I was struck by two items that surfaced in my RSS feeds this morning.

(Yes, I still use RSS. RSS is nowhere near dead. I understand that armies of people are abandoning RSS for “better” tools but, like Dave Winer, I think people confuse Google Reader with RSS. And, like Marshall Kirkpatrick, I’m fine with the growing abandonment RSS. The more who dismiss it, the more I’ll be the one to uncover useful and relevant content. But I digress.)

The first item featured ZDNet columnist Dennis Howlett howling that “enterprise 2.0” is a crock. “Business has more pressing problems,” he argues,” adding that “the world is NOT made up of knowledge driven businesses.” He concludes…

Like it or not, large enterprises - the big name brands - have to work in structures and hierarchies that most E2.0 mavens ridicule but can???t come up with alternatives that make any sort of corporate sense. Therein lies the Big Lie. Enterprise 2.0 pre-supposes that you can upend hierarchies for the benefit of all. Yet none of that thinking has a credible use case you can generalize back to business types - except: knowledge based businesses such as legal, accounting, architects etc. Even then - where are the use cases? I???d like to know. In the meantime, don???t be surprised by the ???fail??? lists that Mike Krigsman will undoubtedly trot out - that???s easy.

It was funny, then, that the very next item I read, from CIO magazine, chronicles how no less an organization than Procter & Gamble produced bottom-line business results through the systematic introduction of in-house social networking.

The goal was simple, and one that seems to have escaped Howlett in his rant: P&G wanted to expand the way its employees collaborate, “incorporating Web 2.0 tools into a single platform to unlock weak and potential ties???employees with common goals or interests who have little to no contact.”

While Howlett rails that most people “just want to get things done with whatever the best tech they can get their hands on,” P&G saw the potential for social tools to allow “users to create value beyond their usual circles.”

P&G’s systematic approach began with skunkworks projects involving the blogs and wikis Howlett insists nobody cares about. Once the use of those tools became part of the fabric of work, the company settled on a platform, PeopleConnect from Telligent, that employees use “to form and join groups and to interact through blogs, wikis, forums and document stores.” Nearly 12,000 employees opted into the network before the company even formally launched it.

P&G is tracking the results both with metrics the system produces but also with genuine business outcomes. For example, a 150-person team, made up of employees situated in P&G facilities throughout the world, normally came together in about six to 12 months under the hierarchy to which Howlett seems to believe organizations are bound. Using PeopleConnect, it took two. Presumably, that means the results of the team’s efforts will begin generating profits four to 10 months sooner than normal.

P&G’s experience, is not, of course, the only bottom-line benefit organizations can point to as a result of adopting enterprise 2.0. Best Buy has reduced turnover and increased retail worker participation in the company’s retirement savings plan. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance has seen an increase in collaboration. Siemens USA is finding employees establishing knowledge contacts who might otherwise never have met.

Howlett asks, “Can someone explain to me the problem Enterprise 2.0 is trying to solve?”

In response, Hill & Knowlton’s Niall Cook—author of “Enterprise 2.0”—lists streamlining internal communication where overload has become the order of the day, getting sales people to share best practices, improving collaboration between people who otherwise would never connect, speeding the delivery of answers to questions.

When companies know the conditions that hinder speed to market, growth, innovation and collaboration, they can explore the options for overcoming those obstacles and adopt the strategies that move them forward. That’s what P&G and a growing number of companies have done—in fact, a study from AIIM notes that the number of companies embracing Enterprise 2.0 has doubled in the past year. I doubt most of them are jumping on a bandwagon, but rather introducing systems designed to improve the bottom line.

I hope that answer’s Howlett’s question.