Did you know that on average Internet users now spend more time on social networking sites than using e-mail! It’s only a matter of time before these sites make their impact felt on companies, their processes and their operating methods.
Viadeo, Facebook, LinkedIn, ... CrossKnowledge has been quick to take an interest in these new modes of communication, certain that they’ll improve the effectiveness of teaching methods and the development of students’ skills. They will generate profound and enduring changes in companies, processes and leadership models. Implementing these changes may meet with reluctance and require risk-taking, but there will be significant gains in productivity and agility for companies which take this route.

How do attitudes to social media impact companies? What can we expect from current and future tools? What position does management find itself in when the virtual world penetrates the real world to such an extent? To look at these issues from every possible angle, CrossKnowledge asked the opinion of five observers from very different fields: a publisher of Web 2.0 solutions, a consultant specialising in social networks, an HR executive, a sociologist and a teacher. These five complementary points of view have enabled CrossKnowledge to detail and analyse the impact of social networking on a company’s strategic vision, structure and leadership.

Social media are about more than just technology, they’re also all about combining social interaction and content creation: they use collective human intelligence, in the spirit of online collaboration. Consequently, the impact of professional networks will change the actual structure of corporate strategy.

The culture of exchange and openness encouraged by social networking sites enables companies to accelerate their decision-making processes, and increase their capacity for innovation and commercial productivity; social networks boost a company’s competitiveness by providing it with improved responsiveness. Far more than just a technological revolution, the predicted arrival of the company as community translates above all into a cultural change. By creating a networked organisation, social media encourage the lasting participation of employees, clients and partners, which in turn prompts reflection on both management’s role in the corporate structure and the form that training takes.

Could this be a pivotal moment, with companies having to review their training frameworks to take into account the emergence of new fields of communication and ways of accessing skills?

To order the CrossKnowledge white paper, "The company as community: the impact of social media on the corporate world", for free, click here