Wikibility of Innovation Oriented Workplaces - The CERN Case - The thesis

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,
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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