The CX Blog

Andy McAfee was tickled when he found out the term he’d coined, “Enterprise 2.0″ had made its way into Wikipedia.  But things went south from there: a wikipedian nominated enterprise 2.0 for deletion, claiming it was a dubious neologism.

The case made its way all the way to the high court of wikipedians, allowing McAfee to experience up close and personally how communities of users really do self-regulate, their reliance on governance and regulations, and at the end of the day, how wild-wild-west that community really is.  Said McAfee, “The elbows are sharp on Wikipedia. It’s not cuddly.”

The system works because it is incredibly porous.  Input, output, the chorus of voices, the rag-tag team of determined editors, all keep the information and the channel incredibly vital and alive, but also make the system anxiety producing for those accustomed to a more ordered way of collecting and maintaining information.

McAfee first used his own wiki in creating a workshop he had planned–he invited all the attendees to decide on the agenda, setting up pages to correspond with the four days of the event.  In no time at all, he had a working, interesting-to-all, and viable agenda.

McAfee’s term survived the high court and is alive and well on Wikipedia now. You can view the whole long (well over 500 edits and dog fights) history of the entry here. Plus, McAfee and team got a new Harvard Biz School case study out of it–win/win.