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CIOs who block social media will halt innovation

BI based on the stories that social media is telling

CIOs and IT managers who block access to social media will lack innovation and affect personal branding, says one creative director.

Speaking at the Gartner BI summit in Sydney last week, Thinque’s creative director, Anders Sorman-Nilsson, said the disruptive nature of technologies like cloud computing and social media is only the start of a new set of challenges that will plague the CIO in 2011.

“We need to upgrade the way we think to look at disruptive global trends like cloud and collaboration, because change happens without your approval,” Sorman-Nilsson said.

“...With big data that we’re seeing, the future is more about context rather than content.”

Sorman-Nilsson, who spoke at a recent CIO event, said CIOs are lagging behind and must embrace a new view of social media.

“I asked a group of CIOs who [of them] blocked Facebook and about 50 per cent raised their hands,” he said. “I then told them that Syria and Iran did too.”

Rather than trying to block all social media usage, Sorman-Nilsson said it was important for CIOs to embrace the use of sites like Facebook and Twitter, with the business leader saying that enterprise processes and social media are becoming a force to be reckoned with.

“Social media isn’t a fad,” he said. “It’s a whole new way of communicating. Social and business are merging.”

Understanding who is responsible for leading such initiatives is important, according to Sorman-Nilsson, who said getting an accurate picture of an organisation was far more important than crunching the numbers of social analytics.

“You should be asking in your organisation, who should be leading some of these social initiatives?,” he said.

“Social data is less about ones and zeros and more about a story.”

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Facebook, Gartner

Comments

1

Troy Junge

Thu 03/03/2011 - 09:12

For what purpose must CIO's embrace social media, because after reading that I have learned nothing.

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