The Social Economy; Unlocking Value and Productivity through Social Technologies

McKinsey Global Institute
The social economy:
Unlocking value and
productivity through
social technologies
July 2012

Copyright © McKinsey & Company 2012
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The social economy:
Unlocking value and
productivity through
social technologies
Michael Chui
James Manyika
Jacques Bughin
Richard Dobbs
Charles Roxburgh
Hugo Sarrazin
Geoffrey Sands
Magdalena Westergren
July 2012

The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies
The “social” phenomenon has swept through the popular culture in the past few
years, as millions of people joined online communities and started using online
social platforms. These IT-enabled communities have grown to more than 1.5
billion members globally. This growth indicates the almost primal appeal of social
technologies, which bring the speed, scale, and economics of the Internet to
social interactions. From sharing updates on Twitter to organizing support for
political and social causes to forming entirely new types of communities that exist
beyond the constraints of time, distance, or social group, consumers around the
world have made social technologies a part of their lives.
In this report, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) examines the economic impact
of social technologies. By looking into how social technologies are being used
today and how they are likely to evolve in the coming years in five sectors of the
economy (four commercial sectors and the social sector), we have identified ten
value-creating “levers” that can be used across the value chain, from product
development through after-sale customer service. Importantly, we find that the
use of social technologies to improve communication and collaboration within and
across enterprises could contribute two-thirds of the $900 billion to $1.3 trillion
in value that we estimate can be created across the four commercial sectors
we study.
This level of value creation could have transformative impact across sectors and
economies. But capturing this value will be a challenge for enterprises, primarily
because they will have to transform their organizational structures, processes,
and cultures to become “extended networked enterprises” that connect well
internally as well as with customers and partners. For social technologies to
deliver their potential economic benefits, enterprises must be open to information
sharing and create cultures of trust and cooperation. They must also deal with
significant risks to confidentiality, intellectual property, and reputation. Policy
makers are confronted with similar challenges to ensure that personal and
property rights are protected in online communities. On balance, we believe that
the benefits are so compelling that over the coming years business leaders, policy
makers, and individuals will find ways to meet these challenges.
Preface

James Manyika and Michael Chui led this project, working closely with Jacques
Bughin, Richard Dobbs, Geoffrey Sands, and Hugo Sarrazin. Adam Bird and
Charles Roxburgh also made valuable contributions. We are particularly indebted
to our team leaders—Samantha Test, who helped shape the initial thinking;
Magdalena Westergren, who managed the core research; and Britta Lietke, who
supervised additional analyses and the writing of the final report. The project
team included Rickard Carlsson, Joi Danielson, Milind Kopikare, Eliza Lehner,
Philip Rogers, Monique Sischy, Jay Sung, and Paayal Vora. Geoffrey Lewis
provided editorial support, and we thank the MGI production and communication
staff: Marisa Carder, Julie Philpot, Gabriela Ramirez, and Rebeca Robboy.
We are grateful to our external advisers, Hal R. Varian, emeritus professor in
the School of Information, the Haas School of Business, and the Department of
Economics at the University of California at Berkeley; and Martin Baily, senior
fellow in the Economic Studies Program and Bernard L. Schwartz Chair in
Economic Policy Development at the Brookings Institution.
We also thank McKinsey directors and experts whose insight and guidance
were critical to our work: Karel Dörner, David Edelman, Johannes-Tobias
Lorenz, Johnson Sikes, and Marc Singer. Jaana Remes, a senior fellow at
MGI, also provided valuable perspectives. McKinsey colleagues from several
practice areas gave generously of their time and expertise to guide our sector
analyses. For their assistance in our work in consumer packaged goods, we
thank Jonathan Ablett, Katya Fay, Jonathan Gordon, Supriya Handa, Betsy
Holden, Jeff Jacobs, Shruti Lal, Carl-Martin Lindahl, Jessica Moulton, Jared
Simmons, Vivien Singer, Kelly Ungerman, and Jim Williams. McKinsey colleagues
who provided knowledge in financial services were Elizabeth Abraham, Aser
Rodriguez Alvarez, Adam Homonnay, Rob McNish, Ido Segev, and Lawrence
Wong. In advanced manufacturing, we benefited from the input of Jennifer Brady,
Nadine Griessmann, Sri Kaza, Alan Lau, Hugues Lavandier, Anish Melwani, Mark
Mitchke, Cody Newman, Bryant Shao, Pamela Simon, Melanie Taylor, and Bill
Wiseman. For their guidance about the social sector, we thank Jonathan Bays,
Laura Callanan, Anshulika Dubey, Christy Gibb, and Vivian Riefberg.
We also acknowledge the McKinsey colleagues who contributed their knowledge
of TMT (technology, media, and telecommunications) industries: Abhijit Dubey,
Daniel Hui, Davis Lin, Loralei Osborn, Kevin Roche, Bonnie Shaw, Ari Silverman,
Dan Singer, and Christopher Thomas. In addition, we thank the McKinsey
colleagues who provided their insights about marketing and sales: Rishi Bhandari,
Cindy Chiu, Stacey Haas, Brian Loh, Thomas Meyer, Rebecca Millman, Claire
Pages, Vicki Smith, and Andris Umblijs.

This report is part of our ongoing work about the impact of technology on the
economy. Our goal is to provide the fact base and insights about important
technological developments that will help business leaders and policy makers
develop appropriate strategies and responses. As with all of MGI’s work, we
emphasize that this report has not been sponsored in any way by any business,
government, or other institution.
Richard Dobbs
Director, McKinsey Global Institute
Seoul
James Manyika
San Francisco
Charles Roxburgh
London
Susan Lund
Director of Research, McKinsey Global Institute
Washington, DC
July 2012

Number of social networking users globally
>1.5 billion
Social technologies
today …
Graphic courtesy of Paul Butler, “Visualizing friendships,” Facebook note, December 13, 2010
80%Proportion of total online users who
interact with social networks regularly
70%Proportion of companies
using social technologies
90%Proportion of companies using social technologies
that report some business benefit from them
28 hoursTime each week spent by knowledge
workers writing e-mails, searching for
information, and collaborating internally

… and their
untapped potential
$900 billion–
1.3 trillionAnnual value that could be unlocked
by social technologies in four sectors
1/3Share of consumer spending that
could be influenced by social shopping
2xPotential value from better enterprise
communication and collaboration compared
with other social technology benefits
3%Share of companies that derive substantial
benefit from social technologies across all
stakeholders: customers, employees, and
business partners
20–25%Potential improvement
possible in knowledge
worker productivity

Executive summary 1
1. The evolution of social technologies 15
2. How social technologies create value within and across industries 35
3. How social technologies create value in five sectors 59
4. Implications of social technology 119
5. The future of the social economy 133
Appendix 137
Bibliography 161
Contents

1
Seven years ago, most consumers logged on to the Internet to access e‑mail,
search the Web, and do some online shopping. Company Web sites functioned
as vehicles for corporate communication, product promotion, customer service,
and, in some cases, e‑commerce. Relatively few people were members of
online communities; social networking sites were for college students; chief
marketing officers did not worry about how many online fans “liked” their
company’s products.
While social technologies have swept through the popular culture and are
being adopted across industries, we find that businesses have only just
begun to understand how to create value with these new tools.1
The research
presented here attempts to quantify that value, which we find is potentially on
a transformative scale (i.e., more than $1 trillion annually) and can be realized
across the value chain, not just in the consumer-facing applications that
have been at the forefront of adoption. Most importantly, we find that social
technologies, when used within and across enterprises, have the potential to
raise the productivity of the high-skill knowledge workers that are critical to
performance and growth in the 21st century by 20 to 25 percent.
Today, more than 1.5 billion people around the globe have an account on a social
networking site, and almost one in five online hours is spent on social networks—
increasingly via mobile devices. By 2011, 72 percent of companies surveyed
reported using social technologies in their businesses and 90 percent of those
users reported that they are seeing benefits.2
In just a few years, the use of social technologies has become a sweeping
cultural, social, and economic phenomenon. Hundreds of millions of people have
adopted new behaviors using social media—conducting social activities on the
Internet, creating and joining virtual communities, organizing political activities. All
the rituals and rites in which individuals and groups in society participate—from
personal events such as weddings or daily gossip, to global happenings such
as the Arab Spring—play out on social platforms. Indeed, many behaviors that
sociologists study—forming, maintaining, and breaking social bonds—are now
taking place online.
Social technologies have literally changed how millions of people live. People rely
on their online social connections—often including friends and associates they
have never met in person—for everything from advice on what movie to watch to
positive reinforcement for behavior modification (e.g., diet and weight loss). On
social media, writers who have never been published and musicians who have
1 In this report we define social technologies as IT products and services that enable the
formation and operation of online communities, where participants have distributed access to
content and distributed rights to create, add, and/or modify content.
2 Jacques Bughin, Angela Hung Byers, and Michael Chui, “How social technologies are
extending the organization,” The McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011.
Executive summary

2
never performed in public are now contributing to blogs and posting videos to
YouTube. Social platforms have the potential to tap the great “cognitive surplus”
of society by using leisure time for creating content and collaborating, rather than
consuming.3
Businesses are changing their behaviors as well. In these few short years,
social technology has evolved from simply another “new media” platform to an
increasingly important business tool, with wide-ranging capabilities. Thousands
of companies have found that social technologies can generate rich new forms
of consumer insights—at lower cost and faster than conventional methods.
Moreover, in addition to engaging consumers directly through social media,
companies are watching what consumers do and say to one another on social
platforms, which provides unfiltered feedback and behavioral data (e.g., do people
who “like” this movie also “like” that brand of vodka?).
Companies are also enlisting social technology users to “crowdsource” product
ideas and even to co-create new features. Social platforms have become a tool
for managing procurement and logistics, allowing instant communication between
different parties on B2B supply chains. Perhaps most intriguingly, companies
are beginning to find that social technologies have enormous potential to raise
the productivity of knowledge workers. Social technologies promise to extend
the capabilities of such high-skill workers (who are increasingly in short supply)
by streamlining communication and collaboration, lowering barriers between
functional silos, and even redrawing the boundaries of the enterprise to bring in
additional knowledge and expertise in “extended networked enterprises.”
In this report, the McKinsey Global Institute traces the growth of social
technologies, examines the sources of their power, assesses their impact in
several major sectors of the economy (including the social sector), and analyzes
the ways in which social technologies create value. We also explore social
technology risks and obstacles to adoption, as well as the enabling capabilities
and conditions to create value using social technologies.
Among our key findings:
ƒƒ The speed and scale of adoption of social technologies by consumers has
exceeded that of previous technologies. Yet, consumers and companies are
far from capturing the full potential impact of these technologies. Indeed, new
uses, technical advances, and social business models will evolve—driven by
user innovation and advances in technology. Almost any human interaction
that can be conducted electronically can be made “social,” but only a fraction
of the potential uses have been developed (e.g., content sharing, online
socializing). Today, only 5 percent of all communications and content use in
the United States takes place on social networks.
ƒƒ Several distinct properties of social technologies make them uniquely
powerful enablers of value creation. The most fundamental is to endow social
interactions with the speed, scale, and economics of the Internet. Social
technologies also provide a means for any participant to publish, share, and
consume content within a group. They can also create a record of interactions
and/or connections (a “social graph”) that can be used by consumers to
3 Clay Shirky, Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age (New York:
Penguin Press, 2010).

3The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies
manage their social connections and by others to analyze social influence.
Finally, social technologies can “disintermediate” commercial relationships and
upend traditional business models.
ƒƒ Based on in-depth analysis of usage in sectors that represent almost
20 percent of global industry sales, we identify ten ways in which social
technologies can create value across the value chain. Each industry’s specific
characteristics determine which levers will be most impactful. Overall, we
estimate that between $900 billion and $1.3 trillion in value can be unlocked
through the use of social technologies in the sectors we examined.4
(This
range represents the maximum value that could be created if all participants
fully implemented social technologies—and complementary organizational
changes—and if all time and money saved by social technologies were applied
in the most productive ways).
ƒƒ Two-thirds of the value creation opportunity afforded by social technologies
lies in improving communications and collaboration within and across
enterprises. By adopting these organizational technologies, we estimate that
companies could raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25
percent. However, realizing such gains will require significant transformations
in management practices and organizational behavior. Social technologies can
enable organizations to become fully networked enterprises—networked in
both a technical and in a behavioral sense.
ƒƒ Companies that rely heavily on consumer insights for product development
and marketing purposes have an opportunity to create value by engaging
with consumers on social media and monitoring social media conversations
to generate consumer insights and market intelligence. Companies in the
consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector, for example, have an opportunity
to create value that is equivalent to between 15 and 30 percent of current
spending on these activities. This value is predicated not on use of social
technologies alone, but on creative, thoughtful, and well-executed strategies
that may incorporate other channels.
ƒƒ Individuals and the communities they form will derive much of the benefits of
social technologies. We estimate that today’s free social technologies provided
$40 billion in consumer surplus in 2010, potentially rising to $76 billion in
2015.5
Individuals will also capture additional consumer surplus (in the form
of better products and lower prices) through the deeper customer insights
generated by social technologies and the greater transparency that online
communities provide. Finally, social technologies can empower individuals
to form communities of interest around specific issues or causes, providing
societal benefits.
4 In this report, we use value to be synonymous with economic surplus, not net present value.
5 See Consumers driving the digital uptake: The economic value of online advertising-based
services for consumers, McKinsey & Company for IAB Europe, September 2010. The IAB
Europe report estimates that social technologies account for almost 30 percent of consumer
value derived from advertising-supported online services. These estimates do not include
the benefits that will eventually accrue to consumers from the surplus created by businesses
through social technologies, much of which will be passed on to consumers via lower prices
or better products.

4
ƒƒ Giving social interactions Internet scale, speed, and economics carries risks.
These risks include identity theft, loss of intellectual property, violations of
privacy, abuse, and damage to reputations. Social technologies also can
disrupt traditional business models.
ƒƒ The benefits of social technologies will likely outweigh the risks for most
companies. Organizations that fail to invest in understanding social
technologies will be at greater risk of having their business models disrupted
by social technologies.
Capturing the full potential value from the use of social technologies will require
transformational changes in organizational structures, processes, and practices,
as well as a culture compatible with sharing and openness. As with earlier waves
of IT innovation, it could take years for the benefits to be fully realized, because
these management innovations must accompany technological innovations. The
greatest benefits will be realized by organizations that have or can develop open,
non-hierarchical, knowledge-sharing cultures.
In this report, we define “social technologies” as the products and services that
enable social interactions in the digital realm, and thus allow people to connect
and interact virtually. These are information technologies that provide distributed
rights to communicate, and add, modify, or consume content. We use the terms
content and communications broadly. They include creating a message to be
communicated (a tweet or a blog), adding content to what is already online, or
adding information about content (“liking” a piece of content). Content creation
also includes performing an action that an individual knows will be automatically
shared (e.g., listening to a piece of music when you know your music choice
will be displayed to others). Social technologies allow anyone within a group to
access and consume content or information. They include technologies that
also have been described as “social media,” “Web 2.0,” and “collaboration tools”
(Exhibit E1).
Exhibit E1
Social
analytics1
Social technologies include a broad range of applications
that can be used both by consumers and enterprises
NOT EXHAUSTIVE
1 Social analytics is the practice of measuring and analyzing interactions across social technology platforms to inform decisions.
SOURCE: McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Ratings
and
reviews
Evaluate and rate
products, services,
and experiences;
share opinions
Social
commerce
Purchasing in groups,
on social platforms,
and sharing opinions
Wikis
Search, create and adapt
articles; rapidly access
stored knowledge
Discussion
forums
Discuss topics in open
communities; rapidly
access expertise
Shared
work-
spaces
Co-create content;
coordinate joint
projects and tasks
Crowd-
sourcing
Harness collective
knowledge and
generate collectively
derived answers
Social
gaming
Connect with friends
and strangers to
play games
Media
and file
sharing
Upload, share, and
comment on photos,
videos, and audio
Social
networks
Keep connected
through personal and
business profiles
Blogs/
microblogs
Publish and
discuss opinions
and experiences

Social technologies—the computer code and the services that enable online
social interaction—are, essentially, the product of 40 years of technology evolution
and the fulfillment of a long-held vision of what computers and digital technology
could do. Indeed, from the time that computers moved from punch cards to
communicating terminals, computer users have been finding ways to interact
socially with one another. The earliest academic computer networks had bulletin
board systems that allowed researchers to post information to be shared and
to comment on each other’s content. When the Internet became available to
members of the public, among the first commercial services were those that
hosted interest groups (listservs). The Web’s growth in reach and capability,
and as a medium for interaction, set the stage for the explosive growth of
social technologies.
SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES HAVE BEEN ADOPTED AT
UNPRECEDENTED SPEED AND SCALE
Once the pieces were in place—and after some innovators and entrepreneurs
designed the right formats and business models—social technologies took
off with unprecedented speed and intensity. In fact, social technologies have
been adopted at a faster rate than any other media technology. While it took
commercial television 13 years to reach 50 million households and Internet
service providers three years to sign their 50 millionth subscriber, it took
Facebook just a year to hit 50 million users. It took Twitter nine months.
In May 2012, Facebook logged its 900 millionth user. It is estimated that
80 percent of the world’s online population use social networks on a regular
basis. In the United States, the share of total online time spent on social
networking platforms more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2011,
from 7 percent to 15 percent.6
Moreover, social technologies are replacing other
Web applications and uses; use of e‑mail and instant messaging are off sharply in
the past few years.
This growth suggests social technology’s almost primal appeal. It is fundamental
human behavior to seek identity and “connectedness” through affiliations
with other individuals and groups that share their characteristics, interests, or
beliefs. Social technology taps into well known, basic sociological patterns and
behaviors: sharing information with members of the family or community, telling
stories, comparing experiences and social status with others, embracing stories
by people with whom we desire to build relations, forming groups, and defining
relationships to others.
Social technologies have given these basic behaviors the speed and scale
of the Internet. At virtually zero marginal cost, people can interact with a very
large group of people, across geographies and time zones. Social technologies
have lowered the barriers for joining groups and making social connections; for
example, people who do not know each other comment on one another’s blog
posts or forum contributions. Almost all forms of social interaction—including
negative ones, such as bullying—are possible on social platforms.
Still, despite the rapid adoption of social technologies by businesses, there is far
more opportunity ahead. In a McKinsey survey of executives at 4,200 companies
around the world, 70 percent said that they were using social technology in some
6 ComScore Media Metrix, US, June 2007–May 2011.

6
ways and 90 percent of those said they were seeing some degree of business
benefits. Yet only 3 percent of companies could be identified as fully networked,
meaning that they were achieving substantial benefits from use of these
technologies across all parts of the organization and with customers and external
partners.7
However, penetration and usage are far lower across the millions of
small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Only 31 percent of American SMEs
used social media in 2011.8
Another indication of how much more growth potential social technologies
have is the relatively small, albeit fast-growing, share of total time spent on
communication and content consumption that takes place on social platforms.
Americans spend approximately 11 hours a day communicating or consuming
messages in various ways, including in-person, watching TV, reading, and using
e‑mail. Today, the average American spends about 35 minutes (about 5 percent)
of his or her total time interacting with content and communicating (which does
not capture all messaging via social technologies). This compares with 60 minutes
for e‑mail and 14 minutes for telephone talking (Exhibit E2). Social media is
already responsible for a large portion of growth in Internet use in the past years
and is likely to take share from other forms of communication, such as print media
and telephones. Interactive social features are also likely to become embedded in
broadcast media (radio and television).
Social technologies also have more growth potential in how they are used by
shoppers along the “consumer decision journey.”9
Today, relatively few consumers
rely on information obtained through social technologies as they research,
8 The state of small business report: January 2011 survey of small business success, Network
Solutions LLC and Robert H. Smith School of Business at University of Maryland, 2011.
9 David Court, Dave Elzinga, Susan Mulder, and Ole Jørgen Vetvik, “The consumer decision
journey,” The McKinsey Quarterly, June 2009.
Exhibit E2
Social networking accounts for just 5 percent of the time spent
communicating and consuming media
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
1900
In person
20102000199019801970196019501940193019201910
Social networks
Instant messenger
SMS
Mobile phone
Other Internet3
E-mail2
Recorded music1
TV1
Landline telephone
Radio1
Print
Mail
1 Radio, TV, and recorded music are slightly discounted to account for the time spent using these concurrently with other media.
2 Does not include e-mail sent internally within companies, which is not counted as Internet traffic.
3 Includes all social technologies that cannot be explicitly separated in available data.
SOURCE: Bureau of Labour Statistics; WAN-IFRA; Statistical Abstracts; National Bureau of Economic Research; US Census
Bureau; Radicati Group; Yankee Group; Nielsen; ITU; eMarketer; and others; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Time spent consuming messages by technology type
in the United States
Hours per day
Non-digital
Potential to be socially enabled
Currently socially enabled

evaluate, and consider products to purchase. In the most active category,
electronics, 16 percent of shoppers rely on social input for purchasing decisions;
in home goods, only 2 percent of shoppers turn to online social communities for
advice. We estimate that eventually up to one-third of consumer spending could
be influenced by “social” interactions, which could mean that $940 billion of
annual consumption in some US and European categories could be influenced by
social input.
As social applications migrate to mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and
tablets), consumer uses of social technologies will continue to multiply. More
than six billion mobile phones are in use worldwide, enabling consumers to
socialize online wherever they go and inspiring a new range of social marketing
applications. By September 2011, Facebook estimated that more than 40 percent
of its users were already accessing its service with mobile devices.
SEVERAL DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL
TECHNOLOGIES ENABLE VALUE CREATION
Social technologies have several distinctive properties that make them uniquely
powerful and help explain their rapid adoption and high potential impact.
ƒƒ “Social” is a feature, not a product. Social features can be applied to almost
any technology that could involve interactions among people (e.g., the Internet,
telephone, or television). A social component—a button to “like” or comment—
can be added to virtually any IT-enabled interaction, suggesting an almost
limitless range of applications.
ƒƒ Social technologies enable social behaviors to take place online, endowing
these interactions with the scale, speed, and disruptive economics of
the Internet. Social interaction is a powerful way of efficiently organizing
knowledge, culture, and economic and political power. Freed from the
limitations of the physical world, people are able to use social technologies
to connect across geographies and time zones and to multiply their influence
beyond the numbers of people they could otherwise reach.
ƒƒ Social technologies provide platforms for content creation, distribution,
and consumption. At the same time, they enable new forms of content
creation, including co-creation and transformation of personal and group
communications into content (e.g., a blog posting can be a means to
communicate immediate information, but also accessed later as a piece of
content). Instead of a small number of editors or producers deciding what
content is distributed, any social technology user can create, distribute,
comment on, or add to content. Thus, social platforms can extend the
“disintermediating” power of the Internet to the masses. For example, rather
than relying on intermediaries such as talent agents or record producers to
discover new musical artists, the online community chooses—by downloading
songs or watching YouTube videos. These technologies change not only the
economics of content creation and distribution, but also the nature of content
itself, which becomes an evolving discussion, rather than a fixed product.10
10 See Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes
Everything. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).

8
ƒƒ Social technologies can capture the structure and nature of interactions
among individuals. A “social graph” provides a map of the personal
connections of a person or a group, which, combined with other data, such as
topics these individuals discuss, can be the basis for inferences about groups
and individuals. Social graphs capture important information about which
group members contribute most and have the greatest influence.
ƒƒ Social technologies can be disruptive to existing power structures (corporate
and governmental). Social technologies allow people to connect at a different
scale and create a unified, powerful voice—as consumer groups or entire
societies—that can have significant impact on the ways in which dialogues are
shaped and policy is made.
ƒƒ Social technologies enable unique insights, by allowing marketers and product
developers to engage directly with thousands of consumers and to monitor
unprompted and unfiltered conversations. This can generate more genuine
and timely insights into consumer preferences and trends. Social technologies
also increase transparency—exposing more information about products and
markets, and spreading information about organizations and institutions.
HOW VALUE IS CREATED IN DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES
We have identified ten value “levers,” or techniques, that enterprises use to
generate value from social technologies. These tactics fall into four segments of
the value chain: product development, operations and distribution, marketing and
sales, and customer service. In addition, two enterprise-wide value levers create
value by improving organizational productivity (Exhibit E3).
Exhibit E3
Ten ways social technologies can add value in organizational functions
within and across enterprises
1 Deriving customer insights for product development is included in customer insights (lever 4) under marketing and sales.
2 Business support functions are corporate or administrative activities such as human resources or finance and accounting.
3 Levers 9 and 10 apply to business support functions as they do across the other functional value areas.
Organizational functions Across entire enterprise
Marketing
and sales
Operations
and
distribution
Product
development
Co-create products1
Leverage social to forecast and monitor2
Use social to distribute business processes3
Use social technologies for marketing
communication/interaction
5
Generate and foster sales leads6
Derive customer insights4
Social commerce7
Provide customer care via social
technologies
8
Enterprise-
wide levers
(Social as
organizational
technology)
Customer
service
Business
support2
4
Improve collaboration and communication;
match talent to tasks3
Use social
technology to
improve intra- or
inter-organizational
collaboration and
communication
Use social
technology to
match talent to
tasks
9
10

In the four industries that we have analyzed in detail (consumer packaged goods,
consumer financial services, professional services, and advanced manufacturing),
the estimated total annual value creation potential is $900 billion to $1.3 trillion.
About $345 billion of this value potential would be available from product
development and operations; $500 billion from marketing, sales and after-sales
support activities; and $230 billion from improvements in business support
activities. The value contribution from improved communication, coordination,
and collaboration—potentially two-thirds of all potential value from use of social
technologies in business organizations—is embedded in these projections.
Individual firms can gain even more. In general, the companies that stand to
benefit most have one or more of the following characteristics:
ƒƒ A high percentage of knowledge workers
ƒƒ Heavy reliance on brand recognition and consumer perception
ƒƒ A need to maintain a strong reputation to build credibility and consumer trust
ƒƒ A digital distribution method for products or services
ƒƒ An experiential (hotels) or inspirational (a popular sports drink) product or
service offering
We estimate that consumer goods companies, which have many knowledge
workers and rely heavily on brand recognition, can use social technologies
across all value chain steps. If they do so, we calculate that they can increase
margins by as much as 60 percent, by using social technologies to connect
with customers and to generate sharper consumer insights, as well as by using
social technologies to improve the productivity of knowledge workers. Benefits
of this range apply only to individual firms and not the entire industry, since
they are based on initiatives that increase market share (at the expense of other
players). And, it should be noted, simply shifting advertising and consumer insight
budgets to social media will not suffice; in the past few years it has become
clear that only well-planned and well-executed programs (often incorporating
non-social components such as mass media) will capture the potential value of
A considerable fraction of the $900 billion to $1.3 trillion value potential in these
industries could be captured by consumers in the form of lower prices, higher
quality products, offerings better suited to their needs, and improved customer
service.11
In addition, individuals will benefit from the participation of other
individuals in their communities. For example, consumers will benefit from the
ability to identify a group of like-minded people, to stay in touch with a network of
people, or to access or reach out with a message or piece of content, at almost
no cost.
The social sector, too, can benefit from social technologies. Nonprofit
organizations and other social sector players can use social technologies
to gather information, crowdsource labor and solutions, raise funds,
expand their volunteer networks, build support, educate the public, engage
11 Other consumer benefits (e.g., increased customer satisfaction with better products and
services) are not yet quantifiable.

10
supporters, improve collaboration and communication, and establish
organizational structures.
In broad terms, the value that social technologies can generate in an industry is
determined by fundamental characteristics of the industry. Exhibit E4 illustrates
how some characteristics, such as knowledge intensity, determine how much
relative value potential an industry might have and how other characteristics, such
as the need to protect proprietary information, influence how difficult capturing
that value could be.
THE VALUE CREATION POTENTIAL WITHIN AND ACROSS
ENTERPRISES IS LARGELY UNTAPPED
Our research indicates that there is great untapped potential for social
technologies to improve communications and collaboration within and across
enterprises. We estimate that social technologies can raise the productivity of
interaction workers in large organizations by 20 to 25 percent if they become fully
networked enterprises. Two-thirds of all of the value potential we estimated in
four sectors relate to these enterprise applications (Exhibit E5). This assumes that
social technologies are used by all interaction workers for all relevant activities
and that the time that they save in communicating, finding information, and
collaborating is then applied to highly productive uses. In most organizations,
achieving these conditions will require substantial changes in organizational
structure, processes, practices, and culture.
Some of these gains are predicated on shifting communications among
interaction workers from channels designed for one-to-one communication
(e.g., e‑mail, phone calls) to social channels, which are optimized for many-to-
many communication. Today, a huge amount of relevant enterprise knowledge is
locked up in e‑mail inboxes. As more enterprise information becomes accessible
Exhibit E4
Potential value and ease of capture vary across sectors
Utilities
Energy
Health care
providers
Pharmaceuticals
Education
Telecommunications
Retail and
wholesale
Transportation
Electronics
Consumer
products
Food and
beverage
processing
Chemicals
Construction
Industrial
manufacturing
Professional
services
National
government
Local
government
Media and
entertainment
Insurance
Banking
Software
and Internet
Value
potential
Ease of capturing value potential
Lower
Higher
Relative size of
GDP contribution
HigherLower
US EXAMPLE
Directional

and searchable, rather than locked up as “dark matter” in inboxes, workers
could save not only the amount of time they spend on writing, reading, and
answering e‑mail, but also on the amount of time spent searching for content
and expertise. We estimate that total e‑mail use by interaction workers could
be reduced by 25 percent, freeing up 7 to 8 percent of the workweek for more
productive activities. With internal knowledge and information more available on
social media, a typical interaction worker could reduce information searching time
by as much as 35 percent, which would return approximately 6 percent of the
workweek to other tasks.
However, these benefits cannot be obtained simply by installing social software.
As with previous waves of productivity-enhancing IT, investment in the
technologies has to be accompanied by management innovations to produce real
gains. These innovations usually take years to demonstrate their full potential.
BENEFITS OF SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND
THEIR COMMUNITIES
Individuals are the first and most important beneficiaries of social technologies.
Unless individuals receive value for using social technologies, they won’t use
these technologies, and none of the other forms of value can be created. People
derive great personal satisfaction from the relationships they are able to maintain,
the information they can glean, and the communities they form through their
use of social technologies. Various studies have estimated that the economic
value of this consumer surplus is significant. McKinsey and IAB Europe (Internet
Advertising Bureau Europe) estimated the value of broadband services at
approximately $50 per year per household in consumer surplus in the United
States and Europe in 2010. This is projected to grow to about $253 billion in
consumer value. The report estimates that social technologies account for almost
Exhibit E5
Value available through collaboration and other benefits of
social technologies varies across industries
%
63
49 48
30
24
57
38 34
Average
66
Aero-
space
62
Auto
43
Semi-
conductors
76
Profes-
sional
services
98
Retail
banking
70
2
Life
insurance
52
P&C
insurance
51
CPG
37
Collaboration
Other benefits

12
30 percent of that consumer value, or about $40 billion in 2010 and as much as
$76 billion in 2015.12
A significant amount of the value unlocked by companies using social
technologies eventually will accrue to consumers, either because market
players compete away that surplus or because social technologies provide the
insights that allow consumers to purchase goods that are better suited to their
needs. When these better products increase total demand, both individuals and
enterprises can capture value.
Social technologies, of course, also have the potential to provide individuals with
significant non-economic benefits. As people multiply their abilities to organize
themselves through social technologies, there is the possibility to effect positive
change in communities and governments. Social technologies, for example,
were an important enabler of the 2011 Arab Spring. Social technologies can
also to help communities collaborate in non-political ways, such as organizing
disaster aid.
RISKS OF SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES
The use of social technologies can also carry risks. One risk is the possibility of
abuse, such as excessive employee time spent “chatting” about nonwork-related
topics on internal or external social networks or using social media to attack
fellow employees or management. Enterprises have taken different approaches
to handling this risk, from forbidding nonwork-related conversations or censoring
critical opinions to welcoming the critiques and engaging in public conversation
with the critics.
Other risks involve breaches of consumer privacy, which could constrain a
company’s ability to develop the most revealing consumer insights. Similarly,
there is a great need for information security, but a company’s need to maintain
data security can limit the ways in which social technologies can be applied. In
addition, in many nations, censorship and restrictions on Internet use stand in the
way of value creation by companies that hope to enable consumers to interact
with them and that wish to harvest deep insights from social data.
CAPTURING THE VALUE OF SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES
How much future value is generated by social technologies will depend on
multiple enablers. Success in implementing and using social technologies in and
across enterprises will depend on transforming their organizations and cultures to
take full advantage of the collaborative potential of social technologies. Success
in deploying social technologies to connect with broader communities will require
the ability to create trust, a critical mass of participation, and positive community
cultures and practices. Social technology is not just another IT implementation.
Nor is it simply a tool to improve communication and collaboration. As has been
seen in the consumer context, social technologies unleash creative forces among
users and enable new relationships and group dynamics. Some of the most
useful innovations in consumer social technologies—the hashtags to organize
tweets and the standardized Wikipedia article format—were created by users.
12 Consumers driving the digital uptake: The economic value of online advertising-based
services for consumers, McKinsey & Company for IAB Europe, September 2010. This work
measures social networks, social games, user-generated video sharing, wikis, and blogs.
Values are based a USD/euro exchange rate as of April 30, 2010 ($1 = 0.75208 €).

User innovations can drive the evolution of social technologies within and across
enterprises, too, if the culture encourages them.
* * *
The real power of social technologies is only just beginning to be understood.
That power stems from the innate appeal of interacting socially and the pleasure
and intellectual stimulation that people derive from sharing what they know,
expressing opinions, and learning what others know and think. As has been seen
in early use of social technologies, when these ways of interacting are applied
to commercial and professional activities (e.g., developing and selling products,
working together to solve a business problem), the resulting value creation is
impressive. Scaling these results to industry- and economy-wide levels produces
very large numbers. For now, such figures are directional—they represent what
could happen, if organizational and cultural barriers can be reduced and if risks
can be mitigated. Over the coming years, it will become clear if those hurdles can
be overcome.

15
1. The evolution of
social technologies
In just a few years, social technologies have captured the imagination of
consumers, business leaders, and politicians. Hundreds of millions of people
have adopted new behaviors: transferring social interactions online, forming
connections, and creating and sharing content. Governments have fallen because
citizens organized themselves using social technologies. Social technologies
have become a fixture of modern life—in private, public, and commercial spheres.
Companies of all kinds have started to use social technologies as a way to
win customers, improve performance, and advance their missions. Most large
consumer-facing companies, and a growing number of smaller ones, recognize
that they must now use social technology to compete.
This report explores and begins to quantify the value potential these technologies
can unlock for individuals, firms, and the entire economy. In this chapter, we
examine sources of the transformative powers of social technologies and
the evolution of the social technology phenomenon. We examine why social
technologies have set records for speed of adoption.
By enabling social interactions to take place virtually—loosening the constraints
of time, location, and even the number of personal relationships that define
traditional social activity—social technologies can unleash powerful forces in
society and the economy. They bring the Internet’s speed, scope, and scale to
human interactions. Social platforms extend the disintermediating powers of the
Internet—the force that have disrupted the businesses of agents in airline booking
and record stores in music sales—to the masses. Today virtually anyone with a
smartphone or computer can become a publisher or share his or her creative
output with the world.
Social technologies are redrawing relationships between companies and
customers, as well as within companies. Consumer-facing companies are mining
social sites for feedback from customers and thus gaining new insights through
the unprompted and unfiltered chatter about their products. By monitoring a
range of online behavior in a rich social context, marketers and product designers
are able to generate new views of consumer needs and trends.

16
At the same time, organizations are finding that social technologies can be
applied internally to hasten knowledge dissemination, enable innovation, and
encourage collaboration across functional silos to improve productivity.13
Social technologies are making organizational boundaries more permeable,
even to the extent of allowing organizations to become “extended networked
enterprises,” inviting people from outside the enterprise to participate in tasks
that are traditionally performed by employees. Permitting outsiders to participate
in crowdsourced innovation is an example. In addition, social technologies can
increase collaboration by making it more entertaining. Gamification, the infusion
of gaming techniques, mechanisms, or style into non-game contexts, can add
a real-time, competitive gaming element to common work activities, such as
performance management.
SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES HAVE DISTINCTIVE PROPERTIES
THAT MAKE THEM UNIQUELY POWERFUL
Before we examine what properties have made social technologies such a
powerful phenomenon and have propelled their rapid adoption, we start with the
definition of social technologies used throughout this report (see Box 1, “Social
technologies share three key characteristics”).
In other words, in addition to enabling people to interact socially (e.g., chat,
share personal news, send greetings), social technologies allow anyone within
a group to create, add, or modify content and communications. This includes
adding or deleting content such as text or a link, contributing to content added by
others, endorsing (e.g., “liking” a piece of content), or performing an action that
an individual knows will be automatically shared (e.g., choosing a song from a
service that will display your music selection to others). Social technologies allow
anyone within a group to access and consume content and communications.
They include many of the technologies that are also classified as “social media,”
“Web 2.0,” and “collaboration tools” (Exhibit 1).
13 Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0: New collaborative tools for your organization’s toughest
challenges (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2009).
Box 1. Social technologies share three key characteristics
We define social technologies as digital technologies used by people
to interact socially and together to create, enhance, and exchange
content. Social technologies distinguish themselves through the following
three characteristics:
1. They are enabled by information technology.
2. They provide distributed rights to create, add, and/or modify content
and communications.
3. They enable distributed access to consume content
and communications.

Several other terms describe phenomena closely related to what we call social
technologies. Social media, which refers to Web- and mobile-based technologies
that allow the creation and generation of user-generated content, falls under our
definition, as do Web-based tools for enterprise collaboration. We also include
technologies described as “Web 2.0” that enable groups of people to generate
and consume content. And we also include enterprise collaboration and the
similar tools that meet our criteria and are used within and across enterprises.
Social technologies have been embraced by people across cultures, age groups,
and demographic segments for several reasons. Social technologies tap into
the most basic human traditions: forming groups and sharing information,
enjoying entertainment, and communicating interesting content. In a sense,
social technologies represent a return to aspects of the oral tradition—providing
a means for all members of the group to tell their stories, add to the stories
that others are telling, or offer another point of view. Indeed, the behaviors
that are upending traditional media and marketing today—reliance on word of
mouth and suspicion of information not sanctioned by the affinity group/clan—
were fundamental to pre-literate societies. By providing an outlet for anyone
with an Internet connection to participate in the group and share knowledge
and experiences (or photos or the latest joke), social technologies tap into
primal needs.
Exhibit 1
Social
analytics1
Social technologies include a broad range of applications
that can be used both by consumers and enterprises
NOT EXHAUSTIVE
1 Social analytics is the practice of measuring and analyzing interactions across social technology platforms to inform decisions.
Ratings
and
reviews
Evaluate and rate
products, services,
and experiences;
share opinions
Social
commerce
Purchasing in groups,
on social platforms,
and sharing opinions
Wikis
Search, create and adapt
articles; rapidly access
stored knowledge
Discussion
forums
Discuss topics in open
communities; rapidly
access expertise
Shared
work-
spaces
Co-create content;
coordinate joint
projects and tasks
Crowd-
sourcing
Harness collective
knowledge and
generate collectively
derived answers
Social
gaming
Connect with friends
and strangers to
play games
Media
and file
sharing
Upload, share, and
comment on photos,
videos, and audio
Social
networks
Keep connected
through personal and
business profiles
Blogs/
microblogs
Publish and
discuss opinions
and experiences

18
In addition, social technologies share a set of characteristics that make them
uniquely powerful:
ƒƒ Being social is a feature, not a product. Almost any digital technology can
be made “social” through adding the ability for people to connect, comment,
or share. In the realm of economics, most economic activity ultimately rests
on interactions between individuals, so almost any economic activity can be
“socialized.”
ƒƒ Social technologies enable social behaviors at an Internet scale. The
fundamental change enabled by social technologies is to endow social
interactions with the scale, speed, and disruptive economics of the Internet.
On social platforms, individuals can interact in social ways (communicating,
sharing information, consuming the same content, playing games) even across
different countries and time zones. Social technologies provide opportunities
for individuals to reach out with a message, to signal common interests, and
to engage in collective action on a scale that was previously not possible. And
all of these social interactions are extended beyond the limits of offline social
group size, of traditional speed of information exchange and amplification,
and of past reach and penetration of social groups. There are many widely
reported stories about pieces of content, such as clever videos or social
games, “going viral” (i.e., achieving wide distribution because they have been
forwarded through social technologies).14
In addition, through social networks,
individuals have gained the opportunity to maintain personal relationships that
would otherwise wither away (e.g., having “status updates” sent to a list of
people to whom one is connected through a social network) and thus maintain
a far larger number of relationships. In particular, the number of “weak ties”
that a person can maintain can be increased beyond the so-called Dunbar’s
number of 150, the theoretical cognitive limit of the number of people with
whom one can maintain stable social relationships.15
ƒƒ Social technologies enable new forms of content creation, distribution,
and consumption. On social networks, all members are able to contribute
content, which is distributed freely and instantaneously, with little or no
mediation between producers and consumers. This means that content can
be produced quickly, in volume, and with great variation. Social technologies
also support content co-creation (e.g., adding commentary to an existing
piece of content, for example, by editing an entry on a wiki). Instead of a small
number of editors or producers deciding what content is distributed, any
social technology user can create, distribute, comment on, or add to content.
These technologies change not only the economics of content creation and
distribution, but also the nature of content itself, which can become an ever-
evolving discussion rather than a fixed product.
14 Some research suggests that the distribution of such content actually accelerates fastest
once it appears in mass media, such as television. See interview with Yahoo! research
scientist Duncan Watts in “How we see it: Three senior executives on the future of marketing,”
The McKinsey Quarterly, July 2011.
15 The Dunbar number refers to the number of people one feels comfortable asking for a favor,
expecting to have it granted. See Russell A. Hill and Robin I. M. Dunbar, “Social network size
in humans,” Human Nature, Volume 14, Number 1, 2003.

