Nicholas de Wolff, National Film Fes­ti­val for Tal­ented Youth:
“Too many peo­ple are div­ing into the Web 2.0 and 3.0 pools
before they even know with whom they are swimming.”

Social busi­ness seen as mak­ing seis­mic waves in mar­ket­ing, sales, operations

The adop­tion of Web 2.0 and social net­work­ing accel­er­ated sig­nif­i­cantly over the past year, and it shows no sign of stop­ping. Global dig­i­tal word of mouth is dis­rupt­ing grow­ing swaths of busi­ness mod­els, and CEOs want to under­stand its oppor­tu­ni­ties and threats. Although the Web is resplen­dent with prog­nos­ti­ca­tions from social media gurus, the voices of enter­prise prac­ti­tion­ers are too rarely heard.

To rem­edy that, I’ve gath­ered the per­spec­tives of highly expe­ri­enced exec­u­tives who share their thoughts on how Web 2.0 is chang­ing their busi­nesses and mind­sets. They also share its lim­i­ta­tions and prob­lems. Keep in mind that each con­trib­u­tor wrote inde­pen­dently, and I have made no attempt to unify their views, although I will offer my analy­sis and con­clu­sions as well as the intrigu­ing back­story below. Here is a sam­pling of the group’s eclec­tic insights:

• A seis­mic shift in mar­ket­ing is emer­gent, and chief mar­ket­ing offi­cers will require robust strate­gies to suc­ceed con­sis­tently with Web 2.0 and use it to their advantage.
• Gam­i­fi­ca­tion will rede­fine “work” and “play” and grad­u­ally make them indistinguishable.
• Per­for­mance demands on gov­ern­ment will force it to shed its lag­gard stereo­type and pio­neer social busi­ness at local and fed­eral levels.
• Arguably the biggest dis­rup­tion of all is that green energy is enabling bil­lions of pre­vi­ously uncon­nected peo­ple to join the world as par­tic­i­pants; China and India are two of the fastest grow­ing economies of the world, and mil­lions of peo­ple are jump­ing online every year. Infra­struc­ture lim­i­ta­tions are forc­ing extreme innovation.
• An excit­ing new career is dig­i­tal sales­peo­ple who help peo­ple to deal with explod­ing choices.
• The print news indus­try will strug­gle but con­tinue to crater—this year, exec­u­tives will cre­ate sur­pris­ing alliances in last-ditch efforts to con­trol content—and laid-off jour­nal­ists will retool by launch­ing myr­iad new con­tent ventures.
• The con­tin­ued explo­sion of ideas and infor­ma­tion will bur­den atten­tion spans and drive the need for cura­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion to max­i­mize engagement
• Enter­prise 2.0 will con­tinue to make gains, but it will face numer­ous obstacles.
• Adop­tion is pro­ceed­ing in pro­fes­sional ser­vices, as reflected by the com­mer­cial real estate industry.
• Mobile social net­work­ing will see sig­nif­i­cant growth dri­ven by mobile appli­ca­tions and increased hand­set sales worldwide.
• Adop­tion in Latin Amer­ica is mixed; in Mex­ico, lim­i­ta­tions in net­works, ven­ture cap­i­tal and monop­o­lis­tic tele­coms slow progress.
• Ulti­mately the value cre­ated by social net­works is dri­ven by trusted rela­tion­ships, but busi­ness will strug­gle to pre­dict their value. Emerg­ing mod­els will attempt to quan­tify the value of inter­ac­tions and trust building.

Enter­prise 2.0 will shift to a mul­ti­fac­eted solutions-based approach—but struggle

R. Todd Stephens, Ph.D., Sr. Tech­ni­cal Archi­tect (Col­lab­o­ra­tion & Online Ser­vices), AT&T, Atlanta

Web 2.0 Inter­ests me from a vari­ety of view­points. First, as a tech­ni­cal archi­tect within a For­tune 100 com­pany, I am inter­ested in how orga­ni­za­tions are incor­po­rat­ing Web 2.0 into their inter­nal busi­ness envi­ron­ments. I want to under­stand the “how” of imple­men­ta­tion and the real value deliv­ered to the enter­prise. Sec­ond, I spend a great deal of time writ­ing about the impact of Web 2.0 to small busi­ness. Web 2.0 can gen­er­ate real busi­ness value in both contexts.

Web 2.0 is impact­ing change in the inter­ac­tion and dra­matic shift in how work gets done. Global orga­ni­za­tions now have to com­mu­ni­cate and com­pete 24 hours a day, and they need tools that enable seam­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Whether you’re an employee, con­sul­tant or cus­tomer, you now have the tools to com­mu­ni­cate directly with your audi­ence with­out lay­ers of man­age­ment impact­ing the mes­sage. We have seen both a huge migra­tion to Web 2.0-enabled enter­prise col­lab­o­ra­tion tools and lim­ited suc­cess with 2.0-only tech­nolo­gies. This is because most peo­ple want solu­tions, not tech­nol­ogy. In 2010, we will see the migra­tion away from tech­nolo­gies like blogs, wikis, twit­ter, social net­works, etc. to a more solution-based approach. Orga­ni­za­tions will ask solu­tion providers to solve prob­lems with a col­lec­tion of tech­nolo­gies and processes that include col­lab­o­ra­tive tech­nolo­gies, mobile devices, uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Web 2.0 technologies.

Web 2.0 will con­tinue to strug­gle within large enter­prises. While we hear the suc­cess sto­ries, they are still a very small minor­ity. Some of these dif­fi­cul­ties are due to the econ­omy, man­age­ment, cul­ture, small con­tri­bu­tion rates, and lack of ROI mod­els. More­over, these hur­dles will not be over­come by 2010. Despite the rose-colored report­ing, our Web 2.0 imple­men­ta­tions are not suc­ceed­ing. The good news is that they are not fail­ing either, which allows them to con­tinue to fight for another year.

New pri­vate social net­works will sip Bing’s value

Clifton Muham­mad, Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant, Infosys & Field Mar­shall, Obama for Amer­ica, Chicago

I improve busi­ness processes for orga­ni­za­tions that face trans­for­ma­tion from new tech­nol­ogy. As a man­age­ment con­sul­tant with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence with busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion, I have helped many indus­try pioneers.

