Three industry veterans join forces in new Enterprise 2.0 consulting firm

With any new technology comes anxiety for firms trying to implement it, and this is probably more true with Enterprise 2.0, which has the potential to flatten the power structure in an organization. This is something industry veterans Dion Hinchcliffe and Michael Krigsman have recognized, and though the two were both Ziff-Davis.net bloggers, they never met until a vendor-sponsored dinner at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston brought them together. There, seated next to one another they began a conversation that would result in the formation of their latest venture: Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0. (Full disclosure: I've known Michael for many years and I freelanced for him at his former firm, Cambridge Publications.)

For the last several years, Hinchcliffe, who recognized early on the power of Enterprise 2.0 tools, has been speaking, writing and consulting with large organizations about it through his company, Hinchcliffe & Company. Krigsman meanwhile launched a company several years ago called Asuret, where he has been studying and writing about why IT projects fail. In the process, he built a software program to help measure the likelihood of a project being successful. The final piece was a meeting with Ross Mayfield who founded Socialtext, an Enterprise 2.0 software tool set (We interviewed Mayfield One one One last March).

Krigsman says the goal of the new venture is to try to bring a level of business maturity to Enterprise 2.0, something he believes has been lacking, and also to provide a way to measure and understand the impact the new tools are having on an organization. "Governance is part of traditional IT and part of of any mature process, but it's new to Enterprise 2.0, and gets to the heart of what we are trying to achieve to bring a level of maturity to the process."

Hinchcliffe says they are not necessarily bound to use Socialtext, and will make these kinds of decisions based on customer requirements, but it gives them a solid Enterprise 2.0 offering on which to build a level of expertise. Krigsman adds, there were two important pieces in their tool set decision and why they teamed up with Socialtext. "One is features, functionality and fit. A tool has to be appropriate for client's needs. The second is credibility and weight. Both are important because this is a new area for many organizations, and they are concerned about risk and concerned about success, so having a thought leader [like Socialtext], and a recognized well established thought leader was important."

The three hope that by combining Hinchcliffe's understanding of implementing systems, Krigsman's expertise in why projects fail and his software tool to bring measurement and accountability to the process, along with Socialtext's tool set; they can provide a platform for building Enterprise 2.0 systems, whether that's a full-scale system or simply adding social networking capability to an existing Intranet. The pieces are in place and there is certainly a market wanting to know more, but anxious about the implications of implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools. The approach sounds solid, although whether it works or not remains to be seen. But with these three individuals working together, they certainly have a good shot of pulling it off.

For more information:
- see the Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 press release

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