University of Lugano
Faculties of Communication and Economic Sciences

MSc in Communication and Economics - Major in Corporate Communication








Wikibility
of
Innovation Oriented
Workplaces

The CERN Case






Master's Thesis by
Vincenzo Cammarata
04-985-040









SA 2007-2008Abstract

The UGC (User Generated Content) revolution of Web 2.0 brought the
application of this new paradigm into the enterprise and professional
environment. This phenomenon is called Enterprise 2.0 and in these last years has
drawn the attention of many experts in the fields of organization and knowledge
management.

In this context, Wiki systems and other social networking applications
represent an important shift on the way in which people work: at the opposite of
other previous IT technologies in this field, the Enterprise 2.0 is not about simple
devices of office automation, but requires (and brings to) a dramatic
organizational culture shift. In particular Wiki offers new possibilities and
opportunities in order to exploit in a more effective way the entire potential of the
collaborative work coming from the active participation of all the individuals that
are present in a workplace.
This dissertation wants to contribute to the current debate on the cultural
shift that the introduction of this tool in a workplace is able to produce: we will
see that, for a Wiki - or any Enterprise 2.0 tool - being effective it has to activate
a virtuous circle able to create new knowledge.
The peculiarity of this work is that it focuses on this particular cultural
aspect and aims to define the features of the ideal workplace that can optimize
Wiki use in order to be innovation oriented and "hence" competitive.

Once identified these "cultural key drivers" and defined Wikibility as the
cultural attitude of an environment able to make the Wiki use in a workplace
effective, the further scope of this thesis is to measure the presence of this
Wikibility mind-set and to propose a new tool (not yet validated). This sort of
cockpit could be useful for the management that, interested to promote a better
and true collaborative approach to work, want to be sure on the effective support
in order to produce true innovation.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication i"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces Abstract
The definition of this tool and the importance of the eight cultural key
drivers, found with a deductive method starting from theory - quickness,
flexibility, sharing, collaboration, social networking, peering, openness and trust - are
supported by an empirical experience at the CERN (European Organization for
Nuclear Research) in Genève. In fact, in this social network of 10.000 members
spread all over the world, the use of Wiki in order to collaborate is at a mature
stage and CERN is, moreover, universally recognized as an innovative
Organization - in 1989 the Web was invented here - where it was supposable to
find an high level of Wikibility.

Even if not sufficient to validate any purposed theory or tool, the CERN
case shows extremely positive evidences that the deductive insights here presented
can be considered as a starting point towards further studies that can researching
how to support a painless Enterprise 2.0 impact on the organizational culture of
competitive (innovation oriented) workplaces.

Key Words: Wiki, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, Corporate
Communication, Organizational Culture, Social Networks, Corporate,
Collaboration, Workplaces, Wikibility, CERN, Web 2.0.






University of Lugano
Master of Science
in Communication and Economics
Major in Corporate Communication

Vincenzo Cammarata
vincenzo.cammarata@lu.unisi.ch
vince@wisetwice.eu



©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication iiTable of contents




Abstract…….............…………………………………..……………………………………………i

Table of contents …………………………………..……………………………………………iii
List of tables…................…………………………..…………………………………………..…v
Table of figures ……………………………………..……………………………………………v

Acknowledgements……...….…………………………..……………………………….………vi



1 Introduction .................................................................................... 1
1.1 Linking Web 2.0, Knowledge Management and Corporate Culture.
The Topic......................................................................................................................2
1.2 Corporate Wiki and Innovation. Research Questions...............................................7
1.3 The Methodology.........................................................................................................8
1.4 Studying the Connections between Intranet Wiki and Innovation.
The Structure..............................................................................................................10
1.5 Innovating the Way to Innovate. The Scope............................................................12

2 Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts ............................................. 14
2.1 The New IT System: Features and Critics ........................................................................15
2.2 Behind the Technology. The Wiki Philosophy .................................................................20
2.3 Applications and Effects of Wiki in Workplace.
The Knowledge Management and Cultural Shifting.......................................................26
2.4 Enabling Enterprise Innovation.......................................................................................37
2.5 Not Just the Right Technology. How Corporate Wiki Supports Innovation ......................47
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication iii"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces Table of contents

3 The Wikibility Workplace. ............................................................ 52
3.1 How to Be Effectively Innovation Oriented .....................................................................53
3.2 Between Wiki and Innovation: The Cultural Key Drivers .................................................55
3.3 Propose for a Wikibility Workplace Auditing Tool...........................................................60

4 The CERN Wiki Case History ......................................................... 67
4.1 An International Organizational Workplace. The CERN...................................................68
4.2 The Reasons for a CERN Wiki Case History.....................................................................73
4.3 A Successful Case History. The Wiki Adoption at CERN..................................................75
4.4 The Wiki Culture at CERN..............................................................................................82

5 Conclusions.................................................................................... 86
5.1 From "2.0" to Wikibility. Summary................................................................................87
5.2 The Importance of Wikibility of an Innovation Oriented Workplace.
Enterprises Implications .................................................................................................90
5.3 The Wikibility Audit: Proposal for Further Studies. Open Questions.................................93

Exhibit a. - Proposal for the
"Wikibility of Innovation Oriented Workplaces Audit" (WIOWA) …………...….94

Bibliography …………………………………………..…………………………………………96

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication iv"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces List of tables - Tables of figures
List of tables

Table 1 - As Quick as a Wiki: Comparison of steps needed
for the creation of wiki page and web pages. (Klobas, J. 2006) ……………………16
Table 2 - Tools matrix (Brown et al. 2007) ….…..……………………….……..……………..25
Table 3 - Wiki Are Best-Suited To Activities Not Subject
To Legal or Compliance Requirements (Driver, 2007) ….…………......…….…..28
Table 4 - Wikibility in Innovation Oriented Workplace:
definition of survey's questions - theme of questions..….……………......…….…..61


Table of figures

Figure 1 - Scheme of research structure …….…………….…………………………………….10
Figure 2 - Virtual Workplace Integration Orientation Matrix (PoliMi) and Wiki …..….….32
Figure 3 - Wiki Effective Innovation Oriented Workplace:
definition of Cultural Key Drivers ….……………………………………………....54
Figure 4 - The Cultural and Knowledge Management Key Drivers
in the Wiki - Innovation Model .….………………………………..……………....54
Figure 5 - Wiki Effective Innovation Oriented Workplace:
definition of survey's questions .….………………………..………..……………....60
Figure 6 - Purpose of Wikibility cockpit (fake data) .……………..………..……………....65
Figure 7 - Distribution of all CERN users by nation of institute
(CERN Annual Report 2006) ……………..………..………………………...…....70
Figure 8 - CERN accelerator complex (CERN Annual Report 2006 and web site) .…….....70
Figure 9 - CERN Internal Organization (CERN Annual Report 2006) ….…………….......71
Figure 10 - The CERN TWiki portal ………………………………………..………….......77
Figure 11 - The CERN TWiki statistics - CERN
(https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/Main/CERNTWikiStatistics) .……….......77





©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication v"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

A particular acknowledgement goes to my friend Giuseppe Lo Presti, my
CERN "insider", who made possible my interesting experience in Genève. Special
thanks also to Pete L. Jones, Wiki administrator at CERN, who with his interview
and his contribution to find material gave an authoritative imprinting to my
reporting activity on the CERN Case. Thanks also to Ilaria Segoni, Andrea Di
Simone, Alberto Colla, Federico Zema who answered my questions and gave me
the possibility to check the Wikibility audit tool survey at the best.

Many thanks to all my numerous friends whom I evangelized about wikis
and whom I freely involved in my continuous and enthusiastic brainstorming on
organizational culture, innovation and Web 2.0.



©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication vi1 Introduction










The basic idea of the Web is that an information
space through which people can communicate, but
communicate in a special way: communicate by sharing
their knowledge in a pool. The idea was not just that it
should be a big browsing medium. The idea was that
everybody would be putting their ideas in, as well as taking
1
them out. - Tim Berners-Lee


1
Berners-Lee, 1999, http://www.w3.org/1999/04/13-tbl.html
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 1"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
1.1 Linking Web 2.0, Knowledge Management
and Corporate Culture. The Topic

Something is changed. The Web is changed.
During the last five years - three in Europe - we have been witnessing of a
quick revolution that at the beginning seemed to involve only the big public.
Social networking, instant messaging, sharing photos, broadcasting videos
and writing encyclopaedic texts, is something that now is normal. But maybe we
have to remember what Web was only six years ago and how an inappropriate use
of this media brought to the sunset of what, for deduction, is now considered
Web 1.0.
The Web 2.0, defined by O'Reilly as "a set of economic, social, and
technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the
internet - a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user participation,
2
openness and network effects" , is deeply closer to the original concept of Web
that the Web father Tim Berners-Lee meant: "…everybody would be putting their
ideas in, as well as taking them out".
So Web 2.0 is not so different from what Web 0.0 was. A networking tool
that fosters collective intelligence (Klobas, 2006), a kind of Wisdom of Crowds
(title of a book by James Surowiecki, originally published in 2004).
In this context, Wiki is the most representative tool that enables this new
3
Web philosophy. This socio-economic new paradigm, so called Wikinomics.
Today Wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and the new mash-up platforms based on
widgets integration are some of the many application tools that enterprises have
taken by Web 2.0 concept. For this reason gurus define what for analogy is
Enterprise 2.0.

"An online platform with a constantly changing structure built by
distributed, autonomous, largely self-interested peers. On this platform,

2
Musser, 2006, p.1
3
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, p.2-3
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 2"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
authoring creates the content, links and tags knit it together, and search and
(RSS) make the emergent structures and patterns in the content visible, and help
4
people stay on top of it all." - Andrew McAfee

In particular, Wiki - invented more than ten years ago by Ward
Cunningham as the "Portland Pattern Repository" for a community of computer
scientist in an IT context - is now used for many different scopes. Wikis are useful
for resources development and collaborative creation in many disciplines and at
different scales. In small group context they are used for sharing information (and
knowledge) in specific projects. Inside organization is now integrated in the intra-
extranet platform, following the principle of openness that forecasts the
involvement of all stakeholders (suppliers, partners and customers) in the
corporate process (Klobas, 2006).

Wiki, as a symbol of this User Generated Content (UGC) era, is the
example of how IT tools are now really changed. They are not just office
automation instruments, but are able to produce new business and organizational
rules. New business models and new technology and collaborative models change
business design and competitive dynamics. In this sense it is an Innovation process
that exploits the connection between individuals and the social development.
From this point of view, the mass is not just to be considered as a crowd or a
collectivism results.

Some big names of the IT business like Bill Gates, defending his position,
warn that, even if the "Collective Intelligence" exists, there may be a serious risk of
"Collective Stupidity", and that this kind of "Collectivism" is a certain form of
"Communism". This is not the case of what is happening. Corporations are in
fact discovering the true dividends of collective capability and knowledge. This
new way, the Wiki way, make visible and recognizable the individuals, optimizing
their genius exchanges. (Tapscot and Williams 2007)

4
McAfee, 2006, definition of Enterprise 2.0
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 3"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
A real art and science of collaboration is now developing. The
"Wikinomics" doctrine defines the topic not only as an organizational or
operational point of view, but observing and analyzing the inevitable cultural
change that it presupposes or that it will cause. Openness, peering, sharing and
acting globally (Tapscot and Williams 2007) are now the four pillars on which
this culture is built. The same values that in the last decade, due to the
globalization phenomenon are leading to a new must: "harness the new
5
collaboration or perish…"

Mass projects, like Wikipedia, show how these values and their
implications can work in a positive and innovative way: open-source, mass
collaboration, peer production, low-cost collaborative infrastructures, the dramatic
reduction of barriers for an active participation, need new insights, new ways to
make things. The role of trust and transparency, the emergent effectiveness of
horizontal organizational structure, the destruction of the once impregnable
corporate towers of knowledge and a wide and strategic view, become the core of
this cultural mission.
At the same time, Innovation is the most important challenge that
enterprises have to confront. To reach the true competitive advantage
differentiation is now crucial: being different is always possible following the two
classical ways of cheapness and quality of goods. In the actual global scenario
competing by remaining cheap is hard, is difficult to win Cindia low cost
production. So it is relevant to point on quality and overall on new products.
Innovation in products and in process of production, management and
organization is the key. How argued by Heinrich von Pierer, President at Siemens
6
AG, Innovation is actually the core of our economy.
Fostering collaboration is a new way to create value and Innovation: this is
now supported by three forces: technology, demographics and global economics.

5
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, p.12
6
Getz and Robinson, 2005, p.3
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 4"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
7
"The new Web is about verbs, not nouns" . Ross Mayfield, one of Wiki
company CEO (Socialtext), explains in this words the real technological
Innovation that UGC and the 2.0 trend bring in favor of collaboration, that
combined with the generational change in action inside the management and the
workforce of enterprise, the hiring of the Net Generation (N-Gen) manpower, is
producing a positive conjuncture.

Web 2.0 enables a new way of working. Intranet is evolving: from a
channel for content distribution (Mayfield's nouns) to a platform for activity:
8
collaborating, publishing, sharing and innovating (verbs).
Remembering that "technology is at best a tool and a facilitator of
efficiency" but " the best technology in the world cannot fix the oh-so-very human
9
issues that sometimes sabotage even the best teams" , it is possible to understand
how the cultural aspects of the N-Gen and this generational clash are relevant.
The pre N-Gen values talked about loyalty, seniority and authority. N-Gen
believes are, instead, creativity, social networking, fun, freedom, speed, diversity in
workplace.
In these words is not difficult to recognize the features of the Wiki way to
collaboration. Collaboration among employees and collaboration across silos
(boundaries) are at the base of Innovation production.
10
"Communicate, collaborate, coordinate and communicate some more" is
a mantra for successful virtual teams, but the common denominator of all this
phases is the Knowledge. Created and exchanged. Knowledge Management is the
discipline that can exploit at best this kind of social and digital revolution:
knowledge management systems, knowledge bases or simple repositories are now
integrated into tools, like Wiki, used for every day activities.
Indeed, the accessibility of Wiki as collaborative platform, permits an
holistic approach to the process: principles are defined by business people and not

7
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, p.46
8
Gilroy and Ives, 2006
9
Brown, Huttner and James-Tanny, 2007, p.6
10
Brown, Huttner and James-Tanny, 2007, p.23
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 5"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
by technologists, business units are now viewed as networked services, function,
modular, flexible organizational structure.
Instead of old hierarchical and full of bureaucracy organizational structure,
the new way to Innovation pass through agility, creativity and connectivity
(Tapscot and Williams 2007). In other words a democratization process is starting
and smart companies are understanding that Innovation often begins at the
fringes.
The manager role is changing: technology like Wikis are transforming
11
them in team leader, acting as facilitator with function of connecting people .
The manager is now a kind of coach that guarantees the essential components to
collaborate in virtual workgroup: objective sharing, knowledge of what to do,
12
equipments, ability and desire to do it .
13
Using Wiki requires participation or at least representative democracy , a
bottom-up process that marks the failure of top-down knowledge flow. This self-
organization system, where there is an integration of new information and new
experience (knowledge), is the natural field in which creativity grows (De Bono,
1992) and develops producing Innovation.

The topic of this work is focused on the intranet (and in some cases also in
the extranet) use of the Wiki technology, studying the implication of this use on
the new knowledge management approach to the corporate culture and the
benefits that is generate in terms of return on Innovation for the organization.

In this work I will not explain what Wikis are. There are many technical
books and handbooks responding to all the issues that came up: how to start a
new one, how they work or how to co-write. In this dissertation, I will assume
that the reader knows the difference between Wiki and Wikipedia even if the only
Wiki visited before is Wikipedia.

11
Brown, Huttner and James-Tanny, 2007, p.10
12
Schafer, 2000
13
Davenport, 2005, p.59
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 6"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
1.2 Corporate Wiki and Innovation. Research Questions

Wiki in the workplace is the state of the art for 33% of US enterprises
14
responding to the McKinsey's global Web 2.0 survey presented on March 2007.
For this successful adoption rate, if considered the short period of enterprise life of
Wiki, it is interesting to investigate on the effectiveness of this 2.0 tool in order to
produce a true competitive advantage, that, as we have seen, is identifiable with
the Innovation rate generated.

