Social Nation

I've recently added reading notes on Social Nation to my site - with some reluctance, as it's tainted by a mercenary agenda: to convince readers that social media is good and that they should hire the author and his company to consult with them to take advantage of it. As such, it has to be approached with a careful eye, to consider whether what the author says is objectively valid, or is merely a sales pitch. Even so, there's enough helpful content to make the book a worthwhile read, so long as you understand its bias and consider the alternative argument - that social media isn't a panacea.

Taken out of the context of specific technologies, a "business" (company, corporation, firm, etc.) is not a collection of capital assets, but an group of employees who happen to use those assets to deliver value a group of customers. Each of these groups are social "nations" unto themselves, and value is created where one nation connects with the other, directly or indirectly.

By the traditional methods of business management, considerable effort is placed on preventing, rather than facilitating, interactions among the members of these groups as well as the interaction of one group with another - which is ultimately to the detriment of the firm. This is seen in the stem reaction of a firm when an employee strays outside of their "box" (their assigned role, tasks, and area of authority) and the terror and the prospect that customers might be listening to what anyone other than the official spokesperson has to say about the firm.

While this is not necessarily a consequence of technology, technology has done much to thwart the barriers that have been put in place among people: customers can now go to the internet for information about a firm (rather than having to reply entirely on advertisements to form an opinion), and employees are interacting with one another outside of the constraints of the org chart.

And the author's thesis, with which I am inclined to agree, is that this is a good thing - that the interactions among the "nations" of people who constitute a business surfaces ideas an innovations that were formerly squelched, in greater quantity and with greater frequency than had previously been possible. And more, that the company that leverages this interaction stands to gain significant competitive advantage over others that continue to resist.