The ROI of social technologies

It is hard enough to convince any management to invest on new technology what more Web 2.0 or social network tools. The connotation and assumption that such tools are something that nice to play with or tools for younger generations do not help at all. So to present the ROI for introducing such a thing is really something else. In the world where bean counters are the order of the day it is not only a challenge but an almost impossibility. Not only that the idea of the need for organization to embrace socialization as a good strategy would be difficult. No matter how it has been proven it would still be difficult. Research after research has been cited to the effect, just like this one, still it is a hard sell. By no means it is just any research but research conducted by MIT. The only way to do it is just to follow Nike ‘Just Do It’. To quote the report:

‘MIT research shows that 40% of creative teams productivity is directly explained by the amount of communication they have with others to discover, gather, and internalise information. In other MIT studies, research shows that employees with the most extensive digital networks are 7% more productive than their colleagues. Furthermore, those with the most cohesive face-to-face networks are 30% more productive.’

In the world of knowledge management we have to accept that something is just given. We know that knowledge sharing would bring benefit to any organization. The same with creating an environment in what ever form where conversation happens naturally.

Is Baby Boomer any different?

When we talk about change in any form today most of the time we’ll also talk about the different ways how to manage change for different generation of the population. Especially, when we talk about change in relation to new technologies. We use classification like netgen, gen y, gen x, virtual aliens and baby boomers. Without much thought because of the perceived prevalent used we assume that the younger generation is the main primary users of new technology, especially internet technology, and the so called baby boomer the laggards. I also just jump into the bandwagon without much thinking about it forgetting relatively my own age. After being virtual resident for a while now I realized this is not true at all. In fact I am in virtual groups full of these baby boomers not only that, they are using social tools like Facebook, Linked, and Twitter as well. Amazingly most of them that I know have their own blogs that they update almost daily. So when I came across this new report from Forrester Research I was not surprise. It was reported that more than 60% of the baby boomers actual actively consume the social create content in 2008. Let me quote few paragraphs of the write-up of the report.

‘In 2007, the percentage of Boomers consuming social media was 46% for younger Boomers (ages 43 to 52) and 39% for older Boomers (ages 53 to 63). By 2008, those numbers increased to 67% and 62%, respectively.

The number of Boomers responding to content posted online, as opposed to just passively consuming it, is also going up. For example, the proportion of older Boomers responding to content doubled from 15% in 2007 to 34% in 2008. According to Forrester, this is now a percentage that's high enough to target this group with a social application.

Joining social networks is also becoming a widely popular among the younger Boomers. Today, almost one in four younger Boomers are active in social networks, up from 15% in 2007’

So I would not make any assumption on this again and be careful about simply ignoring them it all equation.