ƒƒ Social technologies can capture the structure and content of
interactions. Online social interactions (whether conducted on a computer
or a mobile device) can generate a “social graph”—a map of nodes
(social connections) and how they connect. The social graph is a visual
representation of how people (and organizations) interact and influence one
another. The “social graph” of an individual or a group provides an explicit map
of their personal connections. When combined with other data, such as topics
of common interest, the social graph allows inferences to be drawn about
groups and individuals.
ƒƒ Social technologies can be disruptive to existing power structures.
Social technologies enable people to coordinate and engage in collective
action at a scale not previously possible and to create a unified, powerful
voice—as consumer groups or political movements—that can have significant
impact on existing power structures. Social technologies also impose greater
transparency, accountability, and competitive pressure on individuals and
organizations by exposing information about their behaviors.
ƒƒ Social platforms extend the disintermediating power of the Internet.
Social technology brings disintermediation—the force that has disrupted
bricks-and-mortar stores in music sales and travel agents in airline booking—
to the masses. The participatory properties of social technologies have
already started to change the economics for discovering and testing creative
talent in industries that have traditionally relied on agents, publishers, or
producers to identify promising individuals. For example, with his mother
uploading home videos to YouTube, Justin Bieber built his own fan base and
became a global pop star before signing with a record label. Across the arts,
entertainment, and publishing, success on a social platform now serves as
proof of commercial potential. Even venture capital investors are starting to
rely on social media to discover cutting-edge start-ups. Using a “practice
before theory” approach, they are funding new concepts (e.g., games, social
shopping concepts) that show rapid adoption or intense engagement on social
platforms. Similarly, crowdfunding/crowdfinancing is circumventing traditional
financial intermediaries, allowing individuals to invest directly in early-stage
companies.16
ƒƒ Social technologies enable unique insights. On social platforms,
companies can engage consumers in natural conversations or observe
the unprompted and unfiltered observations that are recorded in social
platform interactions. These research methods can generate more genuine
and timely insights into preferences and trends than are generally available
through traditional market research methods such as surveys and focus
groups. Such conversations also impose greater transparency, accountability,
and competitive pressure on companies by exposing information about
their products and behaviors. Social graphs also provide a rich context for
consumer insights; by analyzing the graph of a consumer’s connections
and interactions, a marketer or product development team can assess a
consumer’s interests and competencies and can gauge the individual’s
credibility (see Box 2, “Social graphs”).
16 “Crowdfunding” refers to mass funding efforts through which large numbers of people can
use social media to finance business enterprises.

20
Box 2. Social graphs
A social graph is a representation of the personal connections between people (see
Exhibit 2). Connections can be either reciprocal (explicitly acknowledged by both
parties, such as when two people identify themselves as “friends”) or directional
(defined by only one side, as when one person “follows” the postings of another, but
the reverse might not be true).1
When connections represented on a social graph
are made intentionally, they can be seen as an indicator of social capital: the person
who has been added is considered a reliable, relevant, or entertaining source of
content or opinion. Social capital is valuable. According to a 2010 survey by Vision
Critical, recommendations about a brand or product from a contact on a social
network are more than three times as trusted as those that come from a stranger
or an advertisement.2
And this dependence on social connections for advice is
even stronger in very trust-based cultures: as an independent survey of moisturizer
purchasers found, 66 percent of Chinese consumers relied on recommendations
from friends and family, compared with 38 percent for US consumers.3
By understanding the social graph, a marketer can see which individuals are likely to
have influence on others and thus can focus on influencing those key people. When
it is augmented with other information (e.g., from personal profiles or content posted),
even more useful views can be created, (e.g., shared preferences for certain styles,
when overlaid on a social graph, can generate an “interest” or “taste” graph). Certain
individuals on the graph (nodes) can emerge as tastemakers, based on the number
of relationships they have with others who share their interests and preferences.
Content can be prioritized based on an individual’s social graphs (weighted by level
of interaction, or common connections, with a particular content contributor).
1 The social graph is based on mathematical graph theory, which describes the relationships
between vertices (or nodes) and edges (lines connecting the nodes) in a structure. Graphs have
long been used in mathematics and computer science to model relationships and process
dynamics. See Brian Hayes, “Computing science: Graph theory in practice: Part I,” American
Scientist, Volume 88, Number 1, January-February 2000. The concept of the “social graph”
describing online relationships was raised at a 2007 Facebook conference. See Thomas Claburn,
“Facebook opens up to developers, partners,” Information Week, May 24, 2007.
2 Vision Critical, “Online social networks: Trust not included,” September 2010.
3 Judith S. Olson and Gary M. Olson, “Culture surprises in remote software development teams,”
Queue, Volume 1, Number 9, December/January 2003–2004; Cindy Chiu, Chris Ip, and Ari
Silverman, “Understanding social media in China,” The McKinsey Quarterly, April 2012.
Exhibit 2
Social graphs capture and visualize social relations
SOURCE: Paul Butler, “Visualizing friendships,” Facebook note, December 13, 2010
Each node represents a person, and the lines
represent the relations between nodes
A visualization
of the entire
social graph of
the Facebook
social network

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES HAVE BEEN EVOLVING FOR DECADES
The digital electronic platforms that enable social technologies today have been
evolving since at least the 1970s, when the first interactive computer terminals
came into use. As soon as computers could “talk” across data networks, the
academics and computer scientists who used them created electronic bulletin
board systems that allowed members to post short messages about a specific
area of interest on a central computer. The late 1970s brought Usenet, the first
distributed bulletin board system, which ran on university and research networks,
and FTP (file transfer protocol), which made it possible to share large content files.
The Internet brought data networks to the masses in the 1990s, providing
the foundation for both social technologies and e‑commerce. Millions of
consumers signed up for e‑mail accounts on services such as America Online
and CompuServe, and traditional media outlets (newspapers, magazines, and
broadcasters) created online versions of their products.
The next step toward today’s large-scale social platforms was turning Internet
users into content creators and distributors. Under what would later be labeled
Web 2.0, Internet use became more interactive and “social.”17
With the advent
of peer-to-peer file sharing, millions of Internet users began to share music
and video files. They also started creating their own content, forming their own
communities, and sharing information on a “virtual commons.” People began
publishing “Web logs,” better known as blogs, to record their thoughts and ideas
in online diaries, to comment on the news, and to create an audience of other
social Web users.
Blogs and file-sharing services such as Napster were early indicators of how
disruptive social technologies could be. Napster let music fans circumvent
the radio stations and record companies that for decades had been arbiters
of popular tastes. Blogs provided a platform for millions of writers and
commentators who no longer needed access to a print or broadcast outlet to
be heard. RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a specification created by Netscape,
made it possible to “subscribe” to blogs and all kinds of online content by simply
clicking on an icon.
In parallel to the evolution of the content creation and distribution tools that
would become critical social technologies, virtual communities were becoming
more sophisticated. Even before the Web made connecting online easy, Internet
users had created communities. Early examples such as the WELL, which was
launched in 1985, Theglobe.com (1995), and Tripod.com (1995) allowed people
with common interests to come together in chat rooms. They even let users build
home pages where they could post personal information or share their opinions.
Between 1997 and 1999, pioneering sites such as SixDegrees, AsianAvenue, and
LiveJournal added new ways to connect, broadcast messages, and interact on
the Web.
17 “Web 2.0,” coined in 2004, emphasizes the user-driven, more interactive, social, and
collaborative uses of the Web that were then becoming more common (e.g., using the Web
as a software platform, and for content creation). See Tim O’Reilly, “What is Web 2.0: Design
patterns and business models for the next generation of software,” Oreilly.com, September
30, 2005. See also Jacques Bughin and James Manyika, “How businesses are using Web
2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey,” The McKinsey Quarterly, March 2007.

22
The trajectory of adoption for social technologies shifted sharply upward in 2002
and 2003 with the arrival of highly popular social networking platforms: Friendster,
MySpace, and LinkedIn. By 2005, MySpace had 25 million users and was
acquired by News Corporation for $580 million18
—a sign of the growing perceived
value of social technology. The next year, Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg
expanded the market for the company he co-founded, “The Facebook,” beyond
the high school and college students who were inviting one another to sign on.
Six years later, Facebook has 900 million users in 213 countries and annual
revenue of $3.7 billion.19
THE SPEED AND IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADOPTION
ARE UNPRECEDENTED
With the right technological building blocks already in place, innovative
entrepreneurs were able to create new social models with mass user appeal. By
early 2012, more than 1.5 billion people around the globe were interacting with
social networks at least on a monthly basis.20
This is just one milestone in a record-setting pattern of adoption and penetration.
It took just one year from the time Facebook launched in 2004 to grow to
50 million users; Twitter reached 50 million in nine months. By contrast, it took
broadcast radio almost 40 years to reach an audience that big, and for television,
it took more than a decade. Even the Internet was slow by comparison to social
technology: it took commercial Internet service providers three years to sign their
50 millionth subscriber (Exhibit 3).
18 Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison, “Social network sites: Definition, history, and
scholarship,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 13, Number 1,
October 2007.
19 Socialbakers, “Facebook statistics by country,” www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/.
20 It’s a social world, comScore, December 21, 2011, based on October 2011 comScore Media
Metrix data.
Exhibit 3
Social technologies have been adopted at record speed
SOURCE: Various press reports
Time to reach 50 million users
50 million users
Radio
TV
iPod
Internet
Facebook
Twitter
38 years
13 years
4 years
3 years
1 year
9 months
ILLUSTRATIVE

The appeal of social technologies has spread to a wide range of users. In the
early years, young adults and teenagers were the most enthusiastic users of
social media, but in the past few years, older demographics have become the
fastest growing in developed markets. The share of US social network users
under 18 years of age dropped from 18 percent in 2009 to 15 percent in 2011,
while users 35 and older grew from 41 to 47 percent (Exhibit 4).
According to surveys by NM Incite, the top use of social media is to stay in touch
with family and friends (88 and 89 percent of users, respectively), followed by
finding new friends (70 percent). About 68 percent of social media users visit
social networking sites to read product reviews, and more than half contribute
product feedback. Other reasons for social media usage include accessing online
entertainment (67 percent), finding a creative outlet (64 percent), learning about
products (58 percent), and getting coupons or promotions (54 percent). Just
16 percent of users said they visit social sites for dating and less than a third
reported using social networks to find a job.21
As uses of social technologies multiply, the impact on other forms of online
activity is becoming more pronounced. Four years ago, e‑mail was by far the
most popular consumer use of the Internet. Now, more consumers use social
networks each month than use e‑mail accounts, and the number of unique
monthly e‑mail visitors as a share of the online population fell from 69 percent
in 2007 to 64 percent in 2011. The drop-off in e‑mail use is occurring mostly
among Internet users who are under 35 years of age; e‑mail remains the leading
Internet use for those over 35. Over the same period, the share of users of instant
messaging has fallen sharply from 47 percent of Internet users to 31 percent
(Exhibit 5).
21 NM Incite’s State of Social Media Survey polled a representative sample of 1,865 US adult
(18+) social media users between March 31 and April 14, 2011. See also Friends, following
and feedback: How we’re using social media, NM Incite, September 28, 2011.
Exhibit 4
SOURCE: eMarketer, February 2011
% of total US users
Use of social networks is spreading across age groups
Age
NOTE: Numbers may not sum due to rounding.
16 14 13
20
18 17
22
21 21
201120102009
65+
55-64
45-54
3
8
14
4
9
15
4
10
15
35-44
25-34
18-24
12--17
0-11
16
2
17
2
18
2

24
Social networking also affects searching. In 2010, 33 percent of Internet
users said they accessed content such as articles or videos via links on social
networking sites, rather than from search engine recommendations. This is a
20 percent jump from 2008.22
Total Google referral traffic to YouTube declined
by 3 percentage points from February 2010 to October 2011 (from 19 percent
of all YouTube entries to 16 percent), but referrals from Facebook increased by
17 percentage points (from 9 to 26 percent). Facebook overtook Google as the
leading source of traffic to YouTube in October 2011.23
At the same time, the adoption of mobile devices such as smartphones and
tablets has accelerated. There are now more than six billion mobile phones in the
world, and in developed markets such as the United States, smartphones make
up more than 50 percent of new phone sales.24
Similarly, the adoption of tablets
has accelerated: in January 2012, 29 percent of American adults owned a tablet
computer or e‑reader.25
The use of smartphones to access social networks nearly
doubled between 2008 and 2011, according to McKinsey’s US iConsumer survey
results.26
In 2011, more than 40 percent of active users accessed Facebook
through mobile devices every month.27
22 McKinsey & Company iConsumer survey, US, 2008–10. Data for 13- to 64-year-old Internet
users. Question: Which of the following features/Web sites do you use to get to the content
that you read/browse online?
23 ComScore Source/Loss Report (Media: YouTube, February 2010, October 2010, May 2011,
October 2011, May 2012, Worldwide—Home and Work), comScore qSearch.
24 International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database
2011 (Estimate); comScore MobiLens, three months ending July 2011.
25 Mary Meeker, “Internet Trends” presentation at All Things Digital D10 Conference in Rancho
Palos Verdes, California, May 30, 2012.
26 McKinsey & Company iConsumer survey, US, 2008–11. Includes 13- to 64-year-old
Internet users.
27 Benedict Evans, “Facebook’s 300m app users,” Evans Analytics, April 23, 2012, www.ben-
evans.com.
Exhibit 5
Communications are shifting from e-mail and
instant messaging to social media
SOURCE: comScore Media Metrix, October 2011
31
36
-5 p.p.
2011 64
2007 69 53
69
47
-16 p.p.
31
44
18
100% =
1,430 million
+26 p.p.
82
760 million56
E-mail Instant messaging Social networking
Users of service
Non-users
Unique monthly visitors
% of global online population

BEYOND CONSUMERS: INTO THE ENTERPRISE
While organizations have adopted social technologies at about half the rate of
consumers (Exhibit 6), adoption by businesses is accelerating in a trend that has
been termed “Enterprise 2.0.”28
Increasingly, they are using social technologies for internal collaboration,
communications, and product development. By 2011, 72 percent of companies
reported using some form of social technology in their businesses. Of these, 90
percent said they have seen business benefits from social technologies.29
The
heaviest users are high-tech and telecom companies, but a full range of other
industries are also going “social” (Exhibit 7).
28 Andrew P. McAfee, Enterprise 2.0: New collaborative tools for your organization’s toughest
challenges (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2009).
Exhibit 6
Adoption of social technologies within enterprises lags far behind
consumer adoption
23
36
57
81
84
56%
Microblogging³
Wikis²
Blogs
Video sharing¹
Social networks
23
25
41
38
50
35%
Consumers Employees
1 As of October 2011.
2 Classified as directories.
3 Includes microblogging sitesTwitter, Tumblr, Weibo, Plurk, and Posterous Spaces.
SOURCE: comScore, May 2012; comScore Global Online Video Viewing, October 2011; "How social technologies are
extending the organization," The McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011
Consumer vs. company penetration, global, 2012
%
Average
Social media technologies

26
Marketing remains the most common business application of social technologies,
used by 79 percent of companies in 2011 (Exhibit 8). More than half of companies
surveyed say they use social technologies in sales, and nearly half use social
technology in IT operations. Within marketing, the leading use is generating
consumer insights, for use in advertising and promotion as well as in product
development. In sales, companies are using data from social platforms to
fine-tune demand forecasting. Social networks are also being used to provide
customer service. Across industries, the most active users are middle managers,
technical specialists, and frontline employees.
Exhibit 7
Across industries, companies are adopting Web 2.0/social technologies
SOURCE: "How social technologies are extending the organization," The McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011
62
64
64
67
69
69
74
74
77
86
Public administration
Business, legal, and
professional services
Pharma
Retail
Transportation
Health care and
social services
Manufacturing
Financial
Energy
High tech and telecom
Companies using at least 1 Web 2.0 tool
% of respondents (n = 4,261)
Exhibit 8
Web 2.0 tools are used across functions and employee types
SOURCE: "How social technologies are extending the organization," The McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011
Corporate functions that are
using Web 2.0 technologies
Types of employees using
Web 2.0 technologies
29
34
35
44
48
51
79
Production/
operations
Other general
and administrative
Service
Research
and development
IT
Sales
Marketing
24
53
60
61
65
Technical experts
(e.g., researchers,
programmers)
Middle managers
Frontline employees
Senior executives
(vice president
and above)
Other employees
% of respondents

Social technology use varies by industry. Financial services, automotive, energy,
and transportation companies are the most active users of social technology
for internal communications and collaboration and in functions such as human
resources (Exhibit 9).
Across industries, there is growing interest in social technologies as a means
to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of internal operations, to better
collaborate with outside partners, and to raise the productivity of interaction
workers. Enterprises that have been successful in applying social tools have
reported measurable business benefits (Exhibit 10). The data indicate that broad
adoption by employees and integration into daily work flows are important
drivers of value in enterprise applications: companies with a high percentage of
employees who incorporated social technologies into their daily routines have
shown the highest level of benefits. Furthermore, a small number of companies,
which can be described as “fully networked,” are deriving outsized benefits from
their use of these technologies to connect internal employees, customers, and
business partners.
Companies have reported benefits from the use of social technologies for various
internal purposes (Exhibit 11).
Exhibit 9
Consumer and retail sectors lead in marketing and sales
uses of social technologies; adoption in other areas is more even
SOURCE: McKinsey Social Media Excellence Survey 2012
% of companies using social technology
22
30
44
48
5656
85
31
34
4543
4646
66
Marketing Internal
applications
HRProduct
management
Sales ServicesExternal
communications
Other industries
Consumer goods and retail

28
Exhibit 10
How companies benefit from social technologies depends on
how “networked” they are
SOURCE: “How social technologies are extending the organization,” The McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011
Organizational type, based on social technology benefits
1
1
2
Very or extremely
integrated into day-to-
day work of employees
18
% of partners 40
% of customers 26
% of employees 39
Partner benefits
Customer benefits
Internal benefits
Internally
networked
n = 224
Externally
networked
n = 365
Developing
n = 2,413
Fully
networked
n = 101
2
3
49
48
37
37
18 8
11
43
54
55
45
13
80
26
64
51
48
24
21
Improvement
in benefits
Mean %
Extent of
social
technology
usage
% of
respondents
Integration
% of
respondents
Exhibit 11
14
19
23
26
31
40
40
51
58
74
18
28
29
40
41
44
52
60
77
37
69
33
56
26
26
41
44
Increasing revenue
Reducing time to market for
products/services
Increasing the number of successful
innovations for new products or services
Reducing operational costs
Increasing employee satisfaction
Decreasing travel costs
Increasing speed to access
internal experts
Reducing communication costs
Increasing speed to access knowledge
Internal use of Web 2.0 applications has produced measurable gains
SOURCE: "How social technologies are extending the organization," The McKinsey Quarterly, November 2011; "The rise of the
networked enterprise," The McKinsey Quarterly, December 2010; "How companies are benefitting from Web 2.0,"
The McKinsey Quarterly, September 2009
1 Asked only of respondents reporting Web 2.0 use for internal purposes; 2009 responses recalculated to reflect only those
respondents who are using at least one Web 2.0 technology. N = 2,051 in 2011, 1,598 in 2010 and 1,088 in 2009
20
20
20
30
30
35
20
20
20
20
20
20
10
10
15
20
20
20
20
20
20
10
10
15
30
30
30
Median improvement
%
% of respondents using Web 2.0 for internal purposes and reporting the following benefits1
2010
2011
2009

One of the most powerful sources of value creation in the enterprise is
substituting social technologies for conventional e‑mail. IBM’s “e‑mail–less” man,
Luis Suarez, for example, claims to have reduced his e‑mail inbox by 98 percent
while providing more room for interaction and knowledge dissemination by
transferring his replies into the social sphere (see Box 3, “From e‑mail to social
media”).30
Similarly, Thierry Breton, the chief executive of IT services company
Atos, has set a goal for his company to become e‑mail–free internally by 2014
(see Box 4, “The ‘zero e-mail’ company”).
30 Robert McMillan, “IBM gives birth to amazing e‑mail–less man,” Wired, January 16, 2012.
Box 3. From e‑mail to social media
Returning from an offsite event in February 2008, IBM Software Group’s
knowledge management consultant, Luis Suarez, opened his e‑mail inbox
and saw more than 200 messages. This was his tipping point. An in-house
expert on social software (he had been working on knowledge and sharing
tools since 2001), Suarez knew that communicating on a social platform
could allow him to eliminate e‑mail from his life—or at least reduce his use of
e‑mail to the minimum.
Four years later, Suarez has reduced his use of e‑mail by 98 percent; he now
receives about 16 e‑mails per week and uses IBM’s internal social networks
to extol the benefits of social technology–based communications. His first
rule: stop responding to e‑mail with e‑mail. He estimates that an interaction
worker can reduce e‑mail volume by 80 percent simply by posting
responses to queries on a social site, thereby eliminating all the follow-up
questions, copying, and forwarding that multiplies e‑mail traffic.
More importantly, Suarez notes, social communication does many things
that e‑mail cannot. Social platforms integrate multiple work routines and
activities: he communicates easily with dozens of colleagues, posts entries
to a wiki that consolidates important group knowledge, monitors ongoing
discussions on topics of interest, shares files and pertinent content, adds to
his blog, and reads colleagues’ blogs. “The social platform allows our work
to become observable; it provides more space to allow knowledge to spread
freely and a richer room for interaction,” he says.
Suarez sees two challenges in gaining the full benefit of social technologies
for communication collaboration. First, more sophisticated and robust
search engines are necessary for finding content and connections on social
networks. Second, most organizations lack the top-down leadership to
drive creation and use of collaborative, open, and transparent networks and
communities.1
1 Interview with Luis Suarez, social computing evangelist, IBM, May 28, 2012.

30
ONLY A SMALL PORTION OF THE POTENTIAL VALUE OF
SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES HAS BEEN TAPPED
Despite this rapid adoption of social technologies, far more growth lies
ahead. Today, more than 80 percent of the world’s online population is
interacting with social networks on a regular basis, but 65 percent of the world
population—4.6 billion people—still lacks Internet access.31
In enterprises, there
is still plenty of growth potential: although 62 percent of Fortune 500 companies
use microblogging (e.g., Twitter) and 58 percent have a presence on social
networks, only 23 percent have public blogs. Furthermore, 31 percent of Fortune
500 companies had no social media presence at all in 2011.32
Moreover, adoption
has been slower across most of the millions of smaller and midsize enterprises in
advanced economies. Only 31 percent of SMEs in the United States were using
social media in 2011, up from 24 percent in 2010 and 12 percent in 2009. The
most commonly used social media sites are Facebook (27 percent) and LinkedIn
(18 percent).33
31 ICT facts and figures, International Telecommunication Union, 2011.
32 Nora Ganim Barnes and Justina Andonian, The 2011 Fortune 500 and social media
adoption: Have America’s largest companies reached a social media plateau?, University
of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, Center for Marketing Research, Charlton College of
Business, 2011.
33 The state of small business report: January 2011 survey of small business success, Network
Solutions LLC and Robert H. Smith School of Business at University of Maryland, 2011.
Box 4. The “zero e-mail” company
Thierry Breton, CEO of the French IT services company Atos, announced at
the end of 2011 that his company will become “a zero e‑mail company within
three years.” His reason: the volume of e‑mail that he and his employees
have to deal with is unsustainable and harms the business. Breton estimates
that managers spend between five and 20 hours a week reading and writing
e‑mails. On average, each of Atos’s 80,000 employees was receiving more
than 100 e‑mails per day, of which only 15 percent were deemed “useful.”
By shifting communications to social platforms, François Gruau, senior
vice president for business development and innovation, expects Atos staff
to be “able to collaboratively process information with more focus, speed,
and precision.”
Atos is counting on social technologies to improve collaboration and
knowledge sharing. The company estimates that employees spend
25 percent of their time looking for information or expertise. So Atos is
pushing employees to use a social community platform to share and keep
track of ideas on subjects from innovation to sales. In the first few weeks
after the initial announcement, these tools helped reduce e‑mail volume by
up to 20 percent.1
1 BBC, “Atos boss Thierry Breton defends his internal e‑mail ban,” December 6, 2011,
and Stijn Phlix, “Company without e‑mail,” Smart Mobility Management, Number 2,
May 2011.

The benefits of social technology so far have been limited: only 3 percent of more
than 4,200 companies in global McKinsey surveys could be identified as fully
networked, which means that the enterprise is generating superior results from
use of technology across all key stakeholder groups, both internal and external.34
Another measure of social technology’s growth potential is how small the
fraction of all communication that takes place on social networks is at this point.
As Exhibit 12 illustrates, despite the millions of daily tweets, status updates,
and content posts in the United States that are replacing e‑mail, the share of
messages that travel across social networks is small. Only 6 percent of the words
consumed daily are via social networks, and time spent writing and reading social
network messages is about 5 percent of overall messaging time (Exhibit 13).35
34 Jacques Bughin, Andy Miller and Michael Chui, “How companies are benefitting from Web
2.0,” The McKinsey Quarterly, September 2009; Jacques Bughin and Michael Chui, “The rise
of the networked enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday,” The McKinsey Quarterly, December
2010; Jacques Bughin, Angela Hung Byers and Michael Chui, “How social technologies are
35 The movements in these two graphs come mainly from the changes in radio and television.
Use of radio grew rapidly through the 1920s, after which its penetration stabilized then rose
in the 1980s with the introduction of new devices (“boomboxes” and portable personal
receivers such as the Sony Walkman). Radio use then fell after 2000, as digital music began
to replace radio. TV use grew rapidly from 1940 until 1980, then stabilized and began to
fall in the 2000s, as viewers began to use multiple devices and paid less attention to TV;
streaming video from the Web also made inroads. We make assumptions about words per
minute and overlapping technology uses. For a full explanation of the model and sources, see
“Consumption analysis methodology” in the appendix.
Exhibit 12
Social technologies account for only a small share of communication and
media use, indicating significant growth potential
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
8,000
9,000
10,000
11,000
12,000
Social networks
Instant messenger
SMS
Mobile phone
Other Internet3
E-mail2
Recorded music1
TV1
Landline telephone
Radio1
Print
Mail
In person
201020001990198019701960195019401930192019101900
2 Does not include e-mail sent internally within companies (thus not creating Internet traffic).
Number of words consumed by technology type
Trillion words per year
Non-digital

32
In the past five years, time spent on many traditional communications media such
as print, radio, and TV has been falling, while time spent on social networks has
grown. In addition to this continuing organic growth (on social platforms), the use
of social technologies will rise as other media (TV, radio) gain social attributes
and other forms of Internet activity, such as e‑commerce, become more social as
well. This would result in significant growth for social technology as it piggybacks
on growth in currently non-social technologies while also expanding its share of
communication time.
Another area that illustrates substantial room for additional impact is in influencing
purchasing behavior on the “consumer decision journey” (i.e., the multiple
touch points that affect purchasing behavior, such as consideration, purchase,
and loyalty).36
Across multiple categories, only a small set of consumers use
social technologies to inform purchasing decisions. The category in which
consumers are most likely to consult social sources is electronics, where
16 percent of consumers used social platforms to research products and find
recommendations. This is small compared with the 46 percent who used non-
social online sources such as company Web sites or ratings sites to shop for
electronics. We estimate that a third of total consumer spending could become
social,37
and the trends from those who use social technologies suggest that
such technologies can influence shopping decisions and habits greatly—up to
$940 billion of consumption in the United States and Europe alone. Of the 18
categories analyzed, the ones where online social influence is greatest also have
the highest level of online sales. In the top three social categories—electronics,
computer hardware and software, and mobile phones—about 30 percent of
purchases are made online (Exhibit 14).
36 See David Court, Dave Elzinga, Susan Mulder, and Ole Jørgen Vetvik, “The consumer
decision journey,” The McKinsey Quarterly, June 2009.
37 For a full description of the model, see “Consumption analysis methodology” in the appendix.
Exhibit 13
Social networking accounts for just 5 percent of the time spent
communicating and consuming media
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
1900
In person
20102000199019801970196019501940193019201910
Social networks
Instant messenger
SMS
Mobile phone
Other Internet3
E-mail2
Recorded music1
TV1
Landline telephone
Radio1
Print
Mail
2 Does not include e-mail sent internally within companies, which is not counted as Internet traffic.
SOURCE: Bureau of Labour Statistics; WAN-IFRA; Statistical Abstracts; National Bureau of Economic Research; US Census
Bureau; Radicati Group; Yankee Group; Nielsen; ITU; eMarketer; and others; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Time spent consuming messages by technology type
Hours per day
Non-digital

Measured by time, words, and purchase behaviors, the impact of social
technologies remains far short of their potential impact, suggesting substantial
room for growth. This potential for growth stems from the pervasive nature of
social technology; unlike many earlier technologies, social technology is not an
end product but an enabler that can be applied to almost any other technology.
As technology is increasingly interwoven into most economic activity, and since
most economic activity ultimately rests on some human interaction, there is little
economic activity that lacks the potential to be “socialized.” Together, the small
existing share of social interaction and the huge potential for social media in
broader economic activity suggest that social adoption has barely begun to gain
the scope and scale it could eventually attain.
Exhibit 14
Based on current patterns of adoption, “social shopping”
could influence an additional $940 billion in
annual consumption
NOTE: Excluded categories from iConsumer are flowers, DVD videos, office supplies, sporting goods, and auto parts. Countries
included are United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, France, Poland, and Italy. Numbers may
not sum due to rounding.
SOURCE: Euromonitor; iConsumer; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
8
11
13
6
12
10
10
15
11
9
8
8
7
8
8
7
6
6
8
30
31
33
37
42
47
51
53
54
58
63
64
65
67
68
73
80
80
64
16
Mobile phones
Large appliances
44
46
15
41
12
Electronics
Computer hardware/software
46
13
35
11
Tickets 5
26Clothing 3
Footwear 4 25
Home improvement tools and products 5 24
Jewelry 4 29
Toys 4 30
27
Music 6 33
Furniture 4 38
Video games
4 24
Grocery
Household products 2
Pets and pet supplies 3 17
Home décor, linens, and towels 2
Health and beauty products
1 13
Total
12
22
4 22
United States and Europe, 2011
% of people influenced by each touchpoint
Digital social
Digital not social
Offline WOM
Other
Incremental influence potential
for social technologies
$ billion
64
49
26
38
11
118
4
19
16
28
41
42
206
73
14
13
167
10
940

35
Businesses have just begun to understand the ways in which social technologies
can create value. Our research suggests that there is a large untapped potential
in using social technologies to improve communication, knowledge sharing, and
collaboration. These social technologies of organizations could provide a new
productivity boost among the high-skill interaction workers whose roles have
been relatively untouched by productivity-enhancing technology, thus improving
the performance of organizations, industries, and even national economies. At the
same time, our research indicates that companies have only just begun to exploit
the potential for value creation through use of social technologies in ways that are
more well known today, such as connecting with consumers and B2B customers,
and deriving deeper insights for product development or marketing.
In this chapter, we examine sources of value from the use of social technology
that will become more prevalent in the next decade. We first look at how value
can be created through the application of social technologies across the
value chain in various industries. We compare sectors based on the relative
potential for value creation from social technologies, as well as the relative ease
of capturing that value. We also show that there is an enormous potential for
social technologies to improve the productivity of interaction workers, when
accompanied by corresponding changes in management. We further demonstrate
that individual end users are the prime beneficiaries of the value generated by
social technologies. We enumerate some of the risks of social technologies, such
as lost productivity and possible loss of confidential information and intellectual
property. Finally, we examine four examples of industries in which social
technologies have enabled the emergence of disruptive business models.
2. How social technologies
create value within and
across industries

36
TEN SOURCES OF VALUE CREATION ACROSS INDUSTRIES
We have identified ten value “levers,” or applications of social technologies, that
enterprises use to generate value. As illustrated in Exhibit 15, eight of these levers
apply to the four segments of the value chain: product development, operations
and distribution, marketing and sales, and customer service. The other two levers
are enterprise-wide and apply in every part of the organization, as well as across
the value chain.
Product development
ƒƒ Co-creation. Using social platforms, companies can tap a large community—
not just their own R&D staffs—to solve product development problems,
enabling them to tackle challenges that are too large for in-house resources.
For example, in “crowdsourcing,” a broad spectrum of participants (the
“crowd”) is solicited to submit ideas, which are then evaluated. In some
cases, the crowd itself evaluates, comments on, or modifies the entries.38
The process can also be broader—asking customers or other outsiders to
contribute their own concepts or designs. For example, Madison Electric
Products, an electrical supply company, launched a “Sparks Innovation
Center,” the industry’s first crowdsourced, collaborative approach to product
development. It invites users to submit new product ideas, the best of which
are reviewed by a focus group. The products that the focus groups approve
move ahead. In its first year, the center generated almost 100 submissions
38 See McKinsey Social Sector Practice, And the winner is … Capturing the value of
philanthropic prizes, 2009.
Exhibit 15
Marketing
and sales
Operations
and
distribution
Product
development
Co-create products1
5
Social commerce7
technologies
8
Enterprise-
wide levers
(Social as
organizational
technology)
Customer
service
Business
support2
4
Use social
technology to
improve intra- or
collaboration and
communication
Use social
technology to
match talent to
tasks
9
10

and nine new products.39
Nonprofit organizations are also using crowds. More
than 5,000 young people participated in CrowdOutAIDS, a project initiated
by UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. Using social
tools, participants helped craft six key recommendations to shape the UNAIDS
Secretariat’s work on HIV and young people until 2015.40
Valuable input into the product design process can also be provided by
customer insights derived from analyzing data from customer interactions
using social technologies, or even by interacting directly with customers using
social technologies. We’ve described this lever in the Marketing and Sales
section below, where it also applies.
Operations and distribution
ƒƒ Demand forecasting. Social technologies multiply the potential sources of
information about demand, adding another level of granularity to improve
distribution efficiency and responsiveness.41
Based on information shared
on social networks by customers or people in the distribution network (e.g.,
retail store staff), suppliers can respond to very localized variations in demand
and detect stock-outs earlier. Companies can use information derived from
social platforms to improve inventory control; government agencies, such as
the US Department of Homeland Security, feed social data into emergency
management plans, using input from social networks to guide deployment of
first responders.42
The monitoring of social buzz can also function as an early
warning system for infectious disease outbreaks. According to an analysis
of the 2010 Haitian cholera outbreak, the volume of informal reports from
sources such as microblog entries about neighborhood outbreaks correlated
with official case data, but were available up to two weeks earlier.43
ƒƒ Distributing business processes. Some organizations are using social
platforms to engage outside and assign work to third parties. Amazon.com
developed a system called the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), initially to find
people who would scan millions of pages of product descriptions to eliminate
duplicates. The system was so successful that Amazon has turned this into
a service that now annually connects almost 10,000 employers, including
academic researchers, with workers.44
Google is using a similar process to
update Google Map Maker in 190 countries.45
Mapping companies TomTom
and Navteq also solicit input from Web users to locate and qualify mapping
39 Kalypso LP, Spike Awards 2011.
40 “Young people present first-ever ‘crowdsourced’ recommendations for AIDS response in UN
history,” UNAIDS press release, April 24, 2012.
41 Some economists have described the ability to immediately use real-time information as
“nowcasting,” in contrast with forecasting.
42 Erin Skarda, “How social media is changing disaster response,” Time, June 9, 2011.
43 Rumi Chunara, Jason R. Andrews, and John S. Brownstein, “Social and news media enable
estimation of epidemiological patterns early in the 2010 Haitian cholera outbreak,” American
Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Volume 86, Number 1, 2012.
44 See Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis, “Analyzing the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace,” XRDS:
Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students, Volume 17, Number 2, 2010.
45 Google, “Countries and regions being mapped” (as of June 2012), retrieved from http://www.
google.com/mapmaker/mapfiles/s/launched.html.

38
errors and test feature updates for their road network databases.46
In addition,
TomTom has started integrating crowdsourced real-time traffic flow data in
its service.
Marketing and sales
ƒƒ Market research and customer insights. Social technologies can be used
to gather insights about products and brands, opinions about competitors,
and perceptions of market segments. These insights can be used as input for
product requirements and design, advertising campaigns, pricing, packaging,
and other marketing and product development activities. One approach
involves “listening” to and analyzing interactions and conversations on social
technology platforms. This is sometimes described as “sentiment analysis.”
Analyzing the interactions on social platforms can provide unprompted
feedback on campaigns and help assess general brand health. Companies
can also monitor social chatter to track competitor moves, and thus adjust or
phase their own marketing campaigns. In addition to passively listening and
analyzing social interactions, companies can engage directly with customers
in online forums and communities and ask members for feedback.
ƒƒ Marketing communication/interaction. Social technologies offer a way
to achieve efficient distribution of messages, i.e., communicate directly with
customers at very low costs and with highly targeted messages and content,
such as special pricing or other promotions for certain customers and
markets. They offer more ways to create more engagement with customers,
e.g., to promote certain products, through interactive media such as social
games. Additionally, they can be used to build customer communities,
which can be tapped for marketing and product development. In this role,
social media helps customers to communicate with one another, in a way in
which companies can actively or passively participate. The number of online
customer communities continues to grow and ranges from Adobe’s forums,
which have more than one million members, to SC Johnson’s Right@Home
platform, which promotes products via articles and information relating to
topics around the house.
Using social technologies to deliver marketing messages and to generate
customer interactions and engagement is still a relatively new field. For all the
many successes described in this report, not every campaign is successful.
Marketers have learned that creative ideas that are executed well and
based on a quality product or service offering are essential in social media
campaigns. They are also beginning to develop social technology–specific
metrics that will help them gauge returns on social technology investments
and the effectiveness of individual campaigns. They also note that effective
campaigns often integrate efforts across multiple channels, including both
social and mass media.
ƒƒ Lead generation. Information from social technology platforms can provide
leads for both consumer and B2B marketers. Consumers using social
technology, for example, often share news about life events—marriage, the
birth of a child, or a new job—that typically signal sales opportunities for
financial services companies. Insurance agents have created local business
46 David J. Coleman, Yola Georgiadou, and Jeff Labonte, “Volunteered geographic information:
The nature and motivation of producers,” International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures
Research, Volume 4, 2009.

pages on Facebook to connect with customers and prospects. By monitoring
the posts of their Facebook connections, the agents can reach out with a
tailored offer when a life event occurs. By building social capital online (e.g.,
by contributing content that enhances their credibility), sales reps can convert
contacts into leads. In B2B businesses, sales agents can collaborate with one
another through social technologies to improve cross-selling, build referrals,
and research relevant contacts in new prospect companies. Specialized
professional networking services can prove particularly helpful to navigate
complex customer organizations and to identify sought-after decision
makers.47
ƒƒ Social commerce. Social technologies can facilitate transactions by adding
a purchasing function to a seller’s social platform or by adding social features
to an e‑commerce site, for example, suggesting products that were bought
by members of the shopper’s online social groups. For example, the Levi’s
Friends Store allows visitors to sign in with their Facebook accounts to see
what products their friends liked and recommend certain products to certain
friends, thus recreating online parts of the social experience of going shopping
with friends.
Customer service
ƒƒ Customer care. Social technologies can improve customer service in several
ways. A social platform can act as a dedicated customer service channel,
taking on some of the work usually performed on the phone by call centers
(e.g., answering routine questions about product features). Answers become
part of a growing, searchable database that can include knowledge. Some
companies let product or brand enthusiasts answer queries, and these
answers can sometimes be rated by users. The Finnish insurer If recruits
enthusiastic customers to be featured on the company home page and pays
for their support. German mobile phone service provider EPlus has a social
site where users voluntarily help answer each other’s service questions.
Social technologies also give companies a way to listen to customer
conversations, identify customer service issues, and act on them before
they harm sales or reputations. When filmmaker Kevin Smith used his Twitter
account to rant about being removed from a Southwest Airlines flight because
he is too large to fit in a single seat and a second seat was not available, the
carrier responded immediately with tweets of its own, apologizing and offering
a refund to Smith, thereby defusing what could have become a much more
negative situation.48
Enterprise-wide levers
ƒƒ Collaboration and communications. The social technologies of
organizations have significant potential to improve organizational performance
by streamlining communications and improving collaboration (both internally
within the enterprise and with outsiders). Social tools can be used to facilitate
collaboration and co-creation, reduce the time spent in unnecessary in-person
meetings, and help share internal knowledge and best practices. Companies
47 Clara Shih, The Facebook era: Tapping online social networks to build better products, reach
new audiences, and sell more stuff (Boston, MA: Prentice Hall, Pearson Education, 2009).
48 Pete Cashmore, “Southwest tweets, blogs apology to Kevin Smith,” Mashable.com, February
14, 2010.

