Q&A with Susan Scrupski: Measuring 2.0 Adoption with Crowdcast

---

Enterprise technologies are always a hot topic – especially when it comes down to predicting their adoption rate and how they will change the future of the business operations. This week we had the opportunity to sit down with Susan Scrupski, founder of the 2.0 Adoption Council, which is a peer-based, information-sharing group of global business leaders interested in facilitating adoption of 2.0 practices and methodologies within the large enterprise.

Susan is teaming up with Crowdcast to launch a new prediction market at this year’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference. The market will predict the outcome of the 2.0 Adoption Council’s annual survey, which forecasts enterprise adoption of 2.0 practices and technologies. E 2.0 attendees will have the opportunity to lock in their bets during the conference, and there will be prizes for the most accurate bets. We’ve already started to give out exclusive invites to participate – you can request an invitation here. The market isn’t just for E 2.0 attendees – it’s for everyone with interest in 2.0 technologies.

In our chat with her, Susan shared her perspective on 2.0 technologies, hurdles to their adoption and a glimpse into the future.

CC: How did you become interested in Enterprise 2.0?
SS: I was a stay at home mom for five years after the dot com crash. When I came back to work in 2006, I started looking around the technology industry for something I was interested in. At that point, E 2.0 was appearing on the scene. I was passionate about the dot com visionaries and then, almost six years later, we had the technology to implement and deliver their original vision. I was excited by the opportunities before me, could see what the real impact for business could be and wanted to take part.

CC: What is your vision for the 2.0 Adoption Council?
SS: Having seen so few successful case studies and technology that did not fulfill expectations, I was at a point of frustration. But, the last E 2.0 conference in Boston had a different feeling from years before – customers were showing up in droves. Some of the most productive sessions were the “un-conferences,” where customers could find other end users to talk to and share their experiences. My vision for the Council was to give these folks a home in a private setting to discuss the joys and sorrows of E 2.0. The Council would give them an opportunity to share and could simultaneously accelerate the pace of adoption.

CC: How do you envision 2.0 concepts changing the way enterprise does business?
SS: When we began to talk about 2.0, we were referring to the technology itself. Now, 2.0 is moving towards something I like to call socio-collaborative transformation. There are four tenets of Enterprise 2.0: transparency, authenticity, trust and collaboration. How will these concepts change business? Well, they change working relationships. This technology is changing the dynamics of how customers relate to others and themselves – changing worldwide business by increasing efficiency and the amount of quality information we have to work with.

CC: What are the adoption challenges you’re seeing right now?
SS: In my opinion, from the beginning, the challenge in this space was awareness. People are not aware of what is possible. There is a need for awareness around what these tools can do and how they can be implemented. Another challenge is the culture of business. It seems radical for so many companies to transform from a hierarchical environment to an open, porous, collaborative one.

CC: What are your hopes for participation in the 2.0 Adoption Index Prediction Market during the E 2.0 conference?
SS: I would love to see 100 percent engagement! If nothing else, this is a learning experience to try out a few new tools. The larger the percentage of audience participation, the more meaningful the results are, leading to more accurate forecasts. I have a suspicion about the zeal of this community – with so many of them excited about Enterprise 2.0, I can’t wait to see the results.

CC: What do you hope to learn from the collective insight gathered by the prediction market?
SS: This data is valuable in terms of tracking the growth in the sector. We are looking to create a continuing measure so that year after year we can plot the evolution of the market and how it takes shape over time. Because of the social web, we tend to subscribe to voices we agree with. There is a danger in not seeing what the whole world is doing – hopefully these markets will reveal this, allowing us to leave the echo chamber and broaden our horizon.

CC: How do you plan to utilize the prediction market model as you move forward with the project?
SS: We want to try to set a benchmark by creating an index to track progress. In 24 months the market may be different, but at that point we will customize it to reflect the current environment.

With the recent Adoption Council survey we conducted, we are hoping to establish a credible benchmark for measuring progress. Following up with the prediction market, we hope to have an accurate, forward-looking forecast about the adoption of 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. We need to look beyond what is happening now – there is value in having a view into future trends in our industry.

CC: Susan, it was great speaking with you, any closing thoughts?
SS: We are passionate believers in enterprise technology and have our own skin in the game. Our goal with the Council and Crowdcast is to elevate the conversation around these tools, using them to drive our own business growth. Prediction markets haven’t yet gotten a lot of buzz and discussion, but they certainly play a role in Enterprise 2.0. It is exciting in terms of awareness to have people voice what they believe are reasonable forecasts in the industry. Prediction markets are a very handy tool and I would love to see more people in the space taking advantage of them. This is an interesting case study, and we are very eager to see the results!

For more thoughts on the 2.0 Adoption Index Council and Prediction Market, visit Susan’s blog, ITSinsider here.