Wikis in enterprises

19 Sep 2013 5 min read

Here is the second article of our series of articles, entitled "How can the wiki culture change your business".

The initial Wiki and Wikipedia are not entreprises wikis. However at the same time as Wikipedia developed, multiple wiki software solutions were being built with enterprises in mind. These software solutions have been conveniently called "Enterprise Wikis". 

Enterprises share similar challenges when it comes to knowledge as the initial wiki communities. But there are some differences.

The growing knowledge challenge

Enterprises are made of individuals who work together. Each of the individuals processes information. In today's "knowledge economy", enterprises are processing more and more information. 

Employees need to get access to the information processed by other employees. Historically the sharing of information is mainly performed one to one, with a small share of the information being shared through meetings or trainings, where information can spread from one to many or many to many).

Enterprises and employees have also become more mobile, with employees changing jobs or enterprises. Enterprises can also grow faster and are spread geographically more
than they used to be, with employees being less in the same physical space.

Enterprises face a challenge when it comes to making knowledge more accessible and spread more efficiently.

Enterprises also face the challenge of "lost information" when employees leave.
When hiring an intern in your company and once the intern leaves, what will stay with the company from the intern's work? If the intern's job is for example to create tasks or produce material goods, everything will be OK, but if his job is to produce "knowledge" it is key to plan how this knowledge will be preserved after the internship. 

In today's companies employees keep asking questions to other employees on "how to do this or this", with every week employees redoing something that another employee has already done. Huge productivity gains are made by solving the "knowledge challenge", and for some companies not solving it will be life threatening as they become less competitive.

Ludovic Dubost
President & Founder

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