40
can use social enterprise tools to “onboard” new employees and to integrate
contractors and outside partners into teams.
Furthermore, social technologies can enable communication and collaborative
work across dispersed locations. From almost any location, employees can
initiate projects, form teams, and complete their tasks, all while being able to
connect a face to a name for more “human” contact. Software vendors have
continued to develop tools for creating internal social networks and to facilitate
group collaboration. One service enables internal subscribers to see and listen
to past meetings via podcasts. Other tools facilitate the creation of wikis and
blogs to let employees contribute content, such as news or guidelines for
specific roles. Collaboration tools enable team members to share knowledge,
work on documents simultaneously, and communicate with remote team
members, contractors, or clients. The health insurer Humana uses a social
media tool that lets employees post what-if scenarios and discuss with
colleagues the business impact of various decisions.49
Gamification, the use of features of games to enhance online engagement,
is another way social technologies can encourage increased collaboration.
For example, Rypple, a Web-based performance management program,
allows managers and coworkers to create “badges” to recognize and thank
colleagues for their work. The creator of a badge determines what skill or
job it represents and how exclusive it is (i.e., how many can be given out).
Badges are displayed on employee profiles, providing employees with public
recognition of their achievements, and encouraging competition for the
most recognition.
ƒƒ Matching talent to roles. Social technology provides a window into the
labor market to determine what skills are available and allow businesses to
discover the competencies of specific candidates. By studying content added
by a candidate on a professional networking site such as LinkedIn, assessing
(and accessing) the connections the person has made available, and the
recommendations garnered, a potential employer can create a detailed
picture of a prospective candidate. Internal social networks can provide similar
insights. Chemicals maker BASF uses information about employees on its
connect.BASF network to identify candidates to staff projects or to provide
a quick answer to an obscure question.50
Resumes and profiles on these
services may be more current, because users are encouraged to visit these
sites frequently, and additional insight can be derived from the connections
that people reveal through their social graphs. The widespread distribution of
such services and automated analytics can enable “passive job-searching”
(i.e., the ability to identify attractive candidates, even when candidates aren’t
actively job hunting).
VALUE CREATION ACROSS INDUSTRIES
We find substantial value potential from using social technologies across the
value chain in the four sectors we analyzed in detail (consumer packaged goods,
consumer financial services, professional services, and advanced manufacturing)
49 Arthur L. Jue, Jackie Alcalde Marr, and Mary Ellen Kassotakis, Social media at work: How
networking tools propel organizational performance (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
50 Cordelia Krooss and CheeChin Liew, “Connect.BASF—Creating chemistry with an
online business network,” May 23, 2012, based on presentation at DMMK Congress,
November 2011.

plus the social sector. We synthesize the overall findings from these five analyses
here and describe the detailed findings in chapter 3. Exhibit 16 summarizes
potential to create value through the use of social technologies in different
subsectors as measured by overall margin improvement at the corporate level.
Exhibit 17 shows potential value from the use social technologies, expressed
as a percentage of the cost base in different business functions and value
chain elements.
Exhibit 16
Potential of social technologies to create value across the
value chain in major sectors of the economy
% of revenue1
1 Value potential for the social sector is expressed as a percentage of costs.
<0.5
0.5–1.0
1.0–2.0
>2.0
Potential benefit from productivity increase along the value chain
Total value
at stake
% of revenueIndustry/segment
Product
development
Operations
and
distribution
Sales and
marketing
Customer
service
Business
support
functions
Financial
services
Insurance—
P&C
~3–6
Insurance—
life
~3–4
Retail
banking
~4–7
Consumer packaged goods ~5–6
Professional services n/a ~8–11
Advanced
manufacturing
Semi-
conductors
~5–7
Automotive ~4–6
Aerospace
and defense
~2–3
Social sector
Exhibit 17
Potential of social technologies to improve productivity at different
points in the value chain in major sectors of the economy
% of cost base in each value chain step
1–5
5–10
10–20
>20
Potential benefit from productivity increase along the value chain
Total value
at stake
% of total costIndustry/segment
Product
development
Operations
and
distribution
Sales and
marketing
Customer
service
Business
support
functions
Financial
services
Insurance—
P&C
~2–3
Insurance—
life
~3–4
Retail
banking
~6–12
Consumer packaged goods ~6–9
Professional services n/a ~8–11
Advanced
manufacturing
Semi-
conductors
~5–6
Automotive ~4–6
Aerospace
and defense
~2–3
Social sector

42
Consumer-facing industries, such as retail financial services, autos, and
consumer packaged goods, have the highest potential to benefit from social
technologies in sales and marketing, where they can greatly enhance interactions
with consumers. Professional services, with its legions of interaction workers,
has the most to gain through improving collaboration among employees. We
observe that the core benefits of social technologies in professional services are
in “operations” of professional and support staffs. In complex manufacturing,
such as the semiconductor, automotive, and aerospace sectors, the greatest
potential benefits come in product development and operations, where much
of their interaction work takes place. The social sector can benefit from closer
interactions with donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries.
While studying each of these industries in detail, we also sought to provide a
broader view across other sectors, in terms of the value creation potential and its
ease of capture. Using proxies for these dimensions, we developed a directional
perspective for sectors across the economy (Exhibit 18).
To gauge the relative value creation potential of social technologies in any
particular industry, we used proxy measures for the degree to which interactions
could be enhanced through the application of social technologies across the
value chain.51
Generally, we found that knowledge-intensive industries have the
greatest potential to create value from the use of social technologies. Sectors that
have a high concentration of interaction workers and sectors that have frequent
interactions with large numbers of customers have a high potential for value
creation. Industries that are more capital-intensive and where a large share of
51 Details can be found in the “Construction of indexes of value potential and ease of capture”
section in the appendix.
Exhibit 18
Utilities
Energy
Health care
providers
Pharmaceuticals
Education
Telecommunications
Retail and
wholesale
Transportation
Electronics
Consumer
products
Food and
beverage
processing
Chemicals
Construction
Industrial
manufacturing
Professional
services
National
government
Local
government
Media and
entertainment
Insurance
Banking
Software
and Internet
Value
potential
Lower
Higher
Relative size of
GDP contribution
HigherLower
US EXAMPLE
Directional

workers are not engaged in interaction work, such as in construction or utilities,
will likely realize smaller returns from investment in social technologies.52
The ease of value capture also varies according to the nature of the organization.
Our research suggests that organizations with cultures compatible with these
technologies (being externally oriented and innovative), that have policies that
allow information and content to flow freely, and have made significant technology
investments will find it easier to capture value from applying social technologies.
Industries with high relative ease of value capture from social technologies
include information services, telecommunications, finance and insurance, and
professional services.53
SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES AS A SOURCE OF BIG DATA: VALUE
DERIVED BY ANALYZING SOCIAL DATA
While many of the benefits of social technologies arise directly from the
interactions among people and organizations that these tools enable, a
tremendous amount of additional value can be created by analyzing the data
generated by these interactions (see Box 5, “Using Twitter to predict stock
market moves,” and Box 6, “Using social media to predict social unrest”). In
fact, unstructured data generated by the use of social technologies are leading
examples of the real-time data streams that fall under the “big data” trend.54
Social data streams are huge: Twitter generated 10 terabytes per day in 2010.
Facebook generated 25 terabytes per day in 2009 in log files alone.55
And Zynga,
the social gaming company, was generating 1 petabyte (1,000 terabytes) of data
per day in 2010.56
Plowing through this volume of unstructured data requires sophisticated analytics
and natural-language programming; the computer must not only scan every word
to find mentions of a particular brand, but also must have the linguistic rules
to interpret whether the mention was really about the brand and whether the
sentiment expressed is positive or negative, strong or weak. This is a challenging
computational problem, given the variety and subtlety of natural human language.
52 Interaction workers include professionals, managers, salespeople, and other business
occupations that require complex interactions with other people, independent judgment, and
access to information. They perform work that is not standardized, is difficult to automate,
and often requires extensive education and training. Transaction workers process information
or conduct repetitive transactions that have the potential to be automated (e.g., retail
cashiers, bank tellers, and clerks). Production workers perform physical work to convert
materials from one state to another or assemble finished goods and components (e.g., factory
and construction workers).
53 We measure the ease of capture by equally weighing industry scores on openness, culture,
and technology aptitude. Further details on the ease of capture index methodology can
be found in the appendix section, “Construction of indexes of value potential and ease
of capture.”
54 “Unstructured data” are those that do not easily fit into predefined fields, or into the rows and
columns of relational databases. See Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition,
and productivity, McKinsey Global Institute, May 2011 (www.mckinsey.com/mgi).
55 Raffi Krikorian, “Twitter by the numbers,” @TwitterU, presentation at the University of
California, Berkeley, September 9, 2010. See also Jeff Rothschild, High performance at
massive scale: Lessons learned at Facebook, CNS Lecture Series, October 8, 2009.
56 Andrew Keen, Digital vertigo: How today’s online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and
disorienting us (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012).

44
Box 5. Using Twitter to predict stock market moves
In a 2011 paper published in the Journal of Computational Science,
researchers reported improving prediction models of Dow Jones Industrial
Average (DJIA) closing values by adding a public mood variable that was
calculated using content from Twitter feeds.1
They found that certain
changes in the public mood correlate with shifts in the DJIA values that
occur three to four days later. Adding this social data into the model
improved model accuracy from 46.7 percent (using only historical DJIA
values) to 86.7 percent. While these findings have generated some
controversy, it is clear that social big data analyses have implications for
tracking sentiment and conducting market research. Most “self-reported
subjective well-being” surveys are expensive and time-consuming. But
public mood analysis using microblog feeds can provide automatic,
fast, free, and large-scale information to complement sentiment
measurement tools.
1 Johan Bollen, Huina Mao, and Xiaojun Zeng, “Twitter mood predicts the stock market,”
Journal of Computational Science, Volume 2, 2011.
Box 6. Using social media to predict social unrest
Revolutions are among the most complex and volatile social phenomena
that social scientists attempt to understand. Now, because of social media,
these scientists have petabytes of data that can help show how a movement
like the Arab Spring spreads and builds.1
Using data visualization tools,
they can find patterns and relationships that help identify the ideas that
drive activity. They can even do this in real time. An example is the UN
Global Pulse program, launched after the 2008 global financial crisis to
collect, analyze, and visualize social media data that can be used to identify
potential areas of trouble. Its techniques are based on those developed for
tracking disease outbreaks.
When Liberian elections were scheduled in 2011, the Ushahidi crisis
information crowdsourcing service created a Web site that tracked potential
disturbances. This replicated—in real time—what it had taken researchers
from Yale University two years to accomplish in Liberia. In 2009 and 2010, a
team from Yale and Innovations for Poverty Action collected data via surveys
from almost 1,000 local leaders and more than 9,000 community members
in 247 towns and villages. The information—similar to the kind of sentiment
data detectable from social media postings—was used to build a prediction
model that relied on fewer than ten risk factors. The model was able to
predict up to 75 percent of all conflicts two years in advance, validating the
value of sentiment surveys to anticipate social unrest.2
1 Luke Allnutt, “Pictures at a revolution,” Foreign Policy, April 11, 2012.
2 Robert Blair, Christopher Blattman, and Alexandra Hartman, Patterns of conflict and
cooperation in Liberia (Part 2): Prospects for conflict forecasting and early warning, Yale
University and Innovations for Poverty Action, 2011.

As social technologies and big data both continue to grow, these examples
illustrate how powerful their combined benefits could be.
POTENTIAL TO UNLOCK VALUE WITHIN AND
ACROSS ENTERPRISES
The largest source of value that we identified is using social technologies for
interactions within and between enterprises (i.e., the social technologies of
organizations). We estimate that social technologies, when accompanied by
significant management, process and cultural transformations, could improve
the productivity of “interaction” workers by 20 to 25 percent. These productivity
benefits in collaboration, coordination, and communication account for two-thirds
of all of the potential benefits of social technologies in the sectors we studied.
Our estimates of total potential value should not be interpreted as projections.
These figures are based on best-case scenarios and assume that organizational
structures, processes, practices, and culture can be transformed to fully take
advantage of social technology innovations on a large-scale basis.
Current level of benefits
Most companies have begun to use social technologies, but the vast majority
use them in limited ways and thus derive limited value. According to a McKinsey
survey, almost 80 percent of corporations that use social technologies are still
“developing,” meaning they are reporting a low level of benefits from their use
of social technologies to interact with employees, customers, and business
partners.57
Only about 3 percent of the surveyed companies could be categorized
as “fully networked,” defined as those that gain substantial benefits from using
social technologies to interact with all three stakeholder groups. Fully networked
enterprises not only have implemented social technologies more broadly, but
also have worked on the organizational changes that are needed to make
new approaches to communicating and collaborating successful, including
incorporating the use of these tools into employees’ day-to-day work flows.
Importance of interaction work
Interaction workers—employees whose work requires complex interactions with
other people and independent judgment—are the fastest-growing category of
employees in advanced economies.58
This group includes professionals such as
lawyers and engineers, managers, salespeople, and a range of other knowledge
workers. Most of these positions require more education and training than other
jobs, which is reflected in higher compensation. Despite their numbers and value,
relatively little progress has been made in using IT to improve the productivity
of these interaction workers, compared with the much larger gains seen in
using IT to improve the productivity of physical work (e.g., through supply chain
management and factory automation) or transaction work (e.g., ATMs in retail
banking and self-checkout in retail). Furthermore, previous research has found
that the greater the relative percentage of interaction workers in an enterprise, the
58 See Scott Beardsley, Bradford C. Johnson, and James Manyika, “Competitive advantage
from better interactions,” The McKinsey Quarterly, May 2006; Bradford C. Johnson, James M.
Manyika, and Lareina A. Yee, “The next revolution in interactions,” The McKinsey Quarterly,
November 2005; and Patrick Butler, Ted W. Hall, Alistair M. Hanna, Lenny Mendonca, Byron
Auguste, James Manyika, and Anupam Sahay, “A revolution in interaction,” The McKinsey
Quarterly, February 1997.

46
more competitive it is within its peer group, suggesting that solving the challenge
of making interaction workers more efficient and effective could be a powerful
competitive weapon (Exhibit 19).59
Social collaboration
We estimate that implementing social technologies, along with innovations in
management practices and cultural changes, has the potential to raise the
productivity of interaction workers by 20 to 25 percent.
Social technologies address the most important aspects of an interaction
worker’s job. Typically, such a worker spends 65 percent of a workday
collaborating and communicating with others. This includes 28 percent of work
time reading, writing, or responding to e‑mail, and 19 percent of working hours
trying to track down information needed to complete tasks.60
For example, shifting communication from a medium optimized for one-to-
one communication (e.g., conventional e‑mail) to social platforms can increase
efficiency in several ways. Not only are messages conveyed more rapidly across
the organization, but they are also searchable and accessible by many people.
So, for example, a financial analyst looking for the information on a specific
topic—say, the latest interest rate forecast for an overseas sales region—can
search the company’s internal social network for mentions of those data, rather
than initiating a long search by e‑mail to find out who has the data. Or, a new
employee or a new member of a team can quickly get up to speed by reviewing
postings by colleagues.
59 Scott Beardsley, Bradford C. Johnson, and James Manyika, “Competitive advantage from
better interactions,” The McKinsey Quarterly, May 2006.
60 McKinsey Global Institute analysis based on proprietary McKinsey data and Susan Feldman,
Hidden cost of information work: A progress report, International Data Corporation,
May 2009.
Exhibit 19
Industries with more interactions workers have a higher variability
in performance
Variation in firm-level performance1
SOURCE: Compustat; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
1 Defined as the ratio of standard deviation to mean for EBITDA per employee within each industry.
2 Low is less than 14 percent interaction workers on payroll, medium is 14 to 62 percent, high is more than 62 percent.
Strategic
advantage
over industry
peers
Range of
firm-level
performance
Top
performers
Bottom
performers
Average
Level of interactions2
Low Medium High
0.9x 5.5x 9.4x

As Exhibit 20 shows, based on a broad set of case examples, we estimate
that 30 percent of current total e‑mail time could be repurposed by moving
communication to a social collaboration platform, freeing up 8 percent of the
workweek for more productive activities.61
We estimate that having access to a
searchable store of social messages could reduce information searching time
by as much as 35 percent, which would return 6 percent of the workweek to the
typical interaction employee.62
With additional time savings for collaboration and
tasks such communicating and seeking information (e.g., e‑mail, internal and
external information searches), we estimate that social technologies could yield
productivity improvements in the range of 20 to 25 percent.
We recognize that this level of productivity improvement does not come
about simply by deploying new technology. It will require both a successful
implementation of the appropriate tools, and, more importantly, climbing a steep
organizational learning curve: changes in processes, organization, mindsets,
and behaviors will be needed to build up habits of open communication and
information sharing, particularly when ideas and knowledge must flow across
functional silos. As Unisys, a computer services company, has learned, for these
benefits to flow, employees must be convinced that there is value for them in
the new behaviors, too (see Box 7, “Making a productivity tool work by proving
its value”).
61 The time reduction per activity has been derived from multiple interviews with users and
providers of enterprise collaboration tools that incorporate social elements. See “Potential
impact of collaboration methodology” in the appendix for additional detail.
62 Corporate knowledge management systems have had a mixed record. Implementation
and overhead costs were high and the amount of knowledge captured was limited. Social
technologies, which capture the informal knowledge that is made available through natural
communication, may be more successful. Social technologies generate their own emergent
structures rather than relying on preset templates and replace rigid taxonomies with terms
that employees actually use—so-called “folksonomies.”
Exhibit 20
20.0–25.0
4.0–6.0
3.5–5.0
5.5–6.5
7.0–8.5
Improved communication and collaboration through social technologies
could raise productivity of interaction workers by 20 to 25 percent
SOURCE: International Data Corporation (IDC); McKinsey Global Institute analysis
19
14
39
28
100Total
Role-specific tasks
Communicating and
collaborating internally
Searching and
gathering information
Reading and
answering e-mail
Tasks of
interaction worker
% of average week
Productivity
improvement
%
Increased
value-add time
% of workweek
25–30
30–35
25–35
10–15
20–25

48
Looking across the sectors we studied in depth, the percentage of potential social
technology benefits that is associated with improved enterprise collaboration
varies from 25 percent in consumer packaged goods, where much of the value
is concentrated in consumer marketing, to 99 percent in professional services,
where essentially all of the benefits come from improving the productivity of the
knowledge workers who are the productive assets of these firms (Exhibits 21–25).
Box 7. Making a productivity tool work by proving its value
Unisys, which designs and builds “mission-critical” computing environments,
has made a significant commitment to using social technologies to share
knowledge and improve collaboration among its 20,000 global employees.
More than 16,000 employees have joined the company-wide employee
social site, and more than 6,400 engineers, programmers, and other
specialists have joined ten “communities of excellence” social sites. On
these sites, employees can share technical challenges that they are
having trouble solving, answer questions from other colleagues, and post
content. This is where technical workers go when they want to find the right
information and expertise to “get things done,” says Gloria M. Burke, director
of knowledge and collaboration strategy and governance.
Burke attributes the success of the Unisys sites to the enthusiasm of
community members. This, she emphasizes, was not left to chance. Unisys
employees have come to rely on their sites because they see there are
clearly defined benefits, the most important of which is that using the site
helps employees work more efficiently. As employees recognize the benefits
and share their enthusiasm, more colleagues engage and the value of
the site multiplies. Unisys also makes sure that the sites remain lively and
engaging, by assigning “community managers” to capture and repurpose
success stories, drive membership, increase adoption, and validate
business value.
Exhibit 21
Value available through collaboration and other benefits of
social technologies varies across industries
%
63
49 48
30
24
57
38 34
Average
66
Aero-
space
62
Auto
43
Semi-
conductors
76
Profes-
sional
services
98
Retail
banking
70
2
Life
insurance
52
P&C
insurance
51
CPG
37
Collaboration
Other benefits

Exhibit 22
How social technologies can generate value in
consumer packaged goods
4.1
4.0
Total
6.5
2.4
Business
support
functions
1.0
0
1.0
Customer
service
0.1
0 0.1
Marketing
and sales
4.5
0.5
Operations
and
distribution
0.6
0
0.6
Product
development
0.3
0.1 0.3
% of revenue
Excluding collaboration
Collaboration
Exhibit 23
consumer financial services
1.4
0.1 0.3
0.9
0.7
0.21.1
0.6
0.60
0 0
2.8
1.4
0.4
0 0.4
0.4
1.71.3
1.8
0.8
0.1 0.70.4
0.1 0.3
1.8
0.5
0.5
0.2 0.3
0.1
0 0.1
3.5
2.7
1.91.4
0
Total
9.0
6.3
Cross-
enterprise
1.0
0.2
0.8
Customer
service
1.3
0.6
0.7
Marketing
and sales
5.2
3.3
Operations
and distribution
0.2
1.4
Product
development
0.2
0
Collaboration
% of revenue
Insurance—
P&C
Insurance—
life
Retail banking

50
Exhibit 24
Total
9.5
0.2
9.3
Business
support
functions
4.0
0.1
4.1
Marketing
and sales
0
0 0
Operations
and
distribution
5.3
0
5.3
Product
development
0.1
0 0.1
% of revenue
Collaboration
Exhibit 25
advanced manufacturing industries
0.80.8
2.9
2.9
0.3
0.4
0.1
0.4
00.1
0
1.6
1.4
0.8
0.1
0.4
4.5
5.9
2.1
0 0.7
0.7
2.1
0.3
0.1 0.3
0.2
0.2 0.1
2.6
0.6
1.0
0.5
0.5
4.9
2.8
1.0
0.6
0.3 0.3
Operations
and distribution
1.0
0.5
0.5
Product
development
0.5
0 0.5
1.7
Cross-
enterprise
0.4
0.1 0.3
Customer
service
0.2
0.2 0.1
Marketing
and sales
Total
2.7
Collaboration
% of revenue
Semiconductors
Automotive
Aerospace

Extrapolating from these estimates, we can also make very rough estimates of
potential macroeconomic effects of such productivity gains across all industries
within four major economies: the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom,
and France. The combined benefit of social technologies to improve enterprise
collaboration across the four sectors in these countries could reach between
$1.6 trillion and $1.9 trillion, we estimate.63
Such productivity improvements could be increasingly important to advanced
economies, where employers are reporting growing shortages of qualified
high-skill workers. MGI projects a potential shortfall of as many as 18 million
college-educated workers in advanced economies by 2020.64
Avoiding such
skill gaps—and the drag on growth that they would cause—will involve a variety
of efforts, including “skill-saving” strategies that extend the capabilities of high-
skill employees. Deploying social technologies to speed up communication and
improve knowledge sharing and collaboration could be a highly productive skill-
saving strategy.
Capturing the value
As noted, one of the most challenging aspects of capturing value from social
technologies to address enterprise collaboration is overcoming organizational
barriers. As with many other technological innovations, real benefits in the
enterprise are not achieved until these technological innovations are paired with
corresponding management changes and, in many cases, significant shifts in
mindsets and behaviors across the organization.65
And given the fundamental
transformations required, the full benefits can take years to achieve.
It is so early in the learning cycle about social technologies that there is not
yet a reliable instruction manual to tell large organizations how to use social
technologies most effectively. However, we have seen enough evidence to
believe that the long-run potential does exist. Organizations that are moving
along this path have begun to experiment with new organizational processes,
forms, and practices. We can point in the direction of some factors that can guide
organizations’ experiments as they seek to capture this value over time.
The idea of communicating with colleagues across a company the way
employees communicate with friends on Facebook is easily understood, but
actually embedding the use of social technologies into day-to-day work flows is
a considerable challenge. It is also easy to see how turning business messages
into content that can be discovered and accessed by many people can make life
easier for interaction workers, but making sure that the most relevant information
is fed to people when they need it is a problem for which technology solutions will
continue to improve.
However, what is much more difficult—and essential for social technology
applications to succeed—is changing the culture of the organization and the
behaviors of its members to implement these new approaches. For example,
63 Based on freeing up 25 percent of the workweek through use of social technologies and
applying that time to the most productive uses. Using the income method for calculating
GDP; total cost of labor is one of the components and can be assumed as a lower bound for
the productivity improvements. Other components are corporate profits and rental income.
64 The world at work: Jobs, pay, and skills for 3.5 billion people, McKinsey Global Institute, June
2012 (www.mckinsey.com/mgi).
65 Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Saunders, Wired for innovation: How information technology is
reshaping the economy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).

52
employees need to get used to the idea of making information available to larger
groups, rather than restricting access rights to a specified few. In many cases,
individuals and groups within the corporation (i.e., in different silos) maintain
power by withholding information from others. Managers will need to reward
employees for the information they share, rather than the information they hoard.
Social technologies can also enhance productivity by changing how enterprises
organize and distribute work. Social technologies enable a more fluid, less
hierarchical approach, based more on talent and capacity, rather than hierarchy
and designated roles. Using social technologies, companies can apply the right
resources, in the right amounts, whether they are internal sources or people
outside the organization. An organization will still have leaders, but the work
of employees may be less closely directed. They could be organized around
challenges and evaluated based on how well their tasks and the team’s mission
are executed.
MUCH OF THE VALUE GENERATED BY SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES
WILL BE CAPTURED BY CONSUMERS
We believe that consumers, in addition to companies, will eventually capture
large amounts of the value generated by social technologies. This economic
surplus comes in the form of direct benefits to consumers—the value they get
from social interaction on the Web—and the value that companies generate
from social technologies that will be passed on to consumers in better
products, lower prices, faster responses to changing needs, and higher levels of
customer service.
Consumers will capture a significant share of the value that companies create
with social technologies because market competition will force companies to
transfer substantial benefits to consumers over time as either price or product
improvements. In addition, social technologies increase transparency into what
various competitors can offer. Consumers also gain leverage over suppliers by
joining forces on social platforms. A single message about the quality or price of
a product from one consumer may not warrant attention, but when thousands—
or even millions—of consumers share those messages on a social site or blog,
companies are compelled to respond.
Social media have already shifted power to consumers. According to an NM
Incite survey, 58 percent of social media users say they write product reviews
to protect other consumers from bad experiences, and almost one in four say
they broadcast their negative experiences to “punish companies.” More than
60 percent of social media users say that consumer ratings and consumer
reviews are their preferred sources for information about products and services.66
Consumers also generate benefits for themselves simply by participating in social
networks and using other forms of social technology. They benefit from the ability
to post content or send messages and by accessing a range of content posted by
their connections. Other benefits include receiving recommendations from friends.
Finally, they derive value from creating and maintaining social connections. Social
technologies allow users to identify with a group of like-minded people, to stay in
touch with a network of people at almost no cost, and to coordinate activities with
groups of people without intermediaries.
66 State of the media: Social media report Q3 2011, NM Incite, 2011.

While we do not attempt to predict how much economic value created through
social technologies will become consumer surplus and how much will realized
as corporate profits, other research indicates that large amounts of surplus
already have been captured by consumers. McKinsey conducted a detailed
consumer surplus study for IAB Europe of value accruing to Internet service
subscribers.67
The study, which included comprehensive conjoint analyses, found
that the average European household that used advertising-supported online
services derived about $50 per year (on top of access costs) in value. That would
translate into about $133 billion of consumer value in 2010 for US and European
broadband users, which is projected to grow to about $253 billion by 2015.68
Based on these findings, it can be argued that consumers capture two-thirds
of the total value created by the Internet (Exhibit 26). The report estimates that
social networks account for almost 30 percent of that consumer value, or about
$40 billion in 2010 and $76 billion in 2015.69
67 Consumers driving the digital uptake: The economic value of online advertising-based
services for consumers, McKinsey & Company for IAB Europe, September 2010.
68 Including a large majority of European countries and using the USD/euro exchange rate as of
April 30, 2010.
69 In the report, the following social technologies are considered: social networks, social games,
user-generated video sharing, wikis, and blogs.
Exhibit 26
Consumers capture two-thirds of Internet surplus
2010
€ billion per year
20
30
Paid
services
30
Free
services
120
100
26
11
Access
Services
Access
11
Services
52
SOURCE: McKinsey & Company, Consumers driving the digital uptake: The economic value of online advertising-based
services for consumers, IAB Europe, 2010
Consumer surplus
Producer surplus
Web services
18 22
12 8
Paid
services
30
Adver-
tising
30
+
Consumers Producers
70
50
Pro-
ducers
120
Con-
sumers
120
100
20
Web access
= Total Internet
100% = 190 billion
Producer surplus Consumer surplus

54
RISKS OF SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY
Social networking has opened up the world as never before. Social networking
connects people with people. Static ideas become a living conversation that
builds through the work of myriad users across the globe. Learning accelerates,
resources are easier to mobilize, and—in the best instances—the quality of life for
consumers, and problem solving by society and industry improve.
However, in an environment where people can contribute in any way they want,
there are also risks. Old societal evils such as predatory behavior, bullying, theft,
and vandalism have now moved to social technologies. There are also risks to
businesses and governments; social technologies force greater transparency,
which can be useful or dangerous. Information released using social technologies
can reach an audience of millions in a matter of hours. Maintaining control over
proprietary or classified information becomes more challenging.
Managing these risks will be part of living in a world where social technologies
become increasingly prevalent.
Societal risks
ƒƒ Social cohesion. Social cohesion is the bond that brings people together
in society. Social cohesion depends on the embrace of collective societal
values, which traditionally have been built through face-to-face interactions
and shared collective experiences. But as people spend more and more
time physically isolated and interacting online, traditional institutions and
social conventions may have less influence and social cohesion could be
undermined. Critics say that social networking sites lead to narcissistic
behavior.70
However, there are also examples of how relationships formed on
social platforms have strengthened societal bonds or have become the bases
of social movements; Facebook updates helped turn dissatisfaction with the
Egyptian government into a widespread movement with unprecedented speed
that led to a change in government.
ƒƒ User-generated content quality. With social technology, more and more
users are becoming part of the global conversation, creating their own content
rather than just consuming it. However, the quality of user-generated content
varies dramatically—from excellent works of journalism to spam and even
abuse. With billions of new entries daily, sifting through content will become
increasingly arduous. Some critics have argued that the very disintermediating
power of social technologies has reduced the overall quality of discourse.71
Others have argued that the short-form content made available through social
technologies is making people less able to digest large and complex amounts
of information.72
The opposing view is that even our existing means of content
selection didn’t ever assure quality, that the diversity of opinions is healthy,
and that if people can learn social media literacy, access to a broader set of
opinions can actually promote critical thinking.
70 Andrew Keen, Digital vertigo: How today’s online social revolution is dividing, diminishing and
disorienting us (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012).
71 Mark Bauerlein, The dumbest generation (New York: Penguin Group, 2008).
72 Nicholas Carr, The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2010).

Risks to young people
Young people may not dominate social media, but they are still a large cohort
of users. They are also targets of adult predators and victims of abuse by
their peers.
ƒƒ Sexual predators. Young people, like adults, post personal information,
photos, and videos about their lives on social networking sites that many
people, including sexual predators, can access. Research by the American
Academy of Pediatrics found that 15 percent of Internet users aged 10–
15 years have received unwanted sexual solicitations online, with 4 percent
of this age group having received such solicitations on social sites. Despite
notorious instances of adult predators, most online sexual harassment occurs
between young peers who know one another.73
While providers of social platforms must take steps to protect underage users,
it is virtually impossible to police every group and remove abusers. To reduce
the risks of unwanted sexual solicitations, parents can teach children about
online behavior risks (e.g., not agreeing to every friend request) and how to
use the various privacy tools within social technology platforms (e.g., ensuring
a child’s profile is set to “private”—only 66 percent of youth profiles now are
private).74
ƒƒ Cyber-bullying. The ability of social technology to transmit information quickly
to a peer group unfortunately makes it an ideal tool for bullies. Vicious and
degrading messages and taunts can become viral, exposing the victim to
humiliation on an unprecedented scale. According to the Pew Internet and
American Life Project, 32 percent of teens have experienced some form of
online harassment. In 92 percent of cyber-bullying cases, children know their
tormentors, most of whom are schoolmates.75
While the majority of children
pass through such experiences relatively unscathed, it is serious torture for
some victims, and can lead to depression, substance abuse, delinquency, and
even suicide.
Internal risks to enterprises
While social technologies have the potential to raise worker productivity,
that benefit comes with some risk to the enterprise. Workers can waste time
socializing and playing games; they can also use social media to attack
the company. Moreover, company security and intellectual property can be
compromised. Companies will need to assess these risks and understand how to
mitigate them when implementing social technologies.
ƒƒ Worker productivity. McKinsey’s social technology survey found that
40 percent of employers were worried that social technology distracted
employees from their core tasks.76
As a response, some companies have
restricted access to external social networks. But others have argued that
73 Michele Ybarra and Kimberly Mitchell, “How risky are social networking sites? A comparison
of places online where youth sexual solicitation and harassment occurs,” Pediatrics Journal,
Volume 121, Number 2, February 1, 2008.
74 Amanda Lenhart, Cyberbullying. What the research is telling us …, Pew Internet and
American Life Project, presentation to Youth Online Safety Working Group in Washington, DC,
May 6, 2010.
75 Ibid.
76 Annual social technologies survey, McKinsey Global Institute, 2012.

56
doing so simply prevents employees from accessing an important source of
communications, information, and ideas, and that the type of employees who
waste time using external social networks will find other ways to waste time at
work. Companies have also taken approaches to nonwork-related discussions
on internal social platforms; some have chosen to try to restrict discussion to
work-related topics, and others have embraced the broader discussion as a
means to enhance engagement and employee connections.
ƒƒ Proprietary information. One of the greatest sources of value creation from
social technologies—the speed and reach of content dissemination—raises
one of its greatest risks: loss of confidential information. In a McKinsey survey,
55 percent of executives said that the use of social technologies significantly
increased the risk of confidential information being leaked, and 40 percent
felt that the use of social technologies significantly increased the risk that
corporate intellectual property would be distributed inappropriately.77
ƒƒ Brand reputation. In some companies, employees have used social
technology to express hostility about the organization, disparage strategic
plans, or attack management. Thirty percent of executives surveyed felt this
was a significant risk to their company.78
Enterprises have taken different
approaches to handling such risks, including monitoring or even censoring
conversation on internal social networks. Such measures can prevent the
open communication that generates productivity improvements. Some
companies, however, have welcomed the unfiltered feedback and responded,
helping build trust in management and support for social technology. In
general, while having appropriate policies in place and technical systems to
manage these risks (e.g., audit trails) are helpful, the social aspect of these
communities (i.e., social norming) that is the most powerful tool to enforce
positive behavior.
External risks
ƒƒ Brand reputation. Potentially more dangerous than internal risks are external
ones, including brand-damaging attacks on public social media. Once the
communication shifts to a social medium, companies can no longer craft and
control the brand message. Today, company products, services, and even
corporate behavior with employees and suppliers are under public scrutiny,
and social networks can vastly accelerate the spread of information (positive
or negative, true or false) about a brand. This heightened brand transparency
requires companies to raise their level of quality in both their interactions and
competitive offerings.
Negative contributors may be dissatisfied customers, critics, or even
employees who think they’re making a harmless joke. Whatever their
motivations, social media give them an instant, global audience. For example,
two Domino’s Pizza employees posted a prank video, in which they show
themselves violating multiple health code rules as they prepare an order. The
video became an instant hit on YouTube, and Domino’s experienced a drop of
1 to 2 percent in domestic same-store sales for the quarter.79
77 Annual social technologies survey, McKinsey Global Institute, 2012.
78 Ibid.
79 “Domino’s Pizza Q2 2009 earnings call transcript,” Seekingalpha.com, July 22, 2009.

There is also an alternative—to react swiftly and constructively to minimize
damage. By monitoring shifts from positive to negative buzz, companies
can quickly spot imminent issues and mobilize social outreach teams and
other relevant parties to engage with online opinion leaders directly. In fact,
if companies react quickly and with appropriate messages through the same
social channels, negative buzz can even be transformed to positive sentiment.
A large logistics service provider, for example, saw negative net sentiment turn
positive after uploading and sharing YouTube messages from a board member
in which he apologized for the behavior of personnel who had been criticized
on social platforms.80
ƒƒ Intellectual property. One of the basic enablers of online social interaction—
the ability to instantly share content—also makes social technologies an ideal
way to distribute stolen content faster and more easily. Indeed, platforms such
as Napster and BitTorrent, which helped make the Internet more “social,” have
also been used to distribute protected intellectual property.
Disrupted business models
Furthermore, certain sectors of the economy are exposed to value destruction
from social technologies as a result of disruptive business models. Content-
producing industries such as media and entertainment are particularly vulnerable
to technology that makes every participant a potential producer, editor, and
professional critic. More often, value will be shifted from one sector or group,
rather than destroyed. In the case of content selection, the value may shift from
content middlemen to content producers and consumers.
While social technologies have spawned new business models—and built whole
new industries—they have also threatened some established business models.
Here are some illustrative examples (and this list is not exhaustive) of business
models that social technologies have disrupted and are disrupting:
Peer-to-peer content sharing sites offer 24-hour access to content—music,
video, and software—often before the public release. Operators of mainstream
distribution channels need to adapt their models to offer legitimate alternatives
that are as good or better than what consumers can obtain from these newer
models. In video distribution, Netflix and Hulu have been adapting to the
challenge of new models.
As noted, social-based models threaten the businesses of traditional content
intermediaries. Content producers, writers, entertainers, and filmmakers—virtually
anyone with a smartphone or a computer—can now distribute their work at little
or no cost directly to consumers. With success on social platforms indicative
of commercial potential, the need for and influence of talent experts (agents,
publishers, and producers) is diminished, resulting in a significant reduction
in the cost of talent discovery. Similarly the social networking phenomena of
crowdfunding/crowdsourcing and crowdfinancing are challenging traditional
financing models.
Some professional service sectors may be vulnerable to new models, including
R&D firms, advertising agencies, market research firms, and recruiting firms.
These firms, while disrupted, have the opportunity to adapt their business
80 Turning buzz into gold: How pioneers create value from social media, McKinsey & Company,
May 2012.

