A guest post by Haydn Shaughnessy.
People are saying that 2012 is the year of social business—making social sound like one more passing fad. In fact, when you look into the background of what goes into the “social business movement,” the threads reach back a long way, giving social business far more momentum and much deeper roots than many people realize.
There are three major strands in this infographic I helped produce for social business platform Global Dawn:
Technology—which has been pushing businesses towards greater openness and collaboration for a decade. It has its roots in open source, reaching back to the early 1990s.
Marketing—Since the 1990s, marketers have been trying to go social, first with loyalty programs and now with social media.
And then there’s the pure strand: The Social Enterprise is reflected in good corporate social responsibility. That reaches back to the old mutuals, organizations that did pretty well through the recession.
The implications are that companies need to think more broadly about their social business strategies, and now just confine themselves to doing social media in the enterprise. In essence, they need to look at what additional rewards employees and customers might be looking for, in return for participation with brands. The added reward we call “shared value,” indicating that in a world where the “share” is king, sharing has to have tangible value.
The infographic was produced by Haydn Shaughnessy and graphic artist Lulu Penney for Global Dawn, the social business platform company due to make its debut March 1.
Haydn Shaughnessy is a writer and advisor who specializes in understanding the personal, cultural and strategic dynamics of change. Trained as a historian and sociologist, right now he is focused on three areas: the social web, the transition to social business, and the development of the Elastic Enterprise. His book on the Elastic Enterprise, written with Nick Vitalari, is published later this month.
