools themselves can be the catalyst for change. Intelpedia, for instance, is bringing people together and slicing through a ton of bureaucracy. “People are working on things independent of what they’re told to work on,” he adds. “It’s connecting people globally.” That’s the best outcome possible in the wiki world.
Would a corporate wiki work in your organization? Would employees share info on their best relationships and their hard-earned client insights?
Would your customers like to share knowledge about your products with other users and enthusiasts?
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