The main research question springs by crossing features and consequences,
observable and perceived, of the use of Wiki in the workplace and the innovation
enablers.
In particular the main question is:
- Which are the cultural key drivers that make an innovation oriented
organization a "wikible" workplace or - in other words - a workplace where Wiki
really works in an effective way?
And then the sub-question:
- How to audit this Wikibility in an innovation oriented workplaces?

After the theoretical part of this work we will identify common elements
that are indispensable for a true and effective use of Wiki in order to be
innovation oriented. These elements are strictly correlated with the changes that
the introduction of Wiki brings in the way to "how things are done" and "how
15
knowledge is shared", in other words, to organizational culture.
The research question, then, consists in verifying the presence of these
cultural insights in an organizational environment - where Wiki is already used
and where innovation is a natural vocation and not only a strategic objective - in
order to furnish a valid support to the work of corporate Wiki sponsors.

14
McKinsey, 2007
15
Hatch, 1997, pp.200-240
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 7"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
1.3 The Methodology

The theoretical part of this dissertation intends to explore potentials of
Wiki effects on workplace and - from the other side - the workplace enablers of
innovation. In this way we will define the cultural aspects that concerning what
we will define as workplace Wikibility, further proposing, a practical measurement
auditing tool that can be useful to a correct approach to Wiki technology and -
generally speaking - to Enterprise 2.0.

In order to obtain an acceptable degree of generalization, considering the
objective boundaries of this work, the empirical part of this dissertation consists of
an emblematic case, that investigates on cultural elements supporting an effective
use of Wiki and thus the Wikibility of this workplace.

The innovative organization chosen is the European Organization for
Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, located in Genève, the "world's largest
16
particle physics centre".

The CERN has been using Wiki in an extensive way since 2002 and each
CERN sub-group has a Wiki space. The fast growth it is promoted in an active
way inside the whole community. Further, CERN is an excellence place for
innovation and is important for the web history: here in 1989, the already quoted
CERN scientist Tim Berners-Lee (see p.1) invented the World Wide Web.
Nowadays, the WWW (or simply the Web) has expanded - and is then
converging as we have seen - from its original scientific environment and has
17
millions of academic, commercial and private users .


16
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/AboutCERN/AboutCERN-en.html
17
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/AboutCERN/Achievements/...
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 8"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
After a short Wiki description and an introduction about how the CERN
works, this research paper consists in interviews aiming to investigate the effective
presence of elements found in the theoretical part of the work. In this sense, the
questions are about each one of these elements and in particular about the
knowledge management practices and the organizational culture.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 9"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
1.4 Studying the Connections between Intranet Wiki and
Innovation. The Structure

The main research question is focused on two elements: Wiki and
Innovation. In this sense, the empirical research that I propose is based on the idea
that, once the Wiki has been introduced - for operative job, work organization,
communication between employees, knowledge management and collaboration -
the Innovation rate (long term objective) may be influenced in an effective way
provided that there are also present the right organizational cultural conditions.

Once defined the two extremes of the construct, Wiki and Innovation, the
common field on which the potential of Wiki meets the enablers of Innovation will
be identified.


Figure 1 - Scheme of research structure

OOrrg. Cultg. Cultureure
(K(KM)M)
CorpCorpororaattee InnovInnovaationtion
WikiWiki RateRate


©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 10"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction

Potentials and Enablers both in the case of IT integration and of
Innovation birth, need that environmental and cultural conditions support this
process. Knowledge, strictly linked to Innovation, and how this knowledge is
exploited and shared among the organization, are intrinsic elements of this
process.

In the first part of this work, the theoretical one, we will discuss the key
points of Wiki and Innovation, and then define a sort of checklist of the cultural
insights that make this process effective, and proposing an auditing tool for
measuring the Wiki's influence in a real and daily context. In the empirical
research will be studied a successful case of organizational Wiki (CERN), in order
to check if the theoretical part - and the derived intuitions - are verifiable in the
practice.

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 11"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction
18
1.5 Innovating the Way to Innovate . The Scope

"Wikinomics" is changing the way to intend the relationship between
19
technology and social progress . We are living in a period where old IT devices
are now integrated with the human capital and with the relational approach of
Web.
Corporate Wiki and more generally the Enterprise 2.0 phenomenon are
20
very current issues. For many analysts the 2006-2007 was the biennium of the
Wiki boom as blogging was the one of last years. This event is interpreted in two
opposite ways by two of the maximum Harvard's gurus.

"The absence of participative technologies in the past is not the only
reason that organizations and expertise are hierarchical. Enterprise 2.0 software
and the Internet won't make organizational hierarchy and politics go away.
They won't make the ideas of the front-line worker in corporations as influential
as those of the CEO. Most of the barriers that prevent knowledge from flowing
freely in organizations - power differentials, lack of trust, missing incentives,
unsupportive cultures, and the general busyness of employees today - won't be
addressed or substantially changed by technology alone. For a set of technologies
to bring about such changes, they would have to be truly magical, and
21
Enterprise 2.0 tools fall short of magic." - Tom Davenport

This is what professor Davenport wrote in response to a blog dispute with
the colleague professor McAfee, that in a following blog post shares the Davenport
insights, specifying that the importance of the management role. But, instead of
Davenport issue minimization, McAfee asserts that the Enterprise 2.0 is
something really innovative and totally different from the previous IT solutions.

18
Thomson, 2002
19
Ebersbach et al., 2005
20
Hinchcliffe, 2006, http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=76
21
Davenport, 2007, http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/davenport/..
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 12"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 1. Introduction

"My enthusiasm about Enterprise 2.0, even after acknowledging Tom's
points, stems from three sources. First is the fact that, as discussed above, its
component technologies are both novel and very valuable. Second is a feeling
that there are actually a lot of managers who want to make concrete this fuzzy
notion of empowerment, and to get out of the way enough to let their teams do
all the work they're capable of. These managers want to address the dysfunctions
that Tom articulates so well, and they'll seize on any tools that help them do so.
Third is a belief in the power of competition. If Enterprise 2.0 technologies and
mindsets do in fact help some companies get ahead by creating and
disseminating more knowledge, innovating more, reacting faster, etc. then
22
interest will grow, and so might new approaches" .- Andrew McAfee

23
The Davenport-McAfee considerations and the other debates regarded
the effectiveness of investment in new IT technologies, for example the new SOA
(Service Oriented Architecture) or the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning).

Observing this kind of enthusiasm is not difficult to understand the
importance of these topics for a strategic organization management and for
enterprises that are changing their way of thinking in order to be competitive with
Innovation.
The scope of this dissertation is to bring the philosophical implication of
Wiki business use on a practical level, observing the results and the benefits of
Wiki adoption in organizations, in order to understand why this idea is more than
an innovative IT device and how it can be effective end favoured if supported by
an appropriate organizational culture.
An useful tool for corporate communication experts - and more in general
for how promotes corporate Wiki - is the ambitious challenge that this thesis
wants to suggest to researchers willing to explore in this direction.


22
McAfee, 2007, http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/..
23
Retting, 2007, http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2007/fall/01/
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 132 Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts








In this part we will go deep in to the topic. Before we are going to explain
Wiki potential in a workplace. We will see Wiki's features and critical aspect of
the tools (2.1). Then we will focus on the philosophy behind this new kind of
collaborative tool: what new kind of approach is required for this new way to
work and which are the benefits in social terms for the organization (2.2).

Then we will considerate how wiki is used in a professional context,
describing the applications of the innovative IT tool (2.3).

From the other side, we will try to define the Innovation enablers in a
competitive organization (2.4).

We will conclude this theoretical part of this work with the conclusion
that Wiki is a valid tool, but is only an instrument, used in a particular context.
For this reason we concluding focusing our attention on observed Wiki potentials
and defined Innovations enablers (2.5) in order to proceed with the our study on
the cultural aspect of an effective Wiki use.

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 14"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
2.1 The New IT System: Features and Critics

Wiki is a social software. A social software is an enabler of social interaction,
collaboration and information sharing, promoting the growth of communities as
users groups.

The wide range of social software includes many objects that can be used
for this scope. For this reason, a Second Life's island has the same possibility to be
tagged as social software as well as the "C/C" function on a simple e-mail manager
24
software .

May be it is simpler to explain what wiki is not.

Wiki is not a forum. Both are structured around topics but forums, follow a
chronologically reference. Wiki is not a collaborative platform or a groupware: wiki
25
is not pre-structured .
At the same time Wiki has some features in common with other UGC
application: the interactions between users of the weblogs and the folksonomy,
26
user-tagging practice typical of social bookmarking.

2.1.1 Wiki features

The main feature of wiki is explained by the word "wiki" that means
"quick" in Hawaiian language. Editing something and sharing the results on the
web is simple, easy and quick. In order to clarify in what wiki publishing is

24
Klobas, 2006, p. 1
25
Klobas, 2006, pp.6-7
26
Gilroy and Ives, 2006
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 15"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
different from a classical webpage creation we will quote a synoptic table of
comparison (Klobas, J. 2006).

Table 1 - As Quick as a Wiki: Comparison of steps needed for the creation of wiki page and web pages. (Klobas, J. 2006)

Wiki Page Web Page
1 Go to the page on web browser Search your Web editor preferred
(Dreamweaver, Frontpage…)
2 Click on Edit Open locally the web page (off-line)
3 Make changes in page Open the source file
4 Save the page Make modifications
5 Save the file
6 Transfer the file on the web-server (FTP)
7 Open the browser
8 Check the edited page on the browser


The other features that make the difference between Wiki's innovation
27
and simples content management systems are:

> Pages are accessible by a standard web browser: this guarantees
a maximum of participation and the possibility to collaborate
everywhere and with every system;

> Easiness of writing: editing pages is simple like writing using a
common word processor software. The WYSIWYG is guarantee for
users that don't know or don't want to use the mark-up language.


27
Klobas, 2006, pp.7-10
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 16"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
> Easiness of linking: internal or external links can be made simply,
it permits authors to create a structure from a personal point of view.

> Real time updating: the technical time of publishing (table 2.0)
is reduced to a simple passage Edit > Save.
The authors can manage personally the publishing phase
and can immediately correct errors or mistakes.

> Collective editing: remains the base concepts of Wiki revolution.
One common document or collection of documents can be created
or edited by many authors.

> History and tracking: is always possible to revert to a previous version
and find the authors of each one. This represent a marginal guarantee
on work quality.

> Visualization of latest version: is useful to compare near versions
of the same documents and to highlight differences.

> Changes notifications: using the RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
feed is possible to be updated on what happens on the Wiki
and which kind of activities users do.

> Search and navigation: is simple to find information
and topics published by other users.

> Simple permission structure: there are only three levels of users:
the readers, the editors and the administrators.

For these particular reasons, Wiki is a powerful tool able to assist
collaboration in virtual team. The team can focus and optimize efforts of all the
components contributing and commenting simultaneously what others done.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 17"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
28
Indeed it is also proved a dramatic cutback of e-mail production
reducing the confusion and the dispersion of information due to the rising use,
and abuse, of this now common media.
The use of Wiki into organization integrates many of different IT devices:
beside e-mail, message board, intranet, blog can be simply developed using a Wiki
platform. With Wiki is possible to implement a project planning, manage
schedules and deadlines, to-do lists and to support the creative work of employees,
29
is also a useful tool for asynchronous brainstorming practice.

2.1.2 Critical Points

Wiki's critics are often linked with the major example of Wiki public
application: Wikipedia.
The fact that the biggest encyclopaedia on line is the best known user
generated example of social participation, make it sensible to charge lack of
30
authoritativeness and control but in closed environment like corporation or an
organization, where members are identifiable and who participate is motivated by
professional aims these critics not represent crucial or particular issues.
The implication of having no structure, or that information seems not to
be so good structured, is a consequence of "collective writing". At the same time,
the messy appearance is caused by the "work-in-progress" permanent state.
In a collaborative platform like Wiki, it is important to remember and to
be aware that Wiki is the mirror of values, perspectives, fears and opinion of the
community, and that this will create an unique voice that seems to cancel
fragmentation of opinion or individual point of view.
The adoption of Wiki in a workgroup, as we will see later, needs a
preliminary cultural approach. The easiness with which others can spoil "my

28
Brown, Huttner and James-Tanny, 2007, p.116
29
Brown, M.K., Huttner, B. and James-Tanny, 2007, p.80
30
The Wikipedia vs. Enciclopædia Britannica dispute (Nature, December 2005) proved that these
critics are not completely true.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 18"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
document" has to be change in the opportunity offers by the possibility that
others are able to improve "our document". Naturally this is valid for rough and
unofficial working documents. The key word is "trust" and we will see further that
it is also a key driver of innovative places.
The intellectual property issue is the last tricky point: with collective
property, who is responsible if somebody uses contents under copyright? This is a
real problem in publics web Wikis, that new type of licence (GNU or Common
Creative Licence) are trying to solve. For an intranet use the problem is to be
considerate as marginal.

At this point we can certainly argue that Wiki is easiness. As we have seen
31
and as a smart video on YouTube explains, Wiki is the integration of three
simple functions: Edit, Save and Link.
32
This supports what Davenport wrote on 2005 : easy technology and
methodology are the optimal starting point to improve knowledge worker
performance.

31
Le Fever, 2007, http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
32
Davenport, 2005, p.92
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 19"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
2.2 Behind the Technology. The Wiki philosophy

More than a social software, Wiki is not only a technology, but the
combination of a place, information and experience, community and philosophy.
Wiki is a space where sharing ideas, where people collaborate to social creation of
knowledge. This resource of information and knowledge exists and works
supported by a kind of ideal philosophy: the wisdom of many is better than one's
thought (Klobas, 2006).
Wiki is a social knowledge space that needs common defined topics, rules
and norms: in other words, it is a community enabler. But not only. It is a space
for ideas that enables culture and sub-culture within organization: sense of
stability, continuity, social norms and common identity are benefits that increase
33
the commitment creating a positive and fertile soil.
There is a strong relationship between Wiki as technical innovation and the
social progress that it produces: users, goals and dependence between users define
34
whether the technological tool is used in a emancipated way or not.
Here it is argued how far Wiki and good human capital are two symbiotic
elements: if both work, the whole process will be positive influenced in a virtuous
manner. In this way Wiki support the teamwork and the collaboration within
workplace. Indeed it is demonstrated that communities are effective and self-
organized group can react - and then perform - better and faster (Ebersbach et al,
2005).

2.2.1 Cooperation and Collaboration

To better understand the practical effects of Wiki use into a workplace and
how it is different by other IT system and other workgroup platform, it is useful

33
De Graff and Lawrence, 2002, p.160
34
Ebersbach et al., 2005, p.21
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 20"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
to define the difference between "cooperation" (old logic) and "collaboration"
(supported by Wiki). Cooperation is when "the results of independent subtasks are
merged to create a final delivery". Collaboration requires "teamwork for each
35
subtask as members work toward a common goal".
The collaborative approach is a real "teamwork" that can rise the potential
of each team member knowledge, stimulating the creation of something new, the
making of new knowledge. It is a more deep concept about "to do something with
others", considering this the creation of something new and not the mere
collection of individual knowledge, is self-evident truth that the collaboration is a
innovation process.

In Wikonomics, Tapscot and Williams define four principles that support
36
Wiki-culture: openness, peering, sharing and acting globally.
Openness is strictly linked with transparency, come from the observation of
what is actually happening: "employees have previously unthinkable knowledge
about their firm's strategy, management and challenges" and that "employees of
open enterprises have higher trust among each other and with the firm, resulting
37
in lower costs, better innovation, and loyalty" .
Trust is the key word of openness.
Peering derives from the experience matured by big open source projects
like Linux or Apache. Peer production communities are different motivated by
traditional hierarchical structure: fun, altruism, achieving something that is of
direct value to them, make theirs members and all the work produced by the
38
group effective.
Sharing is the practice that promotes and supports the win-win logic as an
39
opportunity for all the stakeholder: share tools, share ideas, share knowledge.

