Wikinomics and Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Reading Wikinomics I wondered what it takes for wikis to work in the enterprise. Jimmy Whales, the head Honcho of Wikipedia, has said that 0.7% of users did 50% of the edits on Wikipedia. If those same numbers held for the enterprise, a 1,000 person company's wiki would hinge on the contributions of 7 people. There has been debate about the Wikipedia numbers, but beyond that debate the numbers don't translate to the enterprise because the incentives are different.

What are the incentives to produce content on Wikipedia? There is the altruistic motive of providing free (as in beer) truth to the world, there is the satisfaction of finding and correcting flaws and, perhaps most important, the value of asserting yourself as a topic expert.

Referring to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, none of these incentives translate into level one (physiological) and two (safety) needs, perhaps "belonging to the Wikipedia community" might qualify at level three.

Contrast that with creating or editing a useful page on your company's wiki. Saving colleagues time not only improves the bottom line but might get you noticed by your manager or perhaps even your manager's manager, both of which translate into food and safety (of employment).

While we couldn't extrapolate our numbers because service networks go far beyond wikis -- especially by automatically providing much-needed structure -- we have been seeing the power of those incentives during implementations of Service Networks for Upgrades. Traditionally, non-IT employees shy away from tasks in planning or testing an Oracle Upgrade, but when they see how their contributions will be visible on the network, they often jump on board. With the help of their published experience, upgrades are completed in half the traditional time and at one quarter the traditional cost.

As a lot of momentum is going into Enterprise 2.0, I hope to see more of this type of quantification. While Wikipedia and Facebook may run on Maslow's belonging, esteem and self-actualization, mainstream enterprises will need to understand the material impact on their business for Enterprise 2.0 to really take off.