NACD Directorship – The Unsociable Boardroom: A Costly Strategy for 2014

The Unsociable Boardroom: A Costly Strategy for 2014

Social Boardroom

Directors need to understand how strategies are being applied or affected by the social world.

Or as I like to say “Directors need to make friends with Social Media if they want their strategy to be relevant in 2014”

As a board leader a half decade ago, you might have believed that emerging social technologies such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ had no place in the boardroom. Social media platforms appeared to have no relation to financial performance, nor were they considered strategic business drivers, and therefore were not part of the boardroom agenda.

In 2014, the corporate boardroom is being bypassed by the investment community in recognizing the strategic importance of social media to corporate performance. Investors are analyzing and interpreting “big data” derived from social media as predictive tools. In 2013, 11 percent of Twitter’s revenue was derived by licensing data culled from its massive store of user data. Many firms are using this information to inform strategy and decision making. Both Twitter and @StockTwits have built a category of investor relations to connect investors to equities. [Read more…]