These days lots of businesses are trying to use social media to enhance their online presence. Unfortunately only a minority are really succeeding. Many of these are businesses that are highly digital or naturally global. However many businesses do not fit this model and are working in local markets with non-digital services/products. Can "normal enterprises" exploit social media too or does it only really benefit the global digital elite?

In the second short video "Complex or merely complicated?" in his series on Project Management Michael Cavanagh explains the difference between "complicated" and "complex" and why you really need to know which of the two you are dealing with as a project manager

The Guardian reports on the growth in "Persona Management Software" which individuals use to engage in web conversations using multiple identities on forums and social sites. The aim is to create the perception of a (fake) upswell in sentiment on a given topic (a practice is known as astroturfing). The most disturbing revelation is that the US Air Force have tendered for such software.

In this excellent 3-minute video Michael Cavanagh explains how familiar 'first order' project management tools are vital, and perform well up to a point; but as project complexity increases, less prescriptive '2nd order' techniques must be deployed. The difference in outcomes are as great as playing of basic scales on a piano versus the work of a great virtuoso such as Rachmaninov.

New McKinsey research shows that a payday could be arriving faster than expected. "A new class of company is emerging--one that uses collaborative Web 2.0 technologies intensively to connect the internal efforts of employees and to extend the organization's reach to customers, partners, and suppliers. We call this new kind of company The Networked Enterprise".

Major Article in Stategy + Business Magazine about how companies, governments, and other organizations are working together across traditional boundaries to solve problems which are too big for one enterprise to solve by itself.