35
Brown, Huttner and James-Tanny, 2007, p. 231
36
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, pp.20-30
37
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, p.22
38
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, pp.23-25
39
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, p.25
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 21"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
Think globally, act globally is the new insight in opposition of the previous
mantra "think global, act local". In this context it means that the approach has to
be global and that thinking a strategy at an international level is also right
management across cultures, disciplines and organizational boundaries.
This is an invite to change and to lift-up the point of view in order to
40
obtain an overview of the management texture. Employees too are developing
cross-functional teams that interact as a global real-time workforce.

2.2.2 A New Economy of Work

The result of the introduction of Wiki within workplace are deep and
observable on long-term period: the preview principles change culture, structure
and process, in other words, the economics of work.
Hierarchical workplaces with their rigid relationships are substituted by
self organization, with their distributed and collaborative culture supported by a
flexible human capital network.
Xerox is an example of how openness and trust brings benefits to R&D
staff: more contents and shared knowledge increased efficiency in the innovation
41
process in a easy way.
The "Wikinomics" expert Tantek Çelik (Technorati) analyzing the
corporate Wiki use attributes to Wiki the distribution of the weight of the
collaborative network of the organization, stressing on the reached independence
of individual worker. Further Çelik adds an insight: "the ability to use wikis will
be a required job skill in five years".
In order to accept this new way to think the work dynamics and the new
relationship system, needs a new generation of worker: "Gen-X" lived the
telephone to e-mail passage, now the Net Generation or "N-Gen" is the actor and
the first sponsor of this new mentality.

40
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, p.29
41
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, p.254
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 22"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
N-Gen collects all the people birth between the 1977 and the 1997 and
assume the web and the web 2.0 as a birthright. The revolution, as shown by a
42
New Paradigm research, is a phenomenon that interest in particular the way in
which organizations intent the "employee development model" once based on the
sequence recruit > train > retain now changed in initiate > develop > evolve. In
accordance with this human resources evolution what one time was employees now
are considered relationship.
Net Generation has a radically different philosophy of work: the High-
Tech adoption is only a way to achieve creativity, social connectivity, fun and
diversity. N-Gen will transform and accelerate the current process or
transformation of workplaces and the new way to do business.
Older generation of workers could be sceptical on the point of self-
organization: the objection more frequent stresses on the fact that no hierarchy
could be dangerous and lead to disorganization, confusion and lack of focus and
direction. But the answer is that clear goals, structures, discipline and leadership
remain important: "the difference today is that these qualities can emerge
organically as employees seize the new tools to collaborate across departmental and
organizational boundaries. […] The results are often better when self-organization
takes precedence" (Eric Schmidt - Google CEO).
The workplace design philosophy is changing. The practice of force
employees into a rigid work-flow structure using tools that stifle their creativity
into complex processes and architectures is now clashing with the flexibility
professes by new Wiki philosophy like a kind of Wikibility: "the structure is
created by demanding active involvement from users in ways of organizing and
creating their own information architecture" (Ross Mayfield - Socialtext CEO &
43
Co-founder).


42
NewParadigm, 2007, http://204.15.36.164/default.asp?action=article&ID=74
43
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, p.255
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 23"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
2.2.3 Starfish and Spider. The Organizational Structure

Self organization is about knowledge, workplaces, processes and personal
applications. This will mark the end of routine activities for knowledge worker
that are free to dedicate efforts to manage exceptions on processes.

44
Starfish and spider are the metaphor that Brafman and Beckstorm
propose to explain the advantages of a decentralized organization (starfish) in
comparison with an organization that a central leadership based structured (the
spider). Following this theory there are ten rules making starfish organization work:
1. point on diseconomies of scale, as the long tail phenomenon teaches;
2. foster on the network effect, promoting social networking values; 3. accept the
chaos and exploit its power in order to be creative and innovative; 4. spread
knowledge at the edge, being conscious that the best knowledge is at the fringe; 5.
exploit the desire to participate, everyone wants to contribute; 6. attack the
organization is dangerous, all the authors of this episodes will be remembered as a
threat; 7. substitute the leader role with the charismatic figure called "catalyst" a
kind of sparkling personality that lights employees enthusiasm for the work activities;
8. agree values with organization, in order to stress corporate identity and make
ideology the organization fuel; 9. measure, monitor and manage, checking the
direction of the organization; 10. flat or be flattened, in order to survive, companies
and institutions must take the hybrid approach.

2.2.4 Soft-security and Large Group Dynamics

45
Focusing on Wiki, in accordance with soft-security theorists there are six
assumptions or principles to consider: 1. Assume good faith. People are almost
always trying to be helpful; to apply the principle of first trust, confident that

44
Brafman and Beckstorm, 2006
45
Meatball, 2006 http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 24"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
occasional bad will be overwhelmed by the good; 2. Peer review. Your peers can
ensure that you don't damage the system; 3. Forgive and forget. Even well-
intentioned people make mistakes. They don't need to be permanent; 4. Limit
damage. When unpreventable mistakes are made, keep the damage within
tolerable limits; 5. Fair process. theory that being transparent and giving everyone a
voice are essential management skills; 6. Non violence. Do no violence lest violence
seek you.

Soft-security points on social forces to maintain order proposing this model
as a winner model against the hard-security model that traditionally supports the
rigid order: this model results however unable to recognize simple errors and
46
recognize these from attack or threat.
At this point a question is allowed: if there are so many difference with the
traditional way to work it is much simpler and more economic to maintain the
status quo? Why Wiki, instead, works?

Wiki works following the large group dynamics. Playful creation, flat
hierarchies, intellectual challenge, simple rules and norms systems, open access
(transparency and incentives), diversity of the participants' experiences, extreme
flexibility and self-determined work (following individual strategies, focal points
and roles) are the incentives that makes of Wiki a successful IT technology that, as
we will se in the next section, is already used in different ways and in different
47
workplaces.

46
Klobas, 2006, pp.11
47
Ebersbach et al., 2005, p. 22.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 25"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
2.3 Applications and Effects of Wiki in Workplace.
The Knowledge Management and Cultural Shifting

Table 2 - Tools matrix (Brown et al. 2007)


Collaborative Software Meeting and Communication Information Broadcasting Information Sharing Information Gathering Wikis RSS Feeds and "Push" Technologies
Chat (type) with one or more people in real time x x x
Talk (chat application or VoIP) with one x x
or more people in real time
Run an application
x x x
on someone else's system
Share thoughts, opinions, decisions, and more x x x
Share voice and/or video recordings x x
Present a slide show to one or more people x x x
Hold a scheduled online meeting or training session x x x x
Share dates for deadlines, meetings, and more x x
Share files with team members x x x
(documents, graphics, and spreadsheets)
Maintain long-term discussions about concepts, x x x x x x
comments, and more with team members
Collect information from team members x x x
Track tasks, assignments, and due dates x x x
Collect feedback online from team members x x x x
Set up an editable website that team members can use x x x
Distribute information to team members x x x x x
Notify team members when x x x x x
information has been updated
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 26"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
2.3.1 What Wiki Does

There are different IT tools for different kinds of collaboration - from
open source to really expansive, from one tool/task to integrated suites.
Collaborative software, instant messaging, platform for sharing and access
information, meeting and agenda setting, feeds manager are all devices that are
present in an intranet space.
Moreover, Wiki in enterprises, or more in general in organizations, is one
of the tools more and more used for the daily work. As we will see, Wikis can
integrate and include in the suites many collaborative tools. In the following table,
48
the Wiki is reported as a software in relation with other devices (table 2).
But, as we have seen before, Wiki is not just a software, is a way to do
things, and thinking it only as a simple device or software is not representative of
all the true possibilities that Wiki offers.
In this sense the Tools matrix table requires an integration with another
table (table 3) with which is possible to analyze how an intensive use of Wiki in
49
the workplace supports a wide range of activities.

Easy knowledge base, scheduling assistant, feedback collector, quick
publishing tool, research and analysis instrument, sales and development support,
creativity enabler used as brainstorming facilitator and ideas generator are the
activities that take advantage by a smart wiki use.
Technically, Wiki collaboration is traditionally based on the idea of co-
creation on text. But the function of word-processing is supported by other
possibilities of collaboration: there are Wiki modules for sketching using a
whiteboard, to calculate or to plan using a common spreadsheet or to co-think with
50
on line mind mapping tools.


48
Brown, Huttner and James-Tanny, 2007, p.221
49
Driver, 2007, http://www.forrester.com/Research/..
50
Klobas, 2006, p. 21
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 27"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
Wiki is becoming the perfect substitute for forum, blog and e-mail and the
perfect platform where to build knowledge base exploiting the topic oriented
structure of content.


Table 3 - Wiki Are Best-Suited To Activities Not Subject To Legal or Compliance Requirements (Driver, 2007)

Use case for wikis Examples
Loosely managed knowledge base Documenting best practices, creating FAQs, authoring glossaries, rating
documentation that does not need to be carefully controlled. A public
example is Wikipedia.
Building meeting agenda
Developing meeting agendas based on input from all attendees, capturing
and keeping meeting minutes
meeting minutes and summaries from all attendees. Wikis are an alternative
to meeting support point products from vendors like Facilitate.com,
GroupSystems, Meetingworks, and WebIQ.
Collecting feedback Capturing course participant feedback to instructors on how a syllabus
from course participants
might be changed for future classes. Participants build on each others'
feedback; by the end of the training experience or course, instructors have a
rebuilt course.
Jointly authoring and editing
Sales proposal drafts, presentations, research documents, policies.
documents that do not require
– at least in the early stages At IBM, for example, an editor posted his first draft of a policy on blogging
of the life cycle – a high degree
at IBM. By the time the policy was submitted to executives for approval, the
of editorial control, auditing,
and tracking document was a polished piece of work written collectively. It sailed through
the legal and human resources departments, and past the VP in charge,
without any edits.
Researching and analyzing markets,
competitors, customers Notes, comparisons, links to competitive information
Supporting sales Creating notes about customer visits and briefings, documenting
discussions, capturing details about customer's environment
and budget cycle
Developing product concepts Requirements gathering, feature requests, lists of business
drivers, design ideas and vetting
Brainstorming
and generating ideas Idea generation and refinement. An alternative to point products from
vendors like Brightidea Inc., Imaginatik, and MindMatters Technologies.

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 28"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
2.3.2 Dimensions of Virtual Workplace

The application of Wiki in the virtual workplace can be object of a
51
taxonomy following four dimensions:

> Support to effectiveness. The access to information and operational
application like suppliers address or a colleague telephone number.
In this sense Wiki can be useful to collect and self-update the users
index or other descriptive section.

> Organizational services. All the services that can be useful to
improve work organization. From the self-setting of one's own work
shift plan to the booking of the meeting room, it is possible to create
with Wiki simple spaces where users can autonomously organize
their daily activities (e.g. scheduling and prepare meeting agenda).

> Knowledge and collaborative support. The collaboration inside
and among teams and the related knowledge management issues.
Wiki are used in this sense for many applications, from the creation
and the implementation of the common knowledge base to the
several applications that requires the matching of many experience
(e.g. co-creation of procedures, handbooks, technical information,
planning activities, writing articles, prepare presentation, sharing
meeting materials and collect real time meeting notes).

> Communication and socialization. Fostering a networked internal
communication, institutional and intrapersonal. Users are connected
using Wiki in order to join the owner of a particular competence or
knowledge and real time collaboration with co-worker everywhere
they are. Wiki like as an agora.

51
Dipartimento d'Ingegneria Gestionale Politecnico di Milano, 2006, p.12
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 29"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts

Intranets and workgroup platforms cover more o less effectively this four
dimensions but Wiki does it better and in a really innovative and efficiency way
with the capability to create true new knowledge (collaborative work vs.
cooperative work).
In comparison with a traditional intranet or a workgroup platform, in
52
Wiki we can notice this kind of differences :

> Flexible structure: the free growing structure of Wiki is what makes
this different from the pre-structured platform, or static intranet (o
part of it). This fosters creativity and does not build barriers to
communication and new points of views.

> Informal communication support: the unofficial and self organized
aspect, supports the flow of free ideas, comments and opinion
sharing. Indeed, the possibility to correct quickly and easily reduce
the inhibition to participate to the social and professional life.

> Simplicity: expert and beginner are equally able to join: few
obstacles to publish contributes. It is easy to understand and
appealing by managers (that in this way have the opportunity to be
more participative on operative phase of the work).

> Focus on content: content and structure are more relevant than
visual aspect. This feature, that follow the elementary Nielsen
usability law, improve the quality of work.

> Links importance: as for the previews point the re-discovery of the
hypertext approach stress the attention to the structure of the
knowledge.

52
Paquet, 2006, pp.88
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 30"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts

> Simple and open hierarchy: once administrator invited to join the
wiki, all participants are peer (rarely there are different level of
permissions). This ensure the peering approach and the participation
of all the members of the group fostering individual's consideration.

As we have seen, all this features make relevant one of the main application
of Wiki in the workplace: the knowledge base.

2.3.3 The Evolution of Knowledge Base

Knowledge base is more than a simple glossary or a collection of FAQ
(frequent asked questions), this is traditionally a platform where allocate
experiences distributed across boundaries.
As Davenport affirms, one of the problems of knowledge management
platforms are the fact that these require an extra activity to implement and to
update the knowledge in order to make of these knowledge bases a really useful
tools.
Davenport says that the real problem is that platform are less used and
more static than the channels (operative tools, e.g. e-mail) and are at the edge of
the work dynamics (Davenport, 2005). In this sense, as Harvard professor argued,
the knowledge management is going to sure dead because not supported by right
tools.
Wiki wins this challenge because uses a better approach than the common
platforms, arising knowledge integrating the knowledge management tool with
53
daily work technology.
The obstacles to publishing, typical of old intranets and platforms, was a
true problem that brought bad consequences in term of efficiency. Wiki
encourages participation introducing informal knowledge (e.g. how to achieve a

53
Davenport, 2005, p.101
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 31"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
particular information or, for new employees, how to find information about
usage and corporate culture) once transmitted just orally, face to face or via e-mail.
The quality and the authoritativeness of the source are ensured by the
frequent updating that everybody can do and by the fact that this is a bottom-up
procedure: information are reliable because came from who is the direct expert
and not by an upper level that had to understand the topic of information before
and then approve its publishing, with the possibility of an objective obsolescence
of the knowledge.
Further with the possibility offered by 2.0 technology integration is simple
make of it new knowledge management tool: RSS feed are able to check particular
updates and to bring inside the system external updates (Paquet, S. 2006).

2.3.4 Virtual Workplace Orientation
Figure 2 - Virtual Workplace Integration Orientation Matrix (PoliMi) and Wiki

CorpCorporaorattee
CoCorrppoorraatete
IIndindivviidualdual RRelelatiatioonsnshihipp
WikiWiki
TasTaskk

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 32"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
Wiki with its simplicity, transparency and versatility seems to fit perfectly
with latest workplace features: dynamism, collaboration, knowledge cantered and
communication flexibility.
Also for this reasons, Wiki is seems to be positioned in the middle of the
Virtual Workplace Integration Orientation Matrix proposed by a study of
54
Politecnico di Milano.

Following the two axis we can affirm that Wiki is a tool that is usable both
for corporate orientation (internal communication managed by institution) and for
single task orientation (supporting the operative work); at the same time the
relationship orientation, that combines communication and socialization with
collaborative and knowledge aspects, is fostered by the Wiki networking power.
The individual orientation instead is guaranteed by the new possibilities
offered by evolutes Wiki, that implies that the Wiki mechanism are able to
support the entire work of the single: in this way, by improving the individual
knowledge work level, there is a positive increasing at the organizational level
(Davenport 2005).

