Last week I joined IBM and a group of communicators from some of New Zealand’s top companies to hear about IBM’s CEO study which identified some key issues facing leaders around the world.

Increasing complexity, the need to be closer to customers, and the need for greater agility are the three things keeping CEOs awake at night.

As the second guest speaker, I was tasked with speaking about social media as a way to get closer to customers, but in many ways social media can help with the other two needs as well.

We all agreed that social media was a great way to sense what was going on in the marketplace – the pain points, the great customer experiences, and the unsought new ideas that come from unsolicited customer feedback.

The question then is, what do we do with all this data?

It’s like businesses have started to develop a nervous system. If a company listens in to conversations online, they start to feel the pain. But do the nerves go all the way to the muscles, to where action can happen?

Social media may have first been seen as an IT issue. Now it’s beginning to be seen as a marketing/comms issue. But how many companies are involving their innovation departments (in fact, how many companies have innovation departments?)

This is not a new idea. Bill Gates coined the phrase digital nervous system in his 1995 book Business @ the speed of thought (when @ symbols were ultra-cool and futuristic). Stephan Haeckl describes a similar idea in the Sense-and-Respond organisation.

But these have been theoretical possibilities. In the next few years, perhaps we’ll start to see organisations that work organically, able to not only sense the message of the marketplace, but respond positively.

Can you think of any examples of companies doing the nervous system thing well?

(Photo: perpetualplum)

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We’re living in the age of the mobile social movement – and I don’t just mean you can get it on your mobile phone.

It’s mobile because you can do a lot of good without being deeply committed to something. That doesn’t mean you’re not sincere, but it means it’s never been more convenient to act on your best impulses.

Examples:

Twestival shows how short the distance is between idea and execution.

In September 2008, Amanda Rose had an idea for a tweetup that collected donations for CharityWater. In February this year, the idea went worldwide.

Because the infrastructure was already setup (Twestival.com used WordPress MU so each city could easily manage its own page), getting your own city was relatively simple. The community was already there, and as you might know, Twitterers tend to be better educated, wealthier and better networked than most people, so venues and other details were easy to organise.

In Auckland we had 28 attendees (not bad considering the short lead time of about 2.5 weeks!) and raised $200 which went towards the worldwide total of US$250,000. See the TVNZ coverage here , and our background post here .

Not only did we raise money, we also got to meet fascinating people, like the Dutch student who’d been in Auckland only two days, and was leaving the next day, but wanted to donate and meet some other Twitter people.

#blackout

If you’re in New Zealand, chances are you’ll have heard of the "online community" causing the government to defer the proposed amendment to the Copyright Act for a month.

Interestingly, opposition had been going some months, with the development of the Creative Freedom Foundation website, but it wasn’t until February 16th that the big idea took hold, and became the #blackout protest .

It’s another example of how people will rally to a cause they believe in, as long as you can communicate it in a simple way that:

• shows how it affects them
• incites curiosity
• takes less than 3 seconds
• is spreadable
• translates to multiple platforms (eg the blacked out profile pictures, the banner ads, and even the placards used in real-life protests)

Notice that both of these "mobile social movements" had one thing in common – there was no big corporation involved. While there were corporate sponsors for individual Twestivals, they were in a service role, rather than telling people what to do.

If a business wants to insert itself into a mobile social movement – or start its own – it will face scepticism if its goal is anything but helping people do what they want to do.

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