58
models to benefit from social technologies as well. A marketing research firm
might, for example, move into the business of setting up social technology
testing communities, or a recruiting firm might use LinkedIn to identify
potential candidates.
Finally, the more that consumers communicate on social networks, the more
threatened traditional communication models will be. Between 2008 and 2011, the
amount of communication time spent on social platforms rose from 15 percent of
all communication time (including time spent using landline phones, cell phones,
e‑mail, instant messaging, and video chat) to 29 percent (Exhibit 27). Lucrative
telecom SMS revenue streams could be threatened by similar messaging services
provided through social technology platforms.
Exhibit 27
Use of social networks for communications nearly doubled from 2008 to
2011, while use of landline phones and instant messaging fell
SOURCE: iConsumer survey 2008–11
14 13
12 10
28 27 25 27
10
105
28
6
21
10
100% = 101
22
5
22
11
2008
100
15
4
26
13
Social networking
VOIP
Mobile voice
Fixed voice
Messaging
E-mail
09 11
102
29
5
21
7
Communication portfolio, 2008–111
%; average minutes of use per day, 2008 index
1 Q: You mentioned several activities you do daily or almost daily. How much time do you spend doing these activities?

59
While companies across industries have used social technologies in diverse and
sometimes unique ways to create value, we also see that there are some general
approaches that are proving to be productive across sectors. In this chapter,
we describe and quantify the potential value that can be created for businesses
and consumers through ten levers that use social technologies across an
organization’s value chain. We also discuss the evolving business models used by
providers of social technology products and services.
CAPTURING VALUE FROM SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY:
A TALE OF FIVE SECTORS
While the ten value levers we identify are used across industries, the ways in
which they are applied and their relative importance vary a great deal across
sectors and industries. In the following five sector profiles, we illustrate those
variations, as we examine how social technologies are being adopted, which
strategies are generating the greatest returns, and where opportunities for
greater value creation lie. Overall, we find that in most sectors the use of social
technologies is still in an early stage, and while we see some early examples of
value capture, most organizations are at only the initial stages of exploiting this
trend, particularly in the application of social technologies to internal operations.
To gauge the overall economic impact of social technology, we have examined
four large business sectors (consumer packaged goods, consumer financial
services, professional services, and advanced manufacturing) and the social
sector (e.g., nonprofits, non-governmental organizations) to create a cross-section
of the economy. These sectors include both product and service companies and
companies that operate in B2B and B2C markets. In the following pages, we
examine each in turn.
3. How social technologies
create value in five sectors

60
CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS
The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry sells a broad range of products
that are purchased on a regular basis—the staples, such as packaged foods,
beverages, personal care products, paper goods, and laundry detergent, that
fill shopping baskets at supermarkets and big-box stores. In addition to heavy
spending on advertising and promotion to build and sustain brand loyalty, CPG
companies depend on a continuous stream of product enhancements and brand
extensions to drive sales and brand loyalty, so setting product requirements and
successfully launching new iterations are critically important. Social technologies
can help in both of these areas (Exhibit 28).
Not surprisingly, companies in the consumer packaged goods industry have
been early and enthusiastic adopters of social technologies. CPG companies
are among the largest mass-market advertisers (spending 15 to 20 percent of
revenue on marketing and sales activities) and have found social technology
to be an effective and efficient way to reach consumers, maintain contact, and
gather critically important insights for product development. Several leading CPG
companies are very large, global organizations with complex supply chains and
have a huge opportunity to create value by using social technology to improve
internal and external collaboration and raise white-collar productivity.
Exhibit 28
Social technologies could create $212 billion–308 billion in annual value
in the CPG sector
Global 2011
4,000
480
264
16
760
2,400
80
1 Industry market size: Euromonitor, Global Insight. Adjusted to reflect ~25 percent of retail value captured by retailers.
NOTE: Numbers may not sum due to rounding. Not to scale.
$ billion Key levers
Marketing
and sales
Product
development
Operations and
distribution
Business support
functions
Customer service
Total margin
Total revenue
Value chain
expense and
margin structure
$ billion
% of value
chain expense
or total margin
Value potential
▪ Internal collaboration among
operations workers
▪ Sentiment analysis of consumer
preferences
▪ Direct consumer communication
▪ Communities for consumer
co-creation of answers
business support workers
▪ Crowdsourcing solutions
▪ Internal collaboration among R&D
workers
~45–65
14–17
0–2
19–29
21–36
13–18
~3–6
~36–46
~212–308
~141–217
~20–25
~11–14
Sector
snapshot
$4 trillion per year1Global sector revenue
$212 billion–308 billion annuallySocial technology value potential
Marketing and sales (value potential up to 30 percent) and
customer service (value potential up to 36 percent)
Top value levers

Primary uses of social technology
While CPG companies have been pioneers in the use of social technology, most
companies are still defining the role of social technologies in the marketing mix.
Also, because companies lack methods for estimating the value contribution of
social technology, they continue to work in a trial-and-error mode. Some smaller,
niche players, meanwhile, are committing fully to social approaches and have
shifted all marketing to social channels.
At this point, the level of commitment to social technologies by CPG companies
depends largely on the level of engagement that consumers have with their
brands or products. Some of the heaviest users of social technologies have been
producers of beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic), whose products
exhibit high engagement, strong consumer preferences (e.g., Coke vs. Pepsi),
and intense loyalty. The Coca-Cola Co., for example, has dedicated 20 percent of
overall marketing investments to social technologies.81
Beverages lend themselves to social-based marketing because they are often
consumed in a social context. Beer brands have millions of online “friends” and
offer apps to entertain fans and reinforce brand loyalty. Diageo’s Captain Morgan
rum offers pictures, videos, and downloadable games for its Facebook friends. In
Australia, Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” social media campaign included significant
social elements: sharing songs and virtual Cokes online, as well as competitions.
The company sparked a social media phenomenon when it shipped special
bottles of Coke, each with the familiar trademarked script spelling out one of the
150 most popular names in Australia. Coke kept quiet about what it was up to,
so the campaign went viral, as social network users speculated about what the
special bottles were all about. Coke followed up with a second round, in which
consumers could vote for which names should be put on the bottles next. The
campaign resulted in a 4 percent volume increase in three months.82
While products such as laundry detergent are not used socially and lack the
level of engagement that a favorite food elicits, marketers are finding that social
technologies can also help raise consumer engagement with products that aren’t
found in the food and beverage aisles. In Brazil, for example, Unilever used social
media to promote its OMO liquid detergent. The company posted a series of
online videos, featuring a high-energy maid called Super Nice, who gives advice
on how to manage the household (e.g., how to iron shirts). References to OMO
products are made only when it is relevant for the topic. Once Super Nice gained
popularity on video, Unilever dispatched 150 models dressed like Super Nice
to grocery stores, helping lift OMO sales by 194 percent in just four weeks.83
Similarly, Procter & Gamble is building engagement for its Tide Pods product by
posting company-produced and user-generated videos on YouTube and Amazon.
81 Adi Ignatius, “Shaking things up at Coca-Cola,” Harvard Business Review, October 2011.
82 “‘Share a Coke’ campaign post-analysis,” Marketingmagazine.com, June 22, 2012, and
Cannes Lions, “Share a Coke,” Media Lions Entry, 59th International Festival of Creativity,
June 17–23, 2012, www.canneslions.com.
83 Presentation by Unilever’s marketing director at Proxxima conference, May 2011.

62
Value creation
The three largest sources of value from social technologies for CPG companies
are marketing, product development, and enterprise collaboration. We estimate
that these three sources could potentially generate as much as $300 billion over
the next ten years in the CPG sector, resulting in potential productivity increases
for the category of 0.6 to 0.9 percent per year.
In marketing alone there is an opportunity to improve productivity by
approximately 20 to 30 percent. In a $4 trillion global industry that spends 15 to
20 percent of revenue on marketing and sales, that could generate as much as
around $220 billion of additional value.
The potential of social technologies to improve the ability of large, multinational
CPG companies to coordinate activities and share knowledge across many
brand and geographic organizations and across corporate functions has
big implications. Our research suggests that there is a potential to generate
productivity gains that are equivalent to two to three percentage points of margin
by applying social enterprise tools in CPG organizations.
Product development
New products are key to growth in most CPG categories because many
products are not highly differentiated and brands must continually add new
variations in response to even minor changes in consumer preferences (e.g.,
low-sodium crackers). Yet, despite heavy investments in consumer research to
support new launches, 75 percent of new CPG products in the United States
fail. Only 3 percent become “blockbusters” that generate additional revenue for
many years.84
By using social technologies to derive richer consumer insights about changing
needs, companies can raise the survival rate of new products. We estimate that
if a company managed to produce one more blockbuster for every 100 products
launched, its revenue could increase by 3 percent.85
Social platforms have proven
to be a powerful source of more detailed and timely information than other
research methods. Generating insights by engaging directly with consumers on
social platforms or by observing what they say about products and features can
cost as little as one-fifth as much as conventional research using focus groups
or surveys. Companies use input from social technology users to test product
concepts or to bring in external ideas or solutions through crowdsourcing. Some
companies have created specialized communities to focus on a particular idea,
and some communities have advised companies throughout the development
cycle, including providing post-launch feedback (see Box 8, “Kraft’s South Beach
diet community”). Procter & Gamble’s Connect + Develop program welcomes
external ideas by allowing companies and individual inventors to submit product
ideas or solutions to problems that the company posts online.86
84 The Symphony IRI Group defines a failed launch as a product that does not reach $7.5 million
in first-year sales. It defines a blockbuster as a product that reaches $50 million in sales
during the first year.
85 Assuming about 15,600 new products launched per year in the United States at a total value
of $750 billion (average of 2008 to 2011, Global New Products Database product launch
database), $50 million in first-year revenue for blockbuster products, and three-year lifetime of
blockbuster products.
86 Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab, “Connect and Develop: Inside Procter & Gamble’s new
model for innovation,” Harvard Business Review, March 2006.

Access to external knowledge through social technologies can also reduce
product development time significantly, an important advantage in a sector
where speed of innovation is key to success. By continuously testing ideas with
consumers on social networks, one company reduced from nine months to three
months the time to bring a new variation to market.
Operations
Given the huge volume of products that large CPG companies manufacture
(hundreds of brands and products in different formulations and package sizes)
and the breadth of their distribution networks, one area of experimentation is
in the use of social media to obtain more immediate and granular data about
end-user demand. Social technologies could become an additional source of
information for sales and operations planning efforts, through an approach to
demand forecasting that uses not only point of sale information but also new
sources of downstream data. These new sources can include data picked up
from social networks and microblogging sites. Social data, for example, in which
users share their shopping experiences with their connections, has the potential
to detect sales lost to stockouts, which point of sale data do not capture.87
87 On average, a CPG companies face lags of 11 to 14 days in demand data. Best-in-class CPG
companies have only a one- or two-day lag. See Robert J. Bowman, “In consumer goods, a
new approach to retail replenishment,” Supply Chain Brain, October 2009.
Box 8. Kraft’s South Beach diet community
When Kraft Foods created the South Beach line of diet foods, based on
a best-selling book by cardiologist Arthur Agatston, it invited 150 opinion
leaders in health and nutrition, as well as 150 consumers who had struggled
with weight loss, to form an online community. They talked and shared their
experiences in the community and allowed people to build on each other’s
ideas. While listening in on these conversations, Kraft discovered that
women had trouble maintaining their diets throughout the day and wanted
packaged food that conformed to the diet’s requirements for meals and
snacks around the clock. As a result, the South Beach line (48 products
in all) was developed in 16 months, a significantly shorter time than for
traditional development.
Another important insight was that consumers have trouble remembering
the differences between different diet approaches—South Beach, in
fact, had been incorrectly lumped with low-carbohydrate diets. To avoid
confusion, Kraft used a pre-launch campaign to educate consumers about
how the South Beach Diet works and the benefits of having appropriate
products for all eating occasions. The community members helped refine
product concepts and packaging and were involved in the merchandising
and test marketing. Community members also shared their retail
experiences after the launch (e.g., difficulty finding the products in stores)
and reported their usage patterns, helping to refine the product line.1
1 Amanda F. Batista, “Kraft tallies $100M in sales lift by tapping into online communities,”
DemandGen Report, July 7, 2008.

64
So far, however, attempts to improve forecasting using social technologies have
been limited in their success. One company measured the weekly level of “buzz”
about a snack bar and found a high correlation—0.8—with sales volume, but
causality was not clearly established. After further refinement, these techniques
could potentially provide a new input for forecasting models.
Marketing and sales
Marketing and sales applications have the highest value creation potential for
social technologies in CPG companies. These opportunities arise in consumer
insight, customer communications and promotions, and sales. Overall, we
estimate that companies can generate productivity improvements of 20 to
25 percent in these functions. Given that CPG companies spend on average 15
to 20 percent of revenue on marketing and sales, such a large improvement in
productivity would have a significant impact on their top and bottom lines.
Consumer insight
CPG companies typically spend 1 to 2 percent of revenue on acquiring consumer
insights. About a quarter of consumer insight budgets are dedicated to product
development, with the rest going to marketing activities such as brand monitoring,
advertising copy testing, and competitive intelligence. By using online consumer
panels and communities where people can interact with each other and online
brand representatives, rather than traditional panels and focus groups, some CPG
companies have gained the same level of insights at only 60 to 80 percent of their
previous spend on market intelligence and consumer insight.88
Instead of—or, in addition to—convening focus groups, many CPG companies
now organize or participate in online communities where they can float new
product ideas, conduct polls, distribute coupons, and test packaging or
advertising concepts. Consumer communities range from open forums for
brand fans to tightly targeted groups whose input is used for development of a
specific product.
Companies cite the more intimate connections that they can form by interacting
with consumers in a social context as the basis for qualitative improvements in
consumer insights. And, unlike a focus group where participants often change
every time, a digital dialogue with consumers can be ongoing. As one executive
describes it, “The panel allows me to create a relationship with the participants,
and they get more honest in their comments. In addition, a single individual
cannot dominate, as often happens in a panel or focus group.”89
Social technologies also provide wider samples—tens of thousands of
consumers, rather than hundreds. Thus, the amount of information that can
be generated through “social” research initiatives is many times larger than
what is gleaned from a few hours of work with the traditional focus groups or
periodic panel queries. Sales forecasting models still require representative and
statistically valid samples, but candidates for those samples can be recruited from
the online community.
88 Refer to “Estimating value potential of using social technologies in four global sectors” in the
appendix for details on calculation.
89 McKinsey Global Institute interview.

In addition to gaining insights by engaging directly with consumers on social
media, CPG marketers can learn a great deal by simply tracking what is being
said in social platform conversations. For example, a maker of personal care
products learned only by listening to online chatter that its products were being
used by different consumer groups and in different ways than those for which
they were intended. This type of misalignment between marketing efforts and
customer perceptions or behaviors can be difficult to uncover with traditional
surveys. The insight persuaded the company to update its product information to
reflect the new use and change its marketing to target the new groups.
Social technologies also enable new possibilities for tracking brand and product
health. Instead of relying on quarterly or annual survey data, companies can
monitor consumer attitudes continuously. This instant feedback can provide the
opportunity to improve a new advertising campaign after it launches or even
tweak a new product early on to improve its chances of success.90
Online testing
of advertising copy gives marketers far greater opportunity to iterate changes.
Finally, by using the detailed profile data and behaviors recorded on social
networks, CPG companies can generate finer customer segmentations. Instead
of knowing only age and zip code, marketers can add other characteristics, such
as musical tastes or hobbies, based on choices of social circles and activities on
social sites. Already, social networking services provide much finer segmentation
categories of their users than traditional media—for example, people who like
cheese—for advertising purposes.
Communications
Social media provides a way for CPG brands to communicate directly with
consumers in a light-touch manner—and at less cost and with greater reach than
in typical customer relationship management (CRM) deployments. Many players
launched ambitious CRM systems in the 1990s, hoping to use those systems
to connect directly with consumers. CRM often did not live up to expectations
in CPG, because these companies did not have direct connections to end
consumers (their products are sold through retail stores), and communication
based on CRM was still rudimentary (i.e., segmenting was limited to basic
demographic splits). By contrast, social technologies now make possible a natural
and rich dialogue between consumers and CPG companies and allow companies
to address a community of consumers directly. Unilever, for example, rather than
promoting the benefits of Dove soap, engaged communities of consumers by
prompting online conversations about the unrealistic demands that the beauty
and fashion industries place on women, as part of as part of its “Dove campaign
for real beauty” initiative.
Through social technologies, it is now possible to launch shorter interactive
campaigns or create long-lasting communities to interact with customers.
Leading examples of individual social media campaigns show the additional
value gained is equivalent to 30 to 60 percent of traditional advertising campaign
budgets. Major CPG companies will not migrate their entire advertising budgets
from traditional media into social—if only to cover multiple touch points—but we
believe the emerging shift from traditional to social media will continue. Interactive
campaigns can include elements such as competitions and games and are often
90 Hal R. Varian, “Kaizen, that continuous improvement strategy, finds its ideal environment,”
New York Times, February 8, 2007.

66
combined with offline activities (see Box 9, “A bounty of consumer data,” on an
integrated campaign example). This is where most CPG companies have been
experimenting with social technologies.
On social platforms, consumers can also co-create marketing campaigns and
provide content. Doritos, for example, launched a Web-based competition in
which consumers submitted videos to be shown as part of the snack brand’s
Super Bowl campaign. Contestants could submit, watch, and vote for the videos
online, and Doritos aired the winner during the Super Bowl. More than 6,100
videos were submitted, and the winning video was voted the number one video in
the USA Today/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter.91
Social commerce
CPG companies are using social technologies in sales in several ways, including
adding reviews and communities to online sales sites and creating finely
targeted couponing programs. While most CPG products are sold through retail
channels, some subsegments such as personal care and home products use
direct channels (e.g., Avon Products, Mary Kay, Amway). However, established
CPG players are experimenting with sales of products such as detergents via
online stores. According to McKinsey’s 2011 iConsumer survey, only 4 percent
of groceries are bought online in the United States and Europe, and less than
1 percent of consumers seek online advice before buying these products.92
This
leaves significant opportunity to change shopping behavior for large categories.
There is a high correlation between the share of online sales of a given category
and the degree to which consumers seek advice from other consumers online.
Therefore, the importance of making sales social will increase as more sales
move online.
91 Cotton Delo, “Doritos’ latest Super Bowl ad contest storms viral video,” AdAge Digital,
January 12, 2012, and Bruce Horovitz, Laura Petrecca, and Gary Strauss, “Super Bowl ad
meter winner: Score one for the Doritos baby,” USA Today, February 8, 2012.
92 McKinsey & Company iConsumer survey, 2011 (United States, United Kingdom, Russia,
Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Italy).
Box 9. A bounty of consumer data
The Captain’s Island promotion for Captain Morgan rum was launched on
Facebook, where fans of the brand could enter a contest to win a trip to an
exotic island. Contestants complete challenges such as posting pictures
of themselves dressed as the captain or collecting keys found in bars,
supermarkets, and on Web sites that fully integrate the campaign with the
product. The unique keys allow Diageo’s marketers to trace the connection
between online engagement and sales by mining the information associated
with each key to understand where they bought the drinks and which Web
sites influenced them. The contests generated so much interest that a
market for the keys sprang up on eBay.1
1 Marcus Dyer and Mark Wheeler, “Diageo case study: Delivering sales through social for
Captain Morgan,” presentation at Social Media Marketing & Monitoring conference in
London, September 19, 2011.

When consumers advise each other on product uses and benefits, brand loyalty
and sales increase. For example, studies found that online consumer ratings
significantly influence product sales in the online book market and the movie
industry.93
But this effect is not limited to the online space; it is possible to
leverage reviews in offline advertising as well. Rubbermaid added information
from online reviews to traditional printed coupons and increased the redemption
rate by 10 percent. Further evidence of the impact of active consumer advice
and recommendations was uncovered during our research. A CPG company
created a community for consumers to discuss its products in connection to its
Web shop. When comparing shopping behavior and engagement in that product
community, the company found that consumers who were very active in the
community also generated up to ten times the revenue of an average consumer.
While this example does not indicate whether consumer activity in a community
influences consumer purchases or vice versa, we believe that higher involvement
through product-specific communities fosters the bond between a consumer
and a brand, thus potentially lifting sales. This is also in line with study findings
showing that using social elements on shopping Web sites is advantageous for
sellers because they provide consumers with enhanced perceptions of human
connection and the formation of emotional bonds.94
Therefore, e‑commerce
services will benefit from adding social elements.
Coupons provide another avenue of impact for social technologies in CPG. The
coupon market for household products in the United States was $1 billion in
2010, and social technologies have several benefits for this spending category.
For example, distributing individual discount offers over social networks and to
communities instead of sending coupons through direct mail or print publications
makes it possible to connect purchase patterns to detailed demographics. These
data can be used to direct coupons to new customers, rather than existing ones,
who now receive about half of all promotional discounts on CPG products. Digital
distribution of promotions has additional benefits, including shorter cycle times
and lower distribution costs; printing and distribution costs constitute about
30 percent of the total cost of coupon programs.
Social technologies will also take an increasing role at the point of purchase in
stores. The use of check-in via such services as FourSquare at stores is only
the beginning of making the in-store experience social. Currently, accessing
reviews and ratings takes too long for consumers to seek advice every time they
buy shampoo. However, imagine a mobile application that allowed a shopper
to take a digital picture of a bottle of shampoo and find out which friends have
reviewed it before committing to a purchase (or even having an augmented reality
application proactively provide that information as the shopper walks around
a store). These applications might not be feasible now, but given advances in
technology, you can imagine the possibility that any interaction with a consumer
can be made social, if the cost of accessing and processing social information is
sufficiently low.
93 Judith A. Chevalier and Dina Mayzlin, “The effect of word of mouth on sales: Online book
reviews,” Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 43, Number 3, 2006, and Xiaoquan M.
Zhang and Chrysanthos Dellarocas, “The lord of the ratings: How a movie’s fate is influenced
by reviews,” Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Information Systems, 2006.
94 Liz C. Wang et al. “Can a retail Web site be social?,” Journal of Marketing, Volume 71, Number
3, July 2007.

68
Enterprise-wide applications
The CPG sector includes very large, global organizations that compete in many
product categories and across regions. These are highly complex organizations,
and the most successful ones have learned to balance local independence (at the
regional or national level) with centralized functional “centers of excellence” (e.g.,
in marketing or sales), often in a matrix structure. In addition, CPG companies
often have hundreds of partners and suppliers to both their regional and
central operations.
Social technologies have a significant potential—mostly unrealized—to improve
communications and collaboration within CPG organizations and between them
and external partners. We estimate that by becoming “networked” and using
social platforms to reduce e‑mail use, provide faster access to information,
and increase collaboration, the industry could improve the productivity of its
interaction workforce by 20 to 25 percent, resulting in improvement equal to two
to three percentage points’ margin. Internal communities, forums, and news feeds
can speed up the processes of launching virtual teams, finding experts, and
sharing knowledge.
Value shifts
The largest potential benefits from the use of social technologies in the CPG
industry increase productivity in marketing, product development, and enterprise
collaboration. Some companies might choose to capture some of those benefits
by reducing their costs in these areas, but our research suggests that many
firms will choose to maintain their levels of spend and capture value by additional
growth, both in new markets and by taking share from competitors.
While a number of players have been experimenting with social technologies
for the past few years, few have created a fully integrated strategy covering all
relevant value chain steps. Therefore, the value created by social technologies will
benefit innovative enterprises for some time. Those players that are successfully
leveraging social media are likely to enjoy this first mover advantage for some
time, especially if they continue to more fully integrate social technologies into
their business. Individual firms can hence significantly improve their market
position if they are able to create a successful integrated social strategy.
However, the highly competitive nature of these markets suggests that over time
consumers will capture a substantial portion of the surplus created by social
technologies. Consumers will benefit through improved products that are better
matched to their needs and through lower prices. Operational and marketing
efficiencies will allow enterprises to do the same activities at less cost or reinvest
the value to improve customer offerings.
Consumers will also capture value in the form of greater transparency into prices
and even through influence on the CPG industry beyond what they buy, e.g.,
around corporate social responsibility. The power of consumer opinion mobilized
by social media has been demonstrated by online campaigns against companies
that are perceived to have lax safety or environmental standards.

Enablers and barriers
A key enabler in the further use of social technology in CPG sectors will be better
metrics. Most CPG companies today are struggling to build data-driven social
marketing strategies because so few standard measures of effectiveness exist.
For now, CPG companies rely on intermediate metrics, such as engagement
(time spent on a social site) or impressions (number of “eyeballs” attracted to a
social site), unable to consistently demonstrate the relationship between social
campaigns and incremental revenue. Integrating online sentiment into advanced
marketing mix models might be one step toward the solution. On the product
development side, some benefits are more tangible (e.g., reduced development
time), but other types of metrics (e.g., to measure the improvement in product
specifications as a result of social technologies) have been more difficult
to develop.
Another important challenge is to fully integrate the insights generated from social
technologies into business processes across the value chain. Social communities
can be used to feed consumer insights and ideas into product development,
and they can also be used to test advertising copy, disseminate messages, and
help create answers for customer service questions. To make sure that CPG
companies can call on social platform users for all these activities, companies
will need integrated, cross-functional strategies and processes to ensure that
different organizational units collaborate effectively.
CONSUMER FINANCIAL SERVICES
Financial services companies, broadly defined, account for approximately
20 percent of economic value-add in developed economies.95
In this report we
examine three consumer-facing segments of financial services: retail banking,
life insurance, and property and casualty insurance. Together, these industries
generate $6.6 trillion in annual revenue globally, or approximately 60 percent of
total financial services sector sales (Exhibit 29). Despite the financial crisis, the
global market has grown consistently at about 6 percent annually over the past
decade, led by expansion in the less developed economies, where growth is
expected to remain robust.96
95 Financial services typically represent about 30 percent of the total service market in
developed economies and 20 percent of total GDP (Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development, The service economy, Business and Industry Policy Forum Series, OECD
Publications, 2000).
96 World Global Insurance Pools and Global Banking Pools data (2000–10, actual; 2011
estimate), and forecasts 2012–20.

70
Retail finance—which includes insurance, credit accounts, loans, and personal
investments—provides a unique challenge and a valuable perspective on the
potential of social media to create value. These products are intangible and often
complex; consumers find it difficult to make comparisons across offerings, even
within the same category (e.g., two different home insurance policies). Consumers
do not always have full transparency into products or a clear understanding
of how they work. So, rather than doing their own research and evaluation,
consumers often place their trust in an adviser (either a professional or a
knowledgeable relative or friend) or a brand.
According to McKinsey surveys, the third most important driver of satisfaction
with a bank is that the customer feels good telling other people about where
he or she banks. In other words, that the bank is a brand they feel close to is
more important than how well the bank resolves problems with accounts or if it
provides accurate statements. The top reason for switching banks is an emotional
one: 22 percent of people switched banks to move to an institution that they felt
more confident about (which is above the percentage who switched for better
products or service).97
97 2010 McKinsey Customer Experience Survey.
Exhibit 29
Social technologies could create $256 billion–423 billion in value annually
in consumer financial services
Global 2011
▪ Market research savings
▪ Improved marketing
communication/lead generation
~256–423
~32–61
~40–58
~133–218
~47–79
~5–8
889
1,194
3,566
622
6,563
61
232
▪ Fraud reduction in P&C
▪ Increases in operations worker
productivity
▪ Reduced customer service
costs
▪ Improved collaboration among
business support workers
▪ Recruiting cost reductions
▪ Collaboration among R&D
workers
▪ Potential to crowdsource ideas
SOURCE: US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012, 131st Edition, Washington, DC, 2012; McKinsey
Global Institute analysis
1 US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012, 131st Edition.
~40–70
7–13
1–2
15–24
14–26
3–5
Marketing
and sales
Product
development
Operations and
distribution
Business support
functions
Customer service
Total margin
Total revenue
Value chain
expense and
margin structure
$ billion
% of value
chain expense
or total margin
Value potential
Sector
snapshot
$6.6 trillion per year1Global sector revenue
Marketing and sales (value potential up to 24 percent) and
customer service (value potential up to 26 percent)
Top value levers

Social technologies can also provide financial institutions with valuable insights
into consumer behavior and attitudes to build a positive brand perception. In
addition, an analysis of historical behavior can be used to help price products,
assess risk, and detect fraudulent activity, benefiting both the institutions and
individual consumers.
Social media is also a great tool for helping financial institutions anticipate
future customer needs. Demand for many financial products is tightly bound
to significant life events such as buying a home, switching jobs, or becoming a
parent. Social media can provide a window into these events, allowing financial
industry players to engage customers early in their financial journey and keep
track of life events to identify cross-selling or up-selling opportunities.
Given these market characteristics and developments, there is substantial
opportunity for consumer finance firms to improve customer relations and build
trust by leveraging social media, in the process creating value for the customer as
well as for their bottom lines.
Consumers are increasingly willing to interact with financial services providers
online and even on social platforms. While face-to-face interactions still
dominate certain aspects of financial services, consumers are increasingly open
to virtual customer service even for transactions such as filing an insurance
claim.98
Finally, there is significant potential for social technologies to create
value through enterprise collaboration in financial services. Many of the top
consumer-facing financial services players in mature markets are large, complex
organizations that were formed from mergers and acquisitions, resulting in
siloed personnel structures, fragmented processes, and differing IT systems.
Effectively applied electronic collaboration tools can help create more cohesive,
transparent organizations that consistently and effectively share knowledge. This
is particularly important in the financial services industry, which employs a large
pool of knowledge workers such as underwriters, researchers, and sales agents
whose productivity depends on having ready access to the right information.
Multinational organizations can particularly benefit as such tools can be used
across countries to spread knowledge and ensure alignment of processes,
especially in the light of regulatory tightening since the financial crisis.
Examples of current usage
In general, the financial services industry lags behind other sectors in adoption of
social technologies. In a 2011 survey of social technology users, only 64 percent
of financial services firms reported using at least one social technology tool,
compared with 86 percent in high tech. Only energy firms reported lower usage.99
While most consumer-facing financial services companies have a social media
presence, only a few players have developed fully defined strategies.
Most social technology implementations in the sector so far have been in
marketing and customer service, usually using well-established social platforms to
reach consumers. Some of these players use their social media pages to attract
new customers and retain existing ones by starting discussion threads, posting
links to company-related media files, publicizing promotions, and responding to
98 Kausik Rajgopal and Glen Sarvady, “Online payments and digital disintermediation,”
McKinsey on Payments, Issue 1, February 2008.

72
customer complaints. Financial services companies are also employing social
technologies in their B2B markets, particularly to serve small and medium-size
businesses. For example, American Express has launched a high-profile effort to
use social technologies to create community among owners of small businesses
(see Box 10, “American Express friends small business”).
Internal social collaboration tools are gaining in popularity in financial services,
and several major players have implemented global collaboration software tools.
Our research suggests that the application of social technologies to enterprise
collaboration holds the biggest value potential for the industry.
Some of the most sophisticated users in the sector have begun to explore social
media as a source for consumer data and information that were previously
not available or easy to obtain. This information—such as age, educational
attainment, and current or past employers—can be used to build a more accurate
risk profile to calculate credit scores and price insurance premiums. Although
only a few firms are using social technologies for this purpose, it has significant
potential and will likely be an aspect of many firms’ social technology strategies in
the future.
Finally, social media has allowed radically innovative financial services players to
fundamentally challenge traditional operating models by leveraging social network
connections (see Box 11, “A social selling model for insurance”).
Box 10. American Express friends small business
To help drive sales to its small business customers—and bolster its
reputation with them—American Express launched Small Business Saturday
in November 2010. The company started with a social media campaign to
encourage consumers to shop at small businesses in their towns on the
Saturday after Thanksgiving—the day after the “Black Friday” shopping
spree when millions of Americans descend on malls and big-box stores,
marking the start of the holiday shopping season. Amex created a large
social advertising campaign on Facebook and also provided 10,000
participating small businesses with free Facebook advertising to help drive
sales. It also created a tool to allow small business owners to promote their
businesses via social networks. About 100,000 small business owners
downloaded point-of-purchase and promotional materials and, on average,
saw a 28 percent lift in revenue over the after-Thanksgiving Saturday of the
previous year. The 2011 Small Business Saturday drew 103 million shoppers
and generated a 23 percent increase in Amex card member transactions.1
1 American Express Company, www.smallbusinesssaturday.com; NM Incite.

The largest opportunities in the value chain for consumer-facing financial
institutions are in customer insights and sales and marketing. Value creation in
these areas could amount to approximately $133 billion to $218 billion per year
globally. If the entire value generated from social technologies is captured over
the next ten years, the industry will enjoy annual productivity increases between
0.4 and 0.7 percent. Fraud reduction and increased productivity in operations
and distribution account for the second-largest source of value—about $47 billion
to $79 billion annually. Social technology can enhance fraud detection as well
as decrease incentives for fraud by leveraging connections in social networks.
Across the entire value chain, internal collaboration improvements through
social technologies can increase white-collar worker productivity, including in
product development and business support functions. We estimate that social
technologies could generate value equivalent of as much as 26 percent of the
cost base in customer service operations, through more productive call centers
and reduced costs per customer contact.
Product development
The financial services industry can use social technologies for product
development in a number of ways. First, product development teams can monitor
digital communities where customers share opinions and views on products and
services, and they can use this information to shape the direction of product
development. They can also solicit consumer feedback directly through social
media and enlist customers in co-creation and idea generation. Financial firms
have successfully tapped social networks for consumer insights and have used
crowdsourcing to develop ideas such as iPhone and iPad apps and features,
mobile banking solutions, and mobile peer-to-peer payment systems.
Social technologies also raise the efficiency of product development teams by
enabling better collaboration among dispersed R&D teams and local branches.
Such virtual collaboration can start in the idea generation phase and be used
all the way through product testing and post-launch improvement initiatives. We
estimate that social product development can generate product development
productivity improvements worth 7 to 13 percent of costs, or about $5 billion to
$8 billion a year globally.
Box 11. A social selling model for insurance
Insurance broker Friendsurance developed a way to encourage potential
customers to apply for insurance as a group to save money. The savings
come because customers in the group underwrite all the small claims
themselves, which allows them to qualify for lower premiums and rebates on
the coverage that the insurer provides for bigger claims. This creates value
for the insurance company by lowering the administrative costs of managing
small claims as well as the likelihood of fraudulent claims, since that would
reduce the annual rebate across the group. The system also works because
groups are likely to be careful about letting in members who might be high
risk. Finally, the model reduces the cost of customer acquisitions. According
to Friendsurance, customers save 50 percent on average, and some groups
have saved as much as 70 percent.1
1 “Social insurance company relies on communities to reduce premiums,” Springwise.
com, May 18, 2011.

74
Danske Bank in Denmark has used its social presence to build connections with
customers and generate new product ideas. To show that it was a different kind
of bank—one that truly listened to customers—in 2011, Danske Bank launched
a page called Idebank (“idea bank” in English) on a public social network. On
Idebank, the bank crowdsourced new product suggestions from customers, who
also commented on each other’s ideas and provided tips for improvements on
current products. Consumer suggestions were incorporated in Danske’s mobile
phone and iPad applications, and the bank also adopted recommendations for
changes in mortgages and other loans. Idebank is an ongoing project, which
posts a new topic every month and has raised the company’s Facebook following
significantly.100
Operations
Operations and distribution represent a significant share of total cost for
consumer banking and insurance companies. Social technologies can help
improve collaboration (and raise productivity) across large, geographically
dispersed operations networks. Banks and insurance companies can relay
relevant and consistent information to branch office employees and agents
using social media. Experts can relay answers to many employees and agents
simultaneously, and the knowledge can then be retrieved by others and amended
as needed. This has the potential to significantly expand the capacity of each
expert to address the daily flood of questions about loans or insurance products
that must be answered to complete a transaction. Furthermore, rating and
commenting functions allow employees to sort advice based on its relevance and
quality, as well as post their own insights on the topic.
The social graph that social technologies provides has a particular benefit for
property and casualty insurers, because it gives them a new tool in the fight
against fraud. Insurers can use the information claimants provide on social
networks about themselves, about their relationships to other claimants, and
about the events that led to a claim. For example, Liverpool Victoria, a UK insurer,
used social media to find out more information about a group of passengers who
were filing whiplash claims after a low-speed bus accident. Using social media,
Liverpool Victoria discovered connections between the claimants and the bus
driver, which saved the company £250,000.101
Banks can also use the social graph to sharpen loan underwriting and, ultimately,
reduce defaults. Some large banks have begun to experiment with using
consumers’ social graphs and other data from social platforms to enhance
their underwriting.
At the same time, some start-ups are basing new lending models on social
data (see Box 12, “Lending decisions based on social media data”). Algorithms
draw on the online data to quickly check loan applicants’ ability and willingness
to repay the loan, for example by tapping into available social network, online
shopping, or online gaming behavioral data. Social technologies significantly
enhance data already available on the Internet; cross-referencing a standard
100 Christophe Langlois, “Danske Bank launches Idebank 2.0 and invites their Facebook fans to
help them improve mortgages & housing,” Visible Banking, May 17, 2011.
101 Sam Barrett, “Insurance & social media: To tweet or not to tweet,” Postonline.com, July
5, 2011.

form of ID against the social graph provides valuable insights into a potential
customer’s financial behavior and default risk.102
Marketing and sales
Marketing and sales consume about 15 percent of costs for bank and insurance
companies. Institutions spend hundreds of dollars to acquire each new customer.
Credit card issuers spend billions of dollars annually on direct mail and mass-
market advertising to get new accounts. Social technologies have great potential
to make this spending more productive, particularly for customer acquisition, and
to reach a large number of customers and potential customers in a less intrusive
and more effective way. With technology, financial institutions can engage clients
more closely and more personally; financial institutions can learn who clients
really are, and customers can find out about the lives of their insurance agents,
for example.
Across banking and insurance, we estimate that use of social technologies can
reduce the cost of acquiring a customer by as much as 30 percent, equivalent to
a 0.5 percent margin increase for the consumer-facing financial services industry
as a whole. We estimate that rigorous use of social technologies could generate
value equivalent to as much as 24 percent of the cost base in marketing and
customer acquisition, although capturing this depends on many factors, including
effective execution.
102 For example, Wonga is more likely to approve a loan if the applicant has a mobile phone with
a contract. One of many factors that Klama, an online payments provider, uses to eliminate
applicants is if they shop online late at night. See also “Go figure: A new class of Internet
start-ups is trying to turn data into money,” The Economist, March 17, 2011.
Box 12. Lending decisions based on social media data
UK-based alternative lending start-up Wonga developed an algorithmic,
big-data approach to underwriting microcredit loans that combines data
from social platforms with other customer information. Underwriting payday
loans—emergency loans issued to borrowers who often have no other
sources of credit—traditionally has not been very sophisticated (lenders
charge high fees and accept high risk). Wonga’s algorithm allows it to take a
different approach, by allowing it to more clearly differentiate between good
and bad credit risks among the types of consumers who rely on payday
lending. Customers who apply for a loan on Wonga’s Web site are guided
through a series of questions. The answers build a record of 30 pieces of
simple information about the potential borrower for Wonga. Based on that
information and social platforms, Wonga has found it can access a further
6,000 to 8,000 online data points that relate to the applicant. By refining the
algorithm and using machine learning from past loans, Wonga was able to
reduce its default rate from 50 percent in the first few weeks of the operation
to single-digit percentages in the most high-risk loan market.1
1 Lucy Tobin, Entrepreneur: How to start an online business (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons, 2012).

76
Financial services players can also use social media to develop better insights
about potential customers and assess how attractive they might be to acquire.
Using social data, a bank or insurance company can generate relevant consumer
insights more efficiently and potentially more accurately (given the larger volume
of data) than traditional focus groups. Start-up Movenbank, for example, requires
consumers to have a Twitter or Facebook account as well as a mobile phone
number in order to sign up. In return, it offers a unique customer engagement
system (see Box 13, “No bank branch, no paper, and no plastic”). This model
allows Movenbank to not only collect significantly more behavioral data than
average banks, but also to significantly drive down customer acquisition costs.
Customer acquisition is a very large cost for financial services companies.
Typically, banks spend between $70 and $300 to acquire a new depositor or
to persuade a customer to open another credit card account.103
And while the
costs are high, the results can be mixed. Researchers find that mass direct
mailings tend to result in lower marketing effectiveness. Furthermore, there are
risks of adverse selection; the least creditworthy consumers are more likely to
respond to credit card or loan offers, reducing the profitability of a marketing
campaign. By using social media–enhanced customer relationship marketing
data, banks can target customers according to their specific needs (e.g., sending
a home equity loan offer to a new homeowner). Also, the additional data could
improve forecasting on whether a customer would be approved for the particular
financial product. Companies can also improve efficiency by not sending offers
to customers who are unlikely to respond or unlikely to qualify—and redirect
marketing dollars to where they will be more effective.
103 Brad Strothkamp and Elizabeth Davis, Financial services firms open up about customer
acquisition costs: Results from our Q1 2008 ebusiness and channel management survey,
Forrester Research, July 1, 2008.
Box 13. No bank branch, no paper, and no plastic
The founders of Movenbank want to create the next generation of banking:
If it succeeds, Movenbank—currently in its alpha testing—will be the first
branchless, paperless, and even plastic-less bank. Movenbank will use
social and mobile technologies across its operations: customers will sign
in using Facebook, and bank “members” will be encouraged to participate
in a behavioral, social, viral, gamified engagement system called CRED.
As depositors pay their bills, shift money between accounts, socialize,
and play games, CRED gathers information. The bank will market CRED
as a friend and colleague who helps customers with day-to-day financial
decision making. Movenbank, meanwhile, will use CRED data instead of
traditional credit scores. Social media intelligence, such as behavioral data
and influencing skills (number of recommendations) are important factors
in its ratings. Using only word of mouth on social media, Movenbank has
pre-registered 5,000 users, who are testing its feature in the alpha version.
According to Movenbank management, it plans to enlist 50,000 customers
in its first year, at a $200 lower acquisition cost per customer than banks
usually pay.