2.3.5 Wiki and Knowledge Management

The knowledge management is shifting. Knowledge as experience or
validated information - without a really validated way to exchange this with others
- now become also collaboration across organizational boundaries (in an act
globally vision) creating, in this way, new knowledge. Emergent technologies
(Wiki included) are integrated together in order to become a platform that
permits: 1. to generate and access to knowledge, 2. the possibility to exchange this
55
knowledge.


54
Dipartimento d'Ingegneria Gestionale Politecnico di Milano, 2006, p.26
55
Tapscot, 2005
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 33"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
The evolution of these kinds of technology is so quick that at the moment
it is reductive referring to Wiki - and analyze it - as a simple software of
collaboration. The new intranet platforms (e.g. QEDWiki suite by IBM) are mash-
up systems that permit the personal composition of different collaborative tools
that you can share with others: the application uses widgets (web-gadget) that
allow the predisposition of the personal virtual workplace with the possibility to
cross information between different operative tools. The Wiki are evolving, but
the principle is the same: mash-up are shared application Quick, Easy, (and Done
56
as IBM QED acronym means) following the Wiki philosophy and methodology.

In a short time, Wiki is shifting from a marginal technology (originally
used only in IT department) to a fundamental support to (collaborative)
information/knowledge management in workplaces, and, further, in big IT
57
evolutes organizations there are many decentralized and connected sub-Wiki.

The key of the Wiki success seems to be that eventfully the workspace did
58
not impose the processes (Aaron Brucell, VPMarketing, Stata Labs) , using the
new collaborative tool, is the human capital that shapes in a flexible and
independent way the environment in order to exploit individual and collective
knowledge.

Analyzing the previous debate between McAfee and Davenport about the
effective revolution of Enterprise 2.0 phenomenon (on which Wiki assume a main
role), the ZDNet expert Dion Hinchcliffe states:

"The gap between what's technically possible and what the corporate
culture is willing and able to accept is often wider than many people
59
automatically assume"

56
IBM, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63qIq9t9Gqs
57
Thoney, and Woods, 2005, http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/WikisInTheWorkplaceBook
58
Socialtext, 2007, http://www.socialtext.com/node/36 cited in Klobas, J. (2006)
59
Hinchcliffe, 2007, http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=105
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 34"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts

Latest trends (reputation system, external/internal collaboration support,
enterprise class feeds readers and management, collective intelligence) providing
useful business context to Enterprise 2.0 (Hinchcliffe, D., 2007), support the true
challenge that a successful introduction of Wiki in workplace came from the
human component of the play.

2.3.6 Barriers to Wiki Introduction

60
This destructive practices have to been fought from the beginning.

> Lack of interest, lethargy and lack of contributors. Wiki had to be
"learned" understanding that is "never finished" and this continue
learning process improves autonomy between intelligence
61
communities. Nevertheless in order to avoid this sense
of uselessness given by the initial empty state, it is opportune to offer
benefits from the beginning, to launch the wiki with interesting base
contents.

> Environment resistance. Wiki introduction needs an appropriate
organizational structure: managers and upper levels have to create
the right condition to lighten up professional and personal worries.

> Vandalism. The problem is overestimated: for hackers, Wiki is too
simple to crack to be interesting; as for internal vandals (or false
gurus), it is easy and quick to fix the problem or blocking the page.


60
Ebersbach, et al., 2005, p.26
61
Andrus, 2005
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 35"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
> Attention-seekers. "Editing wars" are expansive in term of time and
resources and often conflicts that are useless to the topic. It is
possible to set-up suitable discussion pages.

> Project portal excursion. Dispersion of resources and time in order
to research inside Wiki. It is opportune create overview pages that
summarize mapping contents.

> Quality assurance. In order to guarantee a good working tool, it is
necessary to create rules and norms using a sort of wikiquette.

> Personal point of view. Ensuring neutrality and objectivity fosters
credibility and reliability in the tool.

> Open editing. Shifting from the "me-author" to "we-co-authors"
mentality. Matching different ideas or ideas with previous solutions,
prove and improve the solidity of the innovative idea.

> Open text. Using new kind of licence (GNU Free Documentation
Licence or Common Creative alternative).

> Careful optimism. Wiki way is too much optimistic? Well, latest
experiences are pro this open approach: this is the first step in order
to avoid destructive behaviours.

This is the evidence that, in order to introduce Wiki in a workplace, it is
necessary to change the previous way to do things, the old way of working.
Change corporate culture. People that support these insights are important, are
new kind of managers, are at the same time players and coaches, hold community
skills, support the talent retention (talent evolution for N-Gen), sponsor the
knowledge-friendly culture and the bureaucracy reduction (Davenport, 2005).
New managers have a role somewhere between Human resource and IT, a kind of
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 36"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
62
"Czar of cultural change", teaching people how to apply and benefit from new
technology.

2.4 Enabling Enterprise Innovation

For an enterprise, innovation is a strategic objective in order to be
competitive. For this reason it is indispensable try to pursue it in an effective way.

2.4.1 The Innovation Process

During the latest decades of XX century, experts gave several
interpretations and explanations about the mechanism that permits to achieve this
objective. Schumpeter in 1975 defined the innovation as a linear process (ideas
generation > invention > R&D > application > spread); in 1978 Kelly and in 1986
Kline and Rosenberg asserted that this process is more complex and iterative
where learning, social interrelation, spreading and communication played a key
role. In 1988 Von Hipple focused on users role as innovation creators and re-
inventors of products. In 2002 Tuomi defined innovation as a social process
rooted in social practice. In a previous study (1998) Wenger had already stressed
63
the importance of community to take part in the process.
The consequence of recognition of social interconnection is the spreading
importance and its technological mediation acquired: possibility of recombination
of knowledge and active (not passive) spreading.
This concept is very distant from the simple linear process defined by
Schumpeter.
Spreading of pre-existent innovation is a fundamental condition to
produce new innovation: it is the cumulative effects of knowledge. In this way,

62
Moore and Rugullies, 2005 http://www.forrester.com/Research/..
63
Almirall et al., 2006, pp. 104-105
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 37"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
new ideas, making innovation possible and easier innovation, enable the
development of new tools and contexts to spread and adopt innovation.
Indeed, interdependence and assimilation are identified as core
components for process: avoiding isolation, in order to guarantee the spread
maximization, to forecast internal and external links building a network structure,
to avoid "cognitive equilibrium" (homogeneity of group knowledge), to support
the structural equivalence (peering) and direct monitoring (transparency) are the
new insights to foster innovation process (Almirall et al. 2006).

2.4.2 The Innovation Levels

At an individual level, there are behaviours that are enemy of ideas and
innovation: 1. the worries and the inhibitions for others' judgement, having a fixed
point of view instead a flexible and fluid perspective, 2. to found believes only on
own previous experiences (personal knowledge) 3. do not consider oneself part of the
64
innovative process.

65
But, as for knowledge management topics, individual level is only one of
the three level to consider: individual, group and organization. These three levels
are then supported two structure aspects: connection space and concept space.
Connection space is about the network development and maintenance, that
support ideas production and cross-fertilization between organization "silos".
Concept space is about the awareness of what happens in the network,
regarding also the tacit knowledge of others, common structures and the
66
definition of discussion channels.

64
Allison, 2004
65
Nonaka, 1991, pp. 162-171.
66
Almirall et al., 2006, p.109
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 38"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
In other words we can argue that connection spaces support the creation
of knowledge and the concept spaces support the share of it. The objective of
these parts of the process is promoting diversity of ideas and recombining of its.
To support this kind of approach to enterprise, innovation process needs
to focus on social networking that, as we have already seen, is the totality of the
connections and relationships that permit to avoid single isolation.
This knowledge network is implemented by spreading and ideas
promotion among it, then is fed by ideas generation (creative sessions). Once
created the new idea it needs a testing phase in order to evaluate the effectiveness
in relation of common objective and its (network) popularity.
This kind of innovation network is then supported by such a featured
architecture: informative, that assure the possibility to have an overview and
understand what is happening and what is changing inside and which are the
rising trends emergent ideas, topic or issues; decision-making oriented, furnish
information on which are connection to follow or opinion leaders and experts;
motivational, focusing on shared objectives and maximizing the community
potential.

Further, in order to stimulate or reinforcing the network, managers can
change the structure making it alive and sparkling or confirming the relations and
67
adding sense to the key people (knots of the network).
Innovation needs change, dynamism and continue movement in the
network. Instead, the standardization is a static operation.

2.4.3 The Learning Process and Creativity

Innovation requires a continue learning process and for this scope a
68
constant transfer of knowledge is fundamental. We are so able to identify

67
Almirall et al., 2006, p.110
68
Bissola, 2006, pp.167-182
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 39"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
innovation with knowledge activities being the second ones evidence of the first:
knowledge meets innovation.
In this perspective innovation has to be promoted as the main objective for
all the human capital with their know-how (Bissola, 2006).

In this context, creativity is the sparkling moment of ideas while
innovation is the concrete application of this. Creativity and innovation are two
key drivers of competitiveness.
Creativity, once considered as an individual capability, is now the topic of
studies (Bissola, 2006) that confirm the influence of human behaviours and
organizational and contextual elements.
69
Albert Einstein said: "we are social thinkers" . Einstein meant to stress the
importance of the others, the relevance of the "contest" and of the "debate",
alerting on the danger of a unique point of view an fixed ideas.

In order to stimulate creativity it is fundamental to take care on how ideas,
needs, and different points of view are displayed. It is also important to receive
always a feedback and observations on proposals and coordinate different
contributes, to promote ambitious and challenging objectives.
Naturally independence, group cohesion, resources supply, an appropriate
leadership style, to be in the mood, to hold meaning of one's own job, incentives,
and an opportune organizational structure with open upper levels are assumptions
(Amabile et al. 2005) of an effective creative context.

As for knowledge and innovative process, further studies shows how
creativity can be considered at the three levels: beside the individual level, authors
70
speak about group creativity and other studies focus their attention on the

69
Adair, 2007
70
Tagger, 2002, pp.315-330
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71
organizational creativity . For this two levels - organizational and group - rise a
common and, as we will see, fundamental element: trust (Bissola, R., 2006).

2.4.4 Trust and Innovation

Attitudes, perceptions, behaviours and performance's indicator, thanks
trust produce positive effects, e.g. on organizational climate, communication and
personal satisfaction. There are also positive effects on control and power relations
inside and outside the organization. Beneficial effects on organizational projects
and on collaborative approach and workgroup performances (including virtual
teams) are confirmed by further studies, and at the end it is demonstrated that
72
trust is an assumption on e-business.

Interpersonal trust "… is a psychological state comprising the intention to
accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or
73 74
behaviours of another". The interpersonal trust model follow this definition and
introducing and describing the two players: trustor and trustee.

The first, the trustor, is who takes the risk. His experience and his cultural
open background, give him a natural disposition to trust in other people.
The trustee, instead, is characterized by his/her ability (as an expert, a
know-how keeper), benevolence (unselfishness predisposition, broadmindedness,
openness) and naturally by integrity (coherence to acceptable principles, also if not
share completely the trustor values, owner of a strong equity.)
In a wide context, we can introduce the concept of collective trust. In this
sense trust is a psychological status - not a behaviour - that came from a set of
action and bring to behaviours.

71
Woodman, Sawyer and Griffin, 1993 pp. 293-321
72
Bissola, 2006, p.171
73
Rousseau et al., 1998, pp.393-404
74
Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995, pp.709-34
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 41"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts

In this way we are able to take in consideration two statements.
1. Institution is a trust system, given by cultural assumption that produce a
sense of stability inside the organization and outside with rating, brand reputation
and other parameters.
2. The are also three level to identify a trust relation: the micro level, that is
the interpersonal relations, the one-to-one stage; the meso level, in order to
transmit this sense of stability from interpersonal to organizational dimensions,
this role of trust-keeper are taken by leaders or coaches that, assuming a boundary
position, and identifiable with the organization; the macro level, that is the
organizational trust.
Other studies try, at the opposite, to find a relation between interpersonal-
collective trust and collective trust distinctiveness (Bissola, 2006).

Trust and creativity are the starting points of innovation: trust can
contribute to create the optimal condition in order to favourite creativity as
75
enabling factor.
Indeed, Clegg defines trust as "an expectancy of reasonable and positive
reactions by others in response to individual innovation attempts", linking
interpersonal trust and innovation (at creativity stage).
Further, in this definition we can notice two important aspects:
- "trust that heard" - the serious consideration of individuals ideas
(contributions) and so the recognition, at organizational level, of single as
a precious resource;
- "trust that benefit" - the legitimate expectancy of participate to benefit
generates (individual level) a sort of "opportunism" that influence the
creativity (and the decision of sharing own knowledge).

Both of the two different definitions of trust, that we have seen, seems to
be valid (Bissola, 2006): Mayer's trust, based on ability, benevolence and integrity,

75
Clegg et al., 2002, pp.409-422
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 42"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
fits with relationship between colleagues, where open mind and sharing are
fundamental; Clegg's "trust that benefit" could be applied in institutional
relationships (inside or outside the organization, e.g. Connect & Develop P&G
76
case ).
In this case, organization can promote trust with mechanisms, processes
and procedures (and also with technologies like Wiki) supporting creativity and
77
innovation.

Beside trust, transparency and communication between boundaries are
able to produce serendipity creativity (Adair, 2007) that is supported by a special
environmental context that fosters collective thinking.
High concentration (density) of individuals with different skills, easy,
quick and simple way to communicate, the presence of a developed social
network, informal meeting place (also virtual), mobility between different
department, opportune resources, freedom, competition, time pressure and good
chaos are innovation enablers that are marking the crisis of traditional
78
organizational structure.

2.4.5 Tower of Knowledge and Community of Practice

The new idea spaces are different from the concept of "towers of
knowledge" that, following the spider metaphor, represent an oligarchic approach
to the knowledge management.
The new idea spaces are "community of practice" (starfish model):
communities support exchange of ideas, storytelling, transparency and the daily
tacit and explicit knowledge sharing.

76
Procter&Gamble, 2005
77
Bissola, 2006, p.177
78
Testa, 2005
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 43"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
In this way the innovative power of these spaces are in the capability that
people that are inside spaces have to create new knowledge. More than a sum of
individuals' knowledge (result of what we have called cooperation), it is a mutual
79
increment of singles' knowledge (fruit of together collaboration).
Then community, fostering emotional aspects, intangible components for
relationship and networking, is a channel for invention and a source of new ideas
80
and business (innovation). Employees, in particular the bottom-line, clients and
suppliers will enable future creativity.

2.4.6 Conversational Knowledge Management

During 2007, social network on-line communities for professional self-
81
promotion (e.g. LnkedIn and Xing ) have introduced an interesting section of
questions/answers. This kind of knowledge creation and sharing is encouraged by
82
Cluetrain Manifesto about conversational knowledge management:

"(1) - Markets are conversations. (45) - Intranets naturally tend to
route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals
cooperating to construct something far more valuable; an intranet worked
corporate conversation. (48) - When corporate intranets are not constrained by
fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds
remarkably like the conversations of the networked marketplace."

Conversational knowledge creation contains several desirable features:


79
De Graff and Lawrence, 2002, p.158-160
80
Getz and Robinson, 2005
81
http://www.linkedin.com and http://www.xing.com
82
Locke et al., 2000
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 44"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
> It can be economical and technology undemanding: many online
communities are built on little more than a listserv, a (freely availed)
web-based discussion forum or better using a Wiki.

> It is fast: taking potentiality only as long as required for one person
to post a question and others to post or e-mail a response. Speed
makes conversational technologies particularly useful for
environments where ad hoc knowledge creation is required.

> It is suitable for environments: where the knowledge is not
centralized, but resides with multiple owners (collaborative
workplaces).

Next to the conversational approach, the soft security scopes (see p.24) are
linked with the concept of trust, transparency and of easiness on knowledge
sharing and so creativity. People are enabled to do not consider errors as
permanents because easily corrigible. This reduce the inhibitions to participate on
83
ideas creation , supporting one of the traditional way to foster creativity:
brainstorming.
Traditionally the brainstorming sessions, that assume parallelism of
84
participants, contribute to generate many ideas (and so to innovate).
But the traditional brainstorming session is not more positively supported
by recent studies: it is demonstrated that is not effective and efficiency.

