Some of us are ready for the Web 2.0 wave that is now breaking over us, and some of us are not. The McKinsey Quarterly just put out an insightful article, “Eight Business Technology Trends to Watch” (registration required), that outlines eight unique business trends that will be enabled by the Web 2.0 technology wave. With apologies to the guys at McKinsey for oversimplifying their detailed work, here’s my brief synopsis of their ‘Big 8’:

McKinsey’s Eight Business Technology Trends to Watch

• ‘Distributing co-creation’: Let everyone in your supply chain create.
• ‘Using consumers as innovators’: Let the people who consume your product also customize and extend your product.
• ‘Tapping into the world of talent’: It’s not plausible to hire all experts as full-time employees. It’s becoming more effective to hire experts for specific jobs as needed.
• ‘Extracting more value from interactions’: Tacit interactions are becoming more valuable and will be core to the workforce by 2015.
• ‘Expanding the frontiers of automation’: Continue to give more and more visibility to customers and supply chain.
• ‘Unbundling production from delivery’: Treat your IT systems as a platform and not only a destination so other companies can “plug-in”.
• ‘Putting more science into management’: Syndicate analytics to partners and customers so they can analyze and provide better information back into the system.
• ‘Making business from information’: Innovate above raw innovation to create higher value information systems.

After reading this I was inspired to create my own ‘What’s In and What’s Out for the Knowledge Worker in 2008’. I expect some of these will resonate with you no matter what your role is in your enterprise.

JackBe’s What’s Out and What’s In for Knowledge Workers in 2008

• Out: Big IT, In: Big User - Don’t grow IT to help the knowledge workers. Grow the ability to help the users create (mashups).

• Out: Integration, In: Collaboration - Don’t integrate systems, put collaborative tools in the hands of users so they can connect information in their own unique ways.

• Out: Consumer Mashups, In: Enterprise Mashups - Tired of Google Maps as the premier mashup? Enterprise mashups based upon real ERP/CRM/SFA/homegrown data help drive dramatic competitive advantage.

• Out: Big SAP, In: Little SAP - Help users have “smaller” access to their SAP data. No single user needs it all; most want it in bite-size chunks.

• Out: Integrate Everything, In: Let the User Mashup - Knowledge workers need ad-hoc and situational data which is dynamically integrated in small amounts. Provide the tools to let the users integrate (mashup).

• Out: LinkedIn the Website, In: LinkedIn in your Enterprise - Professional networks are growing quickly. Enterprises need this capability within the enterprise, as users are coming to expect this kind of empowerment.

• Out: All-in-One Web Destinations, In: Embeddable Mashup Applications - Users will increasingly resist going to a new one-size-fits-all Web destination every-time they need information. Instead, provide capability for users to embed mashup applications in their own portal, application and even their iPhone.

• Out: B2B, In: U2B - When you think B2B, you think EDI. When you think EDI, you're thinking about lots of time and cost. Instead of trying to integrate disparate businesses using B2B, promote User-to-Business access to information. Don’t push information to the user, notify them and let them have access to the amount of information they need.

• Out: Emailing Excel Spreadsheets, In: Mashing in Excel - Copy and paste into Excel and emailing the spreadsheet is Mashup 1.0. Let the user mashup in Excel and collaborate by pushing out parts of Excel information as shared data services.

• Out: Portals, In: Portals - Portals will certainly be around for a while. 2008 is a good time to re-assess your portal 1.0 technology and start moving to an agile and lightweight portal 2.0 technology like Netvibes and PageFlakes.

This is a lot for any enterprise to embrace but the paybacks can be massive. So, is your enterprise ready?