What is Enterprise 2.0?

This keynote speech of John Chambers, Cisco’s CEO, at MIT last October is to me one of the best presentations about Enterprise 2.0 that I ever came across. Though Chambers’ fast-paced southern drawl is sometimes hard to follow, his authority on this matter comes from practice, as opposed to many gurus who don’t run large companies. Cisco is undoubtedly a lab for E2.0, and Chamber is definitely in the pilot’s seat. His point about collaboration revolves around productivity and speed. My attention was drawn by a couple of things he said, such as the new ability of the company to pursue 26 top priority projects at the same time instead of just one or two last year; or the fact that Chambers meets more customers now but less often face-to-face and more often virtually, less often one-on-one and more often as a group; or the fact that he had to get rid of 20% of his staff composed of control freaks who didn’t get it. Chamber believes that communities are the very core of E2.0, and he admits that he had a hard time getting used to it. A great presentation, and worth one hour of listening. The questions from MIT students an scholars are not stupid either.