In 2009, Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies tipped the bal­ance between net­works and knowl­edge. The social net­works, which used Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies, increased the value of the knowl­edge bases that they tapped, well beyond the expec­ta­tions of past years. For sub­ject mat­ter experts who used social net­works in 2009, the year’s growth in the num­ber of other net­worked sub­ject mat­ter experts increased the value of the knowl­edge that each indi­vid­ual pos­sessed, by pro­vid­ing an effi­cient means to iden­tify the most rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion in their aggre­gated knowl­edge base.

Search engines com­modi­tized a large amount of infor­ma­tion, in recent years, through the aggre­ga­tion of vast knowl­edge bases—any infor­ma­tion any­one wanted to have about any­thing seemed to become just a google search away—while a big need still remained for cura­tion of that mas­sive amount of avail­able infor­ma­tion. With the growth of social net­works, the rep­u­ta­tion of the per­son who deliv­ered infor­ma­tion began to mat­ter more than the infor­ma­tion deliv­ered. The integrity of the peo­ple in my social net­work (for exam­ple) became much more valu­able than the raw infor­ma­tion they held because I wanted to trust the infor­ma­tion that I got.

In 2010, we’ll see Microsoft’s Bing and other efforts in search and aggre­ga­tion miss the mark. Busi­nesses will seek to cap­ture more value from the rela­tion­ships within their orga­ni­za­tions and spend less to retain the reser­voirs of infor­ma­tion that those rela­tion­ships will ulti­mately tap. His­tory pro­vides numer­ous exam­ples where tolls and tran­sit ser­vices fol­lowed the real­iza­tion of a desired resource to cap­ture much of that resource’s wealth. In 2010 new social net­work­ing mod­els will develop to enable tran­sit and cura­tion of the knowl­edge that’s most val­ued within organizations.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine may dis­rupt Google’s cur­rent reser­voir of knowl­edge, through con­tent exclu­siv­ity agree­ments. How­ever the value of that knowl­edge will depend on new mod­els of both gated and open social net­works. I will seek oppor­tu­ni­ties to adapt the new mod­els for social net­works (such as Aard­vark) to cap­ture the greater busi­ness value in 2010.

Trans­for­ma­tion takes time

Ken Kabira, Man­ag­ing Prin­ci­pal at True­Works, CMO Chicago Tran­sit Author­ity, CMO McDonald’s Japan, Chicago

I help orga­ni­za­tions define and improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Recently CMO of the Chicago Tran­sit Author­ity, I led two Web 2.0 ini­tia­tives: to enable cus­tomers to help each other to use the tran­sit and to engage employ­ees to improve how we ran the CTA more effi­ciently and effectively.

In the first case, we helped the large seg­ment of the Chicago pop­u­la­tion that spoke lit­tle to no Eng­lish. The CTA web­site was (and still is) Eng­lish only. The agency just doesn’t have the bud­get to cre­ate sites in mul­ti­ple lan­guages. We used wikis in var­i­ous lan­guages to enable peo­ple to edu­cate each other on how to use the tran­sit sys­tem. In the sec­ond ini­tia­tive, we sought to make employee sug­ges­tions more trans­par­ent and valu­able by using a star-based vot­ing sys­tem with a com­ment sec­tion (a la Amazon.com’s reader reviews) to get input from the 4,000+ dri­vers much faster than the pen-and-paper system.

Ama­zon, Best Buy, and other sites that allow users vote on ideas was the source of our inspi­ra­tion. One of the weak­nesses of employee sug­ges­tion pro­grams is that other employ­ees don’t get to see and vet what their col­leagues sug­gested. The CTA’s Sched­ul­ing and Ser­vice Plan­ning depart­ments need feed­back from bus dri­ves and train oper­a­tors, but it is dif­fi­cult to know how good sug­ges­tions are or how bad a prob­lem is. By hav­ing other oper­a­tors see the ideas and vote on it, we could try to tap the wis­dom of the crowd.

In 2010 we will see more pub­lic agen­cies tak­ing risks to engage in this sort of “flat” infor­ma­tion shar­ing and insight gath­er­ing. The biggest obsta­cle will be the CYA men­tal­ity of pub­lic offi­cials and the legal depart­ments, which hin­der risk-taking. How­ever, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that pub­lic agen­cies are rarely rewarded for doing things right, but a slight­est error is severely crit­i­cized by the press, which never both­ers to under­stand the con­straints under which these offi­cials have to operate.

Increas­ing adop­tion in com­mer­cial real estate

Michael Lunn, Prin­ci­pal Bro­ker at Re/Max Com­mer­cial Prop­erty Solu­tions LLC, Chicago, Pres­i­dent of the CCIM Illinois

I am a com­mer­cial real estate bro­ker on the front line of deliv­er­ing value to ROI-driven clients. I also serve as Pres­i­dent of the Illi­nois CCIM Chap­ter. CCIM is the top des­ig­na­tion in com­mer­cial bro­ker­age. Mine is a black and white, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world, but most of my new assign­ments come via refer­ral and reputation.

Com­mer­cial real estate pro­fes­sion­als have embraced LinkedIn, but they shun Face­book and Twit­ter as friv­o­lous and unpro­fes­sional. Blog­ging has reached a crit­i­cal mass, as has using pri­vate peer-to-peer email sys­tems like mail­bridge, which enables our 5,000 mem­bers to ask the (pri­vate) crowd about: inside infor­ma­tion on a cer­tain firm, procedural/legal issues or trusted peo­ple to whom we refer busi­ness. This is more focused than LinkedIn, and I receive bet­ter qual­ity responses than ask­ing 50 mil­lion gen­eral mem­bers the same ques­tion. Our busi­ness is becom­ing more com­pet­i­tive, so the true pro­fes­sion­als are exper­i­ment­ing and get­ting out of their com­fort zones to adopt new tech­nol­ogy for their own and their clients’ benefit.

A key trend is that pro­fes­sion­als are weigh­ing care­fully where to invest their loy­al­ties because tech­nol­ogy gives them a choice. Whether they work for a national bro­ker­age or an inde­pen­dent firm or per­haps they change geog­ra­phy, they have more choice in how to build their net­works. Does it make sense to invest their lim­ited time for net­work­ing within their cur­rent firm or in one geo­graphic area, or does it make more sense to focus on their trade asso­ci­a­tion affil­i­a­tion and invest time there? The idea is find and com­mit to sup­port­ing the high­est qual­ity group that will let you join. I may be a bit biased, but this dis­tinc­tion “clicks” with my peers, and I believe has a com­mon com­pelling logic for other indus­tries. Group loy­al­ties will tran­scend employer loyalties.

