The Blue Monster book club expanded last week with Niall Cook’s Enterprise 2.0. This is the second book that I’m aware of that covers  Blue Monster as a case study – in this case titled Humanizing Microsoft. Niall talks about the role Robert Scoble played until his departure in 2006 and the creation of Blue Monster by Hugh MacLeod in the same year.

Niall notes that the impact of Blue Monster is debatable and I guess that’s a fair view as it’s not like it became the new corporate logo or something. For many though, internal and external it did change things and to some extent continued to lay the canvas that Scoble crafted for a more open conversation between Microsoft’s bloggers, employees, customers, detractors and more. I’m not suggesting that wouldn’t have happened anyway, but Blue Monster enabled me (and others I think) to have conversations we previously may not have had. On a personal level it showed me that you can change things if you want to and that not all change is top down. It also gave me some great new friends in people like Hugh and David.

I haven’t managed to read any more of the book yet but I’m sure Jas will come through with one his his great reviews soon. He just reviewed Rohit’s Personality Not Included which also featured Blue Monster. Meantime, you can learn more about the book or download an excerpt.

 

One small footnote to this – I’ve never really talked about where the Blue Monster name originated. Maybe one for a future post…