2009 Poised as Inflection Point in Enterprise Usage—LinkedIn Increases Relevance to B2B Executives
During the 1990s, I was intimately involved with helping global organizations to decentralize their information technology—as a management consultant and marketing executive. However, a far more disruptive force is imminent today: communications and marketing are rapidly evolving into a networked, distributed pattern, following IT’s lead. Individuals that congregate online will have an increasing role in affecting how other people make decisions, significantly weakening the influence of the mass media on which many marketing strategies depend. Organizations that depend on centralized, controlled communications will be astonished at how fast they become irrelevant over the next five years. Although the case studies are still being written, I’ll go on record as saying that the 2008 U.S. presidential election will prove to be an inflection point of digital social networks’ disruptive potential.
LinkedIn is a leading venue for B2B and B2C executives, so it merits significant attention. The inputs for this Executive Adoption Snapshot are varied: I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of executives to apply LinkedIn to their business processes in 2008. I met two LinkedIn executives […]
The 2008 U.S. presidential election has been the most dramatic in recent history by any measure. Converging economic, cultural and political issues are increasing the level of discomfort among voters and raising the stakes. In endorsing Barack Obama, I have considered the candidates in several dimensions, but my primary perspective has been that of a management consultant. The United States is a client in crisis, and I have asked myself, “What kind of leader does the country need, given the challenges it faces?” Barack Obama is my prescription, although there may be unwelcome side effects. If circumstances were different, I might well have favored John McCain.
Since the early 2000s, everyone has struggled to develop measurable economic models for social media and Web 2.0, mostly with little success. During 2007 and 2008, CSRA has worked with clients on several levels hammering out models to pass enterprise muster, and here I will briefly share one that shows considerable promise for its practicality and utility to businesses. The immediate context is B2B business development and sales, but it is applicable to numerous other enterprise processes as well.
The Social Networking Conference (SNC) was an excellent place to check the pulse of Web 2.0 adoption from customer and provider perspectives. Producer Marc Lesnick explained in his opening remarks that, in the months preceding this conference, corporations had knocked on his door asking to get involved. His Ticonderoga Ventures had held several SNCs over the past few years, and it had been largely the purview of social networking start-ups and their facilitators. This is a very apt indication of the enterprise adoption predicted by my State of Social Networking Forrester coverage and 2007 Review.
Web 2.0 is redefining content on the Web, and Duo Consulting’s and Content Wrangler’s Web Content 2008 Chicago, convened at the UBS Tower on June 17-18, 2008, was a rich opportunity to check in with the Web 1.0-Web 2.0 mashup. Embedded within the legacy concept of “content” (text, pictures, audio, video, etc.) is that few people create it and many people consume it, which is obviously less true with every passing month.
Healthcare systems worldwide are criticized for falling short of expectations, and countries like the U.S. which feature aging populations, are rapidly approaching a crisis. Demand and cost will grow, but the system as currently structured will certainly break down unless radical changes are made. Web 2.0’s disruptive potential can be part of the remedy: we need to introduce much more accountability and collaboration into all parts of the system. We need to change the paternalistic attitudes that pervade the system, treat patients as active participants and encourage everyone to be more accountable. This series introduces healthcare Web 2.0 innovators.
Healthcare systems worldwide are criticized for falling short of expectations, and countries like the U.S., which feature aging populations, are rapidly approaching a crisis. Demand and cost will grow, but the system as currently structured will certainly break down unless radical changes are made. Web 2.0’s disruptive potential can be part of the remedy: we need to introduce much more accountability and collaboration into all parts of the system. We need to change the paternalistic attitudes that pervade the system, treat patients as active participants and encourage everyone to be more accountable. This series introduces healthcare Web 2.0 innovators.