Social Business Forum in Milan (2011)

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Who wants to go to Italy in June?   There is a great opportunity to attend the Social Business Forum 2011 which is being held June 8 in Milan, Italy, where a number of thought leaders will be convening to discuss the latest in social business trends.  

This is the fourth such forum, the the last three years being called the Enterprise 2.0 forum, and the name change reflects the general change in terms in the industry.  I was invited to give a keynote, and the title will be “Enabling Quantum Organizations as a New Level of Enterprise Effectiveness” which is about the amazing confluence of ideas that is coming together under the social banner.  It is not about technologies, but about getting back to organizations in which people can use their natural skills of being social.  Instead of working in Industrial Age Organizations that are based on Newtonian ideas of determinism, the new organizational structures are better compared to idea of quantum physics, uncertainty, and unpredictability.

Stability emerges from patterns of interactions instead of the other way around.

These new organizational structures are not new, it is simply that social technology is opening the gates and allowing these organizational forms to exist where never possible before.  The role of centralized management to make connections and facilitate basic communications is no longer needed when everyone can maintain their own social network.  Those familiar with software development might think of this as “Agile Methodology” for the rest of us in business.   Hopefully I will be able to post more on this before June 8.

I am sure the discussions will be great, but if you are still wondering whether you should attend:  did I mention it is in Italy in June?  I am looking forward to it.

———– ADDITIONAL INFO BELOW ———

Over the past three years the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 has been recognized as the main event on collaboration and cooperative business approaches in Europe. In 2011 the Social Business Forum will take this further by expanding the conversation to focus on the most critical organizational, economic and business challenges and opportunities social media in the business environment is creating for companies.

With the help of experts, international speakers and successful case studies, the event will show how a deeper engagement with an entire company’s ecosystem (employees, customers, partners and stakeholders), can revolutionize collaboration, marketing, services and innovation and thus provide a strategic lever for improving productivity, efficiency, responsiveness, and competitiveness.

The program will address collaboration, communication and innovation in the social media era with a strong focus on the following themes:
  • Evolution of organizational, leadership and management models
  • Definition of strategies which connect new ways of interaction enabled by social media
  • Increasing agility and flexibility by connecting customer communities and participative initiatives with employees
  • Engagement with and transformation of individuals into change agents
  • Socialization of customer management, innovation and product development processes
  • Sustainable approaches to the cultivation of communities and customer engagement
  • Frameworks for measuring the return on investment and the vitality of communities
  • Intranet evolution using collaborative tools
  • Tools and methodologies for the analysis of informal exchanges and collaborative networks
  • Improving the efficiency of knowledge work and knowledge sharing
  • Sharing best practices and success stories
  • The integration of social software within the flow of existing applications and practices

Among others on the stage the experiences of Nokia, Webank, Scottish Water, Toshiba and Fujitsu will be presented.

More than 25 speakers already confirmed including Sameer Patel, Keith Swenson, Stefan Lindegaard, Esteban Kolsky, Mark Tamis, Bertrand Duperrin, Andrew Gilboy, George Siemens, Mitch Lieberman, Craig Hepburn, Roberto Masiero, Fiorello Cortiana, Arrigo Andreoni, Massimo Paoli, Norman Lewis, Laurence Lock Lee, Emanuele Quintarelli, Emanuele Scotti, Rosario Sica and many others.

Afterward

The forum came and went.  I met a lot of great people, and discussed all sorts of interesting subjects.  I was Interviewed on “Adaptive Case Management“.  Luis Suarez summarized the forum and especially my talk in his post:   Social Business Forum Highlights – Highlights from Breakout Sessions and Final Keynote.  We launched the Social BPM book there.
My talk was the closing keynote, Enabling Quantum Organizations as a New Level of Effectiveness, and below are a couple of photos from it (take by Luis with his phone):

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