Wikipedia is a well known service on the internet. The speed with which the information has been gathered is nothing less than stunning. I think it is reasonable to state that Wikipedia has become one of most appreciated sources of reference information on the internet. The power of Wikipedia is due to its collaborative nature, the ease of which information can be added and how the wiki is moderated. One important factor is of course that anyone on the Internet can add and correct the information.
Company Wikis are a current trend within the Enterprise 2.0 space. They enable users within a company, or at least within the eco-system of a company, to participate in producing interesting and valuable information. As tools for collaborating on documents etc. within an organization or company, wikis are very powerful.
In contrast to an open wiki such as Wikipedia, company wikis will not help in leveraging the massive wisdom and knowledge available on the global internet. So, the question we at GroupSwim ask ourselves is how we can enable businesses and individuals to collaborate in building valuable knowledge? I do not believe that opening up a company wiki to the general internet user will result in any significant traction. Thus, it would not generate the value and the information the company would be expecting. Neither do I believe it provides the context in which users are comfortable sharing information. The reason is that the ownership of the information would be unclear. As a user, you might just have been doing free work for a company when your intent was to produce for the general good of the Internet community. So to answer the question, we at GroupSwim are looking at other solutions that we believe are much more attractive.
Our concern is how businesses can benefit from wiki like mechanisms where the collective knowledge (on the internet) can be leverage and enhanced, while satisfying both the needs of businesses and individuals contributing information. One direction we are considering builds on open structured data sources such as Freebase or dbpedia. We call them collaborative structured databases. The idea behind these services is that they provide a structured storage for shared data on the internet. The access is open in the sense that anybody can use the data. These databases provide programming interfaces that can be used by any application. They provide mechanisms for defining types of data as well as concrete instances. As an example, we imagine the type airline while topics of this type would include Singapore Airlines or Finnair. Applications can also search for information in the database as well as annotate topics already stored in the database.
The expectation of structured collaborative databases is that users and business will contribute information in the same way users of Wikipedia contribute information. Technically, the concept is simple and we depict the general idea below. This does not mean it is not hard to build a scalable collaborative structured database, but that’s a whole other discussion.
In the context of GroupSwim, we imagine that an organization has identified a particular topic as vital from a business point of view. The organization searches a collaborative structured database and incorporates the information into their GroupSwim collaboration area. Alternatively, if they do not find the type of topics needed, they can create entities in the database and promote them. The users of the organization can use and add information to the topic, and this information would be pushed back into the database. Similarly, as other internet users update, the connected GroupSwim collaboration site would benefit.
As an example, let us assume that a hospital uses GroupSwim. They could create a database about specific symptoms of diseases. Other hospitals and users connected to the same collaborative data source could benefit and add to this information. This enabled the hospital to build up and benefit from the information faster. It also helps the general internet community build information on this particular topic, and other organizations or individuals benefit from its availability. Although critical and important for the hospital, the information is not considered a business secret. Rather, the hospital determined that it would actually gain more by working with the collective internet to assemble and improve on available information, making it more useful.
Another example I heard of concerns rules and regulations for radio frequency bands. These differ in countries and regions and there was no central source for this information. The lack of an updated central source impacted the business in question, and its ability to build up their networks around the world. The business created the topic in a collaborative data source and invited any one to contribute information. The availability of this information now helps the business significantly by reducing the cost of constantly searching current and accurate information from multiple sources.
We believe this the principle of a collaborative data source is a very powerful extension to the corporate wiki and will enable very effective collaboration among organization and individuals. It harnesses not only the collective knowledge within an organization, but also enables the organization to leverage knowledge outside the organization itself. The main prerequisite is, however, that the business itself is prepared to share their knowledge in this area and be a good collaborative data citizen. Another prerequisite is that there are systems such as GroupSwim that are connected to collaborative structured databases. I would be very interested in hearing about businesses that sees collaborative structured databases as an opportunity to become of effective and competitive.
Tags: collaborative, database, freebase, wiki, wikipedia
May 20, 2008 at 12:30 am |
Yes, they are. I have used them in the past for capturing and organizing ideas, but there is clearly a bigger opportunity. In my book, I call them Social Cataloguing tools and consider them to be more cooperative than collaborative due to the fact that they support informal working where there are no pre-defined goals.
In the enterprise, social cataloguing has endless possibilities. Any type of corporate data – competitor intelligence, suppliers, contact data, etc. – could be handed over to employees for collective management rather than central administration.
I think the biggest barrier is that in large organizations there are people employed specifically to do this job. Managers are therefore reluctant to risk reductions to their headcounts (and power bases) by replacing them with software that allows everyone to do the task and thus intermediate those people.
May 20, 2008 at 12:44 am |
[...] team behind GroupSwim are asking if collaborative structured databases are an opportunity for business: We believe this the principle of a collaborative data source is a very powerful extension to the [...]