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The Future of Collaborative Networks
clipped from ostatic.com
Rather than focusing on socialization, one to one interactions and individual enrichment, businesses must be concerned with creating an information fabric within their organizations. This information fabric is a federation of content from the multiplicity of data and application silos utilized on a daily basis; such as, ERP, CRM, file servers, email, databases, web-services infrastructures, etc. When you make this information fabric easy to edit between groups of individuals in a dynamic, secure, governed and real-time manner, it creates a Collaborative Network.
This is very different from social networks or social software, which is focused entirely on enabling conversations. Collaborative Networks are focused on groups accessing and organizing data into actionable formats that enable decision making, collaboration and reuse. Collaborative Networks will increasingly be critically important to business and organizations by helping to establish a culture of innovation and by delivering operational excellence. Compare the consumer-oriented social networking benefits on the left below, with the group/business oriented ones on the right:
Social Networks' Characteristics Collaborative Networks' Characteristics
One to one Group to group
Social interaction centered Objective and content centered
Achieving personal objectives Achieving group objectives
Individual enrichment Operational excellence
Results immeasurable Results measurable
