Enterprise 2.0, a concept based on the Web 2.0, is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. Enterprise 2.0 often includes using of social software and Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise including those rich internet applications, providing software as a service, and using the web as a general platform. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to competitive advantages in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.
Specific social software tools that have been adapted for enterprise use include hypertext and unstructured search tools, wikis, weblogs for storytelling, social bookmarking for tagging and building organizational folksonomies, RSS for signaling, collaborative planning software for peer-based project planning and management, ideas banks for ideation (idea generation), social networking tools, mashups for visualization, and even prediction markets for forecasting and identifying risks.
In the following table the key features and differences between Enterprise 1.0 and 2.0 are listed:
| Enterprise 1.0 | Enterprise 2.O |
| Hierarchy Friction Bureaucracy Inflexibility IT-driven technology / Lack of user control Top down Centralized Teams are in one building / one time zone Silos and boundaries Need to know Information systems are structured and dictated Taxonomies Overly complex Closed/ proprietary standards Scheduled Long time-to-market cycles |
Flat Organization Ease of Organization Flow Agility Flexibility User-driven technology Bottom up Distributed Teams are global Fuzzy boundaries, open borders Transparency Information systems are emergent Folksonomies Simple Open On Demand Short time-to-market cycles |