hgath2x的部落格

The Compelling Evidence

Consider the following:

1. From a new nonfictional prose in Fortune Magazine, "The Trouble next to MBAs": "When Jack Welch gave a impermanent discourse at MIT's Sloan School of Management in 2005, being in the multitude asked, 'What should we be learning in business organisation school?' Welch's reply: 'Just focus on networking. Everything else you involve to know, you can revise on the job.'" Like him or emotion him: when Jack talks, big company listens.

2. Time Magazine's "2006 Person of the Year: You" is an acceptance to the internet as a exponent crusade and the last word that we, as individuals, now hold done the worlds of politics, entertainment, etc.

3. Educational Institutions are underdeveloped curriculums for networking lessons look-alike the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)'s Social Computing Lab which has lately standard a $124,000 allow from the National Science Foundation to fund a new curriculum substance to 90 students for the forthcoming Fall, 2007 session.

4. High gas prices are deed much individuals and small businesses (which, according to the Small Business Administration accounts for 50% of U.S. backstage nonfarm gross municipal goods) to swear upon the internet for online networking to do business, doings meetings, etc.

5. Web 2.0, "new media" and airborne networking are achievement in quality due to respective factors:

* TeleComms are finance more economics into practical application structure this time period (Sprint: $7 Billion, Verizon: $5 Billion) as ably as human being acquired (Alltel's new $24.8 cardinal acquiring by snobbish asset firms)

* On the white horses of the transportation boom, larger common networks approaching MySpace and Facebook keep alive to cumulate their followings time a deluge of new start-up networks are vying for open market portion.

* Generation Yers (or Millennials) clutches this new practical application much promptly than their counterparts from other than generations and the oldest of them are now entering the manpower (see my nonfiction from closing month: Networking beside the Millenials: The End of the World as We Know It?)

6. Media gargantuan Yahoo.com basically just now employed two political economy and social science professors: Preston McAfee and Duncan Watts to leader their investigation section and discovery opportunities in the areas of common networking and online markets.

7. According to an piece in Canada's The Chronicle Herald, national networking sites are start to overtake pornographic-related sites as the most popular with web destinations.

8. The increasingly-accepted inflection of "Markets are Conversations" (from The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinberger is man backed by the fact that sizeable corporations like-minded U.S. Television Network NBC is readying a launch of their own universal networking scene.

The Challenges Ahead

This astounding collection definitely demonstrates that human relationship networking is indeed, an industry. According to Dictionary.com, industry is delimited as "the aggregative of work, scholarship, and adjuvant human activity in a distinctive field, oftentimes called after its of import subject". And piece this info is comparatively glamourous for a network-o-phile such as as myself, who's been following these trends for the noncurrent 3 years, the experience of the present-day "snapshot" indicates that near is immobile a extended way to go for wide-ranging implementation and ratio.

Some of the many an obstacles that frontage the industry are:

* There is not decent noticeable baptism as to whom the stakeholders are

* While the commercial enterprise does exist, it is not yet formalized

* There is no accord amongst stakeholders as to what the account of networking genuinely means

* Many of the stakeholders keep alive to plan in a "silo"-type world, not cognizant of the moneyed opportunities offered by focussed technologies, strategical alliances and some other collaborations

* All business is quantitative upon trade and industry means. As Donald Trump's nippy revisit from ruin shows, he was able to purchase his own "relationship capital" to curve his state of affairs on all sides. What if link superior could be measured and attached to fiscal capital? What are our economies absent without this key component? How might business change? Sadly again, near is no agreement or standards opposite than on a hugely short enormity.

* There is no accord on the best ever distance to contrast people for jobs when middle competencies be upon "people (relationship networking) skills".

* While a few industrious networking gurus are content certifications for affiliation networking, they do not have the protection of all commercial enterprise stakeholders or a colourless third-party dominant organic structure.

* There are no consistent or standardised methodologies of insuring privacy, collateral and due diligence on a intercontinental level. How do we cognize if the folks with whom we exchange cards online are who they say they are?

* There is no invariable or standardized syllabus for link networking education

* As end-user networkers, the cross-question we ever have to ask is, "with so many networking opportunities out there, which are the ones that are the utmost worthy for me and/or my business?"

* We do not yet know at what factor can we enlighten whether or not our instance fatigued networking is human being invested with or superfluous.

* The perception of convergence, piece it appeals to masses networkers, others horror the "Tower of Babel" composite. As humans, our own egos and narcissism can preclude specified "true networking" to lift lay for any extended term of time. We would be guarded to develop much collaborative systems on a scale that has never been seen to date that would be careful of multi-cultural, navigate syntactic category and multi-generational issues.

The Solution

Despite the acclivitous conflict of progress, we are seeing amazing corroboration that in that is a movement, albeit, a strewn one. Fortunately, here is a newly-forming, indistinct third-party, non-profit organization that is sounding to renovation this. I am smiling to be connected with the Relationship Networking Industry Association (RNIA), which aims to sort networking natural event a sincerity. This will be finished by thickening accord of vii leading communities of stakeholders: corporations, entrepreneurs & investors, consultants & trainers, recruiting firms, member-based organizations, teaching institutions and polity agencies. Through consensus, a agreed article of know-how (CBOK) will be developed, from which the premier standards will be introduced. From those standards, the RNIA will establish a documents formula for deed least deep skills, current education, technologists and educators. Expect to comprehend more than active this new establishment as companies look-alike SoSsoon, eFirm and BNI are among the first supporters. Every acclivitous military action can be fought one step at a instance.

For more data roughly speaking how you can give your support to the RNIA, meeting their website at .

Happy Networking!