This discussion is interesting within the context of the value and role of social media within the enterprise, a hot topic given the prevailing view that it is nothing but a distraction!
So What?
Trust (lack of) is a major barrier within and between enterprises and anything that can be done to foster trust has to be a good thing so maybe this is the key benefit for investing and ecouraging social media witghin the enterprise?
A recent in-person conversation with Robin Harwood of NESTA raised the lack of trust as a key issue when trying to bring together businesses to collaborate in NESTA open innovation programs, particularly when IP is an issue.
Although social networks will not solve the IP issues maybe they can be positioned as a tool to help build the personal trust necessary before embarking on projects like this? Alternatively, maybe the project’s need to rise (phoenix-like) from the social networking rather than be ‘forced’ upon the participants by the corporations or third-party?
There are too many project’s happening today where there is insufficient trust ‘capital’ to succeed but the project will meander to relative failure rather then facing the facts and accepting that without sufficient trust it cannot succeed.
Maybe the true role of social media within the enterprise is to create cross-boundary trust (internal and external). If this happens then the projects will flow and maybe more likely to succeed as a result.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Trust & Social Media in the enterprise
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2 comments:
Hi Brendan,
To quote Elvis (!), and the Cluetrain Manifesto, 'We can't go on together with suspicious minds'. I think most business collaborations start off very sceptical thinking, how are they gonna rip me off, how can I protext my interests. However as business becomes more distributed and collaborative, we are going to have to learn how to suspend our suspicion (just a little at first) and let the ideas and innovations flow.
A lot of what we do at nesta is structuring projects which appears to be about managing IP, but actually I think it is far more about building trust.
Regards,
Roland
Thanks Roland, I do agree. Maybe we should look more closely at social networking tools to help with this ‘trust building’? Could NESTA provide such an environment and encourage its use by project participants and anyone involved with NESTA? There are now very workable solutions on the market so it is not a big investment in technology, though more so in management, promotion and facilitation. Blogging is fine but it is limited and not universally appealing or ideal to build a community and engender trust.
I would suggest this is worthy of NESTA’s attention so throw it into the NESTA idea ‘hat’!
See you at the TBL event next week, Best - Brendan.
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