Corporate Alumni Networks: Leveraging Intangible Assets - Xing
Corporate Alumni Networks: Leveraging Intangible Assets - Xing
Corporate Alumni Networks: Leveraging Intangible Assets - Xing
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pioneering companies, primarily in the professional services sectors. In recent years a significant<br />
and growing number of corporations have launched concerted efforts to cultivate their alumni<br />
relationships in purposively managed organizations. In answer to the question “Why Now?” it<br />
is necessary to explore the trends and drivers behind this sea change in corporate culture, which<br />
may be reaching a tipping point.<br />
The key factors can be grouped under five subject areas: information technology, the business<br />
environment, the work environment, competitive advantage, and the culture of trust.<br />
1. Information Technology. The basic<br />
underlying or enabling factor in the rise of<br />
interest in alumni networks has been the<br />
revolution in IT, most importantly the<br />
ubiquitous penetration of low-cost and<br />
increasingly robust communications<br />
networks, what has been described as “the death of distance.” <strong>Alumni</strong>, almost by definition,<br />
constitute a widely dispersed population who no longer come to the office, attend meetings, and<br />
work on common projects. It has always been possible to reach out to alumni, but the degree<br />
of difficulty has been lowered by orders of magnitude. <strong>Networks</strong> are the norm and have created<br />
an increasingly small world that becomes denser and denser as the webs connecting its<br />
locations proliferate.<br />
In recent years a significant and growing number of<br />
corporations have launched concerted efforts to<br />
cultivate their alumni relationships in purposively<br />
managed organizations.<br />
They have also led to new forms of social behaviour. The explosion of social networking on the<br />
Internet (MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, etribes) has captured headlines and attracted billions of<br />
dollars from media companies, and is now moving into a phase of intense competitive<br />
segmentation. These “communities” are relatively open and unstructured free-for-alls. But they<br />
represent a major trend that has important implications for traditional business corporations. A<br />
number of web service providers now provide more structured communities either for mature<br />
professionals as individuals, or as third-party platforms customized for the programs of specific<br />
corporations.<br />
2. Business Environment. Globalization has been as pervasive as communications technology,<br />
for the two go hand-in-hand, and has lowered barriers of all kinds – regulatory, economic,<br />
national, and even corporate. More open markets for products and services have brought with<br />
them more open markets for labour and talent: outsourcing is just one example. Intense<br />
competition for human resources has caused leading companies to reconsider how they manage<br />
their workforce and the shifting pool of talent available to them.<br />
4