Hi Steve,

Yes indeed, innovation in the consumer space around social media is quickly finding its way into the business arena. As you say, it is going to have to, as the next generation of employees will 100% expect to use such tools in their jobs.

The more these tools are used, I agree that the more value could be attributed to ECM, as ECM will become a more intrinsic and valuable tool within the organisation.

I think it could also potentially make key members of staff more valuable that heavily engage social media tools in the workplace to share their knowledge and experience with others, help predict trends, connect and help colleagues, fuel innovation, really maximising their knowledge ... the kind of staff that if they left the organisation would in reality have an impact on the bottom line, even if that impact is difficult to quantify.

That's the problem, we don't really have a way to attribute a realistic value to:
* Information assets (both tools and content);
* People who sit at the heart of social collaboration and networking within an organisation and play a proactive part in maximising the organisation's knowledge and information assets.

I have previously written a post on this (http://mcgratha.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/recording-human-capital-and-information-as-assets-in-the-balance-sheet) where I came to the conclusion that it was hard to envisage how it would be feasible for organisations to list human capital and information as assets in the balance sheet.

However, I am starting to have second thoughts on this. Although their value may not be actually recorded as assets in the balance sheet, I think their value will be a lot more tangible than it is now. At Logica where I work, we are trailing a predictive and collective intelligence tool (from consensuspoint.com) to predict future technology trends, engaging staff across the organisation.

I think that many more tools will emerge that leverage social media and collective intelligence ... and key contributors will be obvious (and more valuable?)

Regards

Adrian

p.s. I haven't started using this collective intelligence tool in Logica yet ... I guess I better start!