Late last month the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) published an excellent and important report The Social Economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies. If you have an interest in topics such as Social Technologies, Social Business or Enterprise Collaboration then I suggest that you take the time to read it.
The report is full of interesting statistics and analysis. It provides a survey of the evolution of social technologies, describes how social technologies create value within and across industries, reviews how social technologies create value in five industry sectors, discusses the implications of social technologies and concludes with their perspective on the future of the social economy.
McKinsey's estimates on the potential for annual value creation (between $900 billion and $.1.3 trillion) and knowledge worker productivity improvement (from 20 to 25%) are staggering. Even the skeptics must take note of these numbers.
As enterprise adoption rates accelerate and spread from leading to lagging industries we will find what many already know to be true - deploying the technology is the easier part. The bigger challenges include restructuring the organization away from rigid top-down hierarchies, creating a culture that is more open and engaging and re-designing business process to incorporate social collaboration practices and leverage social technologies.
Changing how work is done is hard work. As a friend and colleague of mine is wont to say when we discuss business transformation and the deployment of technology - "the soft stuff is the hard stuff".
If you read the report then let me know what you think. Do you agree with their analysis and estimates? I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