In 2010, I see top pro­fes­sion­als in our field seek­ing to bend tech­nol­ogy to their short term needs con­tin­u­ing, and CCIM intends to use plat­forms like groupsites.com. Our goals are to have our vol­un­teer boards inter­act more effi­ciently between meet­ings, and to extend our value geo­graph­i­cally as we seek to serve more mem­bers. Within my firm, we intend to build our own CRE groups ded­i­cated to top­ics like prop­erty taxes. Group mem­bers are moti­vated and frus­trated, so they con­tribute their unique expe­ri­ences and insights. Mem­bers are by def­i­n­i­tion prospec­tive cus­tomers of our pri­mary ser­vices. 2010 belongs to those who are aware of their sur­round­ings, and who are will­ing to adapt quickly to events as they unfold.

Flight to qual­ity and subscription-based models

Nicholas de Wolff, Busi­ness Strat­egy Expert, Chair — National Film Fes­ti­val for Tal­ented Youth, Los Angeles

Most recently, I served as Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer for a large multi­na­tional tech­nol­ogy ser­vice provider. As co-founder of the New Media Coun­cil of the Pro­duc­ers Guild of Amer­ica, and a mem­ber of the Inter­ac­tive Media Peer Group at the Acad­emy of Tele­vi­sion Arts & Sci­ences, my inter­est in emerg­ing media is both tech­no­log­i­cally and cre­atively motivated.

I have seen many peers adopt Web strate­gies inap­pro­pri­ately because they are under pres­sure from either agency ven­dors who should know bet­ter or from exec­u­tive man­age­ment (or even share­hold­ers) to pur­sue the “next new thing”. Unfor­tu­nately, too many peo­ple are div­ing into the Web 2.0 and 3.0 pools before they even know with whom they are swim­ming. The best Web advances are as yet merely trends that will only solid­ify their value propo­si­tions with time. Any good mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive must have a Web strat­egy, but it must be a well-researched and fully informed strat­egy, which requires either a hefty and well-aimed com­mit­ment or great patience. 2009 demon­strated that busi­nesses and con­sumers alike lacked the lat­ter. Mean­while, com­pa­nies like Pep­siCo and Star­bucks were mak­ing the invest­ments, with the results still in question.

2009 saw ubiq­uity and expan­sion trump­ing secu­rity and selec­tive pre-qualification. Face­book et al have risked alien­at­ing their envi­able user base due to their efforts to widen their sphere of influ­ence and, while I believe the gam­ble will ulti­mately pay off, other ven­tures that sac­ri­ficed qual­ity of infra­struc­ture for mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion may not fare so well. Mean­while, Microsoft has con­tin­ued to plod along—confident that infra­struc­ture con­trol will yield long-term ben­e­fits that far out­weigh shorter term gains. Bing, Office 2010, and other releases will soon show whether the giant’s focus on secu­rity and robust­ness will be able to wrest the gains made by the likes of OpenOffice.org, Google, Fire­fox and oth­ers. The fact that Microsoft has stopped (for the most part) behav­ing like a behe­moth, and is once more allow­ing its busi­ness units to func­tion with a greater degree of auton­omy, is a good sign.

2010 will bring a slow­down in the rate of release and adop­tion. 2009 was the year of acqui­si­tion of mar­ket share, and I want to see 2010 become the year of refine­ment and qual­ity of ser­vice. Many ven­tures will focus on qual­ity, and those that do not will be left in the dust by con­sumers no longer will­ing to put up with any­thing but the high­est lev­els of prod­uct and solu­tion ser­vice. As a result, later 2010 and early 2011 will see firms shift to subscription-based busi­ness mod­els from adver­tis­ing and VC funding.

Just as film stu­dios are becom­ing enter­tain­ment con­tent aggre­ga­tors for the screen(s), so social media net­works and hard­ware plat­forms are becom­ing appli­ca­tion aggre­ga­tors (the new short-form con­tent deliv­ery model?) for multi-platform media and enter­tain­ment. Look for AP and Reuters to release apps for Blackberry/iPhone/iPad/Android/FB/Foursquare/Kindle, while NYT and WSJ release apps for the same, as well as PC/Mac and Linux. The USER will not per­mit them­selves to be lim­ited by device, and will sub­scribe to con­tent and app providers who are plat­form agnos­tic (within reason).

Finally, brands that rec­og­nize that they do not nec­es­sar­ily know it all will reflect a bal­ance between exper­tise and col­lab­o­ra­tive engage­ment, so the indus­tries and con­sumers they seek to engage will self-identify. Con­sumers will be drawn to not only these brands’ phys­i­cal prod­ucts or solu­tions but also to the evolv­ing and strength­en­ing rep­u­ta­tion of their char­ac­ter. Con­sumers say, “Lis­ten to my feed­back, ill-informed as it may some­times be, and help me max­i­mize and lever­age my faith in your prod­uct or solu­tion. Your reward will be my enthu­si­as­tic pro­mo­tion of your offering.”

Seis­mic shift in marketing

Ran­dall Beard, CMO, Nielsen IAG

I am cur­rently Global EVP & Gen­eral Man­ager at Nielsen IAG, respon­si­ble for Con­sumer Pack­aged Goods. I have 25+ years global expe­ri­ence across con­sumer pack­aged goods, finan­cial ser­vices and high-touch ser­vice brands, includ­ing Proc­ter & Gam­ble, Amer­i­can Express and UBS.

With approx­i­mately 50% of con­sumers belong­ing to at least one social net­work, mar­keters have had to restruc­ture their approach to engag­ing con­sumers and con­nect­ing their brand’s ben­e­fit to a com­pelling need. Mar­keters have begun to view social net­works as a sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket­ing con­tact point (and per­haps even more impor­tant than tra­di­tional chan­nels) for procur­ing con­sumer data and knowl­edge. The advent of Face­book Con­nect, OpenID, and sim­i­lar capa­bil­i­ties has enabled con­sumers to tra­verse the web and bring their net­works with them.

