Blog entries

What Saddam Hussein Teaches us about Social Networks

Dan Moorhead — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:40:10 +0100

As “ideal types” of coordination

(that is, getting things done through groups) we often hear about Networks as polar opposites of Hierarchy. Networks are flat, egalitarian, flexible, and emergent, while Hierarchy is vertical, oligarchic, rigid, and prescribed by the powers-that-be. The two forms are not so much locked in a death struggle for dominance, however, as they are co-existing at the same time in a complex overlay.Read More...

Anticipate the Arguments of 2.0 Critics

Dan Moorhead — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:55:47 +0100

Anticipate the arguments of your critics

"What does not kill me, makes me stronger." --

&Read More...

Does Crowdsourcing Produce Collaboration? Ans: Sometimes

Dan Moorhead — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:09:54 +0100

Cisco Systems and IBM

have experimented successfully with crowdsourcing, with enough common results to suggest trends, and enough differences to spark further investigation. The Cisco story (fall 2007) was the subject of a recent Harvard Business Review article, and the IBM experience (summer and fall 2006) was treated in the Sloan Management Review. Both articles are rRead More...

Sobering Stats for Large Scale Collaboration

Dan Moorhead — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:12:39 +0100

is notoriously difficult. The business sector might seem a promising domain for partnering arrangements, based on long history and the obvious shared motives in competitive advantage. At least in theory, business combinations offer the prospect of increased economies of scale, broader geographic reach, wider product portfolios, complementary market positions, and filling gaps in organization capability.&nRead More...

Book Review: Googled, by Ken Auletta

Dan Moorhead — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:44:15 +0100

“The internet makes information available. Google makes information accessible.” -- Hal Varian, Google Chief Economist.

Media executives in music, movies, books, newspapers, “believe their companies were murdered by technology forces beyond their control. In fact, they committed suicide by neglecRead More...

Is Collaboration Your Last Option?

Dan Moorhead — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:36:06 +0100

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Is Collaboration a first choice? Or your last option ... a life preserver to be grabbed only when drowning?
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Many business managers say (or at least think), "You would have to be crazy to partner in a solution, if you could otherwise do it all yourself."

The new age of collaboration is a compelRead More...

Not Defaulting to the word "Collaboration"

Dan Moorhead — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:45:57 +0100

Beware Using "Collaboration" as a blanket term for all of Enterprise 2.0 -- it is not a synonym
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Language is Important. Naming things, even more so.

The choice of just the right words is of great importance to understanding, as philosophers remind us, and scholars fret over. The naming of something has been known to be a sacred and magical act, from the Stone Age forward. So the struggles with vocabulary and definition in our field are not just amusing mud Read More...