Social Roots Excerpt

From the forward of my new book, Social Roots:

I have been working in the fields of innovation, collaboration, and social media with international clients in diverse industries like: communications and high tech, telecommunications, and financial services for over twenty years. What I have learned from the diverse leadership roles, client projects etc. is that there are some constant realities in play.

First, innovation excellence is driven by the passion of its leaders and their tenacity to achieve a vision that stretches everyone’s imagination. The stories in this book are exemplary innovations that have helped shape our increasingly connected and highly virtualized world. In the last book I wrote with my co-authors, John and Joanne Girard, Business Goes Virtual, we examined the forces at play in collaboration, social media and virtual worlds and researched how organizations are using these tools for improving their business goals.

Now that a year has passed, it is increasingly clearer to me that there is a more fundamental economic shift underway and virtualization is a key innovation factor but the glue growth factor is influence networks and the increasing power they have and will have as the world economic structure increasingly shifts to new business metrics like: return on collaboration (ROC) with underpinnings in social capital theory, while other organizations like IBM like to call this return on contribution (ROC).

We call this connected new world order the Influence Economy where who knows who, who is doing what, who can help you, or what you know, or increasingly where you are determines your influence and value.