2010 will see sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of a “seis­mic” shift in mar­ket­ing: ROI-based adver­tis­ing and media. This will help brands ana­lyze what really works and what doesn’t in Web, TV, in-program prod­uct place­ment and cross-media. Based on the air­line industry’s prin­ci­ple of yield man­age­ment, adver­tis­ers will increas­ingly be able to place the right ad in the right pro­gram against the right tar­get at the right price. For Web adver­tis­ing, this means that brand mar­keters will have to con­sider the increas­ingly impor­tant, and per­haps even dom­i­nant role, of online social com­mu­ni­ties as con­sumers inter­act with each other to make deci­sions about brands, prod­ucts and services.

More broadly, media tar­get­ing and buy­ing will move from sim­ple demo­graph­ics to more sophis­ti­cated psy­cho­graphic and behav­ioral tar­get­ing. Media selec­tion will begin to move from sim­ple eye­balls to include con­sumer engage­ment with pro­grams, as well as ad effec­tive­ness based on con­text. Mar­keters will real­ize that TV adver­tis­ing is NOT going away or becom­ing less effec­tive. Instead, they will begin to under­stand the impor­tance of plan­ning inte­grated TV-Web 2.0 mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, as well as the impor­tance of design­ing paid media pro­grams that drive earned media, which, in turn, makes their paid efforts more effective.

Finally, dri­ven by dig­i­tal and Web 2.0, mar­ket­ing will increas­ingly move from an annual plan to a real-time, sense-and-respond func­tion. Mar­ket­ing effec­tive­ness will increas­ingly be mea­sured in real time, and adjust­ments will be made “on the fly,” based on ROI met­rics. This will drive a fun­da­men­tal re-ordering of the mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tion and gov­er­nance models.

Mobile social net­work­ing will grow strongly—Twitter will be acquired

Alvin Chin, Senior Researcher, Nokia Research Cen­ter, Bei­jing, PRC

Social net­work­ing will become truly mobile. This means you will actu­ally be able to record social inter­ac­tions in real life and dynam­i­cally update them to your online social networks.

Zig­Bee devices will be on the mar­ket. Zig­Bee is the next big wire­less tech­nol­ogy that has good band­width and extremely low power com­pared to Blue­tooth. The tech­nol­ogy is mature enough to make it into products.

Twit­ter will be acquired. See­ing how Ping.fm (what I use to post to all my online social net­works) was acquired by Seesmic, I think some com­pany will come to the plate to buy Twit­ter, even though Twit­ter does not want to be bought. Per­haps Google might buy Twit­ter; they bought Jaiku but then killed it off.

Open and portable social net­work­ing. Every social net­work will have its own API, and, with tech­nolo­gies like Face­book Con­nect and Google Friend Con­nect, we will see our social net­works being brought with us to any Web­site.

Microsoft’s Project Natal will be deployed as an add-on to Xbox. Microsoft already dis­played the promise with Natal using body move­ments and will chal­lenge the Nin­tendo Wii. Look for the add-on on Xbox to hap­pen this year.

Pull­back from online social net­work­ing in favor of offline, news­pa­pers will con­tinue to die off

Coley Perry, Con­sul­tant to Own­ers, Exec­u­tives, Man­agers and their Busi­nesses, Chicago

Rev­enue mod­els that do not only rely on “eye­balls” will begin to emerge. There are only so many Googles and Microsofts with deep enough pock­ets to fol­low the “build it and they will come” and “we will fig­ure it out later” strategy.

Some­body smart will fig­ure out how to put “social” back in social media. The rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties exist in offline inter­ac­tions and in REAL LIFE. The Face­book gen­er­a­tion does not want to be exploited by adver­tis­ing, min­ing of their data, etc. They also will even­tu­ally pull back from expos­ing their data when they real­ize that social net­works are great places for iden­tity thieves, HR depart­ments, par­ents, rel­a­tives, stalk­ers, etc. There­fore, the offline oppor­tu­nity will be a great way to cre­ate a rev­enue model around expe­ri­ence, events, etc. As an exam­ple, LinkedIn has pop-up net­work­ing com­mu­ni­ties in each of its geo­gra­phies. What if they would have used their brand to cre­ate rev­enue for them­selves by facil­i­tat­ing and pro­vid­ing con­tent for these events. Because they have a sub­scrip­tion model already and addi­tional charge for a worth­while offline expe­ri­ence would be easy to add to my monthly or annual credit card trans­ac­tion. Espe­cially if it was an “Expense.”

LinkedIn could begin to brand as the “Amer­i­can Express” of today. Because of their demo­graphic they could begin to build affin­ity chan­nels and other “value-add” that are off-line focused that could drive rev­enue. Think the “LinkedIn Card” or the “LinkedIn-side Lounge” a 3rd place for folks to meet and engage. I pitched this to LI when Dan Nye was in charge and they were inter­ested, since the soft­ware guys are back in charge they are more inter­ested in build­ing soft­ware than build­ing business.

There will be more M&A activ­ity in the con­tent provider world. Ulti­mately this will be all about con­tent cre­ation and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Web 2.0/3.0 is just a new set of tools on top of the Inter­net. I used to call my friend on the phone and tell him/her about the party I went to last night. Now I post to Face­book and do not inter­act with him/her. This con­tent is inter­est­ing and pos­si­bly valu­able (I doubt it).

Con­tent providers like Mash­able and Wikipedia will be acqui­si­tion tar­gets of those with deep pock­ets (i.e. Com­cast). In addi­tion, jour­nal­ists of ongo­ing news­pa­per fail­ures will have to retool, which will pro­duce new Web 2.0 ven­tures and con­tent sources. Think about this. The Los Ange­les Times’ beat writer for the LA Kings was laid off due the cur­rent cost cut­ting envi­ron­ment. So the LA Kings hired him, and now the LA Kings con­trol their “news.” The print chan­nel is dying, and he can add con­sid­er­able value to the Kings orga­ni­za­tion. Does that mean the LA Kings are in the con­tent busi­ness? I think so if they want to drive, PR, Mar­ket­ing, Sea­son Ticket Sales, TV/Radio Con­tracts, etc.

Tra­di­tional news­pa­pers will get closer to offi­cial death by the end of 2010. Just like Grunge killed Heavy Metal in the early ‘90s.

Advances in facial recog­ni­tion, decline in value for some social net­work activities

Bill Bur­nett, Part­ner — Launch­pad Part­ners, Change Cat­a­lyst, Chicago, USA

Per­haps the peo­ple who prob­a­bly prof­ited most from Web 2.0 in 2009 were the Web 2.0 gurus. I think this may con­tinue into 2010. At the same time, the value of social activ­i­ties like asking/answering LinkedIn ques­tions, and LinkedIn updates will decline due to overuse and misuse.

