The Strategic Value of Social Networking systems

Went to the London TED Salon on Monday night - series of interesting talks but the one that stood out for me (in terms of new technology strategies) was Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy. For two reasons:

(i) He is always an entertaining speaker

(ii) He has taken on Behavioural Psychology for Advertising almost as a Pauline conversion. ( We shared a stage in Nice last year and Rory uttered not a peep on it then )

Anyway, as part of his talk he put up an interesting slide (see above) about ways of Making A Difference, a good old 2x2:

High Cost, High Impact - Getting Strategy Right - despite being rude about strategists, he noted that getting the strategy right has a huge impact.

High Cost, Low Impact - Consultancy - A cheap (or is that expensive ) laugh here, but the point is well made - often consulting work is not useful or is ignored. for a whole variety of reasons (a thought - is strategic consultancy therefore marginally more valuable than an other? )

Low Cost, Low Impact - Trivia - aka all those campaigns on Twitter, for example

Low Cost, High Impact - ? - Rory's point was this is the area of the cumulative impact of lots of little things. He had no name for it and asked the audience for ideas (trying to avoid calling it a Nudge then, Rory? ).

His view is that real organisational success is actually far more due to getting thsi arae right than what the Big Dogs decide, but is downplayed as otherwise said dogs couldn't justify their gravity defying salaries. He called for organisations to have Chief Detail Officers (they are often called COO's, you know.....)

What interested me most though was Joanne Jacobs pointing out later that, in theory, social media and social networks are really optimal for delivering this level of impact. We kicked around why that might be, and conclusions were that Social Media:

(i) Lowers the transaction costs of receiving data about what is required

(ii) Ditto, makes it cheaper/easier for many of these small detailed things to act in collaboration (think of the the very simple algorithms that do complex tings like make a flock of birds or school of fished turn in unison), thus amplifying the impact

(iii) Execution is simplified as it is cheap and fast to communicate actions and get feedback.

So, what to call this quarter then - how about Social Services?