I was struck by a recent post entitled “Dear Enterprise 2.0” by Dr. Todd Stephens on his Collaborage blog. I read a lot of posts on Enterprise 2.0 and as Dr. Stephens aptly notes, most of these attempt to define what he calls “the full boundary of your open society." Written in the context of what most businesses are struggling with in the current economic environment, I think all of us in the E 2.0 world might need a reality check. Let’s face it, companies do not need us to expound upon on the spectrum of potential outcomes from using our new social applications, they need our help explaining exactly what problems we solve, how we solve them and what the direct business impact is.

Dr. Stephens puts forth the following practical questions all of us Enterprise 2.0 vendors need to be prepared to address:

How can I integrate these tools within my environment and address my imperatives?
What do I need to do for my people? Training? Education? Transformation?
What services can be added to the tools to serve my business needs?
What solutions can you bring to table to have an immediate impact to my productivity?
How do I convince my business managers to replace their current processes with you?
How can I measure success and how will I know that I am heading down the right path?
What patterns, templates and success stories do you have to show me?

I bet these questions are on the mind of any senior executive who is seriously interested in how we might help his or her company navigate through these difficult times.

It’s easy for all of us in this industry to get caught up in the excitement and enthusiasm of evangelizing what is possible with our respective solutions. In fact, that excitement is what likely drew us to want to build our own companies. But putting ourselves in the shoes of “The Business” as Dr. Stephens points out - it might just be that this is the time to be talking less about what is possible and start talking more about what is practical. Businesses don’t need our hype, they need our help.