We may see new play­ers come into the mar­ket to com­pete with LinkedIn, such as click­able graphic user inter­faces like Muck­ety pro­vides. In addi­tion, the capa­bil­ity to use face recog­ni­tion tech­nol­ogy may mean that pho­tos on Face­book may allow the build­ing of con­nec­tions net­works based pri­mar­ily on photos.

Demands for our atten­tion using Web tools needs to be thought through. Peo­ple who will stand out in Web 2.0 are those who will appre­ci­ate the demands on our atten­tion: they will know when to go after deep think­ing, when to accom­mo­date our short atten­tion spans, and when to incent attention.

Slow going in Latin America—iPhone a bright spot

Nico­las Gillet, CEO, Latin3G, San Francisco

I have 20 years of tech­nol­ogy and man­age­ment expe­ri­ence with start-ups, and I’ve led the strat­egy of Latin3G since 2004. We launched a pro­fes­sional social net­work, ixi­mati, in 2009. Its 12,000 users are mainly in Mex­ico and Argentina. Some Web 2.0 obser­va­tions and pre­dic­tions for Latin Amer­ica are:

Mobile Web 2.0 in Mex­ico is still slow on non-smartphone hand­sets. The best thing we are see­ing is the rise of iPhone/iPod in Mex­ico. iPhone/iPod Apps drive start-ups some rev­enue because they don’t have to deal with the car­rier monopoly.

I am see­ing some pos­i­tive devel­op­ments in Mex­ico: in 2009, many bar­camps were orga­nized, new blogs launched, and more apps devel­op­ers entered the mar­ket. How­ever, we have a seri­ous lack of busi­ness angels or ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists to strengthen innovation.

Dig­i­tal sales­peo­ple, 3D print­ing and games as work

Ian Hughes a.k.a. epreda­tor, Emerg­ing Tech­nol­ogy Con­sul­tant, Meta­verse Evan­ge­list, Feed­ing Edge Ltd, Southamp­ton, UK

2009 saw me leave the cor­po­rate world of IBM where I had brought enter­prises into Web 2.0 and into vir­tual worlds as an emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gist and meta­verse evan­ge­list. The fact we have so many ways to con­nect and do busi­ness with one another meant this tran­si­tion was pos­si­ble, and required. Here are some of the tech­nolo­gies that will see marked adop­tion in 2010–2019.

Brands cross­ing dig­i­tal bor­ders. Orga­ni­za­tions will have to increase engage­ment with peo­ple where they hap­pen to want to be online and offline. It will not be enough, as it was back in the early Web, to just leave a web­site lying around to be found. Busi­ness has to become a trav­el­ling exhibit, a mov­able mar­ket stall that can be adjusted and placed wher­ever peo­ple are or want to be. Dig­i­tally, dis­tance knows no bounds, but firms need more than sign­post or ban­ner ads. They need active guides, per­suaders, dare I say sales­peo­ple? Maybe I am refer­ring to my evan­ge­list brethren though? Peo­ple who know the ter­ri­tory, have expe­ri­ence and speak the lan­guage work­ing for com­pa­nies, not just as a side­line that the com­pany takes for granted. 2010 starts to see post-recession rebuild­ing of busi­nesses. In growth they seek change and effi­ciency. Just as we saw Ama­zon, eBay and Google arise from the 90’s dot­com crash, is it inevitable we see new play­ers this time around.

3-Dimensional print­ing. Ten years should be enough for this to become main­stream, as by then the trans­mis­sion of 3D con­tent and design with the asso­ci­ated rules and reg­u­la­tions, kite marks, cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, etc., will start to be in place. Why move goods all over the planet when you can make them locally? It really is a no-brainer. 2010 has seen HP enter the mar­ket pro­vid­ing 3D print­ing. The pres­sures on man­u­fac­tur­ing and logis­tics from green issues to piracy plus an increased dig­i­tal design lit­er­acy will drive this for­ward in the next few years.

Games as work. Even­tu­ally firms will under­stand that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of employ­ees will have spent much of their lives enter­tain­ing them­selves with World of War­craft, Mod­ern War­fare 2 and even Far­mville. Firms will work out that there is no rea­son for humans to drudge along doing dull and repet­i­tive work for the sake of it. Firms that trans­form menial tasks (at very lit­tle cost) into enter­tain­ing, morale-lifting and thought-provoking activ­i­ties will see sig­nif­i­cant boosts in pro­duc­tiv­ity. Work and busi­ness is a role-playing game. Don­ald Trump says he is not inter­ested in money, but it helps to use it to keep score. (I guess I need to alter the game I play ;) ). This will of course become a lot eas­ier to do as ser­vices in the enter­prise are exposed, instru­mented, ren­dered and rep­re­sented in more mean­ing­ful ways in envi­ron­ments like Sec­ond Life Enter­prise. As with all forms of human com­mu­ni­ca­tion, some peo­ple will evolve and flour­ish while learn­ing to enter­tain, inform, per­suade and moti­vate using all the online tools and pres­ence that we are able to engage with today. 2010 could well see a land­mark ven­ture, a game expe­ri­ence whose aim is to get work done. There is much dis­cus­sion of gam­i­fi­ca­tion. How­ever the cul­tural accep­tance of what work is will take a few more years as the work­force bal­ances generationally.

Renais­sance and access for all. Projects like one lap­top per child and local coun­try con­nec­tiv­ity ini­tia­tives are essen­tial. We cur­rently have a divided soci­ety in which many of us are the monks with our illu­mi­nated Apple logos enabling us to con­nect with the world. We have an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple who are just learn­ing to deci­pher the his­tory of our writ­ings. They no longer need to hear us read it out loud because they write their own dig­i­tal his­to­ries and, more impor­tantly, their futures. We have a few naysay­ers that are wor­ried that if every­one has access to this, the world will end as we know it. I mean, peo­ple com­mu­ni­cat­ing with one another and under­stand­ing one another’s cul­tures, ideas and needs with­out being bro­kered by a rul­ing class! Edu­ca­tion pow­ered by global dig­i­tal inclu­sion will drive some huge inno­va­tions, upheavals and pos­i­tive out­comes over the next 10 years. It is putting tech­nol­ogy in the hands of people—as a tool to use as it suits them, not just for the sake of a cool gadget—is going to pre­cip­i­tate this gen­er­a­tional renaissance.

