Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2011 - (Page 11)

LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES | TONY O’DRISCOLL GOOGLE MAKES US STUPID AND FACEBOOK MAKES US LONELY THE PROMISE AND PERIL OF SOCIAL ENTERPRISE here has been speculation that the next wave of economic value will be driven by converting people’s knowledge into value-added market offerings in near-real-time via digital platforms. The merging of social media and enterprise workflow is foreseen to be the Holy Grail that will allow today’s digital enterprise to maximize performance and deliver on new opportunities. The Promise The social enterprise is expected to allow us to move from protecting stocks of intellectual property to enabling the flow of purposeful value creation. The social platform that supports our digital actions and interactions will allow us to take advantage of the strength of weak ties on an unprecedented scale. The social enterprise is envisioned to become an eBay for ideas and the flow of social interaction is channeled via interest graphs and reputational attribution to create an unexpected union of creative and financial capital that sees, seizes and solidifies a position of competitive advantage in an accelerated way. Sociality sets the table, serendipity is the special sauce and market adoption seals the deal. Those who embrace this social enterprise vision, we are forewarned, are destined for digital marketplace dominance. Those who wait for even a nano-second will get left in the digital dust. Time is the enemy they say. To get in on the opportunity you must act now! So go ahead. Flip the switch. Turn on everything from Twitter to Tele-Presence within your enterprise and hold on for the ride! The Peril Wait, not so fast! Before you flip that switch, there is another argument that paints a very different picture you may want to consider. It is argued that social media and the Web that supports it will not yield a new wave of economic value because it is actually dumbing us down. While we surf the shallows of the Internet, some assert that we are eroding our ability to contemplate deeply or think creatively about a given opportunity or challenge. By opting to use the widely available search box when faced with a question, we are slowly but surely eroding our ability to have an T original thought. The paradox of social media is that the more we are connected to others through the Internet, the more alone we are together in the real world. Google makes us stupid and Facebook makes us lonely. Add to this an endless stream of Tweets, RSS Feeds, blog entries and Four Square Check-Ins and we end up devoid of attention, introspection and the capability for authentic human interaction. The Internet essentially dumbs us down to a point where we become information laborers, working a life of indentured servitude to server owners—pushing bits instead of atoms—yet similarly wondering how we got to this uncomfortable place where we have lost our motivation around work. The merging of social media and enterprise workflow will not create value through collective sense-making but instead create so many layers of interactivity that our actions and interactions become diluted to a point of attention diffusion and interpersonal dissociation. The Solution So what is the answer? Is the social enterprise the Holy Grail that will finally unleash the creative capital that has been laying dormant within organizations or is it a Death Knell signaling the demise of enterprise as the layers of digital connectivity overwhelm our ability to see, seize and solidify competitive advantage? Will social enterprise technologies create a vibrant digital shell that compensates for weakened organizational structures or will it amplify the inadequacies of the organizational structures themselves and grind all action and interaction to a screeching halt? I don’t know ... yet. What I do know is that there are a number of early adopter organizations who are agreeing with the first argument and have taken the proverbial “leap of faith” by placing the bulk of their chips on the positive vision of the social enterprise. Those who are more cautious will either end up lauded for their wisdom in waiting or ridiculed for not jumping on the latest technological s-curve. Tony O’Driscoll is the executive director of the Center for Technology, Entertainment and Media at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. E-mail Tony. 11 Training Industry Quarterly, Fall 2011 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2011

Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2011
From Where I Sit: Back to the Basics
Table of Contents
Ad Index
The Learning GPS
Work that Stretches: The Best Teacher
The Promise and Peril of Social Enterprise
Technical Training: How is it Different?
Companies Press 'Play' on Training Games
Redefining the 'e' in e-Learning
Essential Components for Effectively Training a Global Workforce
Five m-Learning Considerations for Your Talent Management Strategy
Instructional Design: Learning Meets Technology
Improving Training: Thinking Like a Game Developer
Casebook: Pfizer: Moving Product Sales Training Online
Why is Mobile Learning Not More Popular?
Tweet Suite
Company News
Closing Arguments: The Three T's

Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2011