Social technologies provide an excellent view into the lives of customers and
potential customers; on social media, people broadcast the life events that signal
selling opportunities in financial services. For example, with the birth of a child,
new parents often buy their first life insurance policies; the first car triggers the
need for auto insurance; the first job necessitates a bank account. Consumers
who interact a lot with one another and share the same demographics are often
in the same phase of their lives, allowing financial institutions to project sales
opportunities across connections that have been articulated on social technology
platforms. Citi Credit Cards, for example, in 2009 tapped existing customers’
philanthropic instincts and social networks to bring in new credit card customers
with the “Make a Difference, One Friend at a Time” program. For every confirmed
card applicant referred from an existing cardholder’s Facebook group, Citi agreed
to donate $50 to a charity of the cardholder’s choice—turning customers into a
crowdsourced marketing machine. Citi says the donations cost far less than the
costs of acquisition through mass media, Internet advertising, or direct mail.
Given the demographics of early social technology users, social marketing has
been particularly useful for banks that are looking to attract young adults as they
enter the market. These are the most sought-after accounts; persuading older
customers to switch banks is far more expensive, and recruiting customers when
they are young provides years of up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.
Wells Fargo was a pioneer in targeting 16- to 24-year-old social media users with
Stagecoach Island, a game that weaves in messages about financial literacy
and money management. Stagecoach Island helped Wells Fargo acquire tens of
thousands of e‑mail addresses of 16- to 24-year-olds. Since its launch in 2005,
membership has grown at double-digit rates every year.104
Common Wealth
Credit Union, based in Alberta, Canada, launched a social media contest to find
an under-25 spokesperson for its banking products. Applicants submitted videos
and competed for votes on multiple social media sites. The campaign resulted
in two million impressions, 2,300 new accounts, and about $3.9 million in new
deposits. Leveraging social technologies in these ways to improve marketing
activities amounts to value creation of up to 20 percent of the cost of a marketing
campaign.105
For retail banking, social commerce—providing traditional retail branch banking
services through social platforms—provides another opportunity. Consumer
acceptance of connecting to banking services via a social media platform has
evolved over the last few years. In 2008, a survey of 400 Facebook users found
that only 14 percent were receptive to the idea of banking on a social platform; by
2012, the share had risen to 24 percent.106
According to comScore, the number of
customers visiting the top ten online banking sites increased from approximately
40 million people in 2006 to more than 58 million in 2010. Nearly 60 percent of
US Internet users visited at least one of the top 20 financial institution Web sites
every quarter in 2010.107
Given the shift of online time toward social technologies,
integrating social features into online banking services could increase the time
and involvement of customers in online banking sessions. One of India’s largest
banks, ICICI, recently launched “Your Bank Account,” a social networking
104 Daniel Terdiman, “Wells Fargo launches game inside ‘Second Life,’” Cnet.com, September
15, 2005.
105 “2008 Forrester Groundswell Awards winners,” Forrester Research.
106 Jim Bruene, “Banking in Facebook,” Online Banking Report, Number 201/202, January
6, 2012.
107 The 2010 state of online banking report, comScore, May 11, 2010.

78
application that allows customers to carry out banking tasks. The app, which
requires a secure connection, enables users not only to view account details
and mini statements but also to apply for debit cards and request checks. Three
months after launch, the application is used by 20,000 customers every month.
Barclaycard US, the payments business of Barclays in the United States, is using
“gamification”—applying game design techniques to make non-game content
and activities more engaging—to market “Ring,” a new social credit card it has
launched in partnership with MasterCard. With the card, the company also
launched “Barclaycard Ring,” a social community of cardholders. Members
receive incentives for sharing their suggestions and ideas for credit card features.
They compete for both in-community rewards (e.g., badges for switching to
paperless billing and referring friends), and offline rewards, such as charity
contributions through Barclaycard’s Giveback program.
Customer service
Financial institutions rely heavily on customer satisfaction for loyalty. Both banking
and insurance products are intangible and are used over many years; they are
not fully delivered at the point of sale, but evolve over time (e.g., securities and
savings accounts; insurance policy balances). As a result, the services after the
initial purchase become an important factor in determining the overall satisfaction
with the brand.
Social technology can significantly improve customer service in two ways. First,
financial institutions can offer a wider range of customer service channels by
adding social media channels. Switching some customer service requests from
call centers to social media channels can potentially provide better quality and
faster service, thus leading to higher customer satisfaction. Banks and insurers
have demonstrated significant cost savings per customer contact using social
media instead of traditional call centers, while retaining comparable service levels.
Social media also gives an institution the ability to act on customer feedback in
more varied ways, from inspiring new product ideas to better informing customers
about a product before they purchase it (see Box 14, “Turning customers
into advocates”).
In a broader sense, social technologies can improve the entire customer
relationship process. Financial services companies depend on long-standing
relationships with their customers; many customers purchase their banking and
insurance products early in life and then return to the same sales agents when
further needs arise. Social technologies can help cement those relationships
and enhance traditional CRM (customer relationship management) systems.
CRM software is designed to manage all interactions with existing and potential
customers. If applied correctly, social technologies can provide cost-efficient
and effective alternatives or enhancements to traditional CRM tools. Because
consumers are increasingly social, CRM needs to manage the social customer
relationship, too. USAA is one of the insurers that uses multiple social media
touch points to enhance CRM capabilities.

Enterprise-wide collaboration
Financial services can exploit social media to improve the productivity of
interaction workers. Banking and insurance companies have a large proportion of
interaction workers, situated in complex organizations with networks of branches,
multinational operations, and multiple lines of business. They have much to gain
through improved communication and collaboration. Specifically, by connecting
central and local staff via social networks, by using social platforms to access
information and communicate, and by collaborating via social tools, the retail
finance sector could improve the productivity of its white-collar workforce by as
much as 25 percent, which corresponds to 6 to 8 percent of total personnel costs
or a potential overall margin improvement of 3 to 5 percent.
TD Bank implemented a social-based communication system that greatly
improved the productivity of lending officers in distant branches and of the
headquarters experts they rely on (see Box 15, “TD Bank sees benefits from
internal social networking”).
The recruiting function of retail finance companies can also benefit from social
technologies. The industry relies on many high-skill workers (e.g., loan officers,
underwriters), who command relatively high salaries. Companies in the sector
that have made the greatest use of social technology platforms to find candidates
have reduced per-candidate costs by up to 40 percent.
Box 14. Turning customers into advocates
Texas-based United Services Automobile Association (USAA) embraces
customer service as a pillar of its strategy. USAA involves customers in
active member communities and makes a significant effort to provide
customer service online and through social technology. In addition, USAA is
using insights from member reviews to improve customer experience at the
USAA.com Web site. For example, a new online function that allows users to
select renewal options and an iPhone application for depositing checks were
developed based on customer feedback. Furthermore, existing customers
actively participate in providing customer service. Authentic case stories
and testimonials from customers on the USAA Web site and its public social
networking page help customers make more informed decisions before
opening a new account or adding a new service, too. These initiatives have
helped USAA’s insurance operation continue to excel in customer advocacy;
the unit tops Forrester Research’s customer advocacy ratings report.1
1 Customer Advocacy Reports 2007–12, Forrester Research.

80
Value shifts
In the near to medium term, retail finance players could capture a significant
share of value created by social technologies, in the form of margin and share
gains. Because switching costs are high in financial services and churn rates
are low (about 2 percent annually), firms are positioned to capture most of the
value added by social technologies in margin improvements. However, young
consumers entering the market as well as consumers searching for new financial
products are likely to benefit from lower prices or better services offered by
players that have successfully integrated social technologies. In the long term, we
would expect to see a gradual shift of value toward increasing consumer surplus.
Another group of players is also beginning to capture value from social
technology: creators of new business financial services business models. Start-
ups like Wonga, Lending Stream, and Zest Cash have the potential to take
share and profit from traditional players in the retail finance sector with lending
models based on rich social media data and sophisticated algorithms to analyze
that information. Other disruptive social lending communities such as Zopa are
leveraging the power of online communities to provide financial services in new
ways. Zopa, based in the United Kingdom, and similar communities such as
Prosper in the United States and Smava in Germany, allow members to lend and
borrow money within the group, sidestepping traditional banks. The basic idea is
Box 15. TD Bank sees benefits from internal
social networking
With 85,000 employees around the globe and several recent acquisitions,
Canada’s TD Bank Group faced a challenge: to get its growing organization
more connected and more collaborative, and make all employees more
engaged. The answer was an internal social media platform. Launched
in November 2011, in Canada, then extended to the United States in
January 2012, the enterprise social network already has more than 4,000
communities and thousands of blogs and wikis. TD employees use the
social network to communicate with team members, share expertise
and information, support each other with advice, and collaborate. With
thousands of employee profiles, colleagues can also easily find experts with
the most relevant knowledge or skills.
TD has found internal social networking cuts down on the phone calls,
meetings, and unwanted e-mail (the endless chains of repetitive information;
lengthy dissertations with massive and multiple attachments). More
importantly, the social network gives management a new way to supervise
and lead. TD senior district leaders, for example, must maintain constant
contact with sales and customer service teams—to coach, motivate,
and lead. Each leader is responsible for ten to 15 branches, and social
technology gives them an easy and natural tool for staying in touch,
providing recognition, and sharing business updates. Previously, such
communications had been filtered through the branch managers—by e‑mail,
in meetings, or during conference calls. Now communications are direct and
teams are always up to date, thanks to status updates and bulletin board
posts that the entire group can see immediately.

that consumers can get better rates, because social lending is more efficient than
traditional bank lending, which has to cover significant overhead costs and must
deliver returns to shareholders.
Another potentially disruptive idea is using the “collective intelligence” of a
networked customer base to generate financial advice based on information
supplied by members about their financial dealings. In Sweden, a newspaper
invited homeowners to post their mortgage rates on an online database, along
with information about their banks and where they live. More than 25,000 people
submitted data, giving other consumers the information they needed to negotiate
better rates. Many people realized for the first time that quoted mortgage rates
are not final and that they can push for a better deal.108
Enablers and barriers
Within the consumer-facing financial services sectors, a variety of issues are
preventing full social media adoption. A number of barriers are common to banks
and insurance firms.
Social media complicates compliance. Financial services companies must
document how they comply with regulations that govern what they can say
about their products or how they solicit customers; in insurance, for example,
only licensed agents are allowed to approach customers. Also, the publication of
insurance and banking services content is strictly regulated and often requires
lengthy disclosures about investment risks.
As a result, regulatory issues pose a significant obstacle to the use of social
technologies. According to a recent survey, about 50 percent of surveyed global
banks cite regulatory hurdles as one of the largest deterrents to embracing social
technologies.109
Players in this market will need to invest in technology solutions
and processes that enable them to use social technologies while complying with
the relevant regulations (see Box 16, “Farmers empowers [and monitors] sales
agents with networking support”).
Many financial services companies face organizational barriers that could inhibit
productive use of social technologies. Given their size and complex structures,
large global banking and insurance players are not able to shift quickly to new
operating models that would let them capture the productivity benefits that social
technologies make possible. So far, most of these institutions have limited social
technology investments to marketing functions and not attempted to implement
large-scale collaboration or communications applications on social platforms.
By definition, banking and insurance firms have a culture of confidentiality and
discretion that bodes against the blossoming of a free-wheeling open community
of ideas on an internal social network. However, as innovative upstarts such as
Movenbank and Zopa prove that there is more value to be gained from social
technology than cutting marketing costs, even the largest institutions may be
convinced that social technologies can work for them, across operations.
108 SvD Närlingsliv, “Sök bland tusentals räntor på SvD:s räntekarta” (Search through thousands
of interest rates on SvD’s interest rate map), www.svd.se/naringsliv/sag-din-ranta/.
109 Social media: Catching up with the banks, MHP Communications survey, London, 2011.

82
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Scope and size of market
The professional services industry includes accounting, advertising and
marketing, architecture, management consulting, engineering, IT, legal, and
scientific research services. Professional services globally generate annual sales
in excess of $3 trillion. They represent 7 to 8 percent of total service sector
revenue in advanced economies, and about 3 percent of all revenue globally.
Professional services firms, more so than other businesses, are innately social
organizations. They depend very heavily on social interactions—with clients
and among professional colleagues—to carry out their work and develop new
business. They rely on long-term relationships that are built on trust; traits
such as intellectual leadership, integrity, and confidentiality are elements of
the reputational brand promise that professional services firms rely on to
retain clients and attract new ones. Within professional firms, encouraging
effective collaboration and building distinct organizational cultures are common
aspirations. Furthermore, it is common for professional services staff to
collaborate with colleagues and clients in different locations, which may be many
time zones away. Specialized knowledge and expertise is often essential, and
in many firms, professionals are expected to publish content, share knowledge
internally, and build reputation externally.
Box 16. Farmers empowers (and monitors) sales agents with
networking support
Like other financial services firms, Farmers Insurance Group relies on
independent agents to sell its products—but those products are also highly
regulated, including by restrictions on what a salesperson can say about
his offerings. Agents quickly recognized that they could use Facebook and
other social sites to build relationships and drive business. But to ensure
quality and comply with regulatory requirements, Farmers needed agents to
stick to the same script.
To address these challenges, Farmers implemented a company-wide social
networking tool that allows the company to monitor social media activities
of agents and archive social network communications, as regulatory
guidelines require. The company trains agents in social media best practices
and compliance and provides a store of content for agents to use, which
range from articles and videos to contests and sweepstakes—all providing
consistent brand messaging.
Farmers was able to provide 4,000 agents with a Facebook presence in
the first four weeks. It then used its agents’ networks as a basis for a major
promotion on the FarmVille game site, resulting in the acquisition of more
than two million Facebook fans in less than 12 hours.1
1 Brian Kotlyar, “Social business summit report: Clara Shih explains local social at scale,”
dachisgroup.com.

All of these characteristics point to very large potential benefits from social
technologies. From demonstrating knowledge and intellectual prowess through
tweets, to recruiting via social sites, to mining social data for information to
assist in litigation, professional services firms are finding ways to employ
social technologies. In fact, we estimate that because the daily operations of
professional services firms involve such a high degree of collaboration and
interaction, the more efficient ways to communicate and collaborate using social
technologies could create value worth as much as 12 percent of the operating
costs in these industries (Exhibit 30). Moreover, through capabilities such as
crowdsourcing talent, social technologies make possible disruptive new business
models in professional services.
However, little of this value is being captured today, because professional
services firms in some areas are not using social technologies to the extent that
they might. When asked what are the most valuable online activities for their
organizations, law firms ranked distribution of white papers and e-books at the
top of the list; social applications were not near the top.110
In this and other areas,
such as collaboration, knowledge management, and communication, the slow
uptake reflects to some extent the relative immaturity of the relevant technologies.
Slow adoption also reflects organizational and cultural barriers. In surveys of
law firm marketing executives, only 13 percent said they see value in using
social media—and 60 percent said that there is resistance to doing so by top
management in their firms. While 85 percent of surveyed law firms view social
media as important and 92 percent track what is said about them in social media,
110 Hinge Research Institute, “Online marketing for professional service firms,”
Hingemarketing.com, 2011. The survey was of 500 professional services firms
and 20 online marketing experts.
Exhibit 30
Social technologies could add $243 billion–360 billion in value annually
in professional services
Global 2011
13
36
1,759
3,179
396
975
▪ Improved collaboration
▪ Speed of access to codified
knowledge and experts
▪ Market research and customer
insights
▪ Better task-employee
matching; higher employee
retention
▪ More targeted recruiting efforts
▪ Collaboration among business
support fworkers
▪ Internal and external
collaboration for R&D workers
~60–90
18–21
7–12
0–1
12–14
~0–1
~121–140
~2–3
~243–360
~120–216
Marketing
and sales
Product
development
Operations and
distribution
Business support
functions
Total margin
Total revenue
Value chain
expense and
margin structure
$ billion
% of value
chain expense
or total margin
Value potential
Sector
snapshot
$3.2 trillion per year1
Global sector revenue
Value potenital up to 14 percent from improved collaborationsTop value levers
SOURCE: Hoovers; US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012, 131st Edition, Washington, DC, 2012;
McKinsey Global Institute analysis
1 Hoovers, May 2012; US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012, 131st Edition.

84
29 percent do not engage with any form of social media because of their firm’s
risk policy.111
There is a range of reasons for resistance, including a history of
difficult technology implementations in professional services: professionals who
must generate “billable hours” doing client work need substantial incentives
to take time out to learn a new system—even if it would make them more
productive.112
Examples of current usage
Nonetheless, social technology-based collaboration tools are starting to play
an important role in some firms in the professional services industry today.
Some organizations are using social technologies to streamline processes by,
for example, using internal social platforms to create and share guidelines and
instructions for repetitive, similar tasks (e.g., templates for drafting client proposals
or a primer on the most common tax issues in sales of retail properties). These
shortcuts enable professional teams to spend more time on executing client work
and less time reinventing known processes. Management consulting firms, for
example, have started setting up communities where project managers can get
fast access to useful blueprints for new engagements.
Social technologies are also helping speed access to internal knowledge and
expertise, particularly to find in-house experts (and sometimes external ones)
who can fill specific knowledge gaps. Professionals in large global law firms, for
example, use internal social networks to quickly locate specific local knowledge of
foreign legal systems and to share best practices.
Law firms have recognized the value of social data in litigation support.
Information from social platforms is helping attorneys discredit witnesses and
fine-tune jury selection, for example. In the past, the party that could spend more
on professional trial consultants (such as social scientists or psychologists) to
evaluate members of the jury pool had significant advantages. The Internet and
social media allow attorneys to gather immense amounts of information about
prospective jurors (e.g., arrest records, political affiliations) and to track their
activities on social networks (e.g., blog posts, comments, group affiliations). Trial
lawyers also use social media to understand and manage public perceptions
of a case. In some cases, they have even started using social media to find trial
evidence.113
Several professional service firms have made social media an integral part of
their broader recruiting strategies. Recruitment staff create their own profiles on
social media sites to help them communicate with potential employees, search for
professionals based on their network and recommendations, and post vacancies
that are easy for targeted candidates to find (see Box 17, “Improving talent
scouting through social media recruiting campaigns”).
111 Salary and social media survey, Law Firm Media Professionals and Hellerman Baretz
Communications, 2011.
112 See W. Orlikowski, “Learning from notes: Organizational issues in groupware implementation,”
Proceedings of the 1992 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 1992.
113 Rich Meehan, “Facebook and trials,” blog.ctnews.com, March 1, 2012.

In some professional services fields, such as architecture, social technology–
based marketing has become common. But in professions such as law,
where social media provides a natural point of contact to establish new client
relationships, many firms have been reluctant to pursue this opportunity. Many
top law, consulting, and audit firms, as well as advertising agencies, use social
media almost exclusively to distribute image-building content, such as white
papers, and news about corporate social responsibility or pro bono initiatives.
Professional services firms may risk falling behind the demands of their clients
to use social technologies for business communications and collaboration.
According to a 2011 survey of 150 large UK businesses, 96 percent want the
option to communicate online with their lawyers. In the same survey, consumers
said they would rely on online reviews as much as personal references to choose
an attorney.114
And, while major law firms weigh the benefits of using social
technologies for client development, entrepreneurial firms are moving ahead.
In the United Kingdom, where the Legal Services Act of 2007 was enacted
to increase competition and allow new types of law firms, start-ups such as
QualitySolicitors, face2face solicitors, 360 Legal Group, and Lawyers2you are
using social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, to connect with
potential clients and recruits.
Indeed, social technologies are making possible new service delivery models
that could prove disruptive to the professional services industry (see Box
18, “Disruptive legal firm models rely on social technology”). For example,
ReferMarket, an online referral market where lawyers and other professionals
in the United States and the United Kingdom can be paid for referring clients
to other professionals, uses LinkedIn and other social networks to attract
114 Peppermint Technology, What clients really want from a legal service provider—the first fully
comprehensive research into the role of the customer experience in legal services, post the
Legal Services Act, research report commissioned by Peppermint Technology in association
with Microsoft, NatWest Business Banking, Epoq, and Oyez Professional Services,
October 2011.
Box 17. Improving talent scouting through social media
recruiting campaigns
In Gap Year 2012, an intern recruitment program in Germany, Allianz,
Bertelsmann, Henkel, and McKinsey used social technologies to reach
out to college graduates who might be candidates for entry-level analyst
roles. This social media campaign was much more successful at reaching
the target group than other digital channels, such as banner advertising. It
improved reach by 20 percent and lowered cost per contact by 27 percent.
The effort even yielded higher-quality candidates: the proportion of
applicants who eventually received offers was 36 percent higher for those
who connected to the firms via social networks than for those who applied
through standard career Web sites. It is worth noting, however, that
application quality from single-purpose social career networks (i.e., serving
only university graduates) was much higher than those from general-purpose
social networks.1
1 McKinsey & Company, Turning buzz into gold: How pioneers create value from social
media, May 2012.

86
new members. Such social networks and marketplaces have the potential to
change how lawyers and other professionals obtain referrals and build new
relationships.115
Value creation potential from social technologies within
Professional services organizations are collections of highly skilled and deeply
specialized individuals who come together to create value for clients by drawing
on and combining their expertise. The core activities involve interacting with other
professionals, support staff, clients, and outside experts, and finding, creating,
and using content and knowledge. Therefore, the biggest opportunity for value
creation comes from making interactions (e.g., collaboration, communication,
knowledge sharing) more efficient and effective. Additional sources of value lie in
product creation (e.g., co-creating new service lines), marketing and sales (e.g.,
more timely and accurate client insights), and recruiting. We estimate that the
annual value generated from social technologies could be as high as $240 billion
to $360 billion in professional services. This would equate to productivity gains
between 0.4 to 0.7 percent annually over the next ten years.
115 Examining the future for law firms and social media, LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell, 2011.
Box 18. Disruptive legal firm models rely on social technology
The economic downturn forced the legal industry to re-examine its high-cost
business model. Even large clients were willing to try unconventional ways
to engage legal talent so they could reduce expenses. Firms like Axiom
and Clearspire offered a more efficient model—supplying legal talent on a
project or temporary basis, charging flat fees for services and using social
technology for collaboration and information gathering.
To lower overhead, these firms use highly qualified, freelance attorneys
who are paid only when working on assignment. The new firms also have
little need for expensive office real estate. Social technology enables their
attorneys and other staffers to work from home anywhere in the world or
from client premises. The collaborative social platform also allows clients to
co-create documents and to make changes and comments in real time.1
As a result, the upstarts charge about half of what traditional law firms do,
while still guaranteeing quality work by highly skilled attorneys.2
It proves
that social technologies can bring new disruptive business models into even
the most conservative, risk-averse industries.
1 “Bargain briefs—technology offers 50 ways to leave your lawyer,” The Economist,
August 13, 2011.
2 Daniel Fisher, “New precedent for law firms,” Forbes, June 6, 2011.

Product development
An important source of growth for professional services firms is creating new
service lines. Often, these new businesses are based on the specific demands of
clients in particular industries and require access to narrowly defined expertise.
Using social technologies, professional services firms can more readily access
knowledge and experts to shape these service offerings and improve the
economics of a highly labor-intensive process. Based on the estimated level of
improvement that social technologies can bring to other knowledge-intensive
collaboration work, we project that professional services firms can unlock value
equivalent to 18 to 21 percent of current costs for developing and modifying
services.116
Social technologies make possible a new development model for professional
services: co-creating services with clients or even with other third parties. Co-
creation and knowledge sharing with clients, in fact, can become an important
source of differentiation and competitive advantage. Instead of providing
commodity services (e.g., IT staffing), firms can develop unique services through
collaboration and knowledge sharing that will also tie clients more closely to the
firm. Successful co-creation of services depends to a large extent on willingness
to disclose information and to work together across organizational boundaries
to create new products or develop new ideas. Social technologies can support
these tasks. Professional services firms investing in this model for product
development are likely to benefit significantly from the collaboration tools of
Helping clients manage their own social technologies represents a growing
service line in many professional service sectors. Advertising, design, and
marketing agencies build practices in social media, one of which is monitoring
and analyzing social data; IT consulting firms provide technology; and law
firms advise clients on social media policies, ranging from intellectual property
protection to use of employee social data.
Operations
Social technologies provide a way for professional services employees to search,
share, modify, and interact on relevant knowledge from anywhere, allowing for
flexible work flows and global collaboration, both internally and across company
boundaries. These activities, which we describe as being the “operations” of a
professional services firm, are where social technologies can create significant
value. Based on our analysis of interaction work across industries and the high
concentration of interaction workers in professional services, we project that the
potential value from fully implementing social technologies in professional services
operations could be equivalent of 7 percent to 12 percent of total operating costs,
depending on the subsector. This indicates potential value at stake of $120 billion
to $220 billion globally across all professional service sectors.
These benefits can be captured not only by client-facing professional services
staffs, but also by employees in business support functions, such as finance
and accounting and IT. Realizing the potential value of improved collaboration,
however, requires widespread participation, which sometimes needs to be
induced (see Box 19, “Getting employees to use a social platform for collaboration
and knowledge sharing”).
116 Assuming 80 percent of labor in this value chain step is interaction work.

88
Marketing and sales
Opportunities in marketing and sales in professional services through the use
of social technology are in building and fostering relationships. Using the social
graphs of influential clients (or even opening up a firm’s social graph) could
expand professional networks of all participants, foster new relationships, and
provide introductions to potential clients. By building up existing customer
relationships on social networks, and integrating client personnel into proprietary
social networks, firms can also enable more effective knowledge sharing and
co-creation, as well as speeding access to experts and expertise. These activities
are beyond traditional marketing and sales but are powerful tools for forming and
strengthening the relationships that create revenue opportunities. They also help
make loss of clients less likely—clients who have co-created knowledge, shared
expertise, and made professional connections on one firm’s social platform have
substantially higher switching costs.
Box 19. Getting employees to use a social platform for
collaboration and knowledge sharing
Bluewolf, an IT outsourcing and consulting company, faced the challenge
of encouraging employees to share knowledge and collaborate on a social
platform. It created a social portal-based resource center that provides
training on different collaboration and knowledge-sharing platforms.
Then it created social profile pages for all employees, identifying team
memberships, areas of functional and vertical (industry) expertise, clients
served, and personal information. The page also listed internal and
external social activities, including blog posts, white papers, or case
studies by the employee, as well as social media analytics showing the
employee’s influence.
To build engagement, the company added gaming components to internal
and external collaboration tools: employees earn points for filling out
fields on their profile pages, for posting or commenting using the internal
communication tool, for publishing blog posts, for attracting visitors to those
blog posts, and for sharing content via external social networks, as well as
for receiving inbound clicks on those shares. There are special challenges
that reward the winners with small prizes: the “spread-the-word” challenge
gives employees who get 50 clicks on a shared link to the Bluewolf site
a $25 gift card and a badge saying they won the challenge. Bluewolf
monitors the success of its social media initiative via site traffic and internal
collaboration. In the first four months after the program launch, collaboration
via the internal social network increased by 57 percent.1
1 David Kirkpatrick, B2B social media: Gamification effort increases Web traffic
100 percent, employee collaboration 57 percent, Marketing Sherpa, case study number
CS32169, May 2, 2012.

Externally, social media is a powerful tool to build overall brand strength and
awareness and to signal subject matter expertise. At relatively low cost (i.e.,
compared with print or television advertising), professional services firms can
establish credibility as thought leaders with a wide audience. Firms can use social
media—home pages, tweets, blogs—to share knowledge initiatives, circulate
press releases or video interviews, stimulate debate around topical issues, and
build public awareness about what they do. By creating and sharing valuable
content such as white papers, case studies, or how-to videos, even smaller
professional services firms can create significant visibility and recognition as
experts (see Box 20, “How social technologies gave a small architecture firm a
national reputation”).
Social technology-based collaboration tools can also be used to create virtual
project teams with clients. For example, TMS, a London-based firm that
specializes in road transportation, has adopted social technologies to manage
communications and collaboration among its professional staff and with its clients
(see Box 21, “Speeding up collaboration with clients”).
Box 20. How social technologies gave a small architecture
firm a national reputation
By blogging, podcasting, and interacting with the design community online,
HPD, a three-person architecture and interior design firm in Dallas, gained
national visibility and developed qualified leads. HPD used microblogging
to meet and follow relevant design community members and to engage in
ongoing discussions by sharing links to relevant content on other design
Web sites. Simply by sharing content created by others (or “curating”), HPD
built a reputation as a knowledgeable resource for the architecture and
design community.
HPD also creates its own content, including “The Architecture Happy Hour,”
a podcast series in which the partners share their views on architecture
topics. They also write blogs to spotlight innovative and interesting
happenings within the architecture community. The team uses social media
to promote podcasts and new blog posts and to build a loyal subscriber
base. HPD’s social media efforts have led to interviews in national
publications, invitations to speak at industry conferences, and word-of-
mouth recommendations as a resource not only for architects, but also for
all kinds of firms that hope to raise their profiles and find business by using
social technologies.1
1 Sean McVey, “HPD Architecture: A study in social media for architects,” Professional
Services Marketing Blog, Hingemarketing.com, August 26, 2011.

90
One of the most important ways in which social technologies can improve
professional service operations is optimizing the allocation of professional talent.
This involves both assigning internal resources and drawing on the global pool of
freelance or subcontracted professional talent that can be tapped across social
networks. Social technology can significantly improve talent resourcing, because
it provides ways to identify specialized expertise—partners, subcontractors,
and offshore resources—to simplify resource sharing among firms regardless
of location.
Another critical source of value in professional services is recruiting. Firms
thrive—or don’t—based on their ability to attract and retain the best professional
talent. In the first stage of the employment life cycle, social recruiting platforms
make it significantly easier and cheaper to identify talented individuals in labor
markets across the world. We estimate that firms can reallocate the equivalent
of 40 percent of recruiting costs through use of social technologies. Moving to
social media can reduce costs of recruiting agencies and traditional recruiting
advertising by, for example, using professional networks and expert forums to
reach the most likely targets directly.
Once talent is identified and hired, social media may help raise retention rates
by improving the general work environment, building communities of employees
with shared interests, and enlarging the breadth and depth of professional
relationships. Furthermore, using social media to improve resource assignments
(matching talent to projects) can also improve project quality and employee
satisfaction. These improvements are likely to increase employee retention in the
long run.
Value shifts
Firms can use social technologies to provide highly customized offerings,
where price is not the primary factor in purchasing decisions. By doing so,
firms can generate higher margins than are available with more commodity-
Box 21. Speeding up collaboration with clients
Traffic Management Services (TMS) manages road works for contractors
and local or national road authorities in the United Kingdom. The company
introduced a proprietary collaboration tool in April 2009 to simplify the
sharing of information and improve electronic communication and online
collaboration with its clients. In one virtual workspace, TMS now shares
design drawings with clients such as the London Borough of Barnet and
Transport for London, vastly reducing turnaround time on changes and
improving collaboration by avoiding mailing revisions back and forth. Using
social technology, TMS now uploads the documents into the workspace, the
system automatically notifies the clients that new documents are available,
and clients as well as other invited team members can review, comment on,
and approve material in real time. In addition, teams use a central diary to
coordinate projects. So far, TMS has implemented 14 workspaces for three
clients and expects to have its entire customer base using the collaboration
tool within 12 months.1
1 “Huddle and Traffic Management Solutions work together to keep the traffic flowing,”
www.huddle.com case study.

like services, such as routine accounting or IT services. However, the potential
for social technologies to enable crowdsourcing of professional talent shows
how social technologies could disrupt existing players (see Box 22, “Bringing
high-end design to small and medium-size businesses”). If clients can bid for
professional services online, many kinds of professional services firms could feel
pricing pressure.
Firms with highly customized offerings and strong customer ties may regard the
payoff from investments in social technologies less as an opportunity to capture
direct economic value, and more as a way to bolster relationship and intellectual
capital. With social technologies, firms will build up knowledge of their clients’
processes, working styles, and industries. All of this information contributes
significantly to the total amount of value a firm can create for its clients. If a client
were to switch firms, this value would be lost. As a result, clients will be less
inclined to switch firms to save on the cost of service. However, in the long run,
market forces will likely cause increasing amounts of the value creation to filter
down to the customers.
Why adoption in professional services is slow
For all the potential benefits of social technologies, professional services firms
face many barriers to adoption. In addition to the cultural issues noted above—
resistance by top management and lack of enthusiasm by professionals who
don’t see a personal benefit in investing in a new work routine and sharing more
information—professional services firms must consider privacy and security
issues. What’s more, the modes of social interaction that social technologies
make possible and that have become so popular in some cultures are not
useful in others. For clients and colleagues in cultures that value “face time”
and relationships rooted in physical proximity over task orientation, virtual online
collaboration via social technologies may be inappropriate.117
117 Gary M. Olson and Judith S. Olson, “Distance matters,” Human-Computer Interaction,
Volume 15, 2000.
Box 22. Bringing high-end design to small and medium-
size businesses
Choosa is an international design crowdsourcing platform and community.
Registered customers publish their requests for design work—a new Web
site, logos, brochures—together with an offering price. Any of the 16,000
designers in the Choosa community can pick up the request and respond
with a proposal. The customer can monitor those proposals and suggest
creative adjustments. Then the customer executes a contract with the best
designer with the best offer. Choosa customers have offered more than
1,000 jobs, and have received, on average, 125 submissions for each.
The platform helps both small business owners and designers alike: small
business can access a global talent pool and get high-end design results at
affordable prices, while designers are able to increase their exposure and
client base and establish themselves in an international design community.1
1 Choosa, “About us,” www.choosa.net.

92
Ensuring that relationships of trust and confidentiality are maintained is another
barrier for social technology adoption. Maintaining confidentiality is a key priority
for most professional services firms and is critically important for firm reputations.
The concept of sharing information on a social platform—even in a completely
secure environment—could make clients and employees uncomfortable.
There are additional risks, even in the personal use of social technologies by
professional services employees or clients. Logging on to Facebook from a
smartphone could give away the whereabouts of parties to secret negotiations,
for example. As a result, users of social technology within professional services
firms need to ensure that their personal use does not damage the firm’s brand or
reputation.118
ADVANCED MANUFACTURING
In this study, the focus of advanced manufacturing is on three subsegments:
semiconductors, automotive, and aerospace.119
Global sales of those industries
in 2011 were about $300 billion, $3.3 trillion, and $140 billion, respectively
(Exhibit 31).
118 Examining the future for law firms and social media, LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell, white
paper, 2011.
119 We use the Hoover’s description of the semiconductor segment, which includes
semiconductor and electron tube manufacturing, electronic capacitors, resistors and
connectors manufacturing, as well as printed circuit boards and other electronic components
manufacturing. Global sales information for semiconductors is 2011 data from iSuppli.
For automotive, we use 2011 global sales (gross output) according to Global Insight WIS
database (June 2012). For aerospace, we use 2011 global sales data from the Teal Group.
Exhibit 31
for advanced manufacturing industries
Global 2011
~170–200
~10–15
~5–10
~90–100
~35–40
~30–35
20
2,960
3,780
250
200
110
240
operations workers
▪ Sales lead generation in
specialized communities
▪ Co-create customer service
answers with enthusiasts
business support function
workers
▪ Main impact from collaboration
among R&D workers
▪ Co-creating with research
community
SOURCE: iSuppli; Global Insight WIS database; Teal Groupl McKinsey Global Institute analysis
~80–100
12–15
~1
30–40
20–60
10–12
Marketing
and sales
Product
development
Operations and
distribution
Business support
functions
Customer service
Total margin
Total revenue
Value chain
expense and
margin structure
$ billion
% of value
chain expense
or total margin
Value potential
Sector
snapshot
$3.8 trillion per yearGlobal sector revenue
Marketing and sales (value potential of up to 40 percent) and customer
service (value potential of up to 60 percent)
Top value levers

These three segments offer complex, engineered products. They are capital-
intensive and require extensive R&D, and they employ a high proportion of highly
educated knowledge workers. Many of these companies also must integrate
components or subsystems from specialized suppliers in global supply chains.
Therefore, companies in these sectors can gain significantly from more effective
collaboration and coordination in their internal operations and with supply chain
partners. In all sectors, competitors succeed through innovation and advanced
product development. Across advanced manufacturing, social technologies can
make significant contributions to raising the productivity of high-skill workers,
improving coordination and collaboration with partners, and accelerating
innovation through co-creation. In the automotive sector, a large consumer
industry, additional benefits can be gained from use of social technologies in
marketing and sales.
Two segments—semiconductors and aerospace—operate in B2B markets, in
which customers (e.g., computer makers and airlines) require not only cutting-
edge products, but also extensive pre- and post-sales technical support services.
To sell these highly complex products, the supplier must assist in defining the
specifications for the order and, in the case of aerospace, provide specialized
technical repair and maintenance services; the finished product is surrounded
by an entire ecosystem of services to deliver continuous post-sale support and
maintenance. Relationships between semiconductor and aerospace suppliers
and their customers are usually collaborative and long term. This makes switching
costs high and marketing costs relatively low.
Both semiconductors and aerospace are highly consolidated industries, with
large, global organizations that depend heavily on knowledge management and
sharing across functional and geographic organizations. At the same time, both
industries have a very strong need to maintain information security, which could
limit the use of social technologies for knowledge sharing. Aerospace includes
defense industries that have particularly stringent requirements for information
security; breaches can have both economic consequences and national security
implications.120
Aerospace and semiconductors are very different in terms of demand and
product cycles. Semiconductor demand is highly volatile, with major surges and
subsequent downturns, driven by high rates of innovation and short product life
cycles.121
To deal with this volatility, semiconductor production and supply chains
must be highly flexible, putting a premium on demand forecasting capabilities.
Aerospace, by contrast, has long product life cycles and customers that buy on
schedules that can last decades.
While the automotive sector requires innovations, like the semiconductor sector,
and has extremely complex supply chains, like aerospace, it differs from the other
advanced manufacturing industries in its consumer focus. Automakers are among
the largest advertisers in heavy industry, spending approximately 7 percent of
revenue on sales and marketing. Purchase decisions are heavily influenced by
120 US government officials expect aerospace to remain a prime focus of industrial espionage,
including through cyber attacks. See Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive,
Foreign spies stealing US economic secrets in cyberspace, report to Congress on Foreign
Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage, 2009–2011, October 2011.
121 For example, from 1998 to 2000, semiconductor industry sales rose more than 35 percent,
then dropped by the same amount from 2000 to 2002.

