The Turning Knowledge Workers into Innovation Creators essay began with the assertion that the only way most companies can generate a constant stream of significant profits is through constant innovation.

It has been shown that constant innovation can be achieved through a better understanding of emergent organizations, the role of innovation creators and the hurdles those innovation creators usually face. The tactical steps simply require a dedicated effort to minimizing those hurdles and building a structured platform to support innovation. One way to achieve that is through enterprise blogs.

It is interesting to note that people have been trying to develop these types of tools since folks at Xerox PARC invented the notion of an electronic office environment. Lotus Notes, Groove and Microsoft’s SharePoint Services have all taken a swing at the problem. They have failed because they focused on automating workflow, rather than empowering knowledge workers. It is ironic that so many software companies build, but don’t give their final clients the tools to build. The only exception has been Microsoft. With Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook, Microsoft gave knowledge workers tools that could be used to build tools for analysis and information distribution.
Enterprise blogging is the beginning of a new phase in knowledge worker empowerment. Today, enterprise communication is handled in either one of two ways. Either knowledge workers use Microsoft Office and a collection of disorganized communication tools such as phone and email, or knowledge workers are forced to adhere to a highly automated and tightly defined process in a customized system, such as the teller screens used in retail banks, or the trading software used on trading desks. The first option is flexible, but inefficient. The second option is inflexible, but highly efficient. Under the second option, innovation is almost impossible.

The innovation that is enterprise blogging, will change that range of options, providing something that is highly flexible and has the potential to be highly efficient.

Enterprise blogging is also something that is browser based. As such, it is a direct threat to Microsoft.
Imagine a world where you preferred to enter content into blogs because they looked better and because it meant the information would be more useful to your colleagues. Would you cease to use Word?

What if your company replaced virus prone Outlook with a powerful web based email tool like Google’s Gmail. If it was modular, the web based email tool could be extended to include a scheduling tool that was linked to people’s Bio blogs. The email tool could even be extended to provide a standardized interface for both writing emails and entering posts to your various blogs.

In this kind of innovative environment, what reason would companies have to continue using Microsoft Windows if most work was done through a web based interface that could just as easily be on an Apple box or a cheap Linux box running the Firefox browser?

Obviously, Microsoft will come back with something new; an innovation not yet imagined. Office Live is the begining of that effort.

Just like your organization, even Microsoft is forced to innovate constantly.

The simple question now is, what are you going to do to help your company turn your knowledge workers into innovation creators?