The Global Human Capital Journal

2009 Predictions and Recommendations for Web 2.0 and Social Networks

Volatility, Uncertainly and Opportunity—Move Crisply while Competitors Are in Disarray

Now that the Year in Review 2008 has summarized key trends, we are in excellent position for 2009 prognostications, so welcome to Part II. As all experienced executives know, risk and reward are inseparable twins, and periods of disruption elevate both, so you will have much more opportunity to produce uncommon value than normal.

This is a high-stakes year in which we can expect surprises. Web 2.0 and social networks can help because they increase flexibility and adaptiveness. Alas, those who succeed will have to challenge conventional thinking considerably, which is not a trivial exercise in normal times. The volatility that many businesses face will make it more difficult because many of their clients and/or employees will be distracted. It will also make it easier because some of them will perceive that extensive change is afoot, and Web 2.0 will blend in with the cacaphony. Disruption produces unusual changes in markets, and the people that perceive the new patterns and react appropriately emerge as new leaders.

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Year in Review—2008: Social Media Out of the Gate and in Full Run

Editor's Choice of the Global Human Capital Journal—Accelerating Disruption and Opportunity

What a year! When I wrote in the 2007 Year in Review that 2008 "would produce an unimaginable degree of change," I had no idea how right that would prove to be. We saw major disruption in the global economy, and the U.S. presidential campaign closed the year with a major political upset, largely at the hand of social media. That said, I still believe that 2008 will prove to be a transitional year and that more profound change is on the way.

Look in any direction. From a macroeconomic perspective, the global economy is showing itself to be pervasively interdependent. The U.S. successfully exported its real estate finance crisis without even working up a sweat. I don't believe that anyone really knows where all the bodies are buried yet, and central bank chairmen, national presidents and global organization leaders are still holding their breaths, even though they smile bravely on television. Barack Obama's successful U.S. presidential campaign showed that a new era of politics is upon us; as we'll discuss below, it will likely redefine how "democracy" operates. A new phase of disintermediation is afoot.

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Web 2.0 Case Study: Barack Obama's Use of Social Media

Conventional Wisdom Scuttled—Disruption Preview—Business in the Batter's Box

Barack Obama's presidential campaign was more than a major social media milestone because it ushered in a new relationship model among leaders and their supporters. Due to social media, an unprecedented number of individuals had a new kind of active, direct role in Obama's campaign; moreover, I predict that the Obama campaign and imminent administration will change citizens' and consumers' expectations of "leader" and "follower" roles in government and business. Amazon.com changed consumers' expectations about retail in general—information on demand, reviews, unbelievable variety at low prices—and a significant portion of Obama supporters will want to continue their support to "make the change happen." These supporters will bring their changed expectations of action and collaboration to their vendors. That means your company.

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Enterprise Digital Social Networks: Executive Adoption Snapshot 2008

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 this month, and I covered CEO Dan Nye's recent interview. I will synthesize clients' experiences and LinkedIn executives' remarks in three sections: 1) Executive Summary, 2) remarks from Dan Nye, Patrick Crane and Steve Patrizi, and 3) Analysis and Conclusions.

I would also be remiss if I did not share some of my experience around what kind of services enterprises will require to excel in this new environment, so after Analysis and Conclusions, I have provided initial thoughts gleaned from my experiences with clients thus far working with Web 2.0.

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The Nonpartisan Global Human Capital Journal Endorses Barack Obama for U.S. President

Cites International Mindset, Judgment and Flexibility—Ambiguity and Global Transformation Form the Backdrop

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.

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How Social Networks Make Markets More Efficient for Buyers and Sellers

Using LinkedIn to Change the Rules of Business Development

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.

