I’ve read that Trampoline systems has received significant funding. (Jerry covered it here)
London, UK, 15 March 2007 – Trampoline Systems, a London- based enterprise software start-up, has today announced the closing of a £3 million financing round from entities affiliated with the Tudor Group1. Trampoline is the first European “Enterprise 2.0” software developer to receive major investor backing. The investment enables Trampoline to increase sales operations, intensify R&D and establish a strategic presence in North
America. Trampoline brings a fresh approach to information management with technology that harnesses social behaviour in the enterprise. The deal provides further evidence that a new generation of enterprise software, dubbed “Enterprise 2.0”, is gaining traction with established organisations
I’d suggest you have a look at the Enron demo and think about the implications this sort of tool could have on internal networking. At the risk of going all cluetrainy again, this is all about the hyperlinked organisation.
I’ve noticed that Trampoline has been doing some work with Oracle, and received an innovation award from them. I’d love to see Trampoline connected to SAP. If Craig can connect Zoho of an evening, then why not Trampoline too? I can imagine all sorts of HR and Compliance uses for Sonar and Metascope.
Stumbling on Trampoline makes it blatantly obvious to me that Enterprise 2.0 applications are becoming more than just wikis, blogs, tagging tools, and sweet ajaxy front-ends. There are far reaching implications for search and especially social analytics. It seems to me that Wiki and other social media tool providers will need to step up their analytical capabilities.
The mind boggles. It may be time to dust off the sociology and statistics – Organisational Network Analysis may just be the next big thing. (well, okay it started in 1934)
This is exactly what I was discussing with a friend of mine from a large mobile phone company yesterday in an HR strategy context here in Walldorf. How do you discover who are your best collaborators and knowledge sharers? Where are the information bottlenecks? How do you design a better organisation? How do you encourage the right behaviours?
Euan Semple’s advice to get out the way of enterprise 2.0 and let the people get on with it has appeal, and he has the experience from the BBC to prove it. But I think the really clever organisations will go one step further. Once things are up and running, they will analyse collaboration and conversion; optimise organisation design, process, reward and so on for the hyperlinked organisation. Sales managers are MBOed on sales figures, yet analysing collaboration may help us build better and fairer models to reward the performance of knowledge workers, which today is a hit and miss exercise.
The view of emergence (or enterprise 2.0) as an underground, revolutionary movement will disappear pretty quickly when those who run organisations understand its power, and start using it themselves. Once upon a time wearing blue jeans and having long hair in a ponytail was a sign of rebellion.
There is a fair bit brewing in development with regards to Enterprise 2.0 here at SAP, but I think there will be plenty of white space to work with folks like Trampoline, Atlassian, Socialtext, Connectbeam and so on. Update: Steve Mann chats about SAP and Enterprise 2.0.
Congratulations to Charles and his team at Trampoline Systems for the funding.
Technorati tags: enterprise 2.0, emergence, Trampoline Systems, Cluetrain, SAP
Vendorprisey 
Tom – you hit the nail on the head with – Organizational Network Analysis.
Today, BI is all about visibility into supply chain and various operational aspects. Remnants of the industrial age – I would say.
Visibility into an enterprise’s collective intelligence, empowering the knowledge workers, high performance workforce, are the real levers of enterprise productivity, growth, and competitive advantage in today’s economy. And companies are starting to understand and focus on this.
Expect to see Connectbeam deliver squarely on this aspect. Some new and very exciting features in the works, that mirror very closely to what you have described in this post.
Thomas:
Funny you should post on Social Network Analysis on the same day as SystematicHR. I saw a brilliant presentation on this subject by Sally Colella – at an Human Capital Institute conference in Chicago.
Sally analyzes the real communication pathways within the organization – and maps them out. This identifies who the “go to” employees are – as well as who is isolated. Two things quickly became apparent. First, power/knowledge does NOT follow the organization chart – and second much of Sr. Management is very isolated – relying on two or three connections for thier view the organization. Brilliant stuff. My post on it below.
http://tomob.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/hci-onboarding-conference/