94
brand favorability, which competitors manage through marketing activities and
continuous product development. Automakers are highly attuned to consumer
preferences, and inputs in the product development process can benefit from the
consumer insights that social technologies enable.
Current uses of social technology
According to a 2010 survey among advanced manufacturing executives, most
manufacturers are just beginning to explore how social technologies can help
to achieve business objectives. Only 63 percent of the 268 surveyed executives
saw opportunities and potential benefits in combining social technologies
with their enterprise IT systems. The main benefits cited were to gain a better
understanding of the marketplace, to get better insights into how their brands
were perceived, to research customer behavior, and to acquire competitive
intelligence. Most did not perceive social technologies as important for decision-
making systems and only a third said they would select enterprise IT solutions
based on their ability to integrate social tools. Larger companies in the sample,
however, are ahead of the adoption curve, with nearly 50 percent stating that
social media will become important for their IT systems.122
Within advanced manufacturing, auto manufacturers have led in social technology
use, primarily for marketing. The intense brand loyalty of auto enthusiasts,
however, is not yet reflected in social media: no auto brand is represented among
the world’s top ten social sites for brands, as measured by number of fans and
“likes.”123
BMW has less than 25 percent the number of followers on its main
Facebook page as Coca-Cola; Ford Mustang has less than 10 percent.124
But auto manufacturers have launched innovative campaigns that have attracted
consumer attention and engagement, especially among younger buyers. For
example, both Ford and Chevrolet have used social sites to send young drivers on
road trips with challenges to undertake (see Box 23, “Ford’s social media Fiesta”).
The next step for automakers is building Internet access (and social connectivity)
into cars. In July 2012, BMW announced that some 2013 models will have an
onboard system that provides Web access and will read e-mails aloud and allow
drivers to dictate e-mails in response.
Automakers are also using social technologies for market research and product
development. They have enlisted online focus groups to evaluate product ideas
and use sentiment analyses to determine consumer design preferences and
identify potential improvements based on discontent with products already in
the market.
This auto industry has also started to find ways to make its products “social”
by adding built-in smartphones and exploring other ways to connect socially
from the road, such as giving navigation systems capabilities to identify and rate
122 The survey was conducted by RBInteractive Research Group for IFS North America among
268 corporate, operations, and IT executives and managers in manufacturing companies
with revenue of $100 million or more. IFS North America, 2010 IFS Advanced Manufacturing
Software Trends Study, 2010.
123 The power of like: How brands reach and influence fans through social media marketing,
comScore, July 26, 2011. See also Jeff Bullas, “The world’s 10 most popular company
Facebook pages,” Jeffbullas.com, 2012.
124 Percentages measured by the number of “likes” on each company’s Facebook page in
July 2012.

nearby restaurants or points of interest based on social network reviews posted
by the driver’s friends. Other potential functions include automatically providing
directions through GPS to places where friends have checked in or playing the
same music that friends in other places are listening to. While the development of
these applications is still in the early stages, auto companies are committing to
integrating social technologies in their cars.
Box 23. Ford’s social media Fiesta
To successfully reintroduce the Ford Fiesta, a subcompact that had been
absent from the American market since 1981, Ford needed to attract young,
urban drivers (under 30 years old). Ford’s traditional market base was white,
suburban family men. Thus, Ford decided to launch an innovative marketing
campaign, distinct from its usual approaches and aimed at gathering new
followers. It was called “The Fiesta Movement.”
Ford loaned Fiestas to 100 “agents”—clever, adventurous young people
who, most importantly, had a proven following on social media sites. In
return for the use of the car for six months (and related expenses), these
agents would share their unfiltered views of the Fiesta experience through all
forms of social media. Ford also provided free publicists, in case the agents
wanted additional guidance.
Together these agents produced more than 600 videos (one of which was
viewed 200,000 times), 600 blog entries, 5,500 photographs, and 7,700
tweets (to 400 followers on average). By the end of the campaign, Fiesta had
garnered enough press mentions to earn a 33 percent “share of voice” rating
in its category; 92 percent of these mentions were favorable or neutral. Of
the 50,000 “handraisers” (consumers who expressed interest in buying a
Fiesta by giving Ford their contact information pre-launch), 97 percent did
not own a Ford car.1
In total, the campaign cost $2 million in cars and other costs, plus $500,000
per month for program maintenance. But, according to chief marketing
officer Jim Farley, that is about one-tenth of what Ford would have spent on
a launch campaign using traditional media.
The Fiesta social campaign continues. “AJ,” a test car, has Twitter and
Foursquare accounts, which are linked to the car’s telematics system,
enabling the car to automatically microblog messages such as “Stuck in
traffic” or “It’s getting pretty dark.” The test drivers check in at restaurants
and tourist spots on Foursquare.2
1 John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld, The Ford Fiesta, Harvard Business School case
study, June 20, 2011, and Andrew Stephen, Ford Fiesta Movement: Using social media
and viral marketing to launch Ford’s global car in the United States, INSEAD case
study, May 2010.
2 Bernie Woodall, “Ford bets big in digital marketing departure,” Reuters, November
1, 2010, and John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld, The Ford Fiesta, Harvard Business
School case study, June 20, 2011.

96
Value creation potential
Because advanced manufacturing industries are very knowledge-intensive
sectors, the largest potential from social technologies lies in using enterprise
tools to improve collaboration, knowledge management, and coordination within
and between enterprises. These uses represent 60 percent of the potential
value available from social technologies in these sectors. Our estimate for the
total annual social technology potential in advanced manufacturing is as high as
$170 billion–200 billion, which over ten years could yield additional compound
annual productivity growth of 0.5 percent.
In automotive, there is also significant potential value in applying “social”
in marketing activities. We estimate that the value potential in marketing is
40 percent of total marketing spend, which corresponds to approximately
$85 billion–90 billion.
Product development
R&D spending in these industries is generally large, ranging from 5 to 20 percent
of revenue. We estimate that by utilizing social technologies, advanced
manufacturing enterprises can capture value equivalent to 12 to 15 percent
of costs, by gathering customer feedback, improving collaborating among
engineers, and co-creating products with an external community. Kia, for
example, designed more comfortable seats and increased the space of the Kia
Optima cabin after learning from consumers in social forums that they found the
Optima cramped and uncomfortable. These changes were implemented just a
year after the model’s launch, which—in an industry with long design cycles and
lagging customer insights—represents a big leap in responsiveness.
Semiconductor makers are also using social technologies to capture customer
insights for their R&D efforts. Texas Instruments, for example, uses online panels
to evaluate new semiconductor products in development. One of the biggest
benefits is discovering which features potential buyers don’t want, helping TI
avoid over-engineered and costlier products.
In terms of R&D operations, social technologies have the potential to improve
communication and collaboration between R&D and engineering teams in
dispersed locations. While Intel and other technology companies pioneered
connected R&D and engineering teams on internal networks to allow them to
work continuously (passing a design from Japan to Israel to the United States, for
example), social media allows companies to take this to a new level, by enabling
more ad hoc collaboration.
Finally, advanced manufacturing industries can draw significant benefits from
co-creation using social technologies. Since the technological barriers and need
for expertise are high, firms can benefit from reaching out to more specialized
and highly skilled groups such as engineering communities or external research
organizations that have spare capacity. Local Motors, a company that was
launched to show that there was an alternative to the traditional capital-intensive
auto manufacturing model, relies on co-creation for its designs and runs co-
creation contests from its Web sites (see Box 24, “Local Motors co-creates a car
for the US military”).

Operations and distribution
While operations account for 60 to 90 percent of costs in these manufacturing
sectors, the potential for productivity improvements from social technologies
is estimated to be relatively modest within this part of the value chain. This is
because a large percentage of operating costs are tied up in machinery and
material, which social technologies have limited ability to affect. However, there
are applications of social technologies within operations, including in demand
forecasting, which we estimate has a value potential of up to $40 billion globally.
Companies can analyze customer information from social technologies to
supplement conventional forecasting methods. These techniques are most
appropriate in sectors where demand fluctuates and there are large groups of
end users: autos and semiconductors, but less so aerospace. Since the lead
times for auto components are long, more precise demand forecasting can
generate significant value by avoiding overpurchasing (and shortages) across
massive supply chains. For semiconductor companies, where fluctuating demand
can quickly turn profits to losses, using social media in demand forecasting can
improve the effectiveness of capacity planning. Intel, for example, applies social
aspects to its demand forecasting system (see Box 25, “Intel predicts demand via
social interactions”).
Box 24. Local Motors co-creates a car for the US military
Getting new vehicles that are adapted to particular terrains into the field
quickly is an important goal for the US Defense Department, which faces
rapidly shifting mission requirements. Faster development could also
produce significant savings. In 2010, the director of DARPA, the US Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, hypothesized that it was possible
to design, manufacture, and test a new vehicle in less than one-fifth of
the usual time (about five years on average). So, as a pilot, DARPA, the
Defense Department research operation, asked Local Motors, a small auto
manufacturer known for its use of crowdsourcing in product development,
to design and produce within about four months a vehicle that could run at
high speeds over desert terrain.
Local Motors launched a competition with a $10,000 prize to design the
vehicle. Designing the competition and scoping it with the Army took two
weeks, and the competition itself was live for three weeks. In that time,
Local Motors received 162 entries. After one week of the crowd voting, the
engineering development and prototyping began. During the three and a
half months of building, specific design challenges were again opened up
to the Local Motors community to solve. The entire process took less than
five months to create a fully functional, combat-ready vehicle. In his speech
at the ceremony when the vehicle was delivered in June 2011, President
Barack Obama noted that by speeding up development, new approaches
like crowdsourcing could save billions of dollars.1
1 Remarks by the president at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics
Engineering Center, White House Office of the Press Secretary, June 24, 2011. See also
Tom Kalil and Regina Dugan, Crowd-sourcing the renaissance of manufacturing, White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy, June 24, 2011, and “Local Motors and
co-creation,” Cocreationforum.com, November 2011.

98
Social technologies could improve operations for advanced manufacturing
beyond demand forecasting by supporting better collaboration in product
customization—the process of transferring individual customers’ needs into
concrete product specifications. This collaborative design process, in which
consumers help define, configure, and modify products, enhances customer
satisfaction. With the right social technologies, co-design and customization
could be faster and less expensive, expanding the range of design alternatives
available to the customer. This could be relevant to B2C (e.g., car manufacturers)
as well as to B2B advanced manufacturing industries.
Marketing and sales
For automakers, the greatest source of value from social technologies in
marketing and sales is in deriving customer insights and in social platform
marketing campaigns, as Ford’s Fiesta Movement demonstrated.
For semiconductors and aerospace, the impact within sales and marketing is
driven by the effectiveness with which sales leads can be generated and fostered
through social technologies. Texas Instruments, for example, built an engineer-
to-engineer network to connect engineers inside and outside TI (see Box 26,
“Engaging with engineers on their own terms”).
Box 25. Intel predicts demand via social interactions
Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor company, determined that customer
information filtered through sales, marketing, and business planning teams
led to biased forecasts. In order to predict true market demand and build
better forecasts, Intel decided to create “forecasting markets,” based on
the concept of prediction markets (in which many players bet on what the
correct answer will be). Market participants—Intel employees with a broad
knowledge of the global market—enter their own unit sales estimates while
watching others enter theirs. Participants reveal not only one expected
outcome, but also a series of expected outcomes over time, capturing
individual and collective assessments about demand trends. The forecasting
market results were 20 percent more accurate than those from traditional
methods and were within 2.7 percent of actual sales in six out of eight
cases. Intel says it plans to quadruple its use of prediction markets and open
them to a more diverse group of employees.1
1 Jay Hopman, “Using forecasting markets to manage demand risk,” Intel Technology
Journal, Volume 11, Number 2, May 2007.

Customer service
Since continuous support is important for customer retention in advanced
manufacturing and many customer support activities require knowledge workers
with technical expertise, social technologies can create significant value for
advanced manufacturers in customer service. The value opportunity in customer
service, which would be mainly in the automotive industry, is $10 billion globally.
This value would arise through reducing the costs of call centers and improving
the productivity of costly experts. Social tools would allow customer service
staff to reuse earlier answers and to identify the best answers from in-house
experts, based on customer ratings. This pre-sorting and answering also frees up
customer service representatives to focus on answering the questions that have
not yet been adequately answered or addressed. For customers and companies
alike, ratings and comments can identify the most useful expertise, and additional
comments can build knowledge that a company itself may not have and
immediately make it accessible to the public, all at almost no cost.
Some semiconductor companies also have opened up online communities for
customers or enthusiasts to answer technical inquiries from each other. Such
communities can foster loyalty among customers and can help companies
encourage potential buyers who are in the consideration phase, by answering
queries or sending out samples. Communities also feed back insights for
product development.
Box 26. Engaging with engineers on their own terms
A few years ago, semiconductor maker Texas Instruments decided
to improve its relationships with its customers, who mainly consist of
engineers. TI realized that the main reason that engineers engaged with
each other online was to get assistance and knowledge to help solve
specific, complex problems. Social sites for engineers already existed, but TI
could offer something more with its online community: access to TI’s internal
engineers. In the mid-2000s, TI launched the TI engineer-to-engineer (E2E)
community, an open network of more than 50,000 engineers and TI experts.
Members engage on this social site by asking and answering technical
questions about TI chips, sharing knowledge and solving problems, or
tracking down bugs. Texas Instruments recognizes members for their
community contributions, including by naming top contributors “gurus”
and posting their pictures on the site. The site has improved TI’s customer
service, by making its engineering expertise available and posting a constant
supply of useful content. And it has made external community members
more committed customers: engineers who engaged in the E2E community
ordered on average six times the number of samples (across three times as
many product areas) as those who were not engaged with the community.
This also helped to reduce the amount of time during which samples were
tested, reducing the sales cycle.1
1 “E2D help central,” Texas Instruments Web site, http://e2e.ti.com/group/helpcentral/
default.aspx, and “How Texas Instruments’ E2E community is driving productivity
through increased engagement,” Wordofmouth.org, June 10, 2010.

100
Enterprise-wide applications
Due to the complexity of the supply chains, along with the high concentration
of knowledge workers, the largest potential for advanced manufacturers lies in
applying social technologies within and between enterprises. For example, if all
barriers were removed and collaborative tools were applied successfully, business
support functions could improve their labor productivity by 10 to 12 percent.
Social technologies can also effectively support coordination among multiple
players in the complex supply chain.
Social tools can also be used to share best practices and to quickly identify
experts, based on content they have uploaded on their profiles or conversations
held on accessible social platforms. These conversations can be converted
to content that captures the experience and wisdom of experts and that can
be further enhanced with additional comments. The most useful sources of
information can be identified, based on usage and recommendations, and
highlighted so that they are easy to find.
Manufacturers can also use social tools for personnel tasks, such as orienting
new hires and selecting project team members. New hires can be presented with
a pre-set social graph consisting of relevant coworkers and experts, in order to
speed the onboarding process. Using social platforms, companies can quickly
identify candidates for geographically dispersed teams. Social tools also support
ongoing collaboration, documentation, and sharing of results.
Finally, as in other knowledge-intensive industries, social technologies can
improve the recruiting process for advanced manufacturers. Many R&D and
engineering roles in advanced industries require highly specific technical
knowledge. Social technologies can be used by companies to screen large
numbers of profiles and identify people with specific expertise. Furthermore, the
social graph helps to screen people using references from existing connections.
The savings can be significant. Astreya Solutions, which supplies contract IT
workers to advanced industries, uses professional networking services to recruit
technical talent. Astreya recruiters screen huge databases and send personal
messages to the most qualified candidates, cutting down time-to-hire by as much
as 50 percent and reducing overall recruiting costs by more than 30 percent.
Today, the firm finds almost a fourth of new hires through professional networking
services and referrals.
Enablers and obstacles for leveraging social tools in
advanced manufacturing
Because the information in these industries is very sensitive (including trade
secrets), companies will need to address security so that social technology can
be used to its fullest extent for collaboration in product development and in other
applications. In addition, since most of the expected benefit involves collaboration
and knowledge sharing, it is critical that organizations address the cultural
transformation and capability building necessary to support broad adoption and
effective usage of social tools. Major automakers, for example, are very complex
organizations with hierarchical structures and standard work flow processes;
they have a long way to go to become open information-sharing cultures where
collaboration takes place easily across silos and geographies.

SOCIAL SECTOR
The social sector—defined here as nonprofit institutions and non-governmental
organizations (foundations, social service organizations, cultural institutions, and
advocacy groups) as well as social movements—has unique opportunities to
benefit from social technologies. These organizations are social by nature: they
depend on social connections and personal appeals to enlist volunteers and to
raise funds. Their ongoing operations require a network of continuing support
and, in many cases, their missions are social in nature as well (e.g., providing
assistance to the needy, building support for social action). Thus, expanding
the reach of social-sector organizations by increasing the number and quality of
social interactions they have with their supporters and recipients offers them a
crucial source of value.
Expanding the value of the social sector has real economic consequences
as well. While the size of individual organizations varies greatly—from the
International Red Cross, with $580 million in annual revenue and 13 million active
volunteers, to one-person local charities—the overall economic impact of the
sector is substantial. In many countries, the social sector provides health care,
education, social assistance, and research funding. In the United States, the
1.6 million registered nonprofit organizations (which include more than 500,000
civic groups such as chambers of commerce) receive annual donations of
approximately $300 billion.125
Including major nonprofit hospitals, US charities had
$1.4 trillion of revenue in 2009 and accounted for 9 percent of national salaries.126
In Europe, nonprofits employ about 4 percent of the workforce.127
Value levers
Many of the strategies for creating value with social technologies by private-
sector companies also apply to the social sector. However, because the
operating models and missions of social-sector organizations are distinct from
those of private-sector enterprises, we have identified nine social-sector value
levers that fall into four areas: collecting information and insights, mobilizing
resources (including fundraising), executing mission, and organization-wide levers
(Exhibit 32). While each of these levers has distinct elements, many overlap and
build on each other.
125 Giving USA: The annual report on philanthropy for the year 2011, Giving USA Foundation,
June 2012.
126 NCCS core file 2009, National Center for Charitable Statistics.
127 European Commission, “Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): Social economy,”
Official Journal of the European Union, Volume 53, April 1, 2012.

102
Collecting information and insights
Gathering information
Nonprofits need to gather information for marketing and outreach purposes and
also to carry out their missions, particularly aid groups that must respond quickly
to natural disasters and other crises. Social media has proven to be an excellent
way for organizations to improve crisis response. By gathering and aggregating
on-the-ground reports, agencies can quickly understand the scope of the
situation, prioritize where to send aid first, and coordinate the activities of relief
workers. Because social technologies are available on mobile phones (mobile
is the primary way in which people in developing economies connect to social
media), social communication remains available even when other infrastructure
(e.g., landline telephone and electric wires) is damaged. Mobile phones also
automatically track their users’ location. Social platforms, which are often
operated on public Web sites such as Twitter or Ushahidi, also allow numerous
organizations to gather information, communicate, and coordinate simultaneously,
helping to increase the speed and effectiveness of aid efforts.
In addition, in many instances, social media gives outside organizations access
to information that is not available through traditional news and communication
channels, either because of censorship or infrastructure damage. Diffusing
information and bypassing official sources can act as a check to violent
governments or groups that would otherwise operate with less transparency.
Social media’s ability to spread unfiltered, live messages from the field, through
online video broadcasting, for example, can mobilize supporters and put pressure
on governments to act—or cease unwanted activities (see Box 27, “Using a social
platform to gather on-the-ground data”).
Exhibit 32
Improve
collaboration and
communication
Rapid organizing
Social technologies can create value across social-sector organizations
Gather information1
Crowdsource resources and solutions2
Fundraise3
Retain support5
Educate the public6
Create and expand volunteer network4
Engage supporters7
8
Organization-
wide levers
(Social as
organizational
technology)
9
Execute
mission
Mobilize
resources
Collect
information
and insights

In non-crisis situations, social-sector organizations can use social media to
gather information and connect with their volunteers in a way analogous to how
marketing teams comb the Internet for product references and address online
complaints (see Box 28, “The American Red Cross: Supporting mission with
social technology”). As in the private sector, this usually revolves around using
scanning software to pick up on references to the brand and code them by type
of comment—a compliment, criticism, request for a specific service, or even just a
comment about a general need.
Box 27. Using a social platform to gather on-the-ground data
Ushahidi (“testimony” in Swahili) is a nonprofit software company based
in Kenya that provides free, open-source, crisis mapping software, which
enables communication through a social platform for people in areas where
natural disasters or political or social upheaval are occurring. It allows both
victims and social-sector workers to submit information, detailing their
locations and the interventions needed.
In 2008, Kenyans used the system to collect data about post-election
violence through anonymous text messages, mobile phone apps, and
e‑mail. After the 2010 Haitian earthquake, Ushahidi aggregated the
thousands of text messages about trapped victims that had been sent to
an emergency text number. Volunteers from all over the world translated the
messages into English and plotted them on a crisis map, which Ushahidi
volunteers conveyed to the United States Coast Guard rescue operation by
instant messaging.1
1 Anand Giridharadas, “Africa’s gift to Silicon Valley: How to track a crisis,” New York
Times, March 13, 2010.
Box 28. The American Red Cross: Supporting mission with
social technology
The American Red Cross is harnessing social technologies in a variety of
ways to support its mission. For example, it uses the information it gathers
from social media to tailor its strategy and improve service delivery. The Red
Cross uses software that parses 4,000 online mentions a day to uncover
insights into what is being said about the Red Cross, to identify contributors
whom the Red Cross should thank, and to find potential donors or students
for Red Cross classes.
The Red Cross is finding ways to communicate with people in crisis via
social media and mobile devices—even providing comfort to tornado victims
who are still in their homes and helping them locate the nearest shelter. The
Red Cross is also developing a digital volunteer program, which has trained
200 people using social media who will respond to comments on all social
platforms (not just Red Cross sites) to help during disasters. In addition, the
Red Cross has used social media to improve its offerings—responding to the
occasional compliant about a boring CPR instructor or a bruise from a blood
donation. Acknowledging these issues and responding to them publicly has
elicited positive reactions.

104
Crowdsourcing resources and solutions
Crowdsourcing—harnessing the knowledge of a large group of people to solve
problems and mobilizing volunteers to work on specific tasks—allows large and
small organizations to tackle problems that their staffs can’t solve and also to add
talent as needed. Social-sector crowdsourcing is gaining in popularity around
the world. Donors and volunteers contribute their expertise for solving problems
or executing tasks and contribute to organizational knowledge, which becomes
more refined and useful as more volunteers participate.
Crowdsourcing is also being used to support the missions of research institutions
and the many nonprofits that are committed to fighting chronic diseases.
Malaria researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are using
crowdsourcing to improve the process of classifying blood cells, through an
online game called GameOn! Researchers found that with a bit of training, people
without scientific credentials and experience could accurately classify malaria-
infected cells. They found that the amateurs were nearly as good as UCLA’s
medical professionals and proceeded to create a game for mobile phones to
crowdsource volunteer blood cell classifiers.
The game has the potential to substantially reduce costs, including by making
better use of the time of pathologists, who review around 300 views of a blood
smear to classify malaria-infected blood. The game also has potential to reduce
unnecessary medical costs. In many areas of sub-Saharan Africa, where this
diagnosis process is not used because it is too labor-intensive, 60 percent of
malaria cases diagnosed are false positives. So creating a way to crowdsource
the labor-intensive element of this process may allow wider use of blood analysis,
increasing the proportion of accurate diagnoses and reducing unnecessary
medical costs.128
Mobilizing resources
Mobilizing resources—both money and personnel—is crucial to a social-sector
organization’s existence; most organizations rely entirely on donations, and many
depend on volunteers to help carry out their missions. Social technologies have
the potential to improve recruiting and retention of donors and volunteers in a
number of ways.
The key benefit in using social technology for finding and keeping donors and
volunteers is the ability to more precisely target people who are likely to engage
with the organization’s mission or cause—and to do it cheaply and on a large
scale. The demographic and behavioral information that people provide on social
networking sites (e.g., sharing content about environmental issues, or “liking”
an animal rights group) provides profiling data that is difficult to obtain by other
means. Social technology users also provide a social graph that shows personal
connections, group affiliations, and areas of common interest. Groups looking
for donors and volunteers can use all these data to craft custom messages for
a specific type of audience, and then rely on their social connections closest to
that audience to spread the message. The organization can target its message
by demographic, history of support, or interests, which becomes viral when
supporters pass on the message to their connections (e.g., by posting it on
a social site and commenting favorably or by forwarding e‑mails). Moreover,
128 S. Mavandadi et al., “Distributed medical image analysis and diagnosis through crowdsourced
games: A malaria case study,” PLoS ONE, Volume 7, Number 5, May 2012.

social media allows organizations to enlist support on a massive scale on a very
tight timeline.
Fundraising
Across the world, fundraising on social platforms has become a standard
tool for nonprofits (Exhibit 33). Not only does online solicitation cost far less
than conventional means, but it also is proving to be more effective. “Social”
fundraising costs can be as much as 80 percent less than those for direct mail,
telephone solicitation, and other traditional channels. And, according to some
estimates, when individuals solicit donations from online social connections
(rather than calling friends and neighbors), their fundraising increases by as much
as 45 percent.
Overall, charities and advocacy groups have found that they get better
returns from online solicitations than from traditional telephone and direct mail
campaigns; in the United States, 58 percent of charities reported an increase
in donations from online fundraising compared with 43 percent from direct mail
solicitations.129
One factor is size of donation: a donor who joined an organization
online gave an average of $62 in 2010, compared with the $32 given on average
by someone who joined by mail.130
By using social media to more precisely target fundraising efforts, nonprofits also
may be able to save money and increase revenue, too. Typically, organizations
limit their spending on fundraising and administration to about 20 cents of every
dollar raised in order to devote most of their donors’ money to the cause they
129 “The nonprofit fundraising survey,” Nonprofit Research Collaborative, 2010.
130 Helen Flannery and Rob Harris, 2011 donorCentrics™ Internet and multichannel giving
benchmarking report, Blackbaud, 2011.
Exhibit 33
Nonprofits around the world are using social networking
to raise funds
SOURCE: 2011 State of the nonprofit industry survey by Blackbaud
19
26
26
29
33
39
48
51
53France 47
Germany 49
Italy 52
Australia 61
Canada 67
United Kingdom 71
United States 74
New Zealand 74
Netherlands 81
Yes
No
1 Survey of 2,203 charities.
Charities using social networking to drive donations, by country, 20111
%

106
promote.131
But doing this means that they do not maximize their fundraising
potential. The inexpensive, high-bandwidth channels that social technologies have
opened up create new choices for nonprofits, including using the savings to fund
additional fundraising.
Finally, fundraising through social media has almost limitless scalability—anyone,
anywhere with a credit card or online payment account can donate to an
organization, even if they are too far away to offer any meaningful in-person, real-
time support. Mobilizing volunteers can be more geographically constrained.
Creating and expanding volunteer network
Social media has a huge potential to rally volunteers, in part due to the social
nature of volunteering. Many people volunteer with friends or become friends with
people they meet as volunteers. So the ability to see on a social network where
friends are volunteering, or to hear from an organization that a friend has become
a volunteer, can encourage a social technology user to join in.
Retaining support
Nonprofits thrive on continuing support—donors and volunteers who participate
year after year. Social technologies are an excellent way to keep donors
and volunteers engaged. An estimated 93 percent of nonprofits maintain a
presence on a commercial social network to participate in a dialogue with
supporters.132
They use these forums to share news, respond to comments and
criticisms, amplify positive comments, or recognize outstanding volunteers and
beneficiaries—on a daily basis, if necessary.
Executing mission
Education
For many social-sector groups, the core mission involves behavioral change,
such as getting smokers to quit, helping people avoid heart disease through
diet and exercise, and preventing drug and alcohol abuse (see Box 29, “Using
peer influence to prevent drug abuse”). The mission is essentially educational—
informing people what they can do to minimize risks and improve health. By
enlisting social connections to deliver these messages, social technologies
provide a powerful educational tool—an anti-smoking message from a respected
peer has far more impact than an anti-smoking ad on the radio or a generic
message on a Web site. In many ways, educational campaigns are among the
nonprofit activities that are best suited to social technologies. An important
capability of social technology is to bring influential social connections (e.g.,
friends or family) into the education process and enlist their support to encourage
the needed behavior change.
131 James M. Greenfield, Fund raising: Evaluating and managing the fund development process
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999).
132 2012 nonprofit social network benchmark report, Nonprofit Technology Network, Common
Knowledge, and Blackbaud, 2012.

Engaging supporters
For advocacy groups, social technologies can help enlist and engage a large
number of supporters quickly and at low cost. Whether they are pushing for a
new firehouse in their city or agitating in a national capital for civil rights, advocacy
groups need to show that they have a large number of supporters. Organizations
that used to rely on known connections—addresses, e‑mails, telephone
numbers—can now post petitions on highly trafficked social media sites,
knowing that they will be passed from friend to friend very quickly. This allows
organizations with limited resources to involve a larger share of current supporters
and reach a far larger audience at a dramatically reduced cost.
Enterprise-wide levers
Social technologies provide a new and powerful way for new social-sector
organizations to organize and for existing ones to function more efficiently and
effectively. Like private-sector enterprises, social-sector organizations can benefit
from improving internal collaboration and communication on social platforms.
In the social sector, social platforms have the additional potential to provide
instant infrastructure for new organizations. Established organizations with the
appropriate structures and cultures (i.e., non-hierarchical and collaborative) can
also realize rapid benefits from shifting communications and knowledge sharing
to a social platform.
Improving collaboration and communication
Social technologies have the potential to improve internal collaboration for social-
sector organizations—both the well established and the young, the large and
the small, the well endowed and the poorly endowed. As with any enterprise,
social-sector organizations thrive on collaboration—with donors, volunteers, and
other organizations whose missions are complementary. Social technologies
can help such collaboration by, for example, connecting different chapters to
share ideas and best practices more easily or hosting an online, searchable
Box 29. Using peer influence to prevent drug abuse
The “Above the Influence” campaign, created by the White House Office
of National Drug Control Policy, aims to give teenagers who have been
exposed to peer pressure a place to talk about choosing to not engage in
substance abuse. It hosts a Facebook page, on which it places informational
videos, articles, and links, in addition to creating a space for teenagers to
post content. As of July 2012, it had 1.4 million “likes” and numerous posts
each hour.
In addition to using social media to enact its mission, Above the Influence is
innovative in how it uses information online to promote its site. It bought ads
that targeted teenagers who listed community involvement like the YMCA
or the Jewish Community Center or listed statements against substance
abuse on their Facebook profiles. This allowed Above the Influence to target
the teenagers who were most likely to engage with a site conveying this
message and who will value a community of like-minded peers. These ads
brought more than 100,000 fans to the Web site.1
1 Jason Keath, “The 2012 Facebook advertising report,” Socialfresh.com, April 4, 2012.

108
repository of these practices to share within and across organizations. The
Nature Conservancy, for example, has used its social intranet to create a closer
community among thousands of employees around the world—and speed up
crucial knowledge sharing (see Box 30, “The Nature Conservancy’s CONNECT”).
The social sector has yet to embrace this idea on a large scale. While widely
used for fundraising and outreach, social technologies are applied to internal
operations in only 13 percent of American nonprofits. Those that do use social
networks, however, tend to value it: 75 percent say that they gain some benefits
from internal social networks.
Box 30. The Nature Conservancy’s CONNECT
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) faces unique challenges. It is a global
organization that protects ecologically important lands and waters for nature
and people (from jungles in Borneo to coral reefs in Honduras). Many of its
employees live in remote places, but as a nonprofit dedicated to preserving
the environment, TNC cannot support extensive travel—both for financial
and environmental reasons. As a result, almost all communication was from
the center outward, and TNC employees—on the ground and in its 600 field
offices—had little access to their remote colleagues’ expertise and insight.
Social technologies have provided a way to knit together this far-flung
operation into a more cohesive, collaborative enterprise. In March 2012, TNC
inaugurated the CONNECT social intranet. Within months, more than half of
TNC’s 3,800 employees are using CONNECT every day. Some 85 private
meeting rooms have been created, where employees from all over the world
can work together on specific issues; there are 54 public communities
where employees with a common interest can get together and share
knowledge. More than 90 percent of senior managers have created profiles
with photographs and “about me” and “expertise” sections; overall more
than three-quarters of staff have created profiles.
While it’s too soon to measure results, CIO Jean-Louis Ecochard says
that the organization is already benefiting from easier access to expertise,
greater collaboration, and time savings. For example, by searching through
the profiles the employees post on CONNECT, which include much more
detail than a typical employee directory, it takes very little time to compile a
list of people with very specific knowledge (e.g., oyster reef restoration) and
get questions answered or organize resources to tackle a project. The social
site has also set a new, faster rhythm for the organization, helping eliminate
delays when working across oceans or international datelines, for example.
People in the field have expressed unsolicited appreciation for CONNECT;
they cite in particular the benefit of finally getting to “meet” people back
in the office with whom they have worked for years, to “put a face” on
remote colleagues they communicate with, and to reduce the typical
friction between headquarters and the field by providing a human face
for centralized services. The site has been so successful that The Nature
Conservancy is expanding it to its 1,500 field trustees (i.e., lead volunteers)
and plans to open it for public access soon.

Rapid organizing
Social media can quickly create a structure for rapidly evolving social movements,
as happened during the Arab Spring movements in 2011. In Egypt, support on
Facebook became a way of “electing” informal leaders of the revolution, who
provided information, rallied groups, and conveyed demands to the government.
The support generated by the Facebook page of Mohamed ElBaradei, a
prominent Egyptian politician, played a major role in the ousting of President
Hosni Mubarak. ElBaradei’s site became the second most popular site in Egypt
in 2010. A Facebook page made in honor of Khaled Said, who was killed by
police after posting a video of attacks on protesters, quickly attracted 500,000
members. All of this can happen over the course of hours or days and can leave
the person behind the organization anonymous.
In addition to helping to rapidly structure a movement, social technologies
significantly lower the barrier to entry into the social sector. Instead of needing
a grant from a major donor and a core group of supporters as a precondition
to launch, a free social page and a catchy social media campaign can draw
supporters. This creates the potential for new, young organizations to disrupt the
social sector; on social platforms, a small charity or less well-publicized cause
can compete for donor dollars.
Enablers and obstacles
Many social-sector organizations share a common barrier to success in social
technologies with private enterprises: cultures that are not well prepared for
the changes required. While the physical switch to using social platforms is
small compared to that of implementing new IT systems, the organizational and
cultural changes needed to capture the full value of social technologies can be
quite difficult to achieve. In addition, in many contexts, it will be challenging to
overcome doubts about the relevance of social technologies. Doctors and other
professionals, for example, will need to be convinced that experiments like the
UCLA crowdsourcing solution to blood screening are valid and reliable and can
be replicated. Privacy and norms about private communications form another
barrier: employees may be hesitant to post their questions on a social forum, even
if they know it will get them a speedy answer, because they are uncomfortable
exposing their question to a broader group.
Nonprofits also must consider reputation risk; once they engage in a public
conversation on social platforms, they no longer control the message. Social
media allows critics to spread negative messages as efficiently as supporters
spread positive ones. However, social technologies also give organizations a
chance to engage critics and respond quickly, potentially heading off a larger
media crisis.
Nonprofits also face a unique challenge in the phenomenon known as
“slacktivism” or “clicktivism”—reducing commitment to a charity or a cause
to a click of a mouse button. There are concerns in the social sector that viral
campaigns such as Kony 2012 (which overnight enlisted millions of social
technology users in an effort to punish a Ugandan warlord 25 years after
he began his brutal crusade) will trivialize nonprofit work and alienate core
supporters. They also fear that supporters may assume that clicking on a “like”
button will suffice—that they no longer need to donate money or show up to
volunteer on a Saturday. Since most organizations rely on donations of money

110
and time from their supporters to execute their missions, such a shift could
dramatically undermine nonprofits’ impact.
SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS
A wide variety of companies provides social technologies and related services.
Many supply IT-enabled services and products that provide a platform for
social interactions, including Web companies that provide social networking
services to consumers; enterprise software companies that sell collaboration
software; social gaming companies; crowdsourcing software companies; and IT
services companies.
This section will explore potential revenue streams that can be tapped by social
technology providers (Exhibit 34). Detailed descriptions of the methodologies
used to estimate potential value streams are included in the appendix. These
analyses do not suggest valuations for any of the providers of social technologies.
The five categories of revenue streams examined in this section are:
ƒƒ Advertising. Sales of advertising, including display advertising on social
platforms, messages propagated through social technologies, and
advertisements that are targeted based on the analysis of social data
ƒƒ E‑commerce. Sales of physical or virtual goods on social platforms or use
of social technologies to increase sales on other e‑commerce platforms (e.g.,
adding social features to e‑commerce sites)
ƒƒ IT software and services. Sales or licensing fees for providing social
technology software, which may be provided in a “cloud” environment,
using a software-as-a-service model; additional revenue sources include
implementation services and software maintenance fees
ƒƒ Donations. Monetary gifts from the public and organizations to support the
development of social software and content (e.g., Wikimedia’s model)
ƒƒ Value-added services. Payment for services based on social technologies,
such as recruiting services, social marketing analytics, and social e-learning
Social technology providers often use a combination of revenue models, as
illustrated in Exhibit 35. Companies continue to experiment with new models to
increase and diversity their sources of revenue, so the environment for social
technology providers remains very dynamic.

Exhibit 34
Five revenue models for social technology providers
Markets within reach for social technology providers
Revenue models
32
31
85
12
67
45
62
730
e-Learning
Marketing
analytics
Recruiting
Payments
Digital goods
Physical goods 142
254
E-commerce
Value-added
services1
Value, 2011
$ billion
1 Not exhaustive.
Less addressableAddressable
Online advertisement
and connected TV
Radio, newspaper, etc.
E-commerce Offline commerce
Online payments Offline payments
Application software
and related services
Infrastructure software,
hardware support
Donations to media Donations outside
media
E-commerce n/a
Recruitment
Research dependent
on physical location
Most consumer
research
e-Learning
n/a
n/a
IT software and services
Donations
Advertising
Total potential value1
Exhibit 35
Revenue models of different social platforms NOT EXHAUSTIVE
SOURCE: Press search; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Social networks Blogs/microblogs Wikis Enterprise
Revenue
model
Advertising
Display        
Search  
Social
distribution  
E-commerce
Physical
goods 
Digital goods    
Payments  
IT software
and services 
Donations 
Value-added
services
Recruiting 
Marketing
analytics       
e-Learning
Current

112
Advertising
The most common revenue model for consumer social technologies is
advertising. Many consumer social networks sell display advertising on their sites
or with their applications. Pricing models include cost per thousand impressions;
cost per click, under which an advertiser pays only when the consumer clicks
on its ad; and cost per action, under which advertisers pay only if the user takes
a specific action, such as engaging with the brand in some way, or executing
a purchase.
There are several ways for social network providers to enhance revenue. First,
they can take actions to increase the traffic on their sites and apps, to drive
higher volumes of advertising impressions, clicks, and actions. They can also
attempt to raise prices, by using the data that consumers have made available on
social platforms (including personal preferences, as well their connections with
other people), to provide advertising to more valuable micro-targeted customers;
advertisers will pay more under any payment scheme to reach customers who
are most likely to respond. For example, if a social technology user mentions an
interest in fashion and many of that person’s friends are also interested in fashion,
an apparel marketer is likely to value an advertisement targeted to that individual
more highly than an ad that will go to a group of undifferentiated consumers.
Furthermore, when social data are combined with location data (which is
increasingly possible to do in real time through mobile technology), marketers can
place advertisements and offers that reach a consumer at the moment when they
can have the most influence (i.e., when the consumer is near a shop where the
merchandise is available).
Making a real-time offer to a consumer based on a combination of social and
location data requires access to location information, most often through a mobile
device. However, there are several challenges to be solved related to mobile
advertising, including the relatively small screen size on many mobile devices,
as well as finding a mechanism to present an offer in real time that is engaging
enough to attract the user’s attention without coming across as overly intrusive.
Unit prices of advertising on social networks have been somewhat limited by the
nature of social media (e.g., many users do not reveal commercial intent) and the
shift in social media growth to developing economies. Unlike on search engines,
where users often signal intent to buy (a consumer searching for “auto insurance”
is probably shopping for auto insurance), users of social networks often are not
revealing any commercial intent or their intent is more difficult to confirm; a social
media user may spend time browsing through pictures or may follow a discussion
about a product with no intention of purchasing. Social networking platforms have
accumulated very large numbers of users, but recently much of the growth in
unique users has come from developing countries, especially as penetration rates
start to plateau in advanced economies. Due to the relatively limited purchasing
power of these new social media users, marketers have had a limited appetite to
pay to target these users.
Social platform operators can also generate advertising-related revenue by
selling the consumer insights derived from social data to advertisers to use
in other channels. For example, social data can be used to more finely target
search advertising, or on e‑commerce sites. Developing the capability to target
advertising based on social data in channels other than on social platforms could

represent a valuable means of monetizing the rich consumer data social platform
operators are collecting.
To take advantage of these opportunities to monetize consumer data, providers
will have to ensure that consumers share valuable data on these platforms. Thus,
providers will have to give users a compelling value proposition to continue to
share these data. Furthermore, providers will have to earn and maintain the
trust of their users (e.g., by meeting privacy expectations) to persuade users
to continue sharing data. And there is also a need to show restraint in regard
to micro-targeted advertising; offers that seem to be based on too much
knowledge could backfire if people feel such a level of intimacy is “creepy.” Trying
to understand what consumers will perceive as being “creepy” is not a simple
analysis. Some retailers that have been doing micro-targeting with discounts on
specific products (e.g., offers targeted to women whose personal data indicate
that they are likely to be pregnant) have reportedly attempted to head off the
unease by including other offers that any young homeowner might want, such as
deals on lawn mowers.133
Social platform operators also continue to experiment with ad types to increase
revenue, including through messages that are intended for redistribution to social
connections. For example, Twitter provides the ability for brands to pay to send
“sponsored tweets.”
Based on our finding that social features can be added to almost any IT-
enabled human interaction, we conclude that virtually all online marketing and
even television advertising can be enhanced with social features, from social
data–based ad targeting, to enabling consumers to interact with advertising in
social ways (e.g., Bronx Shoes’ interactive billboard in South Africa, which adds
a strand of hair to a man’s face every time a user “likes” its Facebook page).134
A key enabler will be Internet-connected televisions and virtual displays, which
are increasing in adoption and can enable advertising to be targeted based
on social data, or even allow consumers to share TV advertising messages on
social platforms.135
Other traditional advertising channels, including print, radio,
and most outdoor billboards, are not currently addressable by social technology
providers, but this may change with technology that would turn these “broadcast”
media into interactive media, for example through QR codes or audio analysis
of data messages in text or audio. The global value-add potential of social
technology advertising could reach $254 billion annually.
133 Charles Duhigg, “How companies learn your secrets,” New York Times, February 16, 2012.
134 Peter Milosheff, “Bronx Men’s Shoes beard growing billboard,” Bronx.com, April 20, 2012.
135 Informa projects there will be 1.8 billion connected TVs in more than 570 million homes
globally by 2016. Connected TVs include TVs, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, game consoles,
and media streaming boxes.

