Open Enterprise 2009: Venkatesh Rao, Xerox

Venkatesh argues that 'culture change is hard' may be an excuse for not pushing hard to get adoption to happen. "It's part of people playing the Impossible Problem Game." If you set up something as culture change, then everyone frames it as impossible, like boiling the ocean. You should look for a more 'Darwinian survival of the fittest' model, where various alternatives are envisioned as competing with each other.

In a similar vein, he discussed his view that 'social media' is actually quite different from other management disciplines that preceded it, like knowledge management. One factor is the generational differences involved, as when younger people join the company with deep social media experience. The technologies may look similar to earlier technologies, but they are very different in practice.

I love his thought that we need to move the discussion about Enterprise 2.0 to where there is some dissent.

Venkatesh agrees with me that 'knowledge management' is a dangerous metaphor, and leads people into a very static mindset. He says that we need to have a 'dialectic', which is another take on take on social. His discussion of how dissent can be too timid, and lead to groupthink, is very illuminating.