As CEO you should ask Marketing for its web 2.0 ideas

The odd thing is that marketeers in general aren’t your biggest fan if you pitch web 2.0 solutions with prospects. You could ask why? After all it’s widely seen as one of the most influential trends that affect the communication and interaction with clients and prospects of companies and organisations. Web 2.0 is a term describing changing trends in the use of internet technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, information sharing and most important collaboration among users. It has firstly been addressed by Tim O'Reilly during a conference in 2004. One of my favorite articles is written by Robert D. Hof in Business Week of June 20 2005 ‘the future of tech – The Power of Us – Mass Collaboration on the internet is shaking up business’.

A must read for every CEO because basically web 2.0 is not only about marketing. According C.K. Prahalad ‘…it’s about the democratization of industry..and it’s all about co-creating unique value with customers’. It can be very scary and requires a mind shift for traditional marketeers that got saturated with mass marketing techniques. They need to overhand the full control on their brand and get used to peer power and learn smart how to ‘use internet-powered services to tap into the collective intelligence of customers and prospects’.