Within a company, a well-tuned online social network can enhance the company's collective knowledge and sharpen its ability to act on what people know in time to be effective. We have long recognized that this kind of network is critical to an organization.

Creating these opportunities to connect is often the stated or unstated purpose of facilitated off-site meetings and other communication initiatives. However, the half-life of connections made at these meetings was very short until online technology provided us with a means to support the network over time.

Benefits of a Social Networking Site:

• Ensure knowledge gets to people who can act on it in time.
• Connect people and build relationships across geographic and disciplinary boundaries.
• Provide an ongoing context for knowledge exchange that can be far more effective than traditional memos.
• Attune everyone in the organization to each other's needs .
• Multiply intellectual capital by the power of social capital, reducing social friction and encouraging social cohesion.
• Create an ongoing, shared social space for people who are geographically dispersed.
• Amplify innovation – when groups get turned on by what they can do online, they go beyond problem-solving and start inventing together.
• Create a community memory for group deliberation and brainstorming that stimulates the capture of ideas and facilitates finding information when it is needed.
• Improve the way individuals think collectively – moving from knowledge-sharing to collective knowing.
• Turn training into a continuous process, not divorced from normal business processes.
• Attract and retain the best employees by providing access to social capital that is only available within the organization.

Portfolios

Quote Request