Social networking in business study

AT&T, in association with a consulting firm called Early Strategies Consulting, published a very good short white paper last week called: The Business Impacts of Social Networking. As well as a nice, simple introduction to some of the principles of web 2.0, it lists ten predictions and ten challenges for businesses in this space. I’ve reproduced them below:

Ten predictions:

1. Corporations will change the way they communicate
2. Corporations will change their vision
3. Corporations will change their organization
4. Collective intelligence and customer experience will lead innovation
5. Networking will be key to employee excellence
6. Employee mobility will increase
7. Corporations will adapt their motivation and career path systems
8. IT/telecoms applications will mutate
9. Corporate adoption will happen at different speeds
10. Social networking may allow increased revenue

Ten challenges:

1. Adopt new ROI model
2. Security
3. Intellectual property
4. Adoption
5. Storage
6. Interoperability
7. Speed: will the corporate world ever keep up
8. In direct benefits of social networking not appreciated
9. Risk of loss of employees, losing human and intellectual capital
10. Capturing the value

What I like about the report, apart from the fact that I agree with almost every word, is that it is simply laid out and written in pretty jargon-free, plain language. If you were thinking of creating a PowerPoint presentation on this subject, you could do a lot worse than use the headings from this report as your structure!

I think a good way to use this report would be to send it to some of the key influencers within your organisation who you have identified as being key to getting social media tools onto your intranet, and then follow up with a call and meeting to talk about the contents in more detail.