Emerg­ing econ­omy advances in green-powered Web

Jeanne Hey­decker, AVP — World­wide Mar­ket­ing at Vihaan Net­works, New Delhi, India

An Amer­i­can high-tech exec­u­tive with 25 years expe­ri­ence with start-ups, I moved to India two years ago. Jux­ta­pos­ing these expe­ri­ences gives me a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on Web 2.0’s value propo­si­tion since I live par­tially off the elec­tri­cal grid.

Web 2.0’s most trans­for­ma­tional poten­tial is empow­er­ing dis­en­fran­chised peo­ple around the world, thereby open­ing up mar­kets. Con­nect­ing the uncon­nected has become a polit­i­cal cliche, but it is truly crit­i­cal to lift­ing peo­ple out of poverty, pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to those who hereto­fore had a chal­leng­ing qual­ity of life and few choices. To me, con­nec­tiv­ity is sec­ond only to a water pump in its sig­nif­i­cance to a village.

I cur­rently work with a com­pany that is build­ing solar-powered tele­com equip­ment specif­i­cally designed for rural areas with unre­li­able or no elec­tric­ity. Our sys­tems use very lit­tle power (less than a 100 watt light bulb), but they pro­vide voice and data con­nec­tiv­ity to places that have had no access to the rest of the world. These sys­tems are typ­i­cally used by illit­er­ate cit­i­zens, so cur­rent traf­fic is mostly voice, and it typ­i­cally stays within the vil­lage and the sur­round­ing area. How­ever, our sys­tems pave the way for entre­pre­neurs to intro­duce solar-powered thin clients and servers and estab­lish Inter­net cafes and charg­ing stations.

This emerg­ing ecosys­tem opens up new worlds and enables small vil­lages to pro­vide e-learning, e-health and finan­cial edu­ca­tion to their chil­dren. As these chil­dren and their fam­i­lies learn to read and write, the sys­tems will see more broad­band traf­fic. Learn­ing will pro­vide more oppor­tu­ni­ties and choice. Expos­ing rural com­mu­ni­ties to accu­rate infor­ma­tion assists democ­racy by con­vert­ing apa­thetic cit­i­zens into con­tribut­ing and informed vot­ers. We’ve seen sparks of this in 2009, par­tic­u­larly in coun­tries deal­ing with cor­rupt vot­ing sys­tems. Rural com­mu­ni­ties are the next untapped mar­ket for wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion: the next bil­lion sub­scribers will not be com­ing from urban markets.

2009 was the year that green-powered tech­nol­ogy was finally rec­og­nized as a huge untapped mar­ket with unlim­ited poten­tial. As fossil-fuel based tech­nolo­gies strug­gle with higher costs and a finite cap on their poten­tial, I see renew­able tech as the next wave of sup­port for pow­er­ing voice/data com­mu­ni­ca­tions. There are already solar pow­ered phones, mobile charg­ers and lap­tops. Open source soft­ware like Linux on thin clients that use much less power will become more wide­spread, par­tic­u­larly in emerg­ing economies in Cen­tral Asia, South­east Asia, Latin Amer­ica and Africa.

2010’s ICT mar­kets will con­tinue to grow expo­nen­tially, with some ven­dors con­tin­u­ing to focus on the shrink­ing returns of urban mar­kets. These ven­dors are not accept­ing the new econ­omy with its green-powered poten­tial. China and India are the top two fastest-growing mar­kets, and their need for power is huge. The Copen­hagen Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence did not suc­ceed in mak­ing the impact it should have: no one even men­tioned the pol­lu­tion and health haz­ards attrib­uted to the tele­com and inter­net indus­tries. The renew­able sec­tor of this indus­try will still be a slow starter, even though the tech­nol­ogy has been rec­og­nized as sig­nif­i­cant in 2009. Real impact, anec­do­tal evi­dence, and sig­nif­i­cant deploy­ment won’t begin until late 2010, once early adopters report their find­ings. The par­a­digm shift to sus­tain­able power is still five years away.

Broad advances in mobile, net­works and reviews—a new Face­book challenger

Steve Gha­reeb, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Spe­cial­ist & Rev­enue Gen­er­a­tor, Chicago

A career busi­ness devel­op­ment exec­u­tive, I have helped com­pa­nies find and real­ize sig­nif­i­cant new rev­enue growth for the past 20 years. Most recently, I have spe­cial­ized in work­ing with soft­ware and hard­ware star­tups. I use Web 2.0 sites to stay cur­rent with mar­ket and prod­uct trends and to deter­mine where the next oppor­tu­ni­ties will emerge.

Web 2.0-enabled col­lab­o­ra­tion will unlock exten­sive value, but this will take time. For exam­ple, I encour­age my teams to launch wikis for prospec­tive clients to share infor­ma­tion, sta­tus and ques­tions eas­ily dur­ing the prospect­ing process. When we win the work, the wiki seam­lessly tran­si­tions to a project tool. My Web 2.0 obser­va­tions and pre­dic­tions for 2010:

Ethics and Integrity in pro­tect­ing cor­po­rate con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion will have to take on a greater empha­sis, as tech­nol­ogy will not be able to address much of the infor­ma­tion exchanged over social net­works. I believe com­pa­nies will wake up to this and start address­ing it.

Fil­ter­ing through what is “real” and “what is not” will get clearer in the next year. Not sure exactly how that will hap­pen but believe it will be part tech­nol­ogy and part evolv­ing social pro­to­cols of what is accept­able in the var­i­ous mediums.

Clear’s 4G wire­less push will drive a com­pet­i­tive upgrade in mobile and res­i­den­tial broad­band for both access and speeds by all providers (wire­less, cable, DSL). This will cre­ate many new oppor­tu­ni­ties for both busi­ness and con­sumer Web 2.0 appli­ca­tions, espe­cially those that are mobile but require more bandwidth.

Google’s Android will also push mobile apps across the board for all phone plat­forms. The appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment will become sim­pler and more wide­spread, and the appli­ca­tions will take off and become very spe­cific to user needs.

Mobile Web apps for input and feed­back will make some huge strides for­ward. They will get con­sid­er­ably eas­ier to find, view and use.

