OpenSource

Forrester has come out with some valuable data that dispels the myth that large company IT organizations have their heads in the sand when it comes to social software. The report does say there is a preference to choose “suite software” - which is what large organizations are traditionally comfortable with. The problem of course is that the large software vendors are usually followers and offer weak products initially to hold on to existing customers. They often promote fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) to keep large buyers from trying products from smaller vendors.

Open source NG tools and the culture of participation came together in Southern California to make sense of the torrents of data being generated in response to the many forest fires that swept the region this week. Here's now a small band of web-savvy radio station employees created a powerful information service that out-performed those of much better-funded public agencies.

Should your organization be using Internet NG features to harness the collective wisdom of the global village?

Knowledge-intensive enterprises have begun to adopt these techniques, sometimes called crowdsourcing, to tackle their R&D challenges.

An opportunity to speak about NG concepts at the Wisconsin Biotechnology & Medical Device Association annual conference introduced me to InnoCentive, a spin-off of pharma giant Eli Lily, which offers the Open Innovation Marketplace to unite "seekers" of solutions and "solvers" of problems in the life sciences and other disciplines.

A widget is a chunk of web code offered by a web business that people can place into their own web sites or social network pages to add a mutually beneficial capability. Here are a couple of familiar web items that you probably didn't know were "widgets":