CEOs Battle to Keep Up With the Pace of Change
The IBM Global CEO Study reveals a dramatic increase in the number of global business leaders who see important change ahead, and also highlights how the ability to absorb and manage change is widening the gap between winners and losers in the global economy. CEOs reported a surprising level of optimism about change as an opportunity to build new competitive advantage. Overall, 83 percent of surveyed CEOs expect substantial change in the future, an increase of 28 percent in just two years. However, CEOs report their ability to effectively manage change is increasing at a far slower pace.
Collectively, CEOs set their organization's ability to manage change 22 percentage points lower than their expectations for the level of change they will have to manage - - a ‘change gap’ that is widening. CEOs point specifically to their own customer base as the source of the most important changes they will have to address, as two new and more demanding classes of customers emerged: the ‘information omnivore’, and the ‘socially-minded’ customer. Of all the trends identified in the study, surveyed CEOs plan their most substantial increases in investment in response to these customer sets.
Social Networking Applications in the U.S. Take Hold and Market Experiences 191% Growth in 2007
Enterprise social networking had a break-out year in 2007 with much faster than expected growth as leading adopters started to reveal their early successes and a number of robust enterprise solutions emerged. While the market is still serviced by a wide variety of small players there was significant consolidation through mergers, acquisitions, and new products from existing players. Additional observations of the social networking applications market include:
As an emergent market, the growth rate is high and spread unevenly between a variety of small vendors and a few larger vendors who represent a relatively large percentage of the market today. While 2007 saw some consolidation, IDC expects that 2008 will see even more.
There is considerable functional adoption as companies deployed social networking solutions to address a wide variety of specific business challenges spanning HR, marketing/sales, engineering, channel management, and customer service functions.
Social networking market growth will be moderated by cultural and resource limitations. Many companies will deploy social networking applications and see few benefits because of the lack of understanding or comfort with the openness required for social networking to be successful.
The higher than expected market adoption in 2007 has pushed long-term projections higher as well. While this forecast projects both slow and aggressive growth scenarios, the projected size of the market in 2012 is expected to be $1.3 billion.
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