Consumer/Pur­chaser reviews will explode in 2010. It is com­mon and use­ful today but not every­one knows it yet. The word is spread­ing like wild­fire. Ama­zon reviews are a great source of info for vir­tu­ally any con­sumer prod­uct whether you buy from Ama­zon or not. I am curi­ous to see what cen­tral­ized resources develop for the sale of com­mer­cial B2B products.

Another social net­work­ing tool to chal­lenge Face­book will show up and begin growth with early adopters and the younger gen­er­a­tion of users.

Con­tent deliv­ery mod­els will get sig­nif­i­cantly refined with ROIs based on some sort of rev­enue. It may be indi­rect forms of rev­enue but it will become more mea­sured, stud­ied and accountable.

More media con­tent will become subscription-based, espe­cially in vertically-oriented con­tent deliv­ered via Web and e-readers. Ubiq­uity of read­able con­tent across devices will accelerate.

Gov­ern­ment Web 2.0 infor­ma­tion, appli­ca­tions and use will also explode. Sig­nif­i­cantly more use­ful infor­ma­tion. Iron­i­cally, this will start with the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment and trickle down to state, county and local levels.

Old media strange bed­fel­lows strike back—mixed results for Cor­po­rate Web 2.0

Richard Miller, Ph.D., Mar­ket­ing & Web Busi­ness Strat­egy Executive

I’ve been a mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive focus­ing on dig­i­tal solu­tions and inno­va­tion for over 20 years. I have been con­stantly involved with help­ing large orga­ni­za­tions build their busi­nesses by adopt­ing technology-driven inno­va­tion. Over the past few years, I’ve advised large orga­ni­za­tions, small busi­nesses and indi­vid­u­als on the value of Web 2.0 and the impor­tance of actively man­ag­ing the process for their busi­nesses, their pro­fes­sional and per­sonal lives, and the human fac­tors dri­ving adop­tion and change.

In 2010, old media will take more rad­i­cal steps in an attempt to sur­vive. They will form niche alliances that would have been pre­vi­ously unheard of, and they will declare war on the aggre­ga­tors with cre­ative solu­tions (e.g., by block­ing links to their content—an ‘all or noth­ing propo­si­tion’ rec­om­mended ear­lier by Mark Cuban). News chan­nels and their news orga­ni­za­tions will not sur­vive when they strive to look the same—by sim­ply putting all of their con­tent online and giv­ing it away. News­pa­per, tele­vi­sion and radio Web­sites have cre­ated a same­ness that’s unsustainable.

The pil­lars of social net­work­ing, such as Face­book, LinkedIn and Twit­ter, will con­tinue to solid­ify their posi­tions through increased adop­tion by the pub­lic. How­ever, pres­sures will increase on them to get paid for their ser­vices. Some of the pil­lars’ new paid ser­vices will drive con­sumers to more niche play­ers that deliver value that’s more eas­ily under­stood by indi­vid­ual niche users.

Large com­pa­nies will con­tinue to exper­i­ment with their social media busi­ness mod­els, but in most instances they will see only mod­est suc­cess. How­ever, those com­pa­nies will begin to under­stand the emo­tional ben­e­fits that vir­tual con­nec­tions pro­vide indi­vid­u­als, and they will learn new ways to bet­ter lever­age those ties. After all, peo­ple are all inher­ently social crea­tures who need to con­nect and engage oth­ers through the weak ties and small touches that Web 2.0 pro­vides. We have become both less con­nected and more con­nected through the advent of Web 2.0. Com­pa­nies will place more value and impor­tance on the ‘social’ part of Web 2.0 and fig­ure out bet­ter ways to include the lost art of con­ver­sa­tion in their mar­ket­ing plans—the art of lis­ten­ing, learn­ing and sharing.

Strong cor­po­rate adop­tion across the board due to solid 2009 gains

Suzy Tonini, Man­ager, Mem­ber Firm Online Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

I cur­rently serve as the com­mu­ni­ca­tions liai­son for 54 Mem­ber firms in over 140 coun­tries and with approx­i­mately 169,000 employees.

My van­tage point for view­ing Web. 2.0 is that I work online for a large trans-global firm. Social media and Web 2.0 are break­ing down cul­tural and coun­try bar­ri­ers to an unprece­dented degree. Peo­ple are meet­ing each other within the firm in ways that would never have hap­pened before: they are shar­ing exper­tise and infor­ma­tion, cre­at­ing a knowl­edge repos­i­tory, and being trans­par­ent in the exchange of information.

Web 2.0 is impor­tant in shap­ing inter­nal global col­lab­o­ra­tion and inno­va­tion, as well as cre­at­ing a large brand pres­ence via Twit­ter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Face­book. These efforts have been ben­e­fi­cial for recruit­ment, attract­ing clients and con­nect­ing with exist­ing clients. In addi­tion, Web 2.0’s reach and cost-effectiveness have been a huge plus in these reces­sion­ary times.

2009 was the year of lay­ing the ground­work for using inter­nal and exter­nal social media. 2010 will see var­i­ous web 2.0 efforts being fine-tuned and much more widely adopted. People’s com­fort lev­els will be much greater, ensur­ing faster adop­tion and more stream­lined processes. Web 2.0 will be on its way of becom­ing as ubiq­ui­tous as email. The mobile web will also became an extremely impor­tant method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, as mobile phones and PDAs become more sophis­ti­cated while steadily lur­ing new adopters with easy to use features.

Focus is on demand dreation and value measurment

Rob Peters, Chief Evan­ge­list for the Rela­tion­ship Net­work­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion (RNIA) & Prin­ci­pal Leader, Bank­ing Prac­tice for Com­puter Sci­ences Cor­po­ra­tion (CSC)

I serve as Chief Evan­ge­list for the Rela­tion­ship Net­work­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion (RNIA). RNIA is a neu­tral work­group. We build and main­tain the Rela­tion­ship Infra­struc­ture to facil­i­tate and mea­sure qual­ity inter­ac­tions between “enti­ties”, includ­ing peo­ple, job posi­tions, work­groups, prod­ucts and assets. We also cer­tify peo­ple who demon­strate mas­tery of aspects of the rela­tion­ship infra­struc­ture. I also have 25 years of busi­ness devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence in con­sult­ing, tech­nol­ogy, & appli­ca­tion outsourcing.