The channelled creativity method seems to work better and reduce the
85 86
resources' waste. Next to the De Bono insights and to the mechanism of
asynchronous brainstorming supported by e-mail, forum, blog and Wiki, the

83
Klobas, 2006, p.11
84
Almirall et al., 2006, p.107
85
Klein, 2003, p.169
86
De Bono, 1992, p.107
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 45"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
channelled creativity method is composed by seven steps of ideas generation and
problem solving (creativity): 1. problem proposition; 2. individual work on the
dilemma; 3. group presentation of the results of individual works; 4. group
discussion session of ideas and feedback collection, 5. integration of ideas;
6. further meeting session; 7. unique solution convergence. (Klein, G. 2003)

This creativity process needs idea space that in a wide organizational sight
would be desirable also in a virtual workplace decreasing problem of distance and
time. In this challenge new IT technologies like intranets are involved.

Intranets are so potentially the new infrastructure for innovation: thanks
to the intranet and the dramatic reduction of transaction and collaboration costs
between firms, knowledge and capability is available to every organization and to
87
all individuals within the firm.

87
Tapscot, 2005, p.23
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 46"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
2.5 Not Just the Right Technology.
How Corporate Wiki Supports Innovation

The theoretical recognition of Enterprise 2.0 and Wiki - as dawn
technology able to support workplace needs of collective knowledge and worker
88
interaction - is the arrival point of this dissertation section. But, considering
innovation as an articulate social practice, is Wiki technology a real innovation
facilitator?

The first Wiki was a patterns repository (see p.3), in other words a box of
analogies, that opportunely recombined, allow comparison between these and
therefore the creation of new knowledge.
This mechanism of "fusion of pieces of knowledge that have not been
89
connected before" produces "new and creative solution" (Geschka and Reibnitz)
and Wiki in 1995 was the technological response in order to favourite this
innovative process.
Innovation is the result of reproducible recombination of existing
elements. Knowledge simplifies the process and drive the technology that allows
capabilities and growth (Hitcher 2006).

2.5.1 Preliminary Insights

New knowledge - as well as innovation - insights are moving towards a
90
new way to mean the workgroup : the shift from cooperation to collaboration,
from "tower of knowledge" to "community of practice", from traditional
"knowledge management" to "conversational" knowledge, the passage from
"nouns" to "verbs" passes trough a new technological process that, instead of old

88
Almirall et al., 2006, p.114
89
Geschka and Reibnitz, 1983
90
Driver, 2007
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 47"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
IT devices and tools, does not cover simply the previous way to work with a
software's interface, but uses the 2.0 applications, and Wiki in particular in order
to innovate the way to innovate.
For a technology being really innovative, it has to re-think application
91
processes . Wiki technology contributes to diffusion of knowledge, that in a
society of knowledge, is true innovation.

An assumption of innovation process is that this is not a standard or pre-
structured concept.
Indeed, Innovation is a continuum and Wiki is in perpetual "beta-mode"
status, innovation is build on previous knowledge and Wiki is a knowledge base,
92
innovation has being shared and Wiki supports social network.

2.5.2 Beside the Wiki Adoption

Wiki enables all this points. But, is that sufficient in order to affirm that a
corporate Wiki works fostering innovation rate ?

Innovating technology or simply adopting new tools, in order to increase
the innovation rate, is useless if the context is not predisposed and oriented to
change. In this way the context is interested in the process too and, if prepared to
new way to work, the use of this technologies can improve this virtuous circle and
activate this permanent learning process that enables new way to make thing, new
organizational culture.

Many cases of study pointed out what Wiki changed in the way to work of
people highlighting benefits:


91
Granelli, A. 2005, p.2
92
Hitcher, 2006
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 48"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
> synchronism in documentation (same version for all the users
avoiding messy copies), dramatic reduction o e-mail use (from 100
mail/day to 1 mail/week), improved coordination, enabled across-
boundaries knowledge and information flow, reduction of 25% of
93
time to make things; - Ziff-Davis Media Case

> not just one owner of the knowledge and everywhere access to
94
information; - Michelin China Case

> improvement employee productivity and the capability to manage
95
big flows of work. - DrKW Bank Case

Big companies make easier to find updated information even without
knowing the expert in the field: the real time publishing possibility (traditional
time to publish in intranet was nearly thirty days) improves work efficiency.
Indeed, Wiki allows creative power of many people, coordinates
horizontally and without further remuneration that, with the dawn of individuals
and the recognition of hidden experts, demonstrates also an increase of the
96
motivational factor to contribute .

2.5.3 Wiki Potentials and Innovation Rate

In order to synthesize the effects of Wiki use on workplace environment,
we can identify five main areas of influence: teaming, time allocation, decision
97
making, resource allocation and communication.


93
Paquet, 2006, p.90
94
Paquet, 2006, p.91
95
Paquet, 2006,p.92 and McAfee, 2006
96
Paquet, 2006, p.97
97
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, pp.259-262
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 49"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
About teaming, in the past corporate teams was assigned building up only
on loyalty and trust. Now, with mass collaboration, self organization, peering and
social network workers, it continues to change roster and mix teams composition.
Indeed, members can work at home as on the road using the right tools and
founding collaborative works also on transparency.
Also time allocation of employee is changing: people are free to dedicate a
percentage of their time (trust) for personal projects (e.g. Google 20%) involving
people to be creativity booster contributing actively to the innovative process of
organization.
The decision making is now supported by the mass of employees, partners
and suppliers, with theirs market trend prediction. In this sense it is possible
exploiting crowd as opinion leaders.
Further, organizational resource allocation is shifting from the logic "first-
come-first-serve": wiki allows the internal "marketplace" for resources (from
computing power to conference room).
The issue of corporate communication - traditional "top-down", now seems
to change this approach and smart companies (also using blogging as tactic, e.g.
Sun) promote an effective, personal and transparent way to communicate with
employees leveraging the network culture. The effects of transparency are various
and relevant: increasing the quickness of workflow, inviting accountability and
driving dialogue between all stake holders, dissolving boundaries between
corporation and its ecosystem.

The other side of the model, from the innovation perspective, we can
98
notice that enablers of innovation are near to be complementary.
First of all, needs of decision making agility, in order to understand changes
and plan effective innovation strategy: as we have seen, the power of crowd as big
opinion leader to investigate and the new conversational knowledge management
that allow to have true "experts on demand".


98
Dipartimento d'Ingegneria Gestionale Politecnico di Milano, 2006, p. 34
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 50"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 2.Wiki and Innovation. Key Concepts
Then, the collaboration between different units - across boundaries -
permits the creation and the sharing of ideas, capabilities and knowledge. The old
trend was for cooperation that supported by the limited IT solutions does not allow
the free access to the whole knowledge of the organization.
Flexibility on process design is fundamental for an effective innovation
strategy: the possibility of change and re-combine is also possible thanks to the
"starfish" structure.
Innovation requires openness to ideas of all the human capital: trust spurs
internal and external creativity and contribution of individuals.
Indeed, it supports people in their daily work everywhere they are, fostering
mobility and portability, increase the rising of innovation.

At the end of the day, we have arrived to define which for authors - and so
in the recent but strong literature on the Wiki field - are potentials and enablers o
the two respective extremes of the construct of our research structure: Wiki and
Innovation.
In the next part we are going to see how and if this dissertation contribute
to this huge of knowledge, furnishing a further support in order to study which
are the best way to optimize the use of this innovative tool called "Wiki".

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 513 The Wikibility Workplace.








At this point, we are able to apply the model Wiki > Innovation, where we
will stress on the knowledge management and cultural connections/links between
potentials and enablers (3.1).
The definition of cultural key drivers bring us to define the concept of
Wikibility in an innovation oriented workplace, furnishing, in this way, elements
in order to answer the main research question (3.2).
But how is it possible to verify, measure and then evaluate the level of
Wikibility maturity of a Workplace?
From this last question we move an insight for further studies: a proposal
of survey - not yet validated - for an auditing tool that can be used by
management that decide to sponsor the Wiki use in a real workplace context (3.3).
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 52"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
3.1 How to Be Effectively Innovation Oriented

In the previous part we have found theoretical base to define, from one
side, what Wiki is able to improve - or to influence - in a workplace and from the
other side what innovation requires from an organizational level perspective.

A first comparison of these very concrete potentials and enablers stresses on
the complementary aspects of these two groups of elements:
More exactly, we can notice that: 1. the improvement on teamwork
(teaming) by Wiki use responds to the "collaboration" needs of an innovation
oriented workplace; 2. the Wiki effects on decision making fits with the decision
making agility of an innovative management; 3. the possibility of managing time
in a personal way (time allocation) offered by Enterprise 2.0 thinking is linked
with the inclination that makes innovative company open to individuals' initiative
(openness to ideas); 4. a better communication is able to support people in daily work;
5. an easy resources allocation system can reduce bureaucracy, obstacle to the
innovation needs of flexibility process design.

Indeed, analyzing the definitions and the descriptions of each of these
99
elements, made by the authors of Wikinomics (for the Wiki side) and by
100
Politecnico of Milan (innovation requirements), as we have already done in the
theorical part (see 2.5.3), bring us to the formulation of a ulterior logical insight.

These Wiki improvements on workplace and workplace's innovation
needs, in fact, seem to converge at the end in some common core concepts (figure
3) and cultural values: quickness, flexibility, sharing, collaboration, social networking,
peering, openness and trust that are the cultural - and knowledge management -
key drivers for an effective use of Wiki in order to be innovative.

99
Tapscot and Williams, 2007, pp.259-262
100
Dipartimento d'Ingegneria Gestionale Politecnico di Milano, 2006, p. 34
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 53"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace

Figure 3 - Wiki Effective Innovation Oriented Workplace: definition of Cultural Key Drivers


CulturaCulturaCulturalll a a and Knd Knd KMMM
Wiki imWiki imWiki improvprovproveseses InnovInnovInnovatatationionion neneneedsedseds
KeyKeyKey driv driv driveeerrrsss
qqquuuicicicknknknesesessss
flexflexflexibiliibiliibilitytytydecisdecisdecisiiiooonnn makin makin makinggg agiliagiliagilitytyty
ttteamineamineaminggg
shshshaaarrriiinnnggg
collaborationcollaborationcollaboration
tititimmmeee a a allllllooocccaaatttiiiooonnn
cccololollllaaaboraboraboratttiiiononon
decisdecisdecisiiiooonnn makin makin makingggsososocialcialcial net net netwwworororkikikinnnggg flexibility onflexibility onflexibility on ppprrrooocccessessess dddesesesiiign gn gn
pppeereereerinininggg opopopennennennessessess t t tooo i i idddeaseaseas
rrresesesooourceurceurce alloca alloca allocationtiontion
opopopenenennnneeessssss
sssuuuppoppopporrrttt to to to pppeeeoooppplelele
commcommcommunicatiunicatiunicationonon
trutrutrusssttt


Summarizing, these knowledge management components and these
culture values could be considered requisites that organization has to guarantee
beside the introduction of Wiki (Enterprise 2.0) technology in an effective
innovation oriented workplace (figure 4).

Figure 4 - The Cultural and Knowledge Management Key Drivers in the Wiki - Innovation Model

Org. CultOrg. Cultureure
(K(KMM))
qquuicicknesskness
fflleexxibibiliilityty
shshaarriningg
ccoollaborllaboratationion
sosocciial netal netwwoorrkkinging
Key driversKey drivers
ppeereeriinngg
opopeennnneessss
trtruusstt
CoCorprporateorate InnoInnovvaatiotionn
WikiWiki RateRate

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 54"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
3.2 Between Wiki and Innovation: The Cultural Key Drivers

The eight items arising in this analysis are the starting point of a deeper
definition, that support us to clarify some peculiarities of key drivers identified in
this eight "key words".

Before starting the definition phases of these cultural aspects, it is useful to
underline that a preliminary disposition to experiment new way of working is
fundamental. But, what we are referring to is not a mere ability to try new
technology or a more basilar computer science alphabetization - Wiki, for
definition, do not need particular skills - what we are referring is the desire to
improve the way to make things, assuming also the risk to change the way to
work: the predisposition to operate a cultural shift.

Assumed that, we can now shortly define these eight insights for an
effective innovation oriented use of Wiki in a Workplace.

3.2.1 Quickness

The first key driver for a completely serendipitous case refers to the
meaning of the word "Wiki". The fact that a Workplace could be considered
"quick" is not properly linked with the easiness to find information or with the
speedy level of the communications: in this context it is linked to the Wiki feature
of assuring a real-time updating access to contents and resources (data,
information or knowledge and physical resources).

Up-dated information are, in fact, at the base of an effective support to
people's work, and are fundamental in order to guarantee a democratic allocation
of resources. Further, up-date information are needed in an effective decision
making process and to guarantee a common base for useful communication
between workers.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 55"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
3.2.2 Flexibility

A flexible workplace is characterized by the capability of individuals to
manage not only theirs works, time or resources, but also the possibility to
influence and operate in an active way inside the community (from team to
organizational level) and for this reasons to be part of the operational process.

Flexibility influences the way of allocating time creating moments for
personals insights development; it gives the possibility to own a picture of the
whole process in order to decide the way to fix personal objectives. Exploiting one
of the main Wiki functionalities, it permits as well to handle other contents and
the possibility to be active - following personal expertise - in different teams
(community of practice).

3.2.3 Sharing

Sharing is linked with the concept of a democratic access - and then
utilization - to all kind of resources, from physical tools to data and, even better,
to ideas and individuals' insights.

The possibility of sharing improves an effective distribution of common
resources (meeting room, projector, corporate car…). In a more general
acceptation of the term, the availability to ideas or previous solution useful for
different use is an advantage that make co-creation of new knowledge and a
healthy circulation of knowledge possible.

3.2.4 Collaboration

As we have seen in theoretical part (see p.21), the true collaboration occurs
when people have the possibility to co-work on the same sub-task, activating a
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 56"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
mechanism of new knowledge creation. Collaboration is not so obvious if is not
clearly supported: the risk is to exchange this "together" learning process with a
simple cooperation process, producing not new knowledge but only a simple
addition of individual regress knowledge.

In this sense, collaboration has to be helped in order to avoid isolation in
job and supported with a compatible scheduling of daily activities. Is also
important to create "collaboration bridges" across teams and groups, involving
people to participate to other's activities or involve experts of other area to
collaborate together.

3.2.5 Social Networking

The social networking aspect is the starting point of a company sensible to
Enterprise 2.0 - then Wiki - solutions. Introducing this concept in a workplace
context is possible to change in a radical and effective way the previous
organizational culture.

The first step to create a social networking is to allow the creation of
101
personal spaces - if possible with a an internal blog - and then to produce a staff
list in order to let people know who their colleagues are and which are personal
skills that they own. In this way there will be a simpler identification of experts.

3.2.6 Peering

A common element between Wiki philosophy and innovation successful
case histories, is the partial or total absence of structure or, saying better, of
hierarchy. The possibility, in fact, to contribute in the same way, indifferently at

101
Cannon, M., (2007), slide 36
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 57"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
which level you are involved in the organization, is one of the first steps towards
the reduction of barriers to collaboration, participation and involvement in the
organizational life.

Peering is to intend in the two ways of organizational commitment: from
both the perspective, the access to common information and the possibility to
contribute to corporate knowledge.

3.2.7 Openness

Strictly linked with transparency concept, openness is at the base of the
principle that people work better if own right information and possibility to
assume that all over the organization.

The simple access to other group member data or the possibility to know
activities scheduled also in other groups are normal operation in a mature context
such as is allowed to look to other team solutions o results in order to decide
something for the own team.

3.2.8 Trust

In order to shift from the culture of individual work to the culture of
collaborative work, is obvious that the issue of the trust is crucial: as we have seen
in the previous part (see p.41) trust is linked not only with the Wiki spirit but it is
a very important requirement of creativity and so of the orientation to innovation.