114
E‑commerce
Social platforms are a natural home for e‑commerce. Adding user-generated
reviews is a common way to apply social technologies in an e‑commerce context.
E‑commerce players have often found that they experience a lift in revenue when
users are allowed to post ratings and reviews, though that raises the risk that
users will post negative comments about products. Furthermore, social platform
providers could either sell goods themselves or allow others to use their platform
to facilitate third-party sales, for which the social platform operator could collect
a commission.
ƒƒ Physical goods. Any online shopping site can be enhanced by adding
social features, such as ratings and reviews or the ability to share news of
one’s purchases. The most common items sold through e‑commerce sites
are physical goods, particularly electronics. New e‑commerce models are
springing up that allow users to place orders for physical goods through social
platforms. China’s popular microblogging site Sina Weibo, for example, is
rolling out local consumer services that will allow users to order food deliveries
directly from Weibo business accounts. Rakuten, a large Japanese online
retailer, has teamed up with Pinterest to embed e‑commerce functionality
into pinned images. When users interact with these images, they are taken to
either Pinterest or Rakuten Ichiba checkout pages for purchase.
ƒƒ Digital goods. This category includes everything from online content—
movies, television shows, books, music, and apps—to virtual goods such
as weapons, tools, and upgrades for use in social games. Virtual goods,
in particular, are one of the fastest-growing revenue sources for social
technology providers. Most virtual items in social games sell for less than $5,
but they add up to a big business, reaching $5 billion in sales globally in 2011
and expected to grow to $13 billion in 2015.136
More than half of US in-game
virtual goods are purchased through Facebook, which recorded $1.2 billion in
virtual goods sales in 2011.137
In games like Zynga’s FarmVille, which is often
played through Facebook, thousands of virtual tractors are purchased daily at
$20 each.
ƒƒ Payments. An essential requirement for any e‑commerce model is a
convenient and secure payments system. Payments can be provided by
a social technology provider, or a traditional payments player could add
social features (e.g., the ability to share information about purchases with
social connections). Social payment or banking systems have not yet
become a major part of the online payments business, and it is not clear
how this business model will evolve in the social technology age. Credit card
companies, which continue to dominate online payments, are experimenting
with social technologies, and new, innovative players in the payments space
that leverage social technologies continue to grow.
136 “Virtual goods in social networks and online gaming,” In-Stat, November 2010.
137 Charles Hudson and Justin Smith, Inside virtual goods: The US virtual goods market 2011–
2012, Inside Network, December 2011.

Enterprises are only beginning to realize the benefits of social networking to
harness the collective knowledge and capabilities of their employees and improve
many customer-facing elements of their businesses. For companies that supply
enterprise social technologies, the most straightforward revenue model is to
simply charge customers software license fees on a per-user basis. This software
might be installed on the customer’s servers or might be delivered via a cloud-
based service. Software sales are also often accompanied by additional services,
such as implementation, upgrades, and maintenance. Because retooling an
organization to take full advantage of social technologies can be very challenging,
there is a significant opportunity for sales of professional services to help
organizations design and execute customized social technology solutions and
implement the change programs necessary to ensure that expected collaboration
performance improvements materialize.
Entrepreneurial providers of enterprise collaboration tools and other social
technology software sometimes use revenue models inspired by consumer
services. Yammer (recently purchased by Microsoft), for example, uses a
“freemium” pricing system for its enterprise social networking tool. Under the
freemium model, users get a basic set of social tools at no charge. To gain
access to additional features, companies pay a monthly per-user fee. Jive
Software has adopted a “try before you buy” model.
Existing technology suppliers of products in categories such as enterprise
resource planning, sales force automation, customer relationship management,
and supply chain management are also adding social features to their existing
enterprise software offerings, creating additional social software revenue
streams. And while consumer-focused social-technology platforms generally
provide their services for free, some could also charge consumers directly for
premium services.
Donations
Some social technology media and services organizations rely on donations
from users and organizations to fund activities, ranging from developing code
and content, to running the organization. For this to work, users must have
strong attachment to the social platform. Wikipedia has a strong no-advertising/
no-commerce policy to protect the integrity of its content and depends entirely
on stakeholder donations from users and institutions to cover the costs of its
servers and operations staff (see Box 31, “Wikipedia paves the way for donation-
based revenue models”). Conceivably, some of these platforms could be funded
(partially) by endowments, much as some other leading media players in offline
formats (e.g., National Public Radio, Harper’s, and ProPublica) fund at least part
of their operations through endowments.

116
Value-added services
In theory, the types of additional value-added services that could be based on
social technologies or the data created by social technologies are limited only
by the range of IT-enabled interactions and the imagination of entrepreneurs. We
describe four of them below but recognize that many more approaches could
be possible.
ƒƒ Recruiting. Online resume posting services fit our criteria for being social
technologies in that they permit content creation and consumption to be
done by distributed groups of individuals. However, many do not exhibit
some of the other characteristics of more recent social platforms, such as the
ability to explicitly define one’s social graph or create communities. However,
more recent professional networking sites such as LinkedIn and Xing have
included these and job placement functions. Players in this space often have
multiple revenue streams (much like competitors in other similar markets):
more than 50 percent of LinkedIn’s revenue ($85 million in 2011) comes
from selling access to databases of millions of members to recruiters.138
Recruiters can search for candidates, place job advertisements, and use a
138 LinkedIn 2011 financial reports.
Box 31. Wikipedia paves the way for donation-based
revenue models
With more than 400 million unique users each month, Wikipedia is the fifth-
largest Web site in the world. Its parent entity, the not-for-profit Wikimedia
Foundation, relies solely on donations to fund its operations. According to
its Web site, Wikimedia states that “ads are not an appropriate thing to find
in a project devoted to education and knowledge—and especially one that
strives for balance and neutrality.”1
Wikimedia has refused to accept advertising and operates on an extremely
lean model; it has fewer than 150 employees and uses open-source
software and donated bandwidth. The only ads on Wiki pages are banners
seeking donations, which lead to donation landing pages. Wiki also
sends out e‑mail pleas. Every year it tests hundreds of banner and appeal
versions, resulting in a 20 to 30 percent increase in donations year on year.
A personal appeal from founder Jimmy Wales, who signed the e‑mails in
2009 and 2010, or from Wiki editors, who signed in 2011, has proved to
be far more powerful than an appeal from the foundation. Adding a green
leafy background also helped—increasing individual donation amounts by
30 percent.2
Wikimedia also accepts donations in multiple currencies using
a range of payment methods. Wikimedia reached its $20 million fundraising
goal in 2011 in just 46 days, with donations from more than one million
donors. This went a long way toward covering 2011 operating expenses; the
remaining budget needs of $8.3 million were met by institutional grants and
other donations throughout the year.
1 “Fundraising 2012/How Wikimedia revenue grows,” last modified May 30, 2012.
2 “Wikipedia:Advertisements,” www.wikipedia.org, March 25, 2012.

LinkedIn application to manage the candidate relationship process. LinkedIn
derives its remaining revenue from advertising and subscription fees for its
premium service.
ƒƒ Marketing analytics. Social technology providers are now getting into the
big data business. They are developing predictive marketing analytic models
and segmentation analyses using established statistical methods of clustering,
inductive decision tree (IDT), logistic regression, and text-mining to be sold as
functions within other software solutions (covered above under “IT software
and services”), delivered as consulting services, or provided as a value-added
service on top of other offerings such as advertising.
ƒƒ E-learning. Social networking technology has sprouted numerous e-learning
options. Today’s students can have teacher-led, self-study, and blended
instruction (classroom and online). In classrooms around the world, teachers
post assignments on community portals and create opportunities for
collaborative learning, unhindered by time zones or geographic proximity.
E-learning interfaces and curricula are also being designed for mobile phones,
extending the reach of existing education. And learners are excited: 160,000
learners from around the world enrolled in an open-access, university-level
course on artificial intelligence given by Stanford University professors, where
questions were often answered more quickly online by fellow classmates
around the world than by one of the professors or teaching assistants. These
ideas have even spawned a new acronym: MOOC, which stands for massively
open online courses, which are now being offered by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (whose OpenCourseWare was a pioneering effort),
Harvard, Stanford, and other institutions. Numerous opportunities exist for
social providers in e-learning, from designing e-learning tools to hosting or
offering e-learning courses on their platforms.
Social technologies have a huge potential to create value, and providers will be
able to capture some of that value. They will continue to experiment with various
revenue models, sometimes adopting models from traditional software and IT
services and in other cases developing new models.

119
Social technologies have clearly established their power and appeal and,
increasingly, are demonstrating their ability to create value for individuals, groups,
and organizations. However, there is far more potential value to be obtained from
the use of social media in the coming decade. This value varies across different
application domains—for example, the application of social technologies to
improve collaboration within and across enterprises is a trend that has reached
only a small fraction of its potential. At this early stage in the evolution of social
technologies, all of the enablers of success—the factors that must be in place to
realize the full value of social technology use—are not yet known. However, many
examples point the way to greater impact.
The degree to which social technologies can continue to generate value for
users and can enable significant improvements in organizational productivity
will depend on how leaders of businesses and other organizations, as well as
policy makers and the companies that supply social technologies, respond
to today’s challenges and opportunities. For social technology applications to
continue to evolve and bring benefits to individuals, enterprises, and the overall
economy, business leaders will need to learn how to maximize those benefits.
Policy makers will need to find ways to protect the rights of individuals, groups,
and organizations in ways that do not undermine the essential strengths of social
technologies. Individuals will need to make well-informed choices about where
they socialize online and the content they consume and contribute; they will also
need to take responsibility for maintaining integrity and trust in their communities.
In this chapter we examine the implications of the challenges and opportunities
that these stakeholders face.
WHAT ORGANIZATIONS CAN DO TO FOSTER SUCCESS IN
SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES
Because social is a feature that can be added to any digital application
through which people can interact, the potential uses of social technologies by
organizations are extremely varied. We have illustrated the broad applicability of
social technologies, and the value they can create, across the value chains of a
selection of diverse sectors.
While much has been written to counsel leaders of organizations about how to
approach social technologies, and in particular, how to work with social media,139
this is a rapidly evolving environment; this is a time to be discovering “next
practices” rather than codifying still immature “best practices.” Based on our
research, we provide indications of the directions that a leader could follow now
to capture some of the potential benefits of social technologies, recognizing that
nobody yet has all of the answers.
139 See, for example, Roxane Divol, David Edelman, and Hugo Sarrazin, “Demystifying social
media,” The McKinsey Quarterly, April 2012.
4. Implications of
social technology

120
The implications for businesses and other organizations that we will describe fall
into four broad categories: “internal” applications of social technologies within
the networked enterprise, “external” applications of social technology for the
extended enterprise to interact with outside stakeholders such as customers and
partners, common implications across both internally networked and extended
enterprises, and the strategic implications of using these technologies.
The networked enterprise: Internal applications of
social technologies
Our research indicates a substantial opportunity for organizations to increase
the efficiency and effectiveness of interaction work—what most professionals,
managers, and high-skill office workers do—potentially raising their productivity
by 20 to 25 percent. As the basis for value creation in the economy migrates from
production of products to innovation and services, improving the efficiency and
effectiveness of interaction workers will continue to grow in importance.
While we have early evidence that this potential is real, we cannot yet write a
comprehensive instruction manual that describes how to capture it in every global
organization. Nevertheless, our research has uncovered some enablers that begin
to point in the direction of the next practices that can unlock this value and create
more fully networked enterprises.
First, since these are essentially social technologies, the primary enablers for
capturing value will be social in nature. The decisions that will make the most
difference will not be about the technologies themselves, but about steps that
affect interactions among people. Clearly, the technologies are necessary in
order to bring the scope, speed, and scale of IT to interactions within enterprises,
and continuing technological innovation will be required—for example, providing
big data analytics to give employees access to the most timely and relevant
information from the torrent of social data that can be made available. But
the essential transformations that will have to be made in order to capture the
full potential of social technologies will be primarily in organizational practices
and culture.
Second, as with many organizational issues, the prescription that is appropriate
for one organization is unlikely to work for another, with its different people,
practices, history, and context. Therefore, one of the most important practices
that an organization will have to adopt is purposeful experimentation. Discovering
what combination of practices and technologies will create value in their unique
situations requires organizations to adopt a thoughtful but persistent approach of
trying new things, learning, and adapting. Concepts borrowed from “lean start-
up” methodologies can be helpful.140
These include deploying “minimal viable
products” to determine what gains traction, test and learn cycles, and “pivoting”
to new models when necessary. Indeed, successful networked enterprises are
continuous learning organizations. They use their networked connections to
accelerate their learning processes, promiscuously proliferating findings from
experiments across the organization.
140 Eric Ries, The lean startup: How today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create
radically successful businesses (New York: Crown Business, 2011).

One of the most important subjects of experimentation should be finding out how
to achieve a critical and growing mass of participation using social technologies—
how does a particular organization create a self-reinforcing cycle of adoption?
More often than not, we have observed organizations deploy social technologies
in the enterprise to great fanfare, resulting in a temporary spike in usage and
engagement, only to see the participation and benefits of these technologies
decline as the initial excitement and novelty fade away.
Our previous research into use of Web 2.0 tools, and the “highly networked”
organizations that get the most benefit from such tools, uncovered some key
success factors.141
For example, while success can be described as achieving
bottom-up adoption of social technologies, we found that in successful
organizations, role-modeling and vocal support of leaders also were important
catalysts. Furthermore, while it was helpful to have a hypothesis for where these
technologies could generate the most value, it was often the case that users
discovered other valuable functions for these technologies. Therefore, a critical
role for leaders is to discover and celebrate these sources of value creation and
support ways to give them enterprise-wide impact.142
We also found that what’s in the work flow is what gets used; if social technology
is not part of their “day jobs,” employees will not participate for long. Highly
networked organizations not only have a higher percentage of employees using
social technologies, but these social technologies also are embedded into their
day-to-day activities. If using social technologies is just one more action item on
a long to-do list, it’s very likely to fall off the list as soon as soon as things get
busy. However, if using social technologies is part of the day-to-day work flow of
employees—enabling them to solve real business problems—then participation
will more likely reach critical mass. Sometimes this requires changing work flows
to integrate the use of social technologies (often, by taking over uses of other
technologies, such as one-to-one e‑mail). Social technologies can be modified to
fit existing work flows, too; and in many cases both the tools and work flows may
need to change.
However, changing processes is only one (albeit critical) enabler of success.
Perhaps even more important is establishing a culture that is conducive to broad
collaboration and sharing. If an organization has not established trust amongst
colleagues, and if there are no ingrained habits of teamwork and collaboration
across the organization, solely implementing social technologies is not likely to
create these conditions in the absence of other interventions.143
In a low-trust
environment, employees will likely limit their social network contributions to good
news or “safe” information. In a culture where organizational power is based on
keeping information from rivals or subordinates, the least valuable information will
be shared. Furthermore, employees who do not perceive value in what is offered
141 Michael Chui, Andy Miller, and Roger P. Roberts, “Six ways to make Web 2.0 work,” The
McKinsey Quarterly, February 2009.
142 Charlene Li, Open leadership: How social technology can transform the way you lead
(San Francisco: Jossey‑Bass, 2010).
143 There is a large body of academic literature demonstrating the negative impact of
disincentives to sharing (e.g., rewarding those who hoard the most information or client
relationships), which is relevant to social technologies. See W. Orlikowski, “Learning from
notes: Organizational issues in groupware implementation,” Proceedings of the 1992 ACM
Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 1992.

122
on the social network will stop participating—as contributors and as seekers of
information and expertise.
Transforming culture, mindsets, and behaviors is not an easy task. It requires an
organization to create a compelling story about why a cultural change is needed
to achieve a step change in organizational performance that will make everyone’s
work life better. It requires role-modeling by leaders and carefully constructed
reinforcing mechanisms; our research has found that intrinsic rewards (e.g.,
status or recognition by peers) are often much more powerful than extrinsic
rewards (e.g., bonuses, or requirements that make use of social technologies
one of an employee’s formal objectives). Capability building and training are also
standard components in change programs, but in many of the most successful
implementations of social technologies, relatively little formal training was
required. Because enterprise social tools are based on consumer applications,
they are intended to be familiar and intuitive. The most useful training is mentoring
by experienced peers.
The cultural and management traits that underpin success in use of social
technologies by interaction workers are in marked contrast to those that were
appropriate for optimizing the performance of production work or transaction
work (Exhibit 36).
Similarly, the role of the chief information officer (CIO) in deploying social
technologies is very different than in deploying other types of enterprise software
such as ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM, or supply management
applications. Rather than focusing on formal, top-down, planned rollouts, and
enforcing standards, the CIO must understand the informal, “real” behaviors
that users are exhibiting, identify successes from experiments (either planned
or natural), and help scale success (Exhibit 37). We will return to other IT
implications below.
Exhibit 36
Many companies need a cultural transformation to prepare for successful
internal implementation of social technologies
SOURCE: McKinsey Global Institute
Transformation Transaction Tacit
Interactions
Strategy and
innovation
Centralized and
top-down
Decentralized,
bottom-up, evolutionary
Organization
Hierarchies,
command and control
Flat, flexible,
contingent, porous
Knowledge
and learning
Rote and instruction-
oriented, top-down
Apprenticeship,
decentralized,
knowledge marketplace
Technology
leverage
Substitute, automate Substitute, automate,
accelerate, scale
Complement, extend,
adapt
Role of
management
Set targets, assign
tasks, optimize
Set direction, enable,
learn
Performance
management
Physical and activity
outputs, efficiency
Outcomes,
effectiveness
Physical outputs,
efficiency

The extended networked enterprise: External applications of
social technologies
Social technologies not only can make the boundaries between internal
organizations more porous, but they also can be used to allow organizations
to extend their interactions to outside stakeholders, including customers
and business partners. Many—but not all—principles of a successful internal
deployment of social technologies within the enterprise apply to inter-enterprise
social applications.
For example, a culture of sharing ideas within the workgroup and also accepting
ideas from outside the group is necessary for successful collaboration in a highly
networked enterprise. Similarly, when using social technologies to connect with
customers or business partners to co-create products or marketing programs,
i.e., to create an extended enterprise, a company’s culture must be more than
accepting. When former CEO A. G. Lafley was driving Procter & Gamble’s open
innovation initiative, he set a goal that 50 percent of the company’s innovations
would come from the outside, and he worked to transform a culture from a “not
invented here” mentality to a “proudly found elsewhere” attitude.144
While significant behavior changes may be needed eventually, companies can,
nevertheless, begin implementing social technologies on a small scale. If a
company is not ready to open up two-way interactions with outside stakeholders,
for example, a “no-regrets” move would be to simply monitor dialogue on social
platforms by subscribing to services that analyze social data streams, extracting
insights such as sentiment about corporate brands, or alerting the company to
particular complaints or controversies. Companies need not always respond
in the same medium, but many companies find it helpful to learn how to do so,
144 Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab, “Connect and develop: Inside Procter & Gamble’s new model
for innovation,” Harvard Business Review, March 2006.
Exhibit 37
IT leaders will also need to adopt new mindsets
SOURCE: McKinsey Global Institute
From … … to
Understanding
of business
Transaction processes,
structured and routine
workflows
Patterns of interactions, user
models, how work really gets
done, community formation
Focus of
impact
Formal structures,
departments, functions,
hardwired processes
Communities of work, social
networks, intra-/extra-company,
customers
Policy
approach
Enforce enterprise
standards
Proliferate the most adopted
enabling technologies
Technology
deployment
Planned rollouts based
on roadmaps
Experiment, scale, and deploy
based on usage and adoption
Decision
making
Top-down, efficiency-
and consistency-oriented
User-centric, usage- and
effectiveness-oriented
Economics
of impact
Labor AND capital, total factor
productivity, effectiveness,
outcomes
Labor-capital trade-offs,
IT productivity/ROI
efficiency, throughput

124
particularly for specific complaints, which can be a gateway to fuller participation
on social platforms.
Implications for internally networked and extended enterprises
A common set of implications applies to the use of social technologies within the
enterprise and as a tool to connect with outside stakeholders. They fall broadly
into three categories: building social capital, managing risks, and measuring the
results of social technology efforts.
First, companies need to build organizational social capital—the trust of other
participants with whom these organizations connect using social technologies.
All of the lessons about developing and maintaining an organization’s reputation,
or a brand—consistency, reliability, authenticity—are amplified when using social
technologies, because the ramifications of any action that affects this trust,
negatively or positively, can be multiplied as others share their experiences. For
example, people are generally very sensitive to inauthentic behavior. If supposedly
personal posts by a CEO are ghostwritten by the PR department, there is a high
likelihood that this will be discovered and any positive goodwill created by the
blog will be eroded by the social distribution of this fact. Conversely, authenticity
builds trust that can be amplified in these social systems. Cory Booker, the mayor
of Newark, NJ, famously helped constituents shovel snow when they requested
help through their Twitter accounts, stories of which have spread throughout
the Twitterverse.
Moreover, the amount of social engagement is also dependent on social capital
and trust, which operate in a virtuous cycle with participation: the more people
who join and post content, the more they respond to one another, the greater
the quantity and quality of opinions and personal information they disclose, the
greater the value of the network or community will be. With more participation,
participants gain access to a larger pool of content and their data can be used
to generate more insights about opportunities or products. This virtuous cycle
depends on trust.
Second, as we described in Chapter 2, organizations are confronted with a
new set of risks to manage when engaging with social technologies. Prime
among these is the possibility that employees or critics outside the company
will use social platforms to share negative information and opinions about
the organization, potentially doing serious damage to the reputation of the
organization or its brands. It is important to remember that these discussions
will occur whether or not the organization chooses to acknowledge them or
engage with the people who start them. Engaging on these platforms does
require courage to hear honest feedback from individuals (some of whom may be
employees). But it also provides the opportunity for the organization to respond
to valid criticism. Furthermore, if true communities are formed with healthy
social norms, these norms will be enforced by members of the community. For
example, some organizations have deployed buttons to flag inappropriate content
for further review in their internal social platforms, but these buttons have rarely
been used because the communities have provided the social pressure to keep
discussions constructive.
Breaches of personal privacy are also high on the list of risks for companies using
social technology. When consumers or employees feel that their privacy is being
threatened or that their personal information is being used in ways inconsistent

with their expectations (e.g., to expose them to unwanted commercial messages),
they are likely to opt out, decreasing the value potential of social technologies.
Meeting the varying privacy-related regulatory requirements across the globe is
challenging, but necessary. However, what might be more important is better
understanding the explicit and implicit agreements that an organization has with
various internal and external stakeholders. Companies must ascertain when and
for what purposes stakeholders would be comfortable with use of their data.
Companies can also take steps to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of
confidential information through social technologies. Technology tools exist to
help manage this risk; among them are automated auditing and alerts and access
control systems. It is always good policy to update and promulgate IT security
policy. But technology solutions can prevent only so much; social pressures and
norms can be powerful forces to reduce unauthorized disclosures.
Regulations can also prevent companies from starting to share information on
internal or external networks. In many industries, such as pharmaceuticals and
financial services, what companies can and cannot say about their products and
services is regulated by law. Farmers Insurance dealt with regulation by using
special software that provided pre-approved material and monitored all agent-
written messages to make sure they do not violate any compliance rules. There
is a delicate balance between content control and the spontaneity and ease of
social interaction, which many companies must learn to navigate.
Organizations will also have to address the issue of intellectual property (e.g.,
who owns a design that has been co-created or crowdsourced). One common
approach is to have users agree to assign all co-created intellectual property to
the company. But asserting ownership might inhibit social interaction, particularly
when outside contributors are involved.
Finally, organizations will need to measure the results of their social technology
efforts. However, at this point, the science behind these efforts is not yet
fully developed. Determining the return on investment from social technology
investments is still an evolving science, and discovering reliable relationships
between social technology investments and corporate performance metrics such
as incremental revenue has been particularly challenging. For now, intermediate
metrics, such as user engagement, have been used. But organizations will
continue to develop these capabilities.
Strategic implications
A range of businesses that rely on exclusive access to information or that have
been the traditional arbiters of professional content and talent could find their
business models disrupted and thus may need to adapt and redefine their
sources of value creation. Sectors whose business models are potentially at risk
include media companies, news organizations, and data suppliers.
Business leaders whose industries could be disrupted by the use of social
technologies should look for ways to co-opt the power of these technologies.
Businesses that are involved in content discovery, validation and prioritization,
and distribution, for example, can tap social sentiment to discover and assess
content and talent (e.g., musicians or aspiring writers) and can use social
platforms as an advertising and distribution medium.

126
News organizations, for example, can co-opt “citizen journalists” by incorporating
citizens’ material into their news reports. Some local TV stations, for instance,
encourage citizens to upload video that is then featured in broadcast news.
Furthermore, these and other media organizations can emphasize the quality and
consistency of their curation of content as being a competitive differentiator over
the analogous function provided through social technologies.
Traditional data providers themselves could also be threatened by large-scale
data-gathering efforts coordinated through social technology. For example, the
OpenStreetMap project threatens to disrupt traditional mapping data providers.
The incumbent can respond by co-opting and/or positioning competitively against
the disruptor, or moving into another business. For example, a mapping provider
could try to develop a strategy to use crowdsourced map data, assert that its
product is superior to crowdsourced maps, or even move into an adjacent market
such as providing professional services to help organizations use mapping data.
IMPLICATIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS
Rather than being passive observers, individuals use social technology to
actively participate in the world around them. They can share stories and jokes
or collaborate on important global problems. They can use social technologies
to deepen relationships with friends and loved ones regardless of time zone or
geographic distance. With social technology’s ability to multiply one’s influence,
ordinary individual users can even start social movements.145
Social technologies
are powerful, and their myriad benefits carry rights, responsibilities, and risks.
Individuals should think critically about where and how they socialize online,
what type of content they consume and contribute, and what the long-term
implications are for such choices.
Social media literacy
Media literacy is the ability to critically analyze and evaluate messages received
through traditional media. In a world where social technologies are becoming
increasingly powerful, individuals will have to develop “social media literacy,”
which involves understanding the mechanics of using social tools and learning
how to judge the context, bias, and motivations of social media contributions.
Furthermore, because social technologies are fundamentally an interactive
medium, social media literacy will require an understanding of how to produce as
well as consume content.
Privacy/data trade-offs
Social technology platforms offer users an enormous amount of value, but
individuals should be aware of the explicit and implicit bargains they are making
when they participate on these platforms. For example, users are trading use of
free services in exchange for their personal information on many platforms. Users
leave virtual footprints as they stop to comment or contribute. This personal
information can be quite detailed, including names of friends, a user’s location,
and personal interests. Understanding what the privacy risks are and how to
avoid exposing more information than one wants to share is a particularly salient
aspect of social media literacy.
145 B. J. Fogg, Persuasive technology: Using computers to change what we think and do
(San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kauffman, 2002).

Risks to young people
There are real risks associated with online sexual predators and cyber-bullying,
particularly for children and young people. Setting appropriate boundaries is
important, but teaching age-appropriate social media literacy will also be vital for
arming young people with the tools to recognize and appropriately respond to
potentially dangerous situations.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES
As the use of social technologies grows, both by consumers as well as
enterprises, providers of social technologies can take advantage of opportunities
to create relevant products and services that fulfill various emerging needs. These
opportunities include:
Contextual content filtering
As more and more communications and content are generated and distributed
through social channels, the critical challenge for users is to receive exactly
what they want or need when they need it. Search engines help users find
information that they are explicitly seeking, but they also need systems that
deliver relevant social content even when they aren’t searching for it. Content
filtering systems that extract and deliver the social data that is most relevant
to a user’s current context will be essential. These systems will be particularly
important in a networked social enterprise when social channels become the
default communication medium. Such contextual content filtering systems are not
yet fully developed.
Social analytics, big data, and real-time response
Social platforms are an important new source of unstructured big data and social
technology providers have the opportunity to provide “social analytics” tools that
can analyze this real-time torrent of noisy data and make sense of it. Contextual
content filtering is one very specific and critical application of social analytics, but
many more analytical tools are needed.
Many companies, for example, would like to be able to monitor their brands’
health through sentiment analysis of social communications. Others would
like tools that can mine social streams to develop insights into what features
should be included in future product development. Still others are seeking a
better understanding of which individuals hold the greatest influence in order to
prioritize sales resources (a technique that is as applicable in B2B sales as it is
in consumer marketing). Some companies are seeking to infer an interest graph
on top of a social graph to micro-segment marketing efforts. Social analytics can
start to address these problems and more.
In addition, organizations would like to be able to respond to social signals in real
time, through tailored responses, on a large scale. For example, when a company
conducts a promotional event or when a brand crisis occurs, a flood of related
social communication often appears. Tools that help to monitor and manage a
real-time response will be in demand.

128
Identity management
Social platforms that have large numbers of authenticated users could leverage
their positions to become identity management platforms for other Web services.
For example, when individuals make social connections with an identity (e.g.,
applying for a credit card online), their connections can function as a way to
vouch for the individual’s identity. Additional information that is provided as part of
a profile or social communication further helps to confirm a person’s identity.
Real benefits could accrue to users from having integrated identity management
on a common platform (e.g., authentication through a single channel, rather than
having to remember multiple passwords) and potentially accessing common
information for use with multiple services (e.g., credit card information). However,
such a system also presents obvious risks, including creating a single point of
failure for access and a single target for security breaches. Such systems could
also present some interesting public policy questions, such as what role such
identity management systems would play in competitive dynamics.
Social–local–mobile
Social technologies are being combined with mobile technologies and a trend
toward increasingly local data, resulting in the “SoLoMo” trend. Smartphone
adoption, which is projected to reach 50 percent of consumers globally by 2015,
will bring more than 1 billion new users online who may never surf the Web from
a personal computer.146
In the developing countries of Africa, for example, there is
very low PC Internet penetration, but much higher mobile Internet penetration via
mobile phones.
Today, social technology providers are providing multiple SoLoMo-related
services, including optimizing physical locations for online engagement, designing
SoLoMo-based marketing strategies, designing interactive mobile applications,
and providing local/social content optimized for mobile devices. But there
are many other opportunities for social technology providers to leverage the
SoLoMo trend.
Integration and interoperability
Interoperability—getting different digital systems to work together—is a key
enabler for the growth of social technologies and for realizing their full value
for enterprises and consumers. This capability can be applied in three ways:
integration of social features into existing applications; tools that enable users
to manage interactions across multiple social technology channels; and
interoperability of social platforms.
Social features can be added to applications of all kinds, including existing
categories of enterprise software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP),
procurement, supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship
management (CRM). Work flows for these activities already include social
components and are frequently used to deal with exceptions. Adding a social
communication capability can help smooth exception processing by allowing
workers at various approval stages to append a special note or communication
explaining the issue.
146 Global mobile forecast, Yankee Group, June 2012.

Integrated tools will enable both business and consumers to consolidate and
manage their social interactions within a single application. Marketers, for
example, want to have a single integrated tool that bundles social platform
marketing, monitoring, and management processes. Eventually they would like
to integrate digital, mobile, and even traditional marketing activities into one
continuous, computer-mediated work flow. Consumers would like to be able to
send and read content and communication to and from multiple social platforms
in a single session.
Finally, both enterprises and consumers would benefit from greater
interoperability among social platforms. In enterprises, for example, different
functional or business units might deploy different enterprise social platforms, or
separate companies that would like to collaborate might have different enterprise
social platforms. Consumers would benefit from interoperability among different
consumer social platforms in many ways, including by making it easier to register
at new sites and avoiding the need to repopulate their lists of connections when
joining a new platform. For this to happen, platform operators would need to
agree on some open standards, but these efforts often are perceived to bring
more benefit to attackers than incumbents.
Integrating synchronous and asynchronous communications
and content
The ability to transform communications into content is an essential characteristic
of social technologies and an important source of value creation. The content of
a social media communication becomes accessible and searchable by others.
Some social technologies, including video chat rooms, are synchronous (real
time). However, because they operate in real time, participation is limited to
people who are available at a specific time.
Greater participation can by achieved through asynchronous communication
(participants access content when they choose to). Recording tools can make
content of synchronous collaborations (e.g., voice or video meetings) accessible
and searchable.
Organizational transformation
As noted above, a critical requirement for the success of social technologies in
enterprises is to transform organizational structures, processes, and cultures to
ensure wide participation, open sharing, and collaboration. Social technology
providers can play an important role in helping companies make this transition
through various services, including consulting services to select and implement
social technology tools, update organizational design, and assist in process
transformation and change management programs. These challenges will multiply
as organizations seek to become extended networked enterprises.

130
IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY MAKERS
Social technologies can transform how government connects with the public,
how it includes citizens within the governing process, and how it accomplishes
its missions. It opens up new avenues for citizen dialogue, potentially harnessing
the collective wisdom of the world. But social technologies have also raised
new policy considerations, especially in protecting privacy, identity, intellectual
property, and content. Policy makers will need to answer many unresolved
questions in the coming years, as social technologies continue to proliferate
around the globe.
Privacy and identity
Privacy is a contentious issue across modern societies, and the spread of social
technologies heightens concerns. Users often share intimate details about
themselves on social platforms. Marketers, law enforcement officials, insurance
underwriters, health care providers, and others see tremendous benefits that
such details could have for accomplishing their work. To complicate the issue, no
universal definition of privacy exists. Nor are there any universally accepted legal
requirements or cultural mores about privacy rights across nations and sectors
(e.g., health care and financial data have distinct privacy rules).
Unresolved questions for policy makers include: Should an employer be permitted
to follow prospective hires online to learn things that employers are forbidden
by law to ask, such as age, race, marital status, sexual orientation, and political
affiliations? Under what conditions should a social platform provider be compelled
to provide personal information for law enforcement officials or legal discovery?
Should users have a right to access, modify, or delete data that are collected
about them?
Some privacy regulations are focused on what data can be collected, and where
and to whom they can be transferred. While this aims to be a “common-sense”
approach, it often has unintended consequences, such as when the restrictions
on the collection of health care data hinder clinical research. An alternate
approach would be to take into account context through regulating the use, rather
than the collection, of personal data. These are the types of complex choices that
policy makers will have to address.
Closely related to privacy are concerns about identity and identity management.
Public policy questions include: If social platforms become platforms for
identity management, what role should these identity management systems
play in the provision of public services? What impact would these systems
have on competitive dynamics in various industry sectors that depend on
identity management?
Intellectual property
Governments seek to create intellectual property policies that strike a balance
between incentives for developing innovations and content through temporary
monopolies (with patents and copyrights), and derivative innovation and free
expression through fair use, limited terms, and co-creation. Social technologies
have characteristics that push on these balances. They make it easy to distribute
content that is meant to be protected intellectual property, and they facilitate co-
creation and the combination of different ideas and expressions. Policy makers
need to take these new realities into account and continue to strike a balance that
optimizes societal benefits.

Content controls
Different governments have imposed regulations on content in various media and
information channels, including social technologies. These include restrictions on
political speech, outlawing criticism of various protected entities, prohibiting the
importing of information from outside a country, and rules to restrict obscenity,
depictions of violence, and other content that is considered harmful. As with
intellectual property, the rise of social technologies tends to push on these limits.
On social platforms, content production and consumption are highly distributed,
so control becomes much more difficult.
In addition to grappling with the practicalities of enforcing content controls on
social technologies, policy makers will have to consider the other consequences
of various types of content control, e.g., impact on beneficial trade and innovation.

133
Social technologies are beginning to deliver on their value potential, and more
of this value will be realized in the coming years. Indeed, the impact of social
technologies will likely spread more deeply into various sectors and can help
address some of the grand challenges that societies around the world are facing.
For example, in an emerging global labor market, there is a great need to match
people with jobs.147
As we have documented in this report, social technologies
can help to improve the matching of people to positions, particularly when
mismatches arise from a lack of transparency into supply and demand.
One of the levers for addressing the supply of qualified talent is improving
education, a relatively underutilized application of social technologies at this
point. The communication and collaboration that social tools enable in enterprises
can also be applied to education, allowing students to learn more interactively,
collaborate on tasks, and solve problems together, both online and offline—and
across bounds of time and geography. Scenarios range from schoolchildren
collaboratively trying to construct a kite to university professors writing a research
paper together.148
Social tools enable students to create self-paced, customized
“learning paths” that draw on interactive, social, and self-publishing media
tools. Social technologies will be important enablers of future learning styles by
facilitating the formation of learning communities, fostering student engagement
and reflection, and enhancing the overall student learning experience in
synchronous and asynchronous learning environments.
Social technologies also have the potential to positively influence health care
outcomes, another global challenge. One of the clearest opportunities is in
improving the performance of health care organizations—providers, payers,
and producers of medical products. Social technologies also show promise in
the practice of medicine itself. For example, communities such as Sermo and
Doctors.co.uk enable physicians to serve their patients better. Sermo provides
forums in which physicians can discuss treatment options (even anonymously if
desired), and Doctors.co.uk offers online applications for practice management as
well as discussion groups for how to best use the applications.
Perhaps more importantly, social technologies also have the potential to
greatly improve how individuals manage their health. Social communities for
people coping with similar diseases have already formed on platforms such
as PatientsLikeMe.com, where patients pool their knowledge, share their
experiences, and help reinforce beneficial behavior (e.g., complying with diet and
exercise requirements). But as the focus of health care shifts from a provider-
centric view of “treating sick patients” to a consumer-centric perspective of
147 The world at work: Jobs, pay, and skills for 3.5 billion people, McKinsey Global Institute, June
2012 (www.mckinsey.com/mgi).
148 Gavriel Salomon and David N. Perkins, “Chapter 1: Individual and social aspects of learning,”
Review of Research in Education, Volume 23, Number 1, January 1998.
5. The future of the
social economy

134
“keeping healthy people well,” applications for social technologies in health
will multiply.
There is a very large opportunity for social technologies to address the issue
of patient adherence—getting patients to engage in the treatments they are
prescribed. A lack of adherence to therapies prevents patients from getting
the full benefits of their medicines, as well as costing billions in avoidable
treatment.149
Social networks can provide a supportive community that can help
to encourage adherence to drug and health care regimens. We have also seen
other communities form around healthy choices, such as diet or exercise. In some
virtual running groups, members share their running experiences, including data
captured from sensors in their shoes.
More broadly, as we observed at the beginning of this report, almost any
experience through which people can interact can become social, when enabled
by social technologies. But only a small percentage of all of these interactions
have become social so far. As the social feature is added to more and more
contexts—from TVs to outdoor advertising—we expect to see a much more
social world.
In business, we expect to see the impact of social technologies grow, as
management innovations start to accompany deployment, innovation, and
adaptations of social technologies in and across enterprises. The types of
organizational changes required to take advantage of these opportunities do not
happen overnight, and we expect that it will take years before the full potential
is achieved. However, the history of the waves of information technologies over
the past several decades shows that technological innovation is followed by the
management innovation that leads to lasting productivity improvements.
We expect social technologies and management innovation to help firms
and economies improve their productivity, and we look forward to a world in
which the experience of work is improved. Social technologies, in fact, have
the potential to unlock the initiative, creativity, and passion that are needed to
produce true innovations and enable companies to tackle the most difficult
problems. “Individuals choose each day whether or not to bring these gifts to
work,” says management consultant and author Gary Hamel.150
We believe that
the interactions enabled by social technologies can encourage more engaged
employees to bring their creative gifts to their work.
149 According to various studies, 45 to 55 percent of adults fail to use drugs as prescribed;
some studies found noncompliance with physician instructions to be as high as 75 percent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that only about 50 percent of patients
worldwide typically take their medicines as prescribed. See Consumers Union, “Take meds
faithfully,” Shopper’s Guide to Prescription Drugs, Number 7, 2007; and Richard P. Kusserow,
Medication regimens: Causes of non-compliance, Office of Inspector General, June 1990.
150 Gary Hamel, What matters now: How to win in a world of relentless change, ferocious
competition, and unstoppable innovation (San Francisco, CA: Jossey‑Bass, 2012).

