It's no secret that Gen Y lives and breathes social media. And while some businesses consider it a time-sink, others are looking to capitalize on this generation's skills to further its business goals. That's where Larry Gee, a professor at San Jose State University, comes in.

CIOs in the enterprise must realise Web 2.0 is not simply a tool to lure Gen-Y employees, and must be made an important priority in the workplace.

Early this year, executives at Philips, a global healthcare, lighting and consumer lifestyle business, initiated talks on selecting and deploying an enterprise 2.0 suite for its 100,000 employees worldwide.

Enterprise 2.0 strategies are becoming more popular among companies today, but there are serious logistical and legal challenges along with the expected benefits of using social collaboration tools.

3M's reputation for innovation is well established, but the company wanted to include more staff in the ideation process. Traditionally, access to the company's annual Markets of the Future brainstorming sessions was limited. By employing a new internal social networking platform, 3M was able to foster creativity and collaboration among all its employees around the world. In the two weeks the tool was open to employees, it attracted more than 1,200 people, who generated over 700 new ideas, which resulted in nine new markets for the company to explore.

Sure, companies have started using Web 2.0 tools, but one man says we've only seen a glimmer of the serious change that they're going to bring to the way we do business.

A few years ago, companies were grappling with how to harness Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis and social networks inside the enterprise. Over time, on a departmental level, business leaders would buy these technologies with or without IT's blessing to help meet their internal collaboration needs.

This week represents an important inflection point for the Enterprise 2.0 market, a set of software vendors that sell social networking technologies to businesses. Analysts say the number of competitors will consolidate in the coming year as Microsoft captures greater market share. The start-ups that will survive must carve out a longterm place for themselves by building applications that are far more innovative and cheaper than those of the incumbent software giant.