Essential 3 dimensions make a mature intranet

Three dimensions of flow must exist for an intranet to be truly mature.
  I'll bet my bottom dollar that intranets with problems are weak in 1 or 2 of the 3 dimensions.

I've found that in Europe, the top-down and horizontal are relatively advanced, and that in North America, the top down and bottom up are strongest.

Interesting to note that in Europe, teams in different countries have long needed to collaborate. At the same time, there's been a slow acceptance to the idea that people in the field have "their word to say".

Personally, I have found that in N. American intranets, the notion of cross-company and cross -functional collaboration is much weaker than in Europe.

This was confirmed for me last year when I saw a chart on intranet maturity (direct pdf download of 76K) presented by Shiv Singh of avenue a razorfish at KMWorld & Intranets in San Jose last November. His chart shows collaboration as stage 3, with HR services and personal information management applications as stage 2.

The majority of companies I work with are large, complex, global and headquartered outside the US. In almost all cases, I would reverse stages 2 and 3. Most of them have collaborative spaces and applications long before HR and PKM.

Shiv and I discussed these differences (along with James Robertson of Step Two Designs). Complementary experiences from US, Europe and Asia Pacific. We looked for explanations, and agreed to pursue our discussion, but once the conference was over... it went the way of many new year resolutions!

Back to my original point: I have not yet seen an intranet with all three dimensions working optimally. Has anyone else?

Any comments from readers of this blog about intranet maturity, the collaborative stage, ....?

Comments

[Shiv Singh]

Jane,

I found our conversation at KM World very interesting. Yes, intranets in the US first focus on HR and Self Service before looking to collaboration. Organizational dynamics, intra company competition and the (over) emphasis on efficiencies here in the US makes collaboration somewhat more difficult.

On the other hand, employee self service provides easily measurable and recognizable benefits to a company. Many intranet managers feel that they can defend their budgets and further their careers more easily by promoting self service applications than pushing their company forward thru collaboration.

Shiv