Category: Research

By Sonia Carreno

This week at Third Tuesday, Niall Cook, Worldwide Director of Marketing Technology at Hill & Knowlton Inc. and author of the recently released Enterprise 2.0, shared his thoughts on social software and how companies are adopting it around the globe.

The discussion started with an interesting exploration of the “why now” factor for conducting this type of research and the obvious demand for it worldwide. He gave some theoretical background about how technologies required appropriate business climates in order to become fully adopted.

Alluding to the Gartner Hype Cycle that describes the time it takes for technologies to be integrated and adopted, Niall talked about the tools that have been available for some time and the global business environment that has only recently become an ideal climate for convergence and adoption.

 

Technology

Today’s most successful companies have been developed as pure platforms completely content-free for others to fill. Some obvious examples include eBay, Google and Amazon. All of these companies have based their success on providing channels for others to communicate, share, sell or review content.

Business Environment

There has been a fundamental shift in power from:

• Producers of goods to the consumers
• West to East
• Employer to Employee

Niall made a specific point about the employer-employee shift in power that I think resonated with the audience. He said that where it used to be that CEOs could refer to teams as “my people”, today employees have full control over their “ownership” and feel that they are renting out their skills (on their terms) to the employers for a time that they feel is appropriate. In this shift, the CEO becomes a Chief Engagement Officer whose responsibilities are more focused on relationships and collaboration vs. hands-off leadership and control.

Here are some other interesting points discussed at the presentation:

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