This week in links - week 10, 2008

"Sorry, Was That an Aphorism?" by Andrew McAfee:

"I met with a group of CEOs recently, and asked them in advance for their questions related to Enterprise 2.0. Many of these concerned definitions of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0...//...I got the impression that some confusion existed, and tried to think of how to tee up the points I wanted to make during our session. So one of the first slides in my presentation (yes, I still use PowerPoint) read:"

"You cannot greatly influence Web 2.0. You can greatly influence
Enterprise 2.0"

"Is that the right message for senior executives, or did I greatly oversimplify or steamroll an important distinction?"

"Back to Decision-Making Basics" by Tom Davenport:

"We have lost much of the connection between the supply of information and the demand for it in decision-making. Despite the fact that companies often justify IT projects on the basis of better decisions, there is seldom a direct tie between the information a particular system produces and the decisions that are supposed to be based on it."

"How have supply and demand become disconnected?...//...One is that many systems implemented at the enterprise level are initially focused on transactions, not decisions...//...second reason is that managers don’t often know all the information and knowledge that is available to help make a decision."

"I have faith that access to information and knowledge can yield better decisions. On occasion they already do. However, I do not have faith that our trillion-dollar investment in corporate information systems is yielding better decisions on a regular basis. If your organization spends money on IT, that should worry you."