Munich Business School logo

Tag: web20

Social Bookmarking @Delicious and Employee Innovativeness

Recently, I discovered a very interesting study by Gray and colleagues published in the journal MIS Quarterly. The researchers scrutinize the bookmarking service Delicious and its impact on employee innovativeness. I’ve included a key outcome below:

“Being able to demonstrate that social bookmarking system use can enhance personal innovativeness is a major milestone for Web 2.0 research, which to date has lacked empirical studies that point to the organizational value of such systems (Gray et al., 2011, p. 639)”.

Reference:

Gray, P., Parise, S., & Iyer, B. (2011). Innovation Impacts of Using Social Bookmarking Systems. Management Information Systems Quarterly, 35(3), 629–643. Retrieved from http://aisel.aisnet.org/misq/vol35/iss3/9

Web 2.0 finds its payday by @McKQuarterly

I’ve commented on the McKinsey Web 2.0 surveys in an earlier blog post. McKinsey just published the outcome of this year’s research, comparing internally networked, externally networked and fully networked organizations. The result: Fully networked organizations perform better in terms of market share and profit margins. Study participants named faster access to knowledge, increased marketing effectiveness and reduced communication costs as some of the main advantages of technology adoption. The authors, Bughin and Chui, also report that more employees within the same organization are now making use of more Web 2.0 technologies compared to previous years. Positive feedback loops seem to facilitate organizational learning. McKinsey predicts that investments in these technologies are bound increase. This is in line with Gartner’s expectations.

There was one finding that I thought was particularly noteworthy: Self-reported market leadership correlated negatively with externally networked organizations. Market leaders tend to focus on internal collaboration, but shield themselves from external ties. The authors of the study suggest that this is to do with maintaining their leadership position. Market challengers, on the contrary, are more focused on external uses of Web 2.0 technologies to win clients over. Would you agree?