The Business of Influence

When George W. Bush was inaugurated for his second term in January 2005, no one uploaded a video to YouTube.

When Italy beat France to win the 2006 FIFA World Cup final, fans didn’t Tweet. Not once. No one in Europe mentioned it on Facebook. No one captured Fabio Grosso scoring the winner on an iPhone. No one jumped on Gmail to commiserate with French friends. No one used BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) to celebrate with Italian friends.

Social media have progressed incredibly quickly and organizations have had to grapple with the challenges and identify and pursue the opportunities.

But things began to get serious during 2009 as it became increasingly apparent that social web and related technologies could transform the way organizations go about their business beyond the domains of marketing, public relations and customer service. It might even redefine what it means to be in business.

By September 2011, when I addressed the executive summit at Dreamforce (the annual Salesforce.com conference), this radical landscape had been labelled with a distinct call to action – socialize the enterprise.

But what does social business mean? Where do you start? How do you transform the organization to secure the competitive advantage quicker than the also-rans?

As these are just the questions I sought to answer in my book, and as the Influence Scorecard remains one of the few comprehensive frameworks to socialize the enterprise, I’m excited to have launched a new consultancy designed to help our clients answer these questions and put the answers into effect – Euler Partners.

Why Euler? Well network science is integral to this new frontier, and the renowned 18th Century mathematician Leonard Euler pioneered the field. In short, we’re big fans.

If you’d like to find out more, if you want to explore the ramifications of social business for your organization, if you think you might be a potential Partner or alliance partner, please do get in touch.