To be considered a credible expert is important such as to be sure to have
reliable expert's opinions; the feeling that you are appreciate inside your team ad
more in general in your community is an incentive to be active and "creative".


©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 58"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace

What we intend with the word Wikibility fits perfectly with the presence
of these cultural aspects.

In other words - and this is a partial answer to the research question - it is
not sufficient to install a Wiki platform in an organization in order to make it works
to produce new knowledge and then innovation: for this scope the level of Wikibility
should be already mature and prepared to exploit at the top the cultural shift that this
new IT technologies will produce in the - one time traditional - workplace.

The intent of this work is now to propose a way to measure the level of
Wikibility in an innovation oriented workplace.
This tool will produce a sort of cockpit that supports the management
believing in Enterprise 2.0 principles, and therefore in Wiki as instrument to
produce a true collaborative workplace.

The Wikibility term is, in fact, extended to the whole organizational
cultural revolution that User Generated Content has brought into the workplace,
following the same logic of the Tapscot-Williams's "Wikinomics".

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 59"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
3.3 Propose for a Wikibility Workplace Auditing Tool

In order to provide an useful survey to measure what we have called
Wikibility and in the same time to deliver a concrete tool for checking which
practical aspect of workplace improvement, we can formulate a set of questions
including the eight cultural key drivers - previously defined - and the four
"dimensions of virtual workplaces" - seen in the theory (p.29) and defined by
Politecnico of Milano - obtaining in this way 32 questions.
The questions are not formulated with the aim of studying how Wiki
technology is used in the workplace, but in order to investigate how and how
much the organizational culture is changed, is changing or is not changed yet in
the four different areas working in innovation oriented virtual workplace that uses,
or intends to use, Wiki.
For the definition of the survey's questions, it is useful to re-consider the
scheme in which we have defined the eight cultural key drivers (figure 5) and
consider for each key driver four elements, one for the each virtual workplace
dimension (as summarized in the table )

Figure 5 - Wiki Effective Innovation Oriented Workplace: definition of survey's questions

CCuullttuurralal and and KM KM
Wiki imWiki improvproveses:: IInnovnnovatationion nneeedseds::
KeyKey driv driversers
ququiicckknenessss
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shshaarriinngg
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fflexibilitlexibility y on pon prrocessocess d designesign
decisiondecision ma makinkingg ssoocciial netal netwoworrkikinngg
ppeereeriinngg ooppenennness toess to i iddeaeass
resresoouurrccee alloca allocattiionon
opopeennnenessss
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comcommmuunnicaticatiioonn
trutrusstt
DDDimimimeeensnsnsionsionsions ooofff Virt Virt Virtuuuaaal Worl Worl Workkkplplplacacace:e:e:
a. Sua. Sua. Suppppppororort t t ttto eo eo effffectivfectivfectivenesenesenessssc. c. c. KKKnnnooowwwledgledgledge ane ane anddd co co collllllaaabbborororatatatiiivvve e e sssuuupppppporororttt
b.b.b. Or Or Orgggaaannniiizzzaaatititionononalalal ssseeervrvrviiiccceeesssddd... C C Cooommmmmmuuunnniiicccaaatititiononon an an and socializd socializd socializatatationionion


©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 60"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
Table 4 - Wikibility in Innovation Oriented Workplace: definition of survey's questions - theme of questions

a. Supporting people a. Flexibility on process design
1. 5.
Quickness b. Resource allocation Social b. Teaming
c. Decision making agility Networking c. Decision making
d. Communication d. Openness to ideas


a. Time allocation a. Supporting people
2. 6.
Flexibility b. Decision making agility Peering b. Resource allocation
c. Flexibility on process design c. Flexibility on process design
d. Teaming d. Communication


3. a. Resources allocation 7. a. Collaboration
Sharing b. Openness to ideas Openness b. Openness to ideas
c. Collaboration c. Decision making
d. Communication d. Communication

a. Supporting people a. Time allocation
4. 8.
Collaboration b. Teaming Trust b. Teaming
c. Collaboration c. Openness to ideas
d. Communication d. Decision making agility

After the definition of questions' themes, we are now able to formulate the
entire survey.

3.3.1 Wikibility Innovation Oriented Workplaces Audit.
Survey's Questions (see also Exhibit "a")

1. Quickness
1.a Supporting People (support to effectiveness)
Do you find up-to-dated data useful for your daily work?
(e.g. index, calendars, telephone number)

1.b Resource allocation (organizational services)
Regarding to booking common resources (e.g. meeting room, projector…)
Is it possible to make it by yourself?

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 61"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
1.c Decision Making Agility (knowledge and collaborative support)
Do you find in an easy way and quickly up-to-dated information
- or knowledge-owner - useful for your work?

1.d Communication (communication and socialization)
Do you find up-to-dated information about organizational activities?

2. Flexibility
2.a Time Allocation (support to effectiveness)
Are you free to dedicate a percentage of your time to your own projects?

2.b Decision Making Agility (organizational services)
Is it possible to get information about the whole project
work progress and direction?

2.c Flexibility on Process Design (knowledge and collaborative support)
Is it possible to re-configure and handle others' contributes?

2.d Teaming (communication and socialization)
Are you active in different teams?

3. Sharing
3.a Resources Allocation (support to effectiveness)
Are the common resources accessible to all and can these
be booked in an autonomous way?

3.b Openness to ideas (organizational service)
Is it possible to access or find results and insights
inside and outside the community?

3.c Collaboration (knowledge and collaborative support)
Is it usual to implement others' work or co-create documents?

3.d Communication (communication and socialization)
Is the real time circulation of ideas among the community supported?

4. Collaboration
4.a Support to People (support to effectiveness)
Do you know which people are involved in your same projects?

4.b Teaming (organizational services)
In your team, are individuals plans often compatible
with the group activity?
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 62"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace

4.c Collaboration (knowledge and collaborative support)
Is it usual to participate to other group projects?

4.d Communication (communication and socialization)
Is it usual to discuss with others about their
work, solving problems together?

5. Social Networking
5.a Flexibility on process design (support to effectiveness)
Is it easy to identify an expert in the whole community?

5.b Teaming (organizational services)
Are members of teams able to know all the competences
and expertises of co-workers?

5.c Decision Making (knowledge and collaborative support)
When the group has to take a decision, it is usual to ask opinion
to experts inside the whole community?

5.d Openness to Ideas (communication and socialization)
Are individuals insights visible to the whole community?

6. Peering
6.a Supporting people (support to effectiveness)
Is everybody able to update useful information like
telephone numbers or scheduled meeting?

6.b Resource Allocation (organizational services)
Is everybody able to book meeting room or,
in general, common resources?

6.c Flexibility on process design (knowledge and collaborative support)
Is everybody able to recombine documents and then publish it?

6.d Communication (communication and socialization)
Is everybody free to publish (in the intranet or wiki)
information useful for your colleagues?

7. Openness (transparency)
7.a Collaboration (support to effectiveness)
Is it possible to access to other group contact data?

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 63"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
7.b Openness to ideas (organizational services)
Is it possible to know when other groups meet
and, if you want, participate?

7.c Decision Making (knowledge and collaborative support)
In order to take decisions, do you usually look
to other groups or departments work results and choices?

7.d Communication (communication and socialization)
Have you ever participate in other groups or departments discussions?

8. Trust
8.a Time allocation (support to effectiveness)
In your online profile, do you have the possibility
to write your further expertises or personal projects?

8.b Teaming (organizational services)
When there are meetings, have you the same
documentation of other participants?

8.c Openness to Ideas (knowledge and collaborative support)

Do you think that your ideas and, in general, your work,
get the right acknowledgement from your Organization?

8.d Decision Making Agility (communication and socialization)
Do you consider reliable the insights coming from the whole community?

3.3.2 Audit Evaluation and Presentation

Once defined questions, the answers can be measured with a classical scale
"not agree/agree" from 1 to 5 (1 = do not agree. 2 = slightly agree. 3 = moderately
agree. 4 = mostly agree. 5 = completely agree).
Combining all the values and using the average of all the data, it is possible
to have a kind of cockpit that can furnish indications about the levels of the eight
cultural key drivers and, furthermore, about the practical aspects of the workplace
implementation.
In order to represent data in a clear way it is easy image a set of "cobweb"
graphs that are able to show which is the Wikibility status of the workplace.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 64"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace

Figure 6 -Purpose of Wikibility cockpit (fake data)

WikWikiibilbiliity in Vty in Viirtrtuuaal Wl Woorkrkppllaaccee
aa.. S Supupport port to eto effeffeccttiivveenenessssb. Ob. Orrggaaninizzaatitionalonal sseervrviicceses
qqquuuicknesicknesicknessss quiquiquiccckkknessnessness
trustrustrusttt ffflexiblexiblexibilitilitilityyytrustrustrustttffflexlexlexibibibilitilitilityyy
opeopeopennnnnnesesessss shshshaaarrriiinnngggopenopenopennnnesesessssshshshaaarrriiinnnggg
peerpeerpeerinininggg cccooollllllaaaboboborararatititionononpppeereereerininingggcococollabllabllabooorrraaatttioioionnn
sssoooccciiiaaalll networki networki networkingngngsssooocial netcial netcial netwwwooorrrkikikingngng
c.c. K Knnoowwledledgge ande and co collabllaboorraattiive suve suppppoortrtd. Cod. Commmmuunniiccatiation on anand sd soocciialaliizzatiatioonn
qqquuuicknesicknesicknessss quiquiquiccckkknessnessness
trustrustrusttt ffflexiblexiblexibilitilitilityyytrustrustrustttffflexlexlexibibibilitilitilityyy
opeopeopennnnnnesesessss shshshaaarrriiinnngggopenopenopennnnesesessssshshshaaarrriiinnnggg
peerpeerpeerinininggg cccooollllllaaaboboborararatititionononpppeereereerininingggcococollabllabllabooorrraaatttioioionnn
sssoooccciiiaaalll networki networki networkingngngsssooocial netcial netcial netwwwooorrrkikikingngng
WikiWikiWikibilbilbilititityyy Sum Sum Summmmaaarrryyy
qqqqquuuuuicknesicknesicknesicknesicknessssssa. a. a. a. a. b. b. b. b. b.
SuSuSuSuSupppppppppport ort ort ort ort OOOOOrrrrrgagagagaganininininizzzzzaaaaatititititionalonalonalonalonal
trustrustrustrustrustttttffffflexiblexiblexiblexiblexibilitilitilitilitilityyyyyto eto eto eto eto effecffecffecffecffectttttiiiiivvvvveeeeennnnneeeeessssssssssserserserserservvvvviciciciciceseseseses
opeopeopeopeopennnnnnnnnnesesesesessssssshshshshshaaaaarrrrriiiiinnnnnggggg
d. d. d. d. d. c.c.c.c.c.
peerpeerpeerpeerpeerininininingggggcccccooooollllllllllaaaaaboboboboborararararatititititionononononCCCCCooooommmmmmmmmmuuuuunnnnnicaticaticaticaticatioioioioionnnnn KnowledKnowledKnowledKnowledKnowledggggge ane ane ane ane and d d d d
anananananddddd s s s s sooooocializatcializatcializatcializatcializatioioioioionnnnncococococollallallallallabbbbbooooorrrrraaaaatttttive ive ive ive ive
sssssoooooccccciiiiiaaaaalllll networki networki networki networki networkingngngngngsssssuuuuuppoppoppoppopportrtrtrtrt



Managers can exploit the results of this cockpit in order to understand
what to improve in the organizational culture - which key driver - or, for
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 65"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 3.The "Wikibility" Workplace
example, if the tool is used in order to cover all its potential range of functionality
(Virtual Workplace Dimensions).
In this way it is possible to verify the critical aspects aroused by this survey
and - with the help of the scheme with the topics of the 32 points (table 4) - to
intervene in the specific case in order to promote and communicate the right
"Wikible" behaviour.

The tool that we have already seen was defined thanks to a brief research
experience (interviews) conducted in a workplace where the presence of all these
organizational cultural key drivers elements was expected.
Now we are going to see the successful case of Wiki adoption in this
workplace (CERN in Genève) verifying the presence of an high level of Wikibility
that can be exploited in order to propose further and deeper studies (validation of
the previous audit tool) useful for corporate communication and knowledge
managers, sponsors of this true innovative IT technology.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 664 The CERN Wiki Case History








Now we are going to analyze and observe the impact of Wiki use in a
particular context, the CERN community (Genève), that offers a really interesting
field of research in collaborative studies.
After a short description of the Centre (4.1), we will be able to appreciate
the dimension of this international Organization and the relevance of what is
happening here in terms of innovation.
In this sense, we will see three of the reasons of the choice of this
Organization for testing the effective presence of the cultural key drivers that we
have found in the previous part of this work (4.2).
Then the CERN case history will be presented, that is useful to
understand how the Wiki use can support one of the most innovative project that
requires the collaboration and the coordination of thousand of people all over the
world (4.3).
At the end of this part, thanks to some on-field interviews, we will be able
to verify the presence of an appropriate Wiki culture into this emblematic
community (4.4).

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 67"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
4.1 An International Organizational Workplace. The CERN

CERN is the old acronym of French Conseil Européen pour la Recherche
Nucléaire or European Council for Nuclear Research, the provisional name that in
1952 moved the first step toward the European Organization for Nuclear Research,
102
founded officially in 1954 .
The strategically choice of Genève as location (though the centre crosses
the France border), is due to the neutrality vocation of Switzerland that is in touch
with the spirit of the Organization: the scientific research collaboration above the
national interests.
During half century, CERN became the world's largest particle physics
103
centre. It is a laboratory where physicist study the nuclear sub-particle and exists
primarily to provide them with the necessary tools and infrastructure in order to
reach significant results. Results that have often been awarded with the maximum
104
acknowledge that a scientist can aim: the Nobel Prize.

CERN members are 20, naturally all European, but many non-European
countries are involved, in different ways, in its activities.

The current Member States are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech
Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, The
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Member States have particular duties and privileges. They contribute to
the capital and operating costs of the CERN projects and are represented in the
Council. They are responsible for all important decisions about the Organization
and its activities.

102
CERN (2006) http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Content/Chapters/AboutCERN/...
103
CERN (2006) http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Content/Chapters/AboutCERN/...
104
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/AboutCERN/Achievements/...
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 68"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
Then there are "Observers" States (or International Organization) and
Non-Member States. "Observer" role is meant to allow Non-Member States the
access to produced documentation and to attend Council meeting, without taking
part in the decision-making process.
Observer States and Organizations currently involved in CERN
programmes are: the European Commission, India, Israel, Japan, the Russian
Federation, Turkey, UNESCO and the USA.
Non-Member States currently involved in CERN programmes are: Algeria,
Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China,
Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Georgia, Iceland, India, Iran, Ireland, Mexico,
Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea,
Taiwan and Ukraine.

At the moment 220 Institutes and Universities of non-Members States use
CERN's facilities. Their physicists and funding agencies of Member and non-
Member States are responsible for the financing, construction and operation of
the experiments on which they collaborate.
Almost the totality of CERN budget is spent on building new machines
such as the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator project that is the
actual target of the whole CERN community.
Currently, the CERN is reaching the installation and commissioning stage
105
of the LHC project that will be ultimate in the 2008.
In order to understand the dimension of the Organization, it is useful to
consider that only 3552 are the CERN employee (2645 staff members and 907
with other kind of contract).
Altogether, CERN's research programme involves some 8000 researchers
from over 500 institutes in 56 countries (figure 7), that if we consider the totality
of the internal people involved, achieve the number of about 10.000 members
spread all around the world.


105
Høimyr and Jones, 2007
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 69"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
Figure 7 - Distribution of all CERN users by nation of institute (CERN Annual Report 2006)




Figure 8 - CERN accelerator complex (CERN Annual Report 2006 and web site)


Indeed, the complexity of the CERN activities (figure 8) and experiments
106
requires a large amount of investments that in 2006 was 1.255.762 kCHF .
Though the experiments that take place at CERN are about nuclear
physics, the CERN community is a very heterogeneous patchwork of know-how
and experts in different fields. In order to better understand the various

106
CERN (2006) http://preprints.cern.ch/cernrep/varia/annual_reports/...
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 70"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
relationships and links that there are between all the members is useful to show
the organizational chart (figure 9).

