Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum Blog

Two natural extensions of the emergent collaboration we discuss under Enterprise 2.0 are  open-source hardware and blanketing WiFi wireless. They are further out, but are worth considering as indicators of future Enterprise 2.0 social and business practices.

Open-source hardware is collaboratively produced and tested hardware, complete with all necessary design documentation and artifacts – schematics, manufacturing bills-of-materials, test patterns, firmware, principles of operation documentation, and mechanical diagrams.    Early examples are Chumby, which first shipped in 2007, and collaboratively designed microchips, or sections of chips (cores).    Looking back to the early 1980s, IBM’s original Personal Computer was open-source hardware.   IBM decided on an open architecture so that other manufacturers could produce and sell hardware peripheral components and compatible software. One could  extend the hardware, by adhering to the basic Intel chip functions and IBM-documented communication bus architecture, or write software applications on top of the basic PC-DOS operating system.  And so two industries,   PC compatibles and    PC software  took off.  Two decades later, with the reach of the Internet, and newly developed social practices, to support design communities, Chumby was specifically conceived to be as open and customizable as possible. 

Linux, built, tested, and released by software engineers in a community with a set of values based on peer review and openness, is the best example to date of a complex system built by a technical community similar to that required for open-source hardware. 

My second example will generate many new telecommunications applications, many more than ever dreamed of by the traditional  telco industry.  It will occur once WiFi wireless blankets our places of work and play. Currently WiFi hotspots are found across most university campuses, most airport lounges, many office buildings, some factories, some fast food and coffee shops, and inside many homes.  Because WiFi operates in the unlicensed spectrum, traditional barriers to entry do not exist. As a result,  all laptops and most new phones ship with WiFi circuitry and radios, making manufacturing volumes high enough for commodity pricing. Hence the number of hotspots will soon dramatically increase.  Around 2010, WiFi will blanket cities, towns, sports fields, shopping centres, office buildings, and homes.  Where Internet access and data communication costs are free, or very inexpensive, we’ll see a number of new business models and new applications of computer networks, including remote health monitoring, tracking of emergency services personnel, energy management, and mobile learning. Many new service businesses will be born.  

On Tuesday, at our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, perhaps we can discuss the many issues of quality, intellectual property, warranty, brand, liability, and management practices that we’ll encounter as these two extensions of emergent collaboration unfold.