Shooting £800bn Social Business Elephants

Attended the McKinsey event on Social Business in London Social Media Week yesterday, overall I don't think I heard anything new (the mere fact that McKinsey is sponsoring a session and pushing out a big report tells you Social Business is now over The Chasm, and is something saleable to the blue chips, not an early adoption technology). Even the Elephant idea is old now, we used it in the first "Social Business" talk we did at the first London Social Media week 2 years ago Most of the "ahas" I got, had to do with other implementation lessons (here are some of ours, from our own experience).

The only thing that has changed is that the market now has an £800bn price tag attached to it (a lareg anmount from the rebadging of Enterprise 2.0, I'll warrant). Anyway, here are my notes on "aha's" and "oh really's":

Implementation

- ROI is a hygiene factor. Early adopters are now getting benefits, but no one can cost justify it early up, so...
- Pilots are the best first step
- iPad was the game changer for Social Media in business, it combined power of notebook and ease of use of smartphone
- Social media business software has become far easier (and cheaper) to use (Lotus Notes to Wikis to Yammer)
- The "implementaion gap" is in middle management - juniors know how the tech works, seniors get huge support to make it work. Middle managers have neither. (Also, middle management gets the least benefit/is most at risk from its adoption)

The conflict between IP and getting Social benefits

- Social media "theory" today relies too much on trust, fine in consumer systems but motivation to cheat is v high in business, the problem of how to police this dichotomy is still in infancy. "Most people are good" vs "yes but the few who aren't can cause a lot of damage" issues still not clearly addressed, still a conflict between open-ness and IP protection.
- Key is to draw a hard barrier bewteen IP sensitive areas and those not, can't be at the business bariier.
- Is the user device in or out the enterprise now ( lock down vs user owned or shared resource)

"Oft repeated Theories still to be Proven"

- We are in "A world where abundance is possible". Saying something isn't possible is a clarion call to developing world developers everywhere. But what is abundant? Is the abundant worth having? See my notes on the declining quality of what is abundant in my "Gresham's Law of Information" posts
- "Open source has given a lot, it works" But look at who who makes money - the ones who can wrap up Open Source in their own IP
- 3D printing are next major assault on IP

Some Predictions from the Panel

Social Media Winners - Healthcare, Education, Consumer businesses, Electronics
Losers - Government, Consultants
Next Social Media company to to be acquired? Twitter
Next IPO? - Twitter
Most impactful next gen Social Media technology - Healthcare, User trust/rating

Good news was I saw quite a few faces I haven't seen for ages. And a Free Lunch