Figure 9 - CERN Internal Organization (CERN Annual Report 2006)


The entire structure is supported by the department that works to furnish
resources and over all know-how to set up the different experiments (ALICE,
ATLAS, CMS…) that will be done when the LHC project will be ready.
Each department can be considered similar to a middle-big company that
is related with others in a complex network of supplier/clients relation: for
example the IT (Information technology) supports all the departments for the side
of ICT and works in order to solve the problem of storage data of the required
experiments. Inside each department there are different groups and in each group
the work is organized in teams.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 71"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
If we take in consideration the international Institutes and Universities'
involvement on department activities, each member of the team manage
107
relationships - and then knowledge - exchanges with "over than forty people" in
different country.

The CERN can be defined as an hub of an enormous Social Network: for
the large number of members, for the knowledge that is owned inside and for the
big needs of collaboration and then of knowledge transfer, could be considered
also a lab from an "unusual" point of view, useful to be studied from a sociological
perspective.
In particular, for the research questions that this thesis intend to
investigate, the CERN case seems to fit perfectly for the reason that we are going
to explain.


107
Giuseppe Lo Presti - CERN IT Dep., interview
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 72"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
4.2 The Reasons for a CERN Wiki Case History

There are many reasons that support the CERN choice as an useful
context to validate the theoretical intuition about the cultural key drivers needed
in order to use Wiki in an effective way in order to produce Innovation.
One of this, the "sociological" relevance of the CERN community, was
already explained in the previous paragraph.
The second is a symbolic one and is referred to the author of the first
quotation of this work, in the first part of introduction: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, that
in 1989 was member of the CERN community, and in order to support the
knowledge sharing and the collaboration, invented, on the NeXT platform already
visible on the CERN "Microcosmo" exhibition, the "Web 0.0".

"…The idea was not just that it should be a big browsing medium.
The idea was that everybody would be putting their ideas in, as well as taking
108
them out." - Tim Berners-Lee

In this sense the Web was intend as a two-way communication media to
share and distribute knowledge in a democratic manner, enabling everybody to
contribute.
The Web 2.0 and overall Wiki just empower users to edit pages on the
Web-server and are very much in the same spirit as the original Barners-Lee Web.
Communication and collaboration, characteristic of CERN community
workgroup, fosters from the beginning the use of technology in order to satisfy
these needs. This make us suppose that we are researching in the right context if
we want to investigate about collaborative culture.

Further, about Wiki potential, a fundamental data to consider is about the
adoption of the Wiki from the CERN.

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Berners-Lee, 1999, http://www.w3.org/1999/04/13-tbl.html
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 73"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
109 110
The 2002 -2003 is indicated by Pete L. Jones, one of the CERN Wiki
administrators, as the date of adoption of this tools.
Five years use is relatively a lot of time in order to observe and study how
Wiki changed the organizational culture of the workplace. People are no more
influenced by the impact with the new tool and many procedures of work are
already validated by practices.
We are so sure that the first element of our construct Wiki>Innovation is
useful for an appropriate study.

And what about "innovation"?
It is not difficult to assert that innovation is the "core business" of CERN.
If "CERN's mission is to serve Science in conceiving, building and operating new
research instruments (large accelerators), which provide particle beams to teams of
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physicists from all over the world organizing experiments" , the Transfer
Technology Group (TT Group) transforms into "innovation" all the discovers or
inventions that are arising during the main mission (LHC at the moment). TT
Group mission is "to make known and available to third parties, under agreed
conditions, technologies and innovations achieved in fulfilling CERN's mission in
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fundamental research, for the benefit of Member States".
CERN produces several patents (IP) during its activity and starting from
the WWW invention, it contributes to produce innovation in many field:
materials, medicine, microelectronics, chemical, astronomy, etc.
We can assert that CERN is an innovation producer and for these reasons
it is possible to find validation for our cultural key drivers in this particular
Workplace.

109
External Institute used Wiki since 2002 - Finnish Grid team using TWiki to document Nordic
Grid activities. https://wiki.hip.fi/twiki/bin/view/Hiptech/MeetingMinutes16Jan2002
110
Pete L. Jones - CERN IT-DES Dep., interview
111
http://visits.web.cern.ch/visits/guides/tools/manual/english/new_keymessages.html
112
CERN - TT Group, 2007 - http://ttpromo.web.cern.ch/ttpromo/Home.do
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 74"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
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4.3 A Successful Case History . The Wiki Adoption at CERN

As seen before, the whole community of CERN is working in order to
achieve the common objective: the Large Hardon Collider (LHC) accelerator, that
- once started its activity - will be the biggest accelerator in the world.
As shown in figure 6, along the ring of 27 km (circumference), there are
the LHC Experiment Detectors that - "large as cathedrals" - correspond with the
experiments that physicist are conducting: ATLAS, ALICE, CMS and LHCb.
At the same time, there are the LHC Computing Grid project (LCG) born
to build a worldwide computing grid that allow to make simulation and analysis
of all the data that came from LHC Experiment Detectors and that physicist
scattered all over the world.
Both of these two LHC linked activities require effective collaboration and
documentation tools.
Formal documents (papers) such as specifications and user-guides would
typically be stored in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) platform, further
there are web-based document management applications for scientific
publications, as well as conferences and meeting.
These tools are knowledge base platforms, and as we have seen in the
theoretical part, as asserted by Davenport (see p.31), are not sufficient to support
an effective collaboration given by the possibility to work together on the same
document co-creating new knowledge.
PLM and web document management platforms, in fact, are not suitable
for Web-pages, guides and "as you go along" documentation. A Wiki, instead,
helps to capture knowledge from all the members of the workgroup, not only for
people with access rights or with the skills needed to use PLM platform or html.
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Since January 2002, a Finnish team involved in CERN Grid activities
used Wiki for theirs activities and then, in 2004, a centrally supported Wiki for

113
Based on Høimyr and Jones, 2007 and Pete L. Jones interview
114
https://wiki.hip.fi/twiki/bin/view/Hiptech/MeetingMinutes16Jan2002
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 75"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
software project documentation was requested by the software team in the ATLAS
Physics in order to increase the collaborative work quality.

"The request of a very simple wiki to set-up, came up in the IT
department from ATLAS Experiments group…" say Pete L. Jones, "… People
e-mail us - I sought that there is a wiki on line. Is it possible to have one? By
word of mouth the request of wikis grown… Indeed, people of Institute or
Organization all around the world, that already used this tool, pushed for this
new way to use the web, a new way to work."

In particular, among different Wiki implementations, supported by the
Finnish experience, CERN IT department chose TWiki as open source platform:
"TWiki comes well out for typical engineering and software documentation
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purposes".
There are other platforms that are valid leading contenders of TWiki:
Confluence and MediaWiki - on which is developed Wikipedia - are two of the
116
alternative to TWiki.
For this reason inside the CERN community "TWiki" is synonymous of
"Wiki". Høimyr and Jones the two Wiki administrator, resume here the
advantage of this collaborative platform:

> Shared Web portal and document workspace;
> Allows for direct editing of web-pages with revision control, keeping full change history;
> Divided into "Webs", with local templates for layout and look and feel, access control and
other preferences for each web. (One web may be used for one project organization).
> Really easy to set up, can run on standard Web-servers
> Powerful for writing documentation "as you go along"
> Simple and un-bureaucratic tool for e.g. "How-to", developer notes and discussions
> Possible to use knowledge database for FAQs

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Høimyr and Jones, 2007
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For other Wiki implementations and their capabilities see http://www.wikimatrix.org
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 76"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
117
The CERN TWiki portal (figure 10) contains numerous "webs", a kind
of sub-Wiki: there are webs for LHC detector collaboration, IT-projects and
support groups as well as control systems, some are used as internal
documentation workspaces and keep the default layout, while others have been
customized to a different Web-layout for the particular project or group.

Figure 10 - The CERN TWiki portal



The CERN TWiki has also one peculiarity, that for the two Wiki administrators
(Høimyr and Jones) is implicit but from the organizational culture perspective is

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https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/DefaultWeb/WebHome
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 77"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
relevant: the Wiki is open to external users, only deeper levels requires the CERN
authentication. This characteristic is due to the openness of CERN community to
all the international Institutions, University and Organization that with theirs
researcher and experts constitute a global "social network".

4.3.1 Use of Wiki in ATLAS Experiment Detector

ATLAS is one of the four main LHC experiments. In this project are
involved 164 institutions in 35 countries including more than 1900 scientific
authors. The ATLAS software community works in order to develop analysis and
simulation software that make possible to physics the data handling.

Wiki is used to document software modules, test procedures, user and
installation guide: physicist adapt Wiki for the "inner detector", others ATLAS
team document in this way procedures and operations.
Wiki pages are so used as a space for shared project documentation,
linking this to engineering specifications, drawings and CAD-models of the PLM
platform for the detector groups. At the moment ATLAS Wiki collect 4000 topics
(web pages).

The dimension of ATLAS projects dawn a data quality issues linked with
the "free for all" aspects of the Wiki. To solve this kind of problem and ensure
quality control on the information in the ATLAS Wiki pages, all the pages and
the up-date had to be checked and validated by a central documentation team that
mark the pages with a kind of quality tag.

Summing up, the ATLAS community learned to integrate in an
complementary way the Wiki collaborative style and the traditional knowledge
management tools (PLM and web-based document management system).

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 78"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
4.3.2 Wiki use for the Firewall and network management project

The second case of CERN Wiki adoption, is linked with the Grid project:
the LHC Computing Grid ensure an easy way to share data, information and
knowledge between the Genève Centre and remote physics institutes and
organizations.
The re-design of the whole network infrastructure and then the design of
an ad hoc Firewall infrastructure required an intensive activity of documentation
process. The project, launched in 2006 and put into production in 2007, utilizes
the Wiki previously employed by the Communication System group - responsible
for Network Infrastructure at CERN - as document software development.
The Wiki document workspace was therefore a natural environment to
start collaborating on the Firewall requirements and specification.

In this case the Wiki user community for this particular project considered
11 stakeholders: 8 contributors from the project team and 3 from the "customer"
side. Furthermore other people were granted read access for information.

In their paper, Høimyr and Jones explain the value of Wiki use for this
new project: "… From the Wiki page with the original project outline and user
requirements, the TWiki workspace spawned a complete set of firewall
documentation, from a description of the system architecture and documentation
of software modules and components, to user guides for system administrators and
operators. This documentation is kept up to date also now after the new firewall
has been put into production. (The main Wiki page for the firewall project
currently has 75 revisions.)"

Indeed, a further use of Wiki in the group, was the preparation, with
initial draft, of a conference paper about High Throughput Firewalls for the
TERENA networking conference.

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 79"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
4.3.3 CERN Considerations on Wiki Use

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The two CERN Wiki administrators formulate interesting conclusions
for the two cases that we have already seen.
The main use of Wiki is linked with the huge documentation that daily
the community produces. In this sense, Wiki improves communication and
knowledge capture.

Thanks to the open approach and simplicity of use, Wiki usage grows
organically among the entire community. Compared to the older and already used
knowledge management systems - PLM or web-based knowledge base platforms -
people start to use "TWiki" without needs for training session or system coaching.
Indeed, the global dimension of CERN community and the numerous
interconnections with other international organizations, make of it the perfect
medium to share - and easily to up-to-date - documentation and knowledge
through the internet, generating a great value for the whole network.

An emergent tricky point is the possible chaos towards the Wiki's open
approach can lead: Høimyr and Jones recommend to define before a clear and
exact core scope of the Wiki and to enforce some structure to keep information in
the right place, proposing the figure of a "gardener" - using Wiki language - in
charge of the maintenance of the project documentation, ensuring the contributes
validity.
Further, remembering that "web is about linking knowledge", the two
CERN experts explain that web documents and notes should contain links to
PDM/PLM or similar in order to produce data and documents under
configuration control.

At the end of the day, the CERN experience brings to argue that "a good
combination of configuration management and knowledge capture may be to

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Høimyr and Jones, 2007, p. 4
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 80"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
baseline product versions and allow for free editing and revisioning of
supplementary information and documents attached to the formally managed
baseline".

From our point of view the Wiki use in CERN can be further developed:
not only with a closer integration with previous knowledge management
technology, but also with the other possibility that conversational knowledge
management typical of Enterprise 2.0 and social networking offers:

The place where wikis really shine is in developing, mining, and
sharing group intelligence. While wikis are in the spotlight right now, alongside
other social computing tools like blogs, shared bookmarks, and social networking,
wikis are not in and of themselves an independent software category. Wiki
functionality is becoming part of enterprise collaboration platforms and
enterprise content management suites – and in the future just another feature
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of Information Workplace platforms. - Erica Driver - Forrester


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Driver, 2007, p. 12
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 81"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
4.4 The Wiki Culture at CERN

In order to investigate the attitude that the members of the CERN
community assume towards Wiki use, we can show how a mature context
- where the possible initial euphoria for the new tools is now irrelevant - is
changed or how the new tool influenced the regress organizational culture.
As seen before, the first Wiki adoption experiment dates back to 2002-
2003, thanks to its previous use in groups of other institute or organization.
The word of mouth referred by Jones in the previous pages (see p. 76), brought in
2005 to generalized and at the same time organized and intensive spread employ
of Wiki in this large heterogeneous environment.

The interviewed users (CERN centre in Genève - 8-12 October 2007),
chosen within two departments - Physics and IT - but all part of different groups
(and experiments), confirmed that the relationship with Wiki inside the CERN
community is very complex and not all the group uses it.
"When I arrived in CERN Wiki was not used, I did not know what Wiki
was, but then, the tool became a known tool inside our [CERN] community and
other groups starting to use it. In our group, we do not use yet this kind of tool
because we are using other tools for the documenting process" (A.C. - PH ALICE,
fellow), all the other users interviewed confirmed the intensive introduction of
Wiki in their daily job: "I use Wiki almost every day, for reading and writing
documents, as a memo and to consult notes and checklists" (I.S. PH CMS, staff )
In all the Wiki users the needs that the tools seem to satisfy is linked
mainly with documentation, but as seen before, it is recognized also an
organizational function that simplify and support the daily activities.

The perceived value of Wiki is in the easiness of the publishing system and
in the simplification of the traditional (draft) documentation repository: "…It is
quicker and simple than the html if you want to publish something on the web"
(A.D.S. PH ATLAS, fellow) and more: "It is a sure place where to find your draft
documents. Indeed, this way to work reduced the e-mail charge!" (I.S. PH CMS,
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 82"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
staff ). In particular, in these words - way to work - there is the consciousness that
this tool changed the cultural side of the organization.
Further, these words prove what Jones argue "Wiki influenced in a very
positive way the quality and the effectiveness of people work: they share ideas and
permit the collaboration on informal documents such minutes - that can be seen
and check practically in real time - in order to release daily up-to-dated
documentations".
The aspect of production of documentation is very presents: "… Using
Wiki, I increased dramatically the quantity - and I think also the quality - of
documentations production: in IT started to use Wiki in January 2006 for
documenting the installation procedures of our software" (G.L.P. IT FIO, staff).

Considering this point of view, one valid parameter to measure
effectiveness of a Wiki - in order to produce innovation, can be the number of
Wiki topics (Wiki pages) published.
The statistics of CERN TWiki (figure 9) show the dramatic increments of
Wiki use during last year (May 06 - September 07): analyzing only the topics
number, we can argue that in one year the document production achieved the
number of 27,345; in July 2007 - probably during an experiment - the "monthly
topic views" reach 1.8 M (1,793,646).

Figure 11 - The CERN TWiki statistics - CERN (https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/Main/CERNTWikiStatistics)

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 83"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
The level of successful of the Wiki at CERN is linked also to the traffic
that a platform like this is able to generate: every day people read and contribute
to the Wiki grow: the "registered users", the active users, are now more than 2000
able to generate (in July 2007) a production of 25,556 pages (updates).