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Inside the Innovation of the New Fall 2008 Executive's Guide to LinkedIn Seminars

Multidimensional Innovation—Inviting Collaboration—Crowdsourcing via LinkedIn

In August, I have been intensely involved in developing the next iteration of executive LinkedIn training (the Executive's Guide to LinkedIn, EGLI), which has proven as illuminating as it has fruitful, so I will share key elements of the quick innovation approach I used as well as how Linkedin contributed to it. I believe that by collaborating with EGLI alumni and other people in my network, I have fielded the most innovative and valuable offering ever. I'd love to get your feedback, too! (links below)

The first seminar series kicked off in March and ended in June, and by all accounts it succeeded in delivering extensive information to relatively large groups in a classroom format (more on the spring/summer series). However, due to the large class size, there was a limited opportunity to draw people out. Actually, we did have significant interaction, but we were limited in how we could apply the information that was our focus.

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San Francisco Social Networking Conference Provides 2008 Mid-Year Adoption Snapshot

Enterprise 2.0 and B2C Web 2.0 Show Serious Traction—But Social Sticky Wickets Remain—How to Trust?

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.

SNC SF 2008 took place July 10-11, 2008 at the UC San Francisco's Mission Bay Conference Center. It was a focused conference that balanced start-ups' and enterprises' innovation—with a dash of perspective from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Social Networking Watch's Mark Brooks. On the enterprise side, GE's Grewal and GM's Denison covered the enterprise 2.0 and B2C Web 2.0 perspectives respectively, while the U.S. Air Force's Adkins presented nascent cross-boundary collaboration in the armed services. Start-ups Twitter, Mowave, Faceforce and many others gave fascinating examples of innovation along several vectors. I beta-released the Social Network Roadmap in my presentation and moderated a panel with Visible Path, Jigsaw and LinkedIn in which we discussed various aspects of how enterprises were using social networks. IBM's Rawn Shah offered a useful network for "social context" for planning and solutions for social networks.

Notable, too, was Daniel Brusilovsky's very lucid presentation, "Social Networks: a Teen Perspective. Daniel is the 15 year old founder of Teens in Tech.

I have coverage of all these tracks, which I'll summarize before Analysis and Conclusions. The reportage follows this convention: the summaries are from my notes of speakers' remarks, and when a sentence is parenthesized, it is a comment. Click on logos for abstracts of the tracks.

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Event Brief: Mashing up Mergers & Acquisitions and Web 2.0 at the AM&AA's Summer Conference

Reports of "Character Building" Market—Significant Parallels with High Tech Bust—Plus, the Emerging Web 2.0 Vein

The sub-prime induced correction of the U.S. financial sector has changed the context around M&A during the last year, and mergers and acquisitions experts met last week to share success stories, lessons learned and admonitions at the Alliance of Mergers & Acquisition Advisors Summer Conference July 22-25, 2008 at Chicago's Wyndham Hotel. I was asked to present a new talk, "Leveraging a Web 2.0 Ecosystem to Grow Your Business," and I had the opportunity to attend some of the other sessions. I'll summarize their key points before adding some thoughts on the promise that Web 2.0 and social networks bring to deal marketing due to significantly decreased transaction costs.

AM&AA members hail from all parts of a rich ecosystem of investment bankers, attorneys, private equity, brokers, intermediaries, CPAs and others who specialize in every aspect of architecting, researching, negotiating and executing deals. To make money consistently in M&A, one needs to know how to identify and manage a wide range of risks. The financial system's painful correction is changing many of the metrics around M&A, but those who can adjust their strategies can do quite well. It's necessary to accept the new conditions and to play by them.

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New Category Debuts on Global Human Capital

"Practice" Will Highlight Behind the Curtain Enterprise Innovation with Web 2.0

I am pleased to announce the creation of "Practice," an exciting new Category on the Global Human Capital Journal. Practice is the first new category I've created since launch in 2005. It will give you behind-the-scenes insights into the innovation I am conducting with clients in my consultancy, CSRA. For example, the new CSRA Social Network Roadmap is attracting extensive attention from Fortune 1000 executives in many industries: utilities, consultancies and market research firms to name three. We will begin using the roadmap to assess, test and scale their companies' use of social networks and Web 2.0.

