To quote Puff Daddy, “It's All about the Benjamins, baby.”

So while I value the organic and human feel of social business as a whole, I understand at the end of the day, the model that will triumph is the one that allows organizations to make the most money. It's the nature of any capital economy.

The incentive, I think, will come as the importance of networks begins to supersede the importance of process. Any attempt to articulate this on my part would really be an echo of this post:

http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2009/11/17/the…

In short, it's my opinion that only when the market demands that organizations act more like humans—and provide products that help to facilitate the transfer of meaning between humans—will we see a large scale shift to more social business platforms…because that's where the money will be.

Of course, I'm on the edge with that theory. There are plenty of people smarter than me that are making the case that enterprise 2.0 is a crock.

But we'll see in a few years. If we listen, the market will tell us.

Thanks again for commenting, and sorry it took so long to respond!

This is a really interesting thesis and I am glad you have started the debate. My view is that while the sands are shifting nothing is settled yet and may not for some time. I have worked in both startups and in large enterprises (where I work now). While it's fairly true you have more flexibility in a smaller organization that doesn't always hold true. Larger organizations can be nimble and they can employ game changing technology. Just last week Dept of Defense announced broadscale use of social media platforms by virtually anyone in the US military. You don't get bigger or more structured than DoD. Also, it is not clear that social media or the emerging 2.0 enterprise (at least yet) necessarily replaces the need for larger scale structured organizations. The reason is that they are driven by profits and large returns. That is the purpose of scale for venture capital as an example. It's not about gaining efficiency although that is a nice by product that adds to overall profit.

In the quote Chris Jones provides he states “How can we hope to make money, when the answer to every problem is to buy and/or build more infrastructure? “
But I would argue companies want this current model because it is an argument for scarcity.

What I believe your saying is move away from that model to one of abundance. Some of capitalism does this now (versus socialism for example) however there is too much profit in the ongoing infrastructure model for companies to walk from that – yet. And this only works in real “Long Tail” environments. There is no “Long Tail” for manufacturing (e.g. cars, consumer products or largescale infrastructure businesses like wireless networks).

So, returning to your central question “So should enterprise organizations “think small” and attempt to act more like their social counterparts to boost profitability as technology and human connection advance?”

Sure they should, if there is enough incentive that it fits a model that generates profits and enterprises can either see this or the market moves to it (so enterprises follow). The challenge for social entrepreneur-ism is how to achieve this and make it attractive enough for those that are less socially inclined, or in business models that cannot currently participate in that way (because they are too big and by your admonition they lack humanity). Unfortunately, that's also a question of greed, which is a very human characteristic, and happens to be the one that large organizations organize around for growth (which is not necessarily a bad thing always).

Great thinking, writing and discussion here, I enjoyed this.

Or do we have to break the machine apart into smaller, more autonomous parts?

By the time the crawler has reached the launchpad, the pickup truck has been there and is already at the next launchpad, ready to go.

But one big pyramid isn't going to work any more. What's scary in this shift though, is that the people at the top have to give up some of their absolute power. And they don't like that…so we're stuck in the status quo until some market force pushes them to change.

Hopefully that comes soon.

Linsssen, who I linked to above, wrote a phenomenal article on politics earlier this year entitled, “Politics – what's the ROI of that, actually?”

http://www.martijnlinssen.com/2010/01/politics-…

Which was actually a partial response to David Armano who wrote in a list of 5 reasons you're failing in social media:

“4. Politics.”

http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2010/0…

…and even though we agree that politicking stupid, many keep doing it.

I think it goes back to the concept of failing fast and failing cheap, something that large organizations have a rough time doing (at least from my vantage).

I'll agree that lack of trust and ego are two huge issues in enterprise.

One of the worst things that lack of trust leads to is micromanagement. This not only frustrates the micromanager (because they aren't really fulfilling their job function), it also frustrates those who are being told what to do. Worst of all, teams that are micromanaged rarely accomplish as much as more freely managed teams.

And about ego…I won't even get started. Although I will say that it's my opinion that the worst display of egoism is when a person in authority makes people under him or her afraid for their jobs if they don't do exactly what he or she wants. It breeds a culture where everyone nods, no one challenges, and ideas stagnate.