On the road with an IT ball-gazer: Forget big data, the future of tech is the 'social enterprise'

I spend a great deal of my time out on the road visiting tech firms and tech buyers. By default I spend a lot of time sitting in the back of cars being driven to and from offices and airports. I love my job. That being said, I don't particularly like chatting about my work outside of work situations, as I am aware that there …

[Pete 2]

The perennial question

> businesses will soon need to make the transformation into the Social Enterprise

OK, that extrapolates existing trends. But it will only continue if someone works out how to make money from it. So, the question is: how do people make money from Social Enterprise?

I think we can discount (even more, or targeted) advertising. The more you push unwanted advertisements into peoples' faces, the less they will use a service. What does that leave? Historically we know that after every expansion comes a correction. Maybe the near-future (the next 10 years) sees social media implode under it's own unsupportable weight and the realisation that it's really a bust, since it offers no value.

Personally, I reckon that the next big thing will be something new (like the internet was). Something that few, if any, can foresee - and that nobody thinking about it today is able to determine the consequences of. We probably won't even realise it's "the next big thing" for several years after it's kicked off. Which opens the possibility that it's already here.

[Lottie]

Re: The perennial question

I suppose, regarding Social Enterprise, there will be even more emphasis on brand/ person integration and rewarding brand loyalty with a few digital trinkets? It won't so much draw in new custonmers, but it makes it even more difficult for current customers to defect. I guess if you build in a social aspect to it as well, you have even more "you *could* upgrade to our competitors product, but do youw ant to lose all of your friends on globoforum?"

Of course, I always thought that a social enterprise was a type of business that worked for the good of society. Like The Big Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

B******s

It really isn't - and how come you're touting this 2yrs after everyone else?

[WhoaWhoa]

Is it just me

or is this an empty marketing- / consultant-speak stream of words?

It was frustrating reading the first few sentences all about the writer and still having no idea what he actually did until, the revelation - he /advises/ people.

Oh.

[teebie]

Re: Is it just me

I don't think it is just you.

Initially I thought maybe the author might be worth listening to, because the organisation they work for have a record of making solid, testable predictions with a relatively high success rate. Then I realised that I was thinking of FiveThirtyEight, not 451 Research.

[silent_count]

utilize next-generation synergies

It's not just you. I was thinking large tracts had been generated by:

http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

[Irongut]

Re: Is it just me

Definitely not just you. The whole peice makes little sense but especially this sentence:

"By Social Enterprise, I mean the sweet spot between "social computing" – where we have infinite touch points, dissolving and increasingly irrelevant boundaries, decentralised and at best loose controls, all in an unregulated state where the activity is the outcome. "

The sweet spot between social computing and what? The other thing is not in the sentence. And, what are we dissolving? It is also missing from the sentence.

If I'd written an essay like this when I was at school my english teachers would have failed it.

[Tridac]

Re: Is it just me

"By Social Enterprise, I mean the sweet spot between "social computing" – where we have infinite touch points, dissolving and increasingly irrelevant boundaries, decentralised and at best loose controls, all in an unregulated state where the activity is the outcome. "

More like pseuds corner, if you ask me. Opinions are like ?....

[WhoaWhoa]

OK, just got it

"an IT ball-gazer"

Had been think of the crystal sort, hence confusion.

[shrdlu]

Social Enterprise

Nice concept but the name is already taken. Social enterprises are commercial operations run to achieve worthy objectives. They are often run by charities or nonprofits.

[Anonymous Coward]

the ball swings...

The "people, processes and technology" triangle is a mantra in IT. It sounds very much like technology has had all the attention over the last 2-3 years, but now that the technology (hardware, OSes, networking) are so good/good enough they are becoming invisible (by which I mean everyone has them and you no longer notice them - think smartphones with 3G and WiFi), the pendulum is swinging back to people, and perhaps processes.

Not an app developer, but I would imagine it's still an expensive, time-consuming and labour-intensive process to create rich sophisticated apps that users now expect, often assume already exist. Powerful apps cost just a few pounds/euros/dollars in the respective app stores. How hard can it be to create a mobile app that integrates with sales, stock control, marketing, email, finance, in real time, im complete security...?