Greater focus for most com­pa­nies will be on demand cre­ation through use of social media & Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies. The old way of mar­ket­ing and sell­ing is not very effec­tive or effi­cient for most indus­tries any­more. Busi­ness lead­ers must have key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors that mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of Web 2.0 inter­ac­tions and 2010 is the year where adop­tion and mea­sure­ment become more strongly inte­grated. Bet­ter use of mea­sure­ment tech­niques on the cause and effect of “Earned Atten­tion” in the gen­er­a­tion of rev­enue and profit will top of mind.

Renowned “DRIVE” author, Dan Pink states that in the knowl­edge econ­omy, peo­ple are moti­vated by greater auton­omy, mas­tery, and pur­pose—not by car­rots or sticks. In 2010, suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies will be those that can inter­sect these per­sonal moti­va­tions, Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies, and key per­for­mance mea­sure­ments that result in strong rela­tion­ship cap­i­tal inter­ac­tions that gen­er­ate rev­enue and profits.

The rules of the road for devel­op­ing strong rela­tion­ships online are rapidly matur­ing. In 2010, busi­ness lead­ers will begin to see the need for rela­tion­ship stan­dards so that these intan­gi­ble assets can be man­aged more effec­tively. Web 2.0 tech­nol­ogy is not enough with­out a finan­cial man­age­ment process over­lay­ing these online inter­ac­tions. These answers will not come from the Finan­cial Account­ing Stan­dards Board (FASB), but by Web 2.0 and social media lead­ers from across the globe.

Soci­ol­ogy will become the new economics

Christo­pher S. Rollyson, Founder, The Social Net­work Roadmap and The Executive’s Guide to Web 2.0 & Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, CSRA Inc. & Founder, the Global Human Cap­i­tal Journal

Dig­i­tal social net­works are one of the most impor­tant inno­va­tions in human his­tory because they change the eco­nom­ics of rela­tion­ships. They will dis­rupt every aspect of human soci­ety. I write this to com­mu­ni­cate the impor­tance of build­ing com­pe­tency as indi­vid­u­als and lead­ers. Too many exec­u­tives regard social net­works as a tech­nol­ogy event because they do not under­stand that the cost of dis­cov­er­ing, build­ing and main­tain­ing rela­tion­ships is falling by an order of magnitude—globally. This will increase volatil­ity and make some prod­ucts and com­pa­nies irrel­e­vant with unprece­dented speed.

More­over, the most expe­ri­enced peo­ple within orga­ni­za­tions do not under­stand the social con­text of per­va­sive trans­parency and the new cat­e­gories of rela­tion­ship that social net­works require. Expe­ri­enced work­ers are slow to embrace dig­i­tal social net­works, which are a trans­for­ma­tional new tool that will drive pro­duc­tiv­ity through the roof for those that see the oppor­tu­nity and use it. Adop­tion within the orga­ni­za­tion will require aware­ness of social inter­ac­tion, which busi­ness has for­merly con­sid­ered as periph­eral at most. Soci­ol­ogy will rapidly become the new economics.

Analy­sis and conclusions

Writ­ing as the Edi­tor in Chief, I am very impressed by the diver­sity and power of con­trib­u­tors’ insights. Depend­ing on where you sit in the web of the global econ­omy, any of these could hold tremen­dous oppor­tu­nity or threat to your business.

• The Euro-centric world that was enabled by the levers of the Indus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion is rapidly mor­ph­ing to a mul­ti­po­lar world. Ian’s and Jeanne’s insights drove this home.
• Bil­lions of peo­ple are access­ing the Inter­net, and new tech­nolo­gies are emerg­ing to enable them to com­mu­ni­cate. Social net­works cre­ate a dig­i­tal social con­text that can bring peo­ple together, espe­cially peo­ple who are sin­cerely inter­ested in oth­ers and cul­tur­ally astute.
• Indus­trial Econ­omy mar­ket­ing will rapidly become an anachro­nism, and CMOs must astutely accept this and turn it to their advan­tage. Ran­dall, Ken and Richard shared diverse thoughts on this. Tac­ti­cally, mar­keters must shift from talk­ing to peo­ple to encour­ag­ing them to talk among each other. I look for­ward to learn­ing more about Ian’s dig­i­tal sales­per­son idea.
• There will be exten­sive exper­i­men­ta­tion with dig­i­tiz­ing soci­ol­ogy, and the RNIA is one fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple (dis­clo­sure: I was an early contributor).
• A key means of unlock­ing the eco­nom­ics of social net­works is encour­ag­ing many-to-many col­lab­o­ra­tion, as Ken pointed out. To enjoy the ben­e­fits, orga­ni­za­tions must enable emer­gent orga­ni­za­tion, which is not in their com­fort zones. Auton­omy is an enabler. It ener­gizes people.
• Although social net­works will ulti­mately change our world, smart exec­u­tives will real­ize, as with all other major dis­rup­tions, they must walk a tightrope: adopt­ing the dis­rup­tion aggres­sively while man­ag­ing their legacy busi­ness processes and inte­grat­ing wisely.

Back­story

The Global Human Cap­i­tal Jour­nal decodes global trans­for­ma­tion trends for CEOs, CMOs, CIOs, and we have focused on Web 2.0– and social network-driven dis­rup­tion and oppor­tu­nity since 2006. To cel­e­brate accel­er­at­ing adop­tion of social net­works, I asked my LinkedIn Group, CSRA Inno­va­tion, to par­tic­i­pate in this col­lec­tive crys­tal ball gaz­ing ini­tia­tive. I man­aged the whole process within LinkedIn, with assis­tance from Google Docs.

This project itself bears tes­ta­ment to the power of dig­i­tal social net­works. Our con­trib­u­tors are extremely lim­ited in time and atten­tion, but the work processes and tools enabled us to make it hap­pen. Some not-so-obvious points: cre­ate groups with trust and pur­pose. CSRA Inno­va­tion is exclu­sively focused on enter­prise social net­works, and this was our first col­lec­tive project, which will serve as an exam­ple for oth­ers. A com­mit­ted group becomes an exper­tise plat­form, which requires some orga­ni­za­tion to unlock. More­over, it was an emer­gent process: asked about the group’s inter­est, designed the project and put it out there. Con­trib­u­tors deliv­ered!Christo­pher S. Rollyson is man­ag­ing direc­tor of CSRA, a man­age­ment con­sul­tancy that advises enter­prises and star­tups on Web 2.0 strat­egy. He is also edi­tor of the Global Human Cap­i­tal Jour­nal and Founder of the Executive’s Guide to Web 2.0. See his pro­file, con­tact Chris or leave a com­ment below.