Changing gears – onto the future of influence and new ventures! | Trends in the Living NetworksTrends in the Living Networks

My readers will have seen a massive focus on Enterprise 2.0 in this blog for the last few months, as I have been preparing, promoting and running the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in Sydney and Enterprise 2.0 Executive Briefing in Melbourne, and writing and publishing Implementing Enterprise 2.0, which is rapidly becoming the reference in the field. Moving forward I will continue to be deeply involved in Enterprise 2.0 through my client work, and will also be releasing a lot more content from the report.

However I am now in the process of shifting gears. Last year I realized that a large proportion of my interests could be encapsulated in two key themes:

The future of the enterprise

The future of influence

The first examines how organizations will evolve and what they must do to be successful in an intensely complex and competitive world. The second looks at how messages disseminate when traditional media is being trumped by social media. Together they bring together the inside and the outside, the twin domains in which open communication is transforming business and society.

Having focused deeply for a while on the future of the enterprise, for the next period my attention will shift significantly to the future of influence.

I have studied and worked on influence networks for much of the last decade. Among other activities, I wrote about influence networks in Chapter 6 of Living Networks and published what was then the first detailed study of influence networks in B2B marketing: How Technology Purchasing Decisions are Really Made. However so far I haven’t written up most of my ongoing research and work in the space.

In coming months I will be creating content, frameworks and a report on the future of influence. In addition, the Future of Media Summit we have run for the last three years simultaneously in San Francisco and Sydney will be replaced by the Future of Influence Summit. Future Exploration Network will be spinning of its events into a new company which will run this event and a lot more. I have a stealth start-up in the influence ratings space which will go into private beta in the next few months. We are also developing a suite of news sites. Lots happening – more on all this announced soon!

Chris Cook

“The future of the enterprise” is not IMHO about “Organisations” such as Ltd Companies, but rather about self organisation within a consensual – ie partnership-based – framework, eg “virtual” LLC’s and LLP’s.
Equally, there is no future for credit intermediation either, due to a systemic shortage of capital.
You might find this article
http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/000085
of interest.
http://rossdawsonblog.com Ross Dawson

Chris, yes it’s about both. Structured organizations will exist indefinitely, and informal organization will rapidly develop.
Having formerly being the global head of capital markets for Thomson Financial, I definitely disagree on the credit intermediation.
I wrote about peer-to-peer banking over three years ago:
http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2006/02/peertopeer_bank.html
Peer-to-peer credit will absolutely grow rapidly as a sector. However there remains substantial value in the intermediary role, prominently in risk assessment and risk aggregation. Just because banks have been crap at this doesn’t mean this role has no value – it’s not going to disappear.