A rather popular topic these days is the risks to organizations of using social networks. An article in today’s Australian Financial Review examines the issue in detail, with an interview of me (excerpted below) hopefully balancing out the other opinions expressed in the article. Unfortunately the way I was quoted seemed to overemphasize my cautions relative to the benefits I discussed.

I am finding it very tiresome to continuously hear security consultants and vendors with big PR budgets go on endlessly about risks, without ever mentioning business benefits. This drone gets into executives’ heads, and as a result discussion of social networks – and many other potentially valuable business tools – focuses on risk and not benefit.

My Enterprise 2.0 Governance Framework explicitly addresses risks, benefits, and actions. It is critical to acknowledge, understand, and minimize risk, but executives are equally culpable if they ignore business value as if they ignore risk.

In the interview with the journalist I basically said that transparency increases business value, however providing transparency must be done intelligently and strategically. The danger is that executives become frightened of the risks, so unintelligently don’t provide transparency, and thus negatively impact the company’s value. Effective business leaders understand that in a complex world business value requires a highly nuanced approach, rather than the black and white view of organizations that is so frequently peddled. Excerpts from the article are below:

When one of Australia’s leading evangelists for Enterprise 2.0 acknowledges “there are some real dangers in an increasingly transparent world”, it’s worth listening.

Ross Dawson, chairman of the Future Exploration Network, is a great fan of online collaboration and communication, but admits there are limits. While research has revealed “a positive impact on stock prices where there is more transparency”, he warns that companies which transparently reported their customers’ private information, for example, would quickly see the opposite effect on share prices.

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In organizational network analysis circles, an MIT study on how people find information is often cited. The research showed that in an organization, people were five times more likely to go to people than to databases to get answers to their questions. So knowledge workers’ productivity is strongly related to their social networks, in terms of who they know who can help them, and whether there is sufficient trust and reciprocal value in the relationship that they get a response.

It is far more efficient and effective for people to be able to identify the most likely people to help them rather than barraging everyone with the one query and hoping that someone will respond. The early knowledge management systems were largely based on broadcast systems within organizations to be get help on particularly issues. In many cases companies used broadcast emails to get help.

People’s email inboxes have long been so overloaded that broadcast emails are rarely welcome. Certainly the highest leverage approaches to connecting knowledge effectively are in enhancing organizational networks, in terms of how well people know each others’ expertise and have strong social bonds. However now that a whole layer of new communication tools has emerged, there are new possibilities. Twitter in particular is already used within communities to ask questions and get ready responses, and many Twitterers will attest they have got great answers to pressing questions. So the question arises as to whether Twitter should be used as an organizational tool.

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On Friday I caught up with Euan Semple in London. It was great to meet, as we’d just conversed over email, voice, and video up until then, and of course had him present over video at our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in February.

It recently occurred to me that when I catch up with interesting people, I should make a brief video at the end of the meeting to summarize the most intriguing ideas that had come up in the course of our conversation. This is the first time I have tried it, though I hope to do this a lot more regularly now. One of the biggest benefits is capturing for myself the most interesting insights from the conversations I have. It’s also great to share these with others.

In this case I did a very poor job of making the video. First the tape ran out in the middle of the conversation. Then I rewound the tape, and ended up going over the beginning of the earlier conversation. Hopefully I have learned my lesson from this – there are still some very interesting points made by Euan in the video. Forgive the discontinuities.

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An article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled Facebook up to it by doyen technology journalist Graeme Philipson gives a great review of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum from last week, excerpted below.

Until now, Web 2.0 applications have mostly affected individuals. Companies and government organisations have largely retained more traditional methods of communication. The primary collaborative technology for most organisations in the modern world has become email, which is very much a Web 1.0, or first generation, internet application.

That is now changing. Web 2.0 applications are increasingly finding their way into the enterprise. This phenomenon has, inevitably, been dubbed Enterprise 2.0. That term was invented last year by Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee, who has emerged as something of an international authority on the subject. Last week I heard a remarkable presentation by Professor McAfee on the state of play with Enterprise 2.0 worldwide. His talk was beamed in via Skype from Orlando, Florida, where he was attending an enterprise search conference. He spoke to 200 of us assembled in a conference room in Sydney’s Luna Park to discuss Enterprise 2.0 in Australia.

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The event I attended where we heard Professor McAfee’s words of wisdom was the grandly named “Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum”, run by Sydney company Future Enterprise Network (FEN). FEN (futureexploration.net) is run by Ross Dawson, who has become one of Australia’s leading internet gurus in recent years. He also runs regular events on the future of media.

In addition to the insights from Andrew McAfee, the article covers the points raised by Euan Semple, who drove the BBC’s move into social media, and the many real live practitioners of Enterprise 2.0 who are in Sydney. It discusses the reluctance by some to embrace these technologies, but also suggests that this shift is inevitable. This is probably the best one-stop review of the event – have a read!

In the wake of the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, Smartcompany magazine has published an interview with me titled Web 2.0: Our winning ways. It begins:

Entrepreneur Ross Dawson is a leading international expert on the way businesses are using web 2.0 in Australia – and he has good news.

After lagging behind our international counterparts in the enterprise 2.0 stakes, Australia is starting to catch up in its use of blogs, wikis, social networks, social search and virtual worlds.

Ross tells Amanda Gome what’s hot, how businesses are benefiting – and what’s destined for the 2.0 dustbin.

A few brief selections from my responses to the interview:

At last I am very encouraged. The response from people at the conference shows there is a lot happening. Up until now organisations have been shy about putting up their hands and talking about what they are doing. Up until now there has also been disparate things being done by different users in different departments. But now things are being squarely addressed by executives at the top of the company so people are prepared to talk about it.

Companies are striving to create more value from the participation of their employees, customers and suppliers by using web 2.0.

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