Hyperconnectivty in the Enterprise

Posts by Andrew McAfee about micro-blogging and messaging in the enterprise ignited a small firestorm about whether a company should set up constrain how these tools are used.

Seems like this is classic Complex (Cynefin) territory, so boundaries and attractors make lots of sense.

Furthermore, enterprises have goals and engage in a mixture of Exploration and Exploitation activities to reach those goals, so integrating exploratory tools like micro-blogging and messaging into ongoing Exploitation activities makes a lot of sense (e.g., many web retailers now have chat integrated into their sales workflow).

Regardless, a related item may be more interesting in the long run. Mozilla has released a Firefox plugin called Snowl that aggregates messaging and micro-blogging. While Flock is more established, Snowl's focus on aggregating messages raises some interesting questions. The one I find most intriguing is how this tool may evolve to allow users to manage hundreds to thousands of message sources (and tap into the associated social network). I don't have an answer, but this may be the cutting edge of hyperconnectivity in the enterprise.