The Social Enterprise

Businesses are discovering the collaborative power of social networks. And employees are

Businesses are discovering the collaborative power of social networks. And employees are reaping the benefits

In the digital age, businesses for whom the lingua franca is knowledge have a problem: Too much information spread out among too many sources, and no good way to connect the right knowledge holders together to create real wisdom. The result is that digital knowledge does not get passed between people effectively, and businesses lose out. Of course the problem isn’t really new; communication gaps have been the bane of doing business since the first misdirected memo (probably dating back to ancient Egypt). More recently, technology platforms such as Intranets have been employed to provide corporate-wide solutions.

But these days, the exponential growth of digital information is simply overwhelming legacy collaboration tools and widening the gap between who knows what and how best to use that abundance of valuable information.

Enter the Enterprise Social Network. In much the same way as consumer-facing platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn create millions of user-defined social groups, enterprise social networks allow employees in companies to organize themselves and communicate in a less formal, more flexible environment.

Rather than establishing rigid, top-down, often heavily siloed org chart art of who owns what information, ESN tools let employees create profiles and list details about themselves. In turn, this makes it easier for other employees or working groups to find them by skill or responsibility, or by business unit.