A few weeks ago, this article on TechCrunch caught my attention. In it, Sequoia Capital's Jim Goetz indicates surprise at the lack of focus on the enterprise in the startup community. The comment from Palo Alto Networks founder Nir Zuk regarding enterprise vs. consumer time-to-market is particularly interesting.
Building a consumer-focused mobile application isn't difficult. It requires focus and commitment to be sure, but the barrier to entry is low, and the learning curve associated with learning a new language or platform is shallow. In my few years in the monolithic corporate software world, I've discovered that robustness, customizability, security, and interoperability are difficult goals to achieve, and thus take time.
Here's an idea in the enterprise space that I've been tossing around in my head for a while:
Self-Organizing Wikis
Knowledge sharing in enterprise environments is both essential and difficult. Products like Atlassian's Confluence platform provide functionality for allowing employees to contribute and search content, track tasks, etc. The challenge lies in keeping all of this content organized. The Google philosophy of "search, don't organize" doesn't hold up in the enterprise due to the frequent scenario of someone not knowing what information is out there, or what has already been tried. A wiki which recognized viewing trends, topic associations, and potentially related postings would be useful.
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