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World of Mouth Asserts Itself at Web Content 2008 Chicago—Wherefore Art Thou, Control?

Reexamining "Content" in Light of "Conversation"

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.

Something else is happening on the way to the forum, too: opinions about content are gaining more attention than the content itself, according to Day One keynote Dick Costolo. If so, where does that leave people who "manage" content? There is a whole ecosystem of professionals and vendors that manage content according to Web 1.0 rules, and many of them were here, sharing their visions and tactics for embracing Web 2.0. Day Two keynote Jerome Nadel provided a clue: a shift in emphasis to design: since "users" are creating the opinion content through their "conversation," I'll hazard that a key part of the concept of "management" will be providing a better whiteboard that enables people to share what and how they want with whomever they want when they want.

Moreover, everyone had control issues. Speakers as a group did not agree whether consumers were in control now or whether content creators still prevailed. Chris Anderson's adage kept flitting across my mind, "We live in an 'and world,' not an 'or world'." The conversation will not replace content; it will play with it. The two will synergize. As usual, I have summarized the remarks of speakers whose sessions I attended, and I'll wrap with my own Analysis and Conclusions.

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Consumer Disruptors: Healthcare Web 2.0 Innovator Case Study

How Consumer-Generated Content Is Contributing to Transparency in Healthcare

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.

Business Drivers

Consumer-directed healthcare is an attempt to decrease U.S. healthcare costs by giving healthcare consumers (patients) a financial stake in the healthcare they access. At the consumer level, most programs consist of two parts, a high deductible health policy to protect against catastrophic expenses and a health savings account (HSA), which consumers use to pay the majority of their healthcare expenses. HSAs are tax-advantaged: in most cases, the consumer pays for healthcare cost pre-tax (healthcare costs reduce the tax rate). The consumer can save unused healthcare funds for following years.

CDHC will work best when consumers have detailed information about healthcare procedures, outcomes and costs so that they can make better decisions about the type and quantity of care they receive. This is disruptive in many areas of healthcare, where releasing cost and outcome information to the patient is often seen as taboo. Most of the sites below build their business models around advertising and up-selling, as they are free to use by consumers.

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PatientsLikeMe: Healthcare Web 2.0 Innovator Case Study

How a "Facebook for Health Conditions" Is Redefining Privacy and Collaboration

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.

Business Drivers

PatientsLikeMe is a digital social network where patients of chronic, life-changing diseases share detailed quantifiable information about themselves, their diseases and their treatments' effectiveness. The goal of the site is to improve quality of life by sharing information.

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HCAR KnowledgeMesh: Healthcare Web 2.0 Innovator Case Study

New Life Sciences Accelerator Leverages Digital Social Network—Inspired by LinkedIn and Facebook

Business Drivers

The Hershey Center for Applied Research KnowledgeMesh is a new initiative that unites healthcare- and life sciences-focused commercial, academic and government forces in a digital social network. It is a cutting edge social networking and scientific mapping online community that will drive R&D in the life sciences and high tech.

KnowledgeMesh is inspired by Facebook and business executive social network LinkedIn. It is explicitly designed to create and enhance interactions among industry, government, academie, venture capitalists, intellectual property attorneys and the work force.

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Sermo: Healthcare Web 2.0 Innovator Case Study

U.S. Physicians Learn the Power of Professional Crowdsourcing—Consult Each Other in Digital Social Network

Business Drivers

Sermo is a start-up that was founded by a doctor with a passion, to create a professional community in which often-isolated U.S. doctors can advise each other. Once confirmed as practicing physicians, members create pseudonyms that are attached to their specialties. No other information about members is required, but they can volunteer other information about themselves.

The Sermo story reflects the limitless applicability of Web 2.0 collaboration, in healthcare and other industries.

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