Gary Vaughan's Collaboration Times

"Digitizing" Traditional Organizations: the eBook Model

A March 19 article in the Washington Post tells how traditional bookstores such as Politics and Prose are trying to broaden sales of hard copy publications to include online e-books and audio versions.

Organizations in diplomacy and development face similar challenges (and opportunities) in adapting relatively static "brick and mortar" enterprises to the virtual reach and synergy of online collaboration.  They need to preserve the institutional memory, direction and output of traditional structures, while improving their agility and performance through web-based collaboration.

While the "jury is still out" on the profitability of online sales at regular bookstores, the impact of online workspace, blog and wiki technology on public ánd private sector organizations' productivity is becoming increasingly apparent.

The Power of Informal Networks

Informal relationships in and among organizations can boost productivity and performance.  Such relationships include ad hoc work, mentoring or other social networks. 

According to University of Virginia's Rob Cross, "Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) can provide an x-ray into the inner workings of an organization -- a powerful means of making invisible patterns of information flow and collaboration in strategically important groups visible."  ONA uses quantitative and mapping tools to chart peoples' roles and their networks in organizations.  This analysis then applies this information to better tap such informal networks' energy, as well as to better complement formal hierarchical structures and processes.

Popular, "early adopter" Internet sites which promote such social networking (or related tagging of information) among techies and bloggers include linked-in, del.icio.us, Technorati and digg.

PTO's New Online Patent Review

A March 5 article in the Washington Post reports on the Patent and Trade Office's (PTO) new pilot project to use a wiki-like online system for rating new patent applications.  This is a fascinating application of this technology, and it will be interesting to see how this public/private sector experiment evolves.