Changing perspective to investigate the relationship aspect of the CERN
Wiki adoption, users are differently involved: "the communication is improved"
(A.D.S PH ATLAS, fellow); "the reduction of human contact is balanced by the
autonomy in finding information without the needs to ask to others" (I.S. PH
CMS, staff); "In our office is not yet considered useful: we use other
communication tools" (A.C. PH ALICE, fellow); "…Effectively, the use of Wiki
slims the workflow, but nothing of significant: the investment not support the
benefits…" but also, "[…] It is great when you are able to share knowledge, but in
an experiment documentation is not so relevant… it was a tool willed by the
top…" (F.Z. PH ATLAS, fellow); "I'm sure, now I can see what other groups are
doing and ask directly to a peer information: yes, the horizontal communication is
improved!" (G.L.P. IT FIO, staff).
Collecting these witness, are able to understand that the approach to the
new technology is important. In some cases, for example at fellow level - also if at
the end the value is acknowledged - the Wiki is something that others
(management) impose; in other case we can notice a different approach to the
technology between physicists and IT experts: both admit the communication and
knowledge sharing, but in IT department this is lived also as an opportunity to
contact people instead of something that reduce the human contact.

Asked to sort in order of importance the cultural key drivers that we have
find in the theoretical part of this dissertation (quickness, flexibility, sharing,
collaboration, social networking, peering, openness and trust), Pete Jones identifies
the main three key drivers: collaboration, sharing and quickness.

But the "TWiki" of the CERN satisfies also another point: the openness.
The Wiki site - excluding some privates areas - is, in fact, totally accessible from
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 84"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 4.The CERN Wiki Case History
the extern of CERN network by a common web-browser: in accordance with
Jones data, 95% of Wiki visits came from outside the CERN network and became
without a login access.

4.4.1 The Wikibility Auditing Tool at CERN

The CERN experience, was not useful in order to validate the tool seen in
the previous part: the number of people interviewed and the short time at disposal
for this particular research are not sufficient in order to assure a relevant
importance to the Wikibility Audit that remains only a purpose.
Anyway, the CERN situation helps us to define better and to check
whether the terminology and the sense of the survey's questions are feasible and
possible.

Indeed, when the 32 questions of the survey were submitted to the five
"users" that I interviewed, all the answers were positive, fitting perfectly with the
original hypothesis that the CERN is a context with an higher level of Wikibility.
The interesting aspect of the research shows how Wikibility is not linked
to what Wiki does in a workplace, but is strictly connected with the way in which
things are done and than with organizational culture.
How we have seen before, the TWiki CERN system, is used essentially as
documenting activities support, covering only part of Wikibility parameters. The
other aspects related to Wikibility, assuring a high level of this, are covered by
others social and "2.0" tools.

This gives another insight to Wiki use in workplaces: Wiki can be used in
a right way in order to improve or support the only not yet Wikible aspects of
workplace organizational culture .
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 855 Conclusions









Summing-up the topic (5.1), we will stress on what Enterprise 2.0
phenomenon is and how Wiki, in particular, is influencing the "way in which
things are done" in workplaces, thus focusing on how organizational culture is
changing.
The purpose audit tool that we have defined thanks to the CERN
experience is, in fact, built in order to furnish to enterprises (5.2) an effective
instrument to verify what we called Wikibility - referring to the context - so
important in these last years that - as the majors experts and research companies
and institutes pointed out - it is characterizing the present of workplaces
knowledge processes, representing a dramatic shift from the traditional knowledge
management systems.
Of course, as we will see (5.3), this research intends to propose just a
personal and not yet validated manner to assure a right adoption of Wiki inside an
organizational context.
Anyway, a contribute to a scientific validation of the audit here proposed
may be given from further studies and structured empirical researches in this
direction, promoting systematic survey activities in order to measure the Wikibility
level in different workplaces and - more in general - in different contexts.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 86"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 5.Conclusions
5.1 From "2.0" to Wikibility. Summary

We have started this dissertation with the words of the Web inventor Tim
Berners-Lee who, satisfying the needs of collaboration of scientists at CERN,
created a "place" where "everybody would be putting their ideas in, as well as
120
taking them out" . This was the original spirit of the web, a "simple"
collaborative tool.
This spirit is recently risen again with the name of Web 2.0 thanks to a
new democratic "for dummies" approach that opens the Web contribution
possibilities to a huge number of no-nerds people.
If Web 1.0 was a simple on-line .html pages catalogue, simply browsed by
the large publics, and for this reason - following the Ross Mayfield's metaphor
(see p.5) - it was about "nouns", Web 2.0 is about "verbs", in the sense that for
the first time it is not only a media to sustain, but a "tool" where people can
participate, contribute and influence in an active way the (social) network in
which they are integrated.

Shifting from the concept of Web - as a general concept - to the impact
of what this new paradigm can imply in a Enterprise context, Wiki opens infinite
possibilities and opportunities to a new real "cultural" season that influence the
way to work and supports a relevant shift from "cooperation" to an effective
"collaboration".
In this context we are able to participate to an actual debate that at present
involves majors experts in knowledge management regarding the way in which
Enterprise 2.0 and Wiki are really influencing aspects of organizational culture.
One of the points in which they agree is that knowledge management -
traditionally supported by cooperative platforms workgroup tools - is evolving,
being now supported by the collaborative approach offered by this new Enterprise
2.0 tools (blog, Wiki, social networking platforms…) that permit not just a

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©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 87"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 5.Conclusions
knowledge "stocking" or the sum of previous information but a true creation and
circulation of new knowledge.
In order to support a practical approach to the issue of Wiki adoption in
workplaces, we concentrated our attention on the effects of this IT investment on
the main actual competitive advantage enabler for enterprise: the innovation rate.

At this point, we have introduced the two extremities of the construct:
corporate Wiki and innovation rate. But considering Wiki merely as an
instrument, a tool that offer many opportunities but that required a particular
organizational cultural approach, can be useful to investigate about these "cultural
key drivers" assuring an optimized use of Wiki in order to guarantee an effective
innovation oriented vocation of the (virtual) workplace.
Crossing Wiki potentials with workplaces and enablers that encourage an
appreciable innovation rate in an enterprise, we were able to find and propose
eight "cultural key drivers": quickness, flexibility, sharing, collaboration, social
networking, peering, openness and trust.

In order to verify the effective presence of this "cultural key drivers" -
exploiting my personal social network - I had the opportunity to taste the field in
one of the most important "collaborative context" of the world, the CERN centre
in Genève, the very place where in 1989 Web was born right in order to support
collaboration.
The CERN is born in '50s in order to support experiments of physics of
international interest and at the moment consists of 10.000 persons from all over
the world, such representing one of the biggest and active professional social
network that - for this reason - can be considered relevant not only for the
experiments that they are preparing (LHC), but at the same time also for social
studies, also in the field of knowledge management and organization.

The two CERN episodes proposed in the fourth chapter of this work,
show that the experience of Wiki use in a organizational environment is not a
recent fact, but it dates back 2002, thanks to the use of this innovative tool in
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 88"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 5.Conclusions
other Institutes connected with Genève community, by a effective word of mouth,
pushed for a centralized Wiki system (2004). Is not difficult to understand that
such an intensive use of Wiki and such a good try out tool is already able to
produce significant effects or potentials on the workplace way of working
(organizational culture).
From the other side, during these years of activities, innovation was one of
the products of the CERN: the Technology Transfer group manage patents
derived by the resolution of technical problem during the construction of CERN
main machinery. New materials, new discovers and invention exploited in medical
field, new storage techniques of information in the IT fields, represents only a
little part of innovation vocation of CERN community.

Thanks to experts (Pete L. Jones) and to a small pool of active members of
CERN community - also Wiki users - it was possible to check and collect
opinions and different approach on Wiki adoption inside the CERN and, even if
not significantly relevant from a research validity point of view, they helped us to
define a purpose for an audit tool to measure the Wikibility level of the workplace.

Focusing on the Wikibility audit tool, defined in the third part, it is
interesting to point out how it derives from the crossing between the eight
"cultural key drivers", previously seen, and the four dimension of the virtual
workplace defined in the theoretical part by the Politecnico of Milan (see p.29).
In this way words such as flexibility, peering, trust, collaboration, and so on,
assume practical connotation in each one of the four dimension: supporting
effectiveness, organizational service, Knowledge and collaborative activities and
communication and socialization.
The result is an interesting "cockpit" at disposal of managers intending to
verify - before or after the setting up of a corporate Wiki system - whether the
present culture effectively supports all the possibilities in which Wiki can be
successful used, as we will show in the following paragraph.
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 89"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 5.Conclusions
5.2 The Importance of Wikibility of an Innovation Oriented
Workplace. Enterprises Implications

As is easy observable by the bibliography of this thesis, the adoption of
"2.0" applications inside the workplaces and, more in general, in enterprises or
organizations, is a living matter that interests the life of workers and in specific the
activities of those Davenport called "knowledge workers".
From Institutions (also academic ones, like Universities) to middle small
commercial companies, this revolution will touch the way of working and go over
the old way of working with others that will be more and more important in the
future.

At the same time, in the prospective to achieve ever more competitive
advantages, as we have already seen, it is important to adopt policy of
differentiation respect old and new competitors that bring the only way to be
competitive on the floor of innovation.

We have deeply analyzed - in the theory part of this work - the
possibilities and the opportunities given by this new IT technology in order to
promote an effectively collaborative workplace and for this reason, it is difficult to
find authors that do not recognize Wiki as an useful tool able to support
collaboration producing new knowledge and then innovation. All the critics, in
fact, are related to an erroneous connection with the most famous application of
Wiki: Wikipedia. But this is the fruit of a superficial analysis of the context in
which Wiki systems can be used in a circumscribed environment, often identified
with intranet boundaries.

From the other side, the whole thesis is a kind of "critics" against the
exceedingly enthusiastic voices that think that installing Wiki in any workplace
brings to extraordinary results only because it is a "cool" tool on which a trendy
company or organization has - definitely - to invest.

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 90"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 5.Conclusions
As stressed in the answers to the research questions, it is not sufficient to
install a Wiki platform in an organization in order to make it work to produce new
knowledge and then innovation.
This position is not only supported by common sense, but also by the fact
that - as we have seen widely in the theory part - Wiki is not just a technology,
but a true philosophical way of intending work.

Analyzing from a practical point of view the contribution that this
dissertation and the insights discussed here, we can find a possible help for
particular "open minded" managements willing to introduce Wiki and Enterprise
2.0 technologies in a successful way.

The Wikibility cockpit, in fact, can be used in different cases: for instance,
if a Wiki is already adopted and we can use it to know if it is working in a effective
way or not, and in this case which behaviours to change, how to communicate a
right Wiki approach and if there are Wikibility aspects already covered by others
tools, towards which direction is opportune that Wiki use will be pushed.

Our case study shows how high is the level of Wikibility at CERN, as
previously supposed and supported by the few considerations on the Audit tool
here proposed. But, as our interviews on Wiki use pointed out, it covers all the
dimensions of Knowledge and collaborative activities because it is mainly used for
documenting activities. As for the other dimensions, the community is already
covered by others software tool that for instance support people in meeting
arrangements (IndiCo) or in the sharing of internal resources in an autonomous
way.

If we look up Wikibility on Google, we will find this term referred to
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issues linked to "Disability" Rights Movement or, closer to our topics, we can
find the abstract of a paper on Wikibility referring to "Developing 'wikibility' - a

121
http://www.wikibilityrights.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 91"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 5.Conclusions
multi-dimensional approach to achieving critical mass for building informal
122
repositories" and therefore it refers exclusively to content management aspects.

In this sense Wikibility is not linked to the context, that is with human
being or behaviours. The conception of Wikibility we have studied, instead, is
much larger than this, and oriented to be a step before the pure academic e-
learning approach of Churchill and Dence.

In this way we intend to support a clear understanding towards an
effective way of working, in order to discover a new impulse for an effective
collaborative approach that will create new knowledge and, in consequence,
innovation.

122
Churchill and Dence, 2006
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 92"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces 5.Conclusions
5.3 The Wikibility Audit: Proposal for Further Studies.
Open Questions

One of the scopes of this thesis is to promote a serious debate on the issue
of how a fertile organizational culture can activate a virtuous circle where
technologies that change the way of working can found a prepared soil for an
effective cultural growth.
The initial debate between the two gurus and Harvard professors, Tom
Davenport and Andrew McAfee (see p.21) about the effective change of
organizational culture brought by Wiki adoption - even if contemporary and alive
- from the point of view of this work is now already outdated.
In fact, considering that, at the base of this assertion the main objective of
a healthy organization is "to be competitive" - and more precisely "to be
innovative" - the question can be faced in a proactive way and identified with the
idea of Wikibility in the context where Wiki are introduced.

As we have often said, the definition of the eight "cultural key drivers" and
the Wikibility Audit - the main results of this work - are both supported by
theory, and obtained by personal intuition. In particular, for the survey proposed
with the Wikibility Audit tool - available in a operative realise in the exhibit at the
end of this thesis - we considered the few interviews at CERN .
The Wikibility of Innovation Oriented Workplaces Audit is just a
proposal, and has to be intend as a starting point for designing and validating a
formal measurement tool, that can be considered reliable thanks to a wide
population of enterprise or organization workers.
Further studies in this sense are welcomed in order to guarantee an
important referring point for the future literature willing to study how Enterprise
2.0 is going to develop the new organizational culture of innovation oriented
workplaces.

©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 93"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces Exhibit

Exhibit "a"
Proposal for the
"Wikibility of Innovation Oriented Workplaces Audit" (WIOWA)

Cultural Key driver Questions agree 1 - 5
1. Do you find up-to-dated data useful for your daily work?
Quickness
Regarding to booking common resources, Is it possible to make it by yourself?
Do you find in an easy way and quickly up-to-dated
information - or knowledge-owner - useful for your work?
Do you find up-to-dated information about organizational activities?
2. Are you free to dedicate a percentage of your time to your own projects?
Flexibility
Is it possible to get information about the whole project
work progress and direction?
Is it possible to re-configure and handle others' contributes?
Are you active in different teams?
Are the common resources accessible to all and can these
3. be booked in an autonomous way?
Sharing
Is it possible to access or find results and insights
inside and outside the community?
Is it usual to implement others' work or co-create documents?
Is the real time circulation of ideas among the community supported?
4. Do you know which people are involved in your same projects?
Collaboration
In your team, are individuals plans often
compatible with the group activity?
Is it usual to participate to other group projects?
Is it usual to discuss with others about
their work, solving problems together?
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 94"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces Exhibit
5.
Is it easy to identify an expert in the whole community?
Social
Networking
Are members of teams able to know
all the competences and expertises of co-workers?
When the group has to take a decision, it is usual
to ask opinion to experts inside the whole community?
Are individuals insights visible to the whole community?
Is everybody able to update useful information like
6.
telephone numbers or scheduled meeting?
Peering
Is everybody able to book meeting room or,
in general, common resources?
Is everybody able to recombine documents and then publish it?
Is everybody free to publish (in the intranet or wiki)
information useful for your colleagues?
7.
Is it possible to access to other group contact data?
Openness
Is it possible to know when other groups
meet and, if you want, participate?
In order to take decisions, do you usually look
to other groups or departments work results and choices?
Have you ever participate in other groups or departments discussions?
In your online profile, do you have the possibility
8.
to write your further expertises or personal projects?
Trust
When there are meetings, have you the same
documentation of other participants?
Do you think that your ideas and, in general, your work,
get the right acknowledgement from your Organization?
Do you consider reliable the insights coming from the whole community?
Avarage a. Suppor to Effectiveness:
for Virtual b. Organizational Services:
Workplaces
c. Knowledge and Collaborative Support
Dimensions
(Total/8)
d. Communication and Socialization
©2007 Vincenzo Cammarata - Master of Science in Corporate Communication 95"Wikibility" of innovation Oriented Workplaces Bibliography
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Paquet, S., (2003) A Socio-Technological Approach to Sharing KnowledgeAccross
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