Connecting Organizational Silos: Taking Knowledge Flow Management to the Next Level with Social Media

MORE SOCIAL OR MORE TECHNOLOGY

A lot of the success of social media is based on the connection of what we are good at. Since the early times of man, we have been social and using tools that scale social interaction to wider audiences than ever before. It is the point, when people really realize this power, that they become intrigued and start looking for ways to leverage it.

One question for the future will be: How will those two areas develop in relation to each other? Will technology take over more and push the social bits aside? Or, will we see a renaissance of social interaction driven by smarter technology that does actually try to get out of the way as much as it can and do its job more silently in the background?

There is a balance that needs to be hit. In Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow, I called it the human–technology continuum. If you look at the recent success of Apple versus Microsoft, for example, it can be explained by setting more focus on the social side and less on technological features. Part of the success of iPhones and iPads (apart from great marketing campaigns, of course) was the fact that those devices introduced new levels of simplicity. They passed a threshold of ease regarding use of mobile devices and were able to get enough people to experience their devices hands-on in stores. I once watched an older gentleman have his first run with an iPad and, walking slowly out of the store, he murmured with disbelief that, “This is really magic.” I have ...