* * *
In this report, we have described how social technologies can be catalysts for
disruptive business models in various industries. We also expect that social
technologies will enable the creation of radically new organizational forms.151
With
social technologies bringing the speed, scope, scale, and transformational power
of the Internet to human interactions, it is not unlikely that new organizational
life forms will appear. These could include far more networked, flexible,
mega-scale global organizations that don’t require command-and-control
hierarchies to maintain coherence. Conversely, agglomerations of small firms
that coordinate through social technologies might challenge large, integrated
multinational corporations. We would not be surprised to find social technologies
as the backbone, exoskeleton, or connective tissue of new organizational
life forms that we cannot anticipate today. And perhaps the use of social
technologies could lead to more participatory governance processes and more
responsive governments.
151 Ronald H. Coase, “The nature of the firm,” Economica, Volume 4, Number 16,
November 1937.

137
Appendix
1. Consumption analysis methodology
2. Share of socially influenced commerce methodology
3. Construction of indexes of value potential and ease of capture
4. Value potential index
5. Ease of capture index
6. Potential impact of collaboration methodology
7. Estimating value potential of using social technologies in four global sectors
8. Estimating value potential for social technology providers

138
1. CONSUMPTION ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY
To estimate potential growth in the use of social technologies as a share
of communications (i.e., versus e‑mail and other formats), we modeled
communication through various media by the amount of time spent and the
number of words conveyed from 1900 until 2010. This entailed standardizing
statistics for each form of communication (e.g., face-to-face, telephony, listening
to radio), then scaling them to the US population (over 15 years of age) to
aggregate trillions of words per year read, spoken, or heard per minute, and to
calculate the average time spent on each communication method per person
per day. Except where otherwise noted, statistics come from US sources, and
we used 200 words per minute (WPM) in full, spoken conversation, as estimated
by Mark Liberman of University of Pennsylvania,152
and 225 WPM for an average
reader.153
Since many technologies have been used concurrently with other media sources
in the past few decades, we discounted by an increasing percent the time and
words consumed in radio, television, and recorded music, in order to have the
sum of the times spent with each medium reflect the total time that a person
would spend in communication and content consumption. Radio, TV, and
listening to recorded music rarely overlap with each other but often overlap with
other types of communication, such as e‑mailing and texting, so discounting
these once covered the time spent concurrently on two technologies without
double discounting.
Discounting applies only to communication done concurrently with other
communication types measured, not concurrently with other activities; listening
to the radio while driving a car, for example, is not a concurrent use and thus not
among the discounted set of activities.
The types of communications, the primary analysis, and the data sources we
used for each follows.
ƒƒ Face-to-face communication. We broke down face-to-face communication
in two ways. First, we divided time by work and leisure, and we segmented
those periods according to definitions of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’
American Time Use Survey from 2010. Second, we segmented the time as
either “full” or “discounted” face-to-face time, depending on the intensity of
conversation embedded in the activity. “Full” face-to-face time refers to the
in-person time spent wholly in conversation and assuming a normal pace
of conversation (200 WPM) to derive word count estimates. “Discounted”
face-to-face time refers to in-person time in which conversation is not the
only focus of face-to-face time spent, resulting in a discounted rate (67
152 Mark Liberman, “Sex-linked lexical budgets,” Language Log blog, Institute for Research in
Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania, August 2006. Another article (Diana
Binnenpoorte et al., Gender in everyday speech and language: A Corpus-based study, Center
for Language and Speech Technology, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands)
places it around 220 as well.
153 According to the Psychonomic Society, a slow reader reads at 200 WPM and the fastest
reader at 330 WPM (Keith Rayner, Timothy Slattery, and Nathalie Belanger, “Eye movements,
the perceptual span, and reading speed,” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Volume 17,
Number 6, December 2010). Given that there are more slow readers than fast readers, we
assume an average of 225 wpm. One reading expert places most readers between 200 and
250 WPM. See James McNair, “What is the average reading speed and best rate of reading?”
Ezine Articles, May 2009.

WPM, based on McKinsey expert analysis). Going to a baseball game with
a friend and having partial conversations is an example of this. Multiplying
these two segments by the average words per minute in a conversation
and the US population gave the number of words per year and time per day
communicated in-person across the country. We held the hours of work
and leisure constant back to 1900, based on National Bureau of Economic
Research data154
and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis research.155
We
adjusted the share of full and discounted face-to-face time at discrete intervals
based on US Census Bureau data and research from the Federal Reserve
Bank of Boston156
to account for the changing uses of time over the past
100 years.
ƒƒ Mail. United States Postal Service statistics about official mail delivered per
year were converted to an average number of letters per person per day.
Using sources to triangulate between the average size of letter paper and
typical paper coverage allowed us to estimate the average words consumed
in a piece of mail, which we could translate into a per person time spend on
mail by dividing by the average reading speed. Local leaflets and other non–
envelope-based mail were not included in calculations; but letter format bulk
mail was included.
ƒƒ Print. We triangulated data on hours spent reading print media from three
sources, WAN-IFRA (the World Association of Newspapers and News
Publishers), Statistical Abstracts, and eMarketer. Print includes daily
newspapers, magazines, and books. Consistent with other written sources,
we assumed 225 WPM read.
ƒƒ Telegraph. To estimate words and time consumed by telegraph messages
we estimated the average words per message, and for time, divided by words
read per minute. The Economic History Association tracked the number
of messages handled by telegraph networks through 1970 and other data
points, which allowed us to estimate a timeline to the present. Transcripts of
parliamentary debate in Ireland provide data on telegram length; hence, we
use 15 words per telegram.
ƒƒ Radio. We used three sources to estimate radio time and minutes: WAN-
IFRA, Statistical Abstracts, and eMarketer. We assumed a spoken word
rate of 120 WPM on radio.157
We began discounting radio from 1965, when
radio’s original novelty was starting to wear off with more people listening
154 Valerie Ramey and Neville Francis, A century of work and leisure, NBER working paper
number 12264, May 2006.
155 Kristie Engemann and Michael Owyang, “Working hard or hardly working? The evolution
of leisure in the United States,” The Regional Economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of St.
Louis, January 2007.
156 Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst, Measuring trends in leisure: The allocation of time over five
decades, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston working paper number 06-2, January 2006.
157 Hadley Cantril and Gordon Willard Allport, The psychology of radio (North Stratford, NH: Ayer
Publishing, 1971) and Mike Causey, “Speed limit: 120 words per minute,” Federal News Radio,
January 16, 2007. According to an analysis of news bulletins (Emma Rodero, “A comparative
analysis of speech rate and perception in radio bulletins,” Text and Talk, Volume 32, Number
3, June 2012), the recommended speaking rate on radio is 160 to 180 WPM, so discounting
that to account for the slower rate on non-news shows, music, and sounds gets to 120 WPM
as well.

140
while simultaneously engaging in other activities. By 2010, 20 percent of radio
listening was with concurrent activities.
ƒƒ Landline telephone. For 1900 to 1940, we use data on telephone lines
provided by Gregory Russell, curator of the Telephony Museum in Chicago,
to approximate the number of telephone subscribers. For the same period,
we assumed that only people of households with subscriptions would
have access to telephones and used average household size data from the
US Census. As of 1945, we assumed more general access (including pay
phones). From this time on, we estimate landline telephone consumption
based on US Census data and US telephone subscriptions from International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) data. Telephone time per user was calculated
using Office of Communications (Ofcom, the independent regulator and
competition authority for the UK communications industries) data as a
proxy. We assumed a slightly discounted pace of conversation (180 WPM) in
comparison to full face-to-face communication to account for time spent on
hold, dialing, and retrieving e-mail or using other telephone services.
ƒƒ Television. We relied on the same sources and methods for calculating
average hours per week of TV consumption as we did for radio. The WPM,
though, differs: the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education estimates
that the average television program has 142 words per minute.158
Similar to
radio, we began to discount TV watching time for concurrent time spent on
other activities in 1980. This figure rose dramatically from 2000 to 2010 and
reached 25 percent, according to a 2009 report from the Council on Research
Excellence, “Video Consumer Mapping,” and a 2012 report on multiscreen
communicating from the Consumer Electronics Association. This allows
us to use a number that represents the hours spent paying attention to the
television, as opposed to the number of hours during which a television is on
but being ignored.
ƒƒ Recorded music. For recorded music, we used the same method as radio
and television but relied on slightly different sources. Statistical abstracts
from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s provide average hours of radio use. Earlier
data come from an analysis done by Indiana University, which provides the
revenue per minute of recorded music played, which we combined with
total revenue data to determine minutes of play before 1980.159
Generally the
only communication listeners hear with recorded music is song lyrics, so we
needed to discount radio’s 120 WPM estimate by 20 percent to subtract radio
DJ communication inherent within radio, resulting in 96 WPM for recorded
music. We estimate that by 2010, recorded music had a 20 concurrence rate,
just like radio (e.g., listening to MP3 files while reading e‑mail).
ƒƒ E‑mail. Using data from the Radicati Group, a technology market research
firm, we aggregated the corporate and personal e‑mails sent per day across
hosts, separated by spam and desired e‑mails, as it has evolved since the
inception of e‑mail in the 1980s. We reduced the number of spam e‑mails
to account for those stopped by spam filters (a number that grows over
158 Denis Burnham et al., “Parameters in television captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing
adults: Effects of caption rate versus text reduction on comprehension,” Journal of Deaf
Studies and Deaf Education, Volume 13, Number 3, Summer 2008.
159 David Waterman and Sung Wook Ji, Online vs. offline in the US: Are the media shrinking?,
Revised Version, Indiana University, November 18, 2011.

time as filters become more sophisticated). The Digital Technology Center
at the University of Minnesota and SPIE (the International Society for Optical
Engineering) provides information on the average kilobytes per e‑mail over
time.160
The kilobyte total also includes non–text-based data (e.g., graphics for
headers, routing information), which we removed to reach an estimated 300
words for the average read e‑mail (having removed spam from the calculation).
ƒƒ Other Internet. Other Internet communication includes all other online
activities, including time spent on Web sites, online games, portals, videos
and movies, search, multi-category entertainment, and classified advertising/
auction sites. To create an estimate of Internet use over time, we used data
from two sources, Statistical Abstracts and eMarketer. We estimate words
consumed when accessing textual material to be 225 WPM.
ƒƒ Mobile phone. CTIA–the Wireless Association, provides the mobile usage
minutes for the entire US population since 1985. Divided by the US population,
these data lead to the average time per person on the phone, allowing us to
calculate time and words consumed on mobile phones. In accordance with
landline telephony, we assumed a slightly lower conversation rate of 180 WPM.
ƒƒ SMS and MMS texting. The US Census Bureau provides data on the annual
number of text and picture messages sent in the United States. Based on
various sources, we estimate 30 words per text and assume reading rates of
225 WPM.
ƒƒ Instant messaging. Based on estimates of IMs per year from the Yankee
Group, a market researcher, and an estimate of average length of a message
and time to read it, we estimate words and time of instant messaging use.
The WPM read in instant messaging is substantially lower than other forms of
conversation (33 WPM) because it depends on the average speed that both
participants (in turn) can type, which is far slower than they can talk.
ƒƒ Social networks. We used Nielsen data to estimate the share of Internet time
spent on social networks. As with other written sources, we assumed 225
WPM read.
In our analysis, we included estimates for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and
content services provided only on mobile devices,161
but they contributed so little
that they are not observable in the overall visualization.
160 Andrew Odlyzko, “Internet traffic growth: Sources and implications,” in Optical Transmission
Systems and Equipment for WDM Networking II, ed. B. B. Dingel et al., SPIE Conference
Proceedings, Volume 5247, 2003.
161 Pure-play Internet and mobile services include telecommunications access (such as DSL
and dial-up, but not cable modems), pure-play content (such as eHarmony, GameSpy, and
MobiTV), and mobile instant messaging and e‑mail alerts (see US Census, Table 1098, Media
Usage and Consumer Spending: 2000 to 2010).

142
2. SHARE OF SOCIALLY INFLUENCED
COMMERCE METHODOLOGY
We use a model of “socially influenced commerce” to estimate the percentage
of purchase decisions that are influenced by input from social media and other
sources. We analyze different methods of consumption (i.e., online or offline)
separately to estimate revenue currently influenced and potentially influenced
through social technologies. The potential for spending influenced by social inputs
was determined by multiplying the percentage of people influenced by non-social
digital (which has the potential to be easily converted into social digital) by total
spending (Exhibit A1).
The data on consumer behavior and spending in the top 18 product categories
come from McKinsey’s iConsumer database and Euromonitor. The iConsumer
database supplies information based on consumer surveys that capture which
media types influence consumers’ decisions. Euromonitor provides consumer
spending data. To create 18 consistent product categories, we mapped together
each database’s categories. For example, we mapped “health and beauty
products” in iConsumer to “beauty and personal care” and “consumer health”
in Euromonitor. Some product categories, such as automobiles, are excluded
because one of the sources (e.g., Euromonitor for automotive) lacked data.
Exhibit A1
We project that social inputs could
influence one-third of all purchases
SOURCE: Euromonitor; iConsumer; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
55
881
53
47
252
630
126
127
73
39
44
10
245
24
74
49
902
119 32
39
27
23
32
15
43
31
21
21
9
15
18
13
13
10
4
5
US and Europe1
spending, 2011
$ billion
1 European countries included are United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, France, Poland, and Italy.
2 Includes only computer hardware spending.
14
47
33
63
83
179
15
15
83
223
46
47
31
18
21
5
129
11
8
11
13
6
12
10
10
15
11
9
8
8
7
8
8
7
6
6
30
31
33
37
42
47
51
53
54
58
63
64
65
67
68
73
80
802
1
Music 6 33
Furniture 4 38
Video games 12 35
Large appliances 11 46
Mobile phones 13 41
Toys 4 30
Tickets 5 27
Health and beauty
products
4 22
Clothing 3 26
Footwear
Computer hardware/
software
15 44
Electronics 16 46
Household products 12
Grocery 13
Pets and pet supplies 3 17
Home décor, linens,
and towels
2 22
4 25
Home improvement
tools and products
5 24
Jewelry 4 29
Digital social
Digital not social
Offline WOM
Other
Influence channels
% of people influenced by
each touch point, 2011
Potential for spending
influenced by social
$ billion
Online
share (%)
=
Total 2,938 1,061
×
Offline
Online

Together, these 18 categories constitute 16 percent of household spending in
nine countries, for a total of $2.9 trillion in 2011. The nine countries are the United
States, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France,
Poland, and Italy.
3. CONSTRUCTION OF INDEXES OF VALUE POTENTIAL AND
EASE OF CAPTURE
By analyzing the application of social technologies in four commercial sectors—
consumer packaged goods, consumer financial services, professional services,
and advanced manufacturing—we have selected a set of proxy measures that
can be used to indicate the relative potential value that can be captured and the
ease of capturing maximum value. Using these criteria, we create two indexes:
the value potential index and the ease of value capture index, which can be used
across sectors. Each index has multiple criteria, which give us a relative sense of
which sectors may be poised for greater gains and which sectors would face the
largest barriers. These indexes do not paint a precise picture, but they do provide
a directional sense of both the potential value available and the ease of its capture
across sectors (Exhibit A2). It is also important to note that these measures
are indicative at the industry level, but any individual organization could have a
significantly different level of value potential or ease of capture than its industry
average might suggest.
Exhibit A2
Utilities
Energy
Health care
providers
Pharmaceuticals
Education
Telecommunications
Retail and
wholesale
Transportation
Electronics
Consumer
products
Food and
beverage
processing
Chemicals
Construction
Industrial
manufacturing
Professional
services
National
government
Local
government
Media and
entertainment
Insurance
Banking
Software
and Internet
Value
potential
Lower
Higher
Relative size of
GDP contribution
HigherLower
US EXAMPLE
Directional

144
4. VALUE POTENTIAL INDEX
The value potential index is based on characteristics that our research
identified as drivers for value creation. The industries where we see the largest
opportunities are those in which a high volume of information exchanges take
place among many employees and between the organization and outside parties
(customers, partners). These conditions are found in many kinds of companies,
including those with a high concentration of interaction workers—knowledge
workers whose work requires personal interactions, independent judgment, and
knowledge sharing. Such organizations can benefit from social technologies that
enable more effective communication, collaboration, or knowledge management
in information exchanges. Companies that have interactions with many
customers, especially consumer-facing organizations, also have a great potential
to benefit from social technologies, which can help develop more detailed
consumer insights, generate interactive and engaging marketing campaigns, and
provide customer service.
We use four dimensions to give a directional indication of the value generation
potential in different industry sectors: 1) R&D intensity; 2) marketing intensity; 3)
customer service intensity; and 4) interactions intensity. The first three dimensions
are indications of impact along the value chain, i.e., product development,
marketing and sales, customer service. As the level of interactions is indicated
by this fourth measure of interaction intensity, we deduct collaboration effects
from all other metrics except R&D to avoid duplication. We do not separate
collaboration from R&D because it is intrinsic to the R&D function. Our proxies
do not cover two value chain steps: operations and distribution, and business
support functions. This is because almost all the effect observed in these
functions originates from enterprise collaboration and therefore is covered in the
fourth metric.
Proxy 1: R&D intensity
A company’s R&D intensity (measured as R&D spending per revenue unit)162
is
an indication of potential value to be captured through use of social technologies
in product development. The mechanism for potential value creation is through
more effective collaboration and knowledge management within the R&D
organization, generation of consumer insights from social technologies, and
crowdsourcing solutions.
Proxy 2: Marketing intensity
The impact of social technologies on marketing and sales operations is largest for
industries where advertising and other marketing activities are powerful drivers
of sales. The proxy measure we use is advertising spending per revenue unit,
which we found to be positively correlated with the margin effect in marketing
and sales in our deep dive sectors.163
Although ad spend does not capture all
marketing and sales activities where social technologies can offer improvement
potential (e.g., company-generated content and public relations materials are not
measured), it is a reasonable proxy, given that ad spend is reasonably correlated
with the total potential in marketing and sales.
162 We use US Bureau of Labor Statistics classification code NAICS to get funds for industrial
R&D performed in the US sales for the latest year available, as well as sales figures, for each
industry. We divided the funds spent on R&D with the sales figures to form proxies that were
comparable between industries and that could indicate the potential in R&D.
163 Schonfeld & Associates, “Advertising ratios & budgets,” Saibooks.com, 2012.

Proxy 3: Customer service intensity
Customer service is another organizational activity whose performance can be
improved through the use of social tools. By posting answers to questions about
their products on social platforms, companies can address similar concerns for
many customers simultaneously. Moreover, those answers remain online and
can be found through Web searches by other customers. In addition, inquiries
can be answered by brand enthusiasts and other consumers who are members
of a community where a particular brand or category of product is discussed.
Our proxy for customer service intensity is the number of customer service
representatives per revenue unit, based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics
classifications. We correlate this proxy with the observed effect in customer
service, less the effects of enterprise collaboration in this part of the value chain
(since that is modeled in proxy 4).
Proxy 4: Interactions intensity
Interactions intensity is a key indicator of value creation potential from enterprise
collaboration because knowledge work depends very heavily on social
interaction. Interaction workers spend a great deal of time communicating (often
by e‑mail), searching for information that other interaction workers and knowledge
experts possess, and in meetings with other interaction workers. The efficiency
and effectiveness of interactions work can be enhanced with social technologies.
As a proxy for how much potential exists for such improvements in a sector, we
use the number of interaction workers per revenue unit to indicate interactions
intensity. The number of interaction workers in this case is gathered from the US
Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Standard Occupation Classification codes,
which capture occupations such as business and financial operations and
engineers. We found this measure to be positively correlated with the effects from
collaboration that we have observed in our deep dives.164
The relationship between each proxy and the associated potential margin
improvement was derived through a linear regression between the proxies for our
deep dives and the corresponding impact potential that our research showed for
those industries. This is illustrated in Exhibit A3, where the relationship between
proxy 2 (ad spend per revenue unit) and margin improvement potential in sales
and marketing (when disregarding collaboration effect) was modeled.165
After determining the relationship between the proxy and the margin improvement
for each part of the value chain, we could approximate the full expected value
potential for an industry, as a sum of the expected margin improvements,
assuming no interactions among separate effects. Exhibit A4 classifies each
sector by potential margin improvement. Again, these proxies are meant to be
directional, and provide some sense of the relative impact between sectors, rather
than predicting the specific value potential for industries that we did not study
in depth.
164 Collaboration gained from product development was not included in proxy 4, given the
challenging nature of separating the lever effects of “collaboration” with those of “co-
development.” It is therefore accounted in proxy 1 (R&D intensity).
165 Data availability did not permit for a more complex analysis at this point, but we are aware
of the limitations of this approach: no proxy is able to capture the full potential of social
technologies as it is only an indicator for some of the effects (for example, ad spending
indicates mostly awareness, not conversion). The assumption of linear relationships between
proxies and value potential does not hold beyond certain levels of proxy intensity (value
potential increases are not per se inelastic with intensity).

146
Exhibit A3
0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0
Average ad spend as share of sales
%
Value potential from use of social technologies
in marketing and sales1
% of revenues
Life
Banking
Financial services
Semiconductors
Auto
Aerospace
CPG
Regression analysis correlating a measure of marketing intensity with
value potential
R2 = 0.66
1 Excluding collaboration.
Exhibit A4
Relative value opportunities across
industries, based on four proxies
of potential value capture
Top quintile
2nd quintile
3rd quintile
4th quintile
Bottom quintile
(most difficult to capture)
No data available
Categories Sectors
Relative
value
potential
Value potential dimensions
R&D
intensity
Marketing
intensity
Consumer
service
intensity
Interaction
intensity
Goods
Industrial manufacturing
Construction, materials, and natural resources
Chemicals
Food and beverage processing
Consumer products
Industrial electronics and electrical equipment
Services
Transportation
Retail and wholesale
Telecommunications
Banking and financial services
Insurance
Media and entertainment
Software publishing and Internet services
Professional services
Regulated
and public
Government—national/international
Government—state/local
Education
Pharmaceuticals, life sciences, medical products
Health care providers
Utilities
Energy

5. EASE OF CAPTURE INDEX
This index is made up of three dimensions: openness, culture, and current
technology capacity. We assess each of these factors through two or more
proxies (Exhibit A5), described below.
Openness
The openness dimension describes the degree to which an industry must secure
or control content and rights to content. Four proxies determine how open
an industry will be; the greater degree of openness, the easier it will be for an
industry to capture value from social technologies.
ƒƒ Reported privacy breaches. We use data from the Verizon 2012 Data Breach
Investigations Report, which tracks the number of compromised records by
industry group.166
Industries with high incidence of breaches are assumed to
be concerned about maintaining control over information and therefore less
open with their data.
ƒƒ Intellectual property intensity. We calculated the intellectual property (IP)
intensity of an industry as the share of IP-intense subsectors in comparison
to the total number of NAICS subsectors, based on data from the “Intellectual
Property and the US Economy: Industries in Focus” report provided by the
US Commerce Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration and
the US Patent and Trademark Office. A high IP index is an indication of a need
to control access to information and possible hurdles in fully implementing
ƒƒ Compliance officers as percentage of industry employment. Based
on 2011 US Bureau of Labor Statistics data, we calculated the share of
compliance officers per total industry employees. A high level of compliance
166 Corrected for breaches of more than one million records to avoid distortions.
Exhibit A5
We use nine proxies to assess ease of value capture, based on
openness, culture, and technology expertise
Dimensions
Enablers of social
technology usage Description of driver Proxy
Ability to share
information
Degree to which privacy is demanded
by players or consumers in industry
Share of reported
privacy breaches
Independence from
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) intensity of
industry
IP intensity
Freedom from regulation Industry-specific requirements for
content control (legal, compliance)
Compliance officers as
percentage of industry
employment
Low amounts of
sensitive data
Data sensitivity/importance of secure
IT systems
IT security spend as
percentage of IT spend
Cultural orientation to
external changes
Degree of focus on external
developments and trends
External orientation
score
Innovative and learning
culture
Ability of an industry’s players to
innovate and learn new things
Innovation and
learning score
Ability and tool set to
quickly adapt to changes
Ability to use the right tools and
technologies to react to business
changes
Transformational IT
spend as percentage
of IT spend
General technological
adeptness
Current usage of technologies Total IT spend as
percentage of revenue
Social technologies
adeptness
Current usage of social technologies Social tools adoption
score
Openness
Culture
Technology

148
personnel indicates a highly regulated industry, which may have difficulty
achieving the degree of openness needed to optimize social technology use.
ƒƒ IT security spending as percent of IT spend. We used Gartner Inc. data on
IT security spending as percentage of total IT budgets by industry.167
A high
level of IT security spend indicates potential issues with sharing information
and a lower level of openness.
Culture
We use three proxies to assess whether an industry culture is conducive to
successful adoption and use of social technologies within company organizations.
The first two are the degree of external orientation and emphasis on innovation
and learning within employer organizations, measured through self-reported large
employee surveys. The third proxy is the level of transformational IT spending (i.e.,
IT investments to implement new capabilities, rather than technology investment
used for running day-to-day operations).
ƒƒ External orientation score. We use consolidated data from the proprietary
McKinsey Organizational Health Index (OHI). McKinsey’s OHI survey is
based on nearly 800 surveys that have been conducted in 400 organizations
and capture assessments of nearly 500,000 employees. The OHI external
orientation construct relies on multiple variables measuring the degree of an
organization’s customer focus, competitive insights, business partnerships,
and government and community relations.
ƒƒ Innovation and learning score. We use McKinsey’s Organizational Health
Index data to measure innovation and learning. The innovation and learning
construct is built from multiple variables, capturing an organization’s ability to
capture external ideas, to introduce top-down innovations as well as bottom-
up innovations, and to share knowledge.
ƒƒ Transformational IT spend as percentage of IT spend. The transformational
IT spend proxy, based on the Gartner IT Key Metrics Data report from January
2012, includes all technological R&D spend a company invests to transform
its operations. It does not include technology expenditures used in running
day-to-day operations or in growing the business organically. This metric is
calculated as the share of the total IT budget.
167 Kurt Potter et al., IT metrics: IT spending and staffing report, 2010, Gartner, January 2010.

Technology
The technology dimension assesses the technological capability of an industry—
its capacity to incorporate social technologies into IT operations. To build this
proxy, we calculate total IT spend as a percentage of revenue, and social tools
adoption for each industry.
ƒƒ Total IT spend as percentage of revenue. Total IT spend as percent of
revenue is based on the Gartner IT Key Metrics Data report from January
2012. Higher IT intensity is interpreted to indicate a greater preparedness for
social technologies adoption.
ƒƒ Social tools adoption score. We use survey results from McKinsey’s
“Minding Your Digital Business” Global Survey168
to assess an industry’s
degree of social tools adoption. Survey participants across industries were
asked to indicate the extent to which their organization has adopted social
tools or technologies (e.g., blogs, wikis, social networking).
Once we quantified each criterion, we gave each sector a score of one to five
based on the quintile into which it falls for each criterion. The overall ease of
capture index is the mean of the scores across the three dimensions (Exhibit A6).
168 McKinsey’s C-level executive survey on key trends in digital business: “Minding your digital
business: McKinsey Global Survey results,” The McKinsey Quarterly, May 2012.
Exhibit A6
Relative ease of value capture
across sectors
Categories Sectors
Overall
ease of
capture
Ease of capture dimensions
Openness Culture Technology
Goods
Industrial manufacturing
Construction, materials, and natural resources
Chemicals
Food and beverage processing
Consumer products
Industrial electronics and electrical equipment
Services
Transportation
Retail and wholesale
Telecommunications
Banking and financial services
Insurance
Media and entertainment
Software publishing and Internet services
Professional services
Regulated
and public
Government—national/international
Government—state/local
Education
Pharmaceutical, life sciences, medical products
Health care providers
Utilities
Energy
Top quintile
2nd quintile
3rd quintile
4th quintile
Bottom quintile
(most difficult to capture)
No data available

150
6. POTENTIAL IMPACT OF COLLABORATION METHODOLOGY
Modeling the potential impact on productivity from social collaboration involved
four steps: 1) defining categories of workers; 2) classifying workers by those
categories and calculating their respective share of the labor force; 3) quantifying
the productivity potential for interaction workers; and 4) estimating impact on a
national level.
Category definition
Based on previous McKinsey research,169
we defined three categories of workers:
interaction, transaction, and production (see definitions below). Although a
common distinction is between knowledge and non-knowledge workers, we
used a three-way split to paint a more nuanced picture of the labor force. Our
classification system distinguishes between knowledge workers who perform
highly routine tasks (e.g., processing standardized forms), whom we classify as
transaction workers, and knowledge workers who require independent business
judgment and carry out complex interactions with other people; the latter are
classified as interaction workers.
ƒƒ Interaction workers: Occupations requiring complex interactions with other
people, independent judgment, and access to information (e.g., professionals,
managers, and consultative salespeople). It is work that is not standardized
and is therefore difficult to automate. Many of these positions require extensive
education and training.170
ƒƒ Transaction workers: Roles in which most time is spent processing
information or conducting transactions that are repetitive and have
the potential to be automated (e.g., retail cashiers, bank tellers, clerks,
and assistants).
ƒƒ Production workers: Employees whose work usually involves converting
materials from one state to another or in assembling goods and components
(e.g., factory and construction workers).
Worker classification and occupation cost
We divide the different types of workers listed in national statistics of employment
into these three categories. These national statistics include the number of
people per occupation as well as the average compensation by country. The
labor force composition can be expressed both in number of people employed
and their associated cost (i.e., compensation). The share of interaction workers
is higher when measured in cost than in employment because of relatively high
compensation in many interaction occupations.
Interaction workers’ productivity potential
The goal of this analysis is to understand how much social media can improve
the productivity of interaction workers. To do this, we first quantify how much
time interaction workers spend on various activities (“time split by activity”).
Then, based on multiple case examples, we estimate the potential productivity
improvements across each of those activities. We conservatively project
169 Bradford C. Johnson, James M. Manyika, and Lareina A. Yee, “The next revolution in
interactions,” The McKinsey Quarterly, November 2005
170 Some previous research had classified certain low-skill jobs such as nurse’s aide as
interaction work. In this research, such roles are classified as transaction work.

productivity increases only for interaction workers whose roles rely heavily
on communication and collaboration and who therefore have the most to
gain from social technologies. We do not include the potential productivity
gains that production and transaction workers could obtain from their use
of social technologies, which we also expect, but to a lower degree than for
interaction workers.
ƒƒ Time split by activity. We base our breakdown of interaction workers’
time spent on various working activities on International Data Corporation
estimates, which were based on multiple surveys on how workers spend their
time, as well as McKinsey proprietary data. From this data set, we identified
the three activities that are performed by almost all interaction workers and for
which social technology could have an impact: reading and answering e-mail,
searching and gathering information, and communicating and collaborating
with colleagues. The data show an average workweek of 46.5 hours, so
we aggregated the time spent on other tasks as being “role-specific tasks.”
(Exhibit A7).
ƒƒ Productivity improvement. We next used the hourly breakdown to estimate
the weekly productivity improvement possible for each type of task. Our
estimates for possible productivity improvements in each activity came from
interviews with users, IT executives, providers of collaboration tools, experts
on organizational behavior, social collaboration advocates, and case studies.
We also incorporated survey data about social technology usage and reports
from social technology tool vendors. The net potential productivity benefit is
estimated to be in the range of 20 to 25 percent (Exhibit A8).
Exhibit A7
We adjust IDC data to estimate time spent on
different activities by a typical interaction worker
SOURCE: IDC; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Activities in IDC report
% of
workweek
1 Included activities depends on specific role, e.g., project management, content creation, people management, data entry, and
information analysis.
3.7
4.0
4.4
5.2
6.0
6.2
6.4
8.1
8.8
13.0
65.8Total
Publish information
Data entry and other
structured tasks
Manage people
Communicate and
collaborate externally
Create content
Manage projects
Communicate and
collaborate internally
Analyze information
Search and
gather information
Read and answer e-mail
Mandatory activities
for interaction workers
Other activities
Adjusted activity list
Average workweek of people responding to the survey
Hours per week per activity
6.4
8.8
Total 46.5
Role-specific tasks1 18.3
Communicate and
collaborate internally
Search and
gather information
Read and answer e-mail 13.0 28
19
14
39

152
National-level economic impact
We combined the per-worker productivity improvement projections with the
proportion of interaction workers in each economy to estimate the overall
economic impact that productivity improvements could have. We used the
analysis of four countries and then scaled up to a global estimate.
ƒƒ Four main countries. The four main countries are the United States,
Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. Calculating the overall productivity
improvements possible required calculating the overall cost of interaction
workers, as a proxy for productivity, multiplying that by the productivity
improvement possible, and then stating the result as a percent of overall GDP.
The overall cost of interaction workers in each country is estimated from its
share of interaction workers (based on national labor statistics) multiplied
by the total cost of labor estimated in each nation by the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (Exhibit A9). This gives the cost
base for interaction workers in the country.171
171 US data: annual wage reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2011. Germany: annual
median gross salary as reported by Bundesagentur für Arbeit (the German Labor Agency),
December 2010, excluding civil servants in the “Beamte” special employment definition and
the self-employed. UK mean salaries reported by the Office for National Statistics, June 2011.
US and UK data exclude the self-employed. French private-sector and self-employed data
from 2010 INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) reports; public-
sector data from DGAFP-BSEEV. We assume that the distribution of self-employed workers
in the three occupation categories is similar to the overall labor force. We use the OECD
definition of annual labor cost of employees compiled according to the System data from
2010 INSEE (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) reports; public-sector
data from DGAFP-BSEEV. We assume that the distribution of self-employed workers in the
three occupation categories is similar to the overall labor force. We use the OECD definition
of annual labor cost of employees compiled according to the System of National Accounts
1993, adjusted for the self-employed by multiplying COE (cost of employment) by the ratio
of total hours worked by all persons in employment to total hours worked by all employees
of businesses.
Exhibit A8
20.0–25.0
4.0–6.0
3.5–5.0
5.5–6.5
7.0–8.5
Improved communication and collaboration through social technologies
could raise productivity of interaction workers by 20 to 25 percent
SOURCE: International Data Corporation (IDC); McKinsey Global Institute analysis
19
14
39
28
100Total
Role-specific tasks
Communicating and
collaborating internally
Searching and
gathering information
Reading and
answering e-mail
Tasks of
interaction worker
% of average week
Productivity
improvement
%
Increased
value-add time
% of workweek
25–30
30–35
25–35
10–15
20–25

ƒƒ Scaling to additional economies. We scale up the analysis to 12 more major
economies, for a total of 16 major economies, using a weighted average
of the productivity improvements for the four countries we analyzed. For
each country, we use a similar method to what we use for the four focus
countries (Exhibit A10). The 12 additional countries—Austria, Belgium, Canada,
Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
and Switzerland—were selected based on the size of their economy and the
availability of estimates for total labor cost in the OECD database.
.
Exhibit A9
To gauge macroeconomic impact of social technologies across
nations, we examine a mix of worker types and wage rates
TransactionInteraction Production
43
36
46
61
43
54
56
69
France
United
Kingdom
Germany
United
States
Cost
Number
of workers
23
21
16
20
10
18
15
16
35
44
36
37
21
31
28
23
SOURCE: National statistics; OECD; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Distribution of workers
% of workforce
Exhibit A10
Improved productivity through social technologies could create
$1.7 trillion–2.2 trillion in value across 16 large economies
SOURCE: OECD; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Weighted
average
12–15
France 11–13
United
Kingdom
14–17
Germany 9–11
United
States
12–15
Additional value
% of total labor cost
Belgium 252
Netherlands 429
Poland 369
Canada 767
Spain 837
Italy 1,181
France 1,363
United Kingdom 1,414
Germany 1,864
United States 8,567
Portugal 157
Norway 140
Greece 186
Austria 204
Switzerland 226
Sweden 210
1 Total cost of labor according to OECD definition.
▪ Extrapolate impact from
analysis of top 4 countries
to additional 12 countries
▪ Countries are selected
based on GDP and
availability of total labor
cost data
$ billion
Total
Cost of employment1
18,167
35–69
5–11
4–8
5–9
6–12
7–13
6–12
7–15
13–25
11–22
22–45
24–49
153–191
196–245
160–200
1,044–1,305
Potential value created
1,699–2,232

154
7. ESTIMATING VALUE POTENTIAL OF USING SOCIAL
TECHNOLOGIES IN FOUR GLOBAL SECTORS
We considered four major industries: consumer packaged goods, consumer
financial services, professional services, and advanced manufacturing.172
We
chose those industries because they are a significant share of global industry
sales (almost 20 percent) and the mix reflects the diversity of industries in the
economy. Consumer packaged goods companies sell through third parties but
have a high level of consumer interactions. The consumer financial services sector
is a consumer-centric, customer service–focused industry. The professional
services industry was chosen as an example of a knowledge/interactive worker-
intensive sector. Advanced manufacturing industries all devote a substantial
amount of resources to R&D, but semiconductors and aerospace have a B2B
focus, while the automotive sector is B2C. Finally, we included the social sector
because it is by nature social and interaction-intensive.
To estimate the value potential of social technologies in these sectors, we
identified across the value chain—in product development; operations and
distribution; marketing and sales; and customer service—eight ways in which
companies use social technologies. In addition, we identify two enterprise-
wide value levers that can improve organizational productivity across functions
(Exhibit A11). For the social sector, we rely on a similar value chain approach to
identify and sort levers but customized these to reflect the unique context.
172 We included the social sector in our sector analyses but not in the numerical analysis.
Exhibit A11
Marketing
and sales
Operations
and
distribution
Product
development
Co-create products1
5
Social commerce7
technologies
8
Enterprise-
wide levers
(Social as
organizational
technology)
Customer
service
Business
support2
4
Use social
technology to
improve intra- or
collaboration and
communication
Use social
technology to
match talent to
tasks
9
10

In our analysis, we rely on the MGI micro-to-macro approach: we based estimates
on proven impact on the micro level (e.g., a collection of individual cases),
which we then scaled up to the macro level (global sector), with appropriate
adjustments. In estimating the potential impact, we prepared detail analyses of
60 case studies after reviewing more than 300 cases from organizations around
the world and academic and industry research. To assess case credibility, we
considered source quality as well as impact and repeat success rates (i.e.,
consistency with other reported cases). We selected case studies and expert
estimates (on which we base some impact estimates) specifically to minimize any
double counting of impact across the social technology levers.
Wherever possible, we use reported impact numbers. In cases where the impact
has not been sized, we rely on expert interviews along with industry data to
complete our value potential calculations. We know that many factors in addition
to social technology implementation and usage need to come together to
generate the observed value. Nevertheless, we have assigned the full value of the
identified levers to social technology use because it is not possible to break down
impact among contributing factors, and “social” is an essential enabler to achieve
the impact in the cases we chose.
In order to estimate the benefits enabled by the use of social technologies, we
used a productivity framework, i.e., the ratio of inputs to