As people are starting to think about how the 2.0 world can be applied to the Enterprise (call it “Office 2.0″ or “Enterprise 2.0″), there’s a really important and not-so-obvious lesson to be learned from all the mashing going on in the Web 2.0 world.
All these cool creative composite applications like Housingmaps.com are not a byproduct of a sudden surge in creative thinking and uses. There’s a critical pre-requisite that’s been put in place: systems are opening up.
Paul Rademacher was selected as one of Technology Review’s 35 young innovators. On his own, he merged together Craig’s LIst & Housing Maps to create housingmaps.com. It’s a great example of the “happy accidents” that can result from systems opening up and simplifying how people can tap into the power of a service. From the Tech Review profile:
For Rademacher, there’s a moral to the story. Innovation is possible only when companies let you tinker with their creations. Too many good ideas are squandered, he says, because the tools needed to realize them are locked away.
At Arc90, we’re building some complex systems and one thing we’ll openly admit is that we can’t foresee every every possible way a service can be leveraged in the future. So we hedge our bets by delivering these servics in a easy-to-understand, simple way. We’re already seeing the fruits of this approach. When the time comes to start tying systems together (and it inevitably does) the heavy lifting typically associated with integration isn’t so heavy. In fact, in many cases it’s downright easy.
So within your organization, open up first and build your applications upon that open framework of services. It may be slightly more painful now, but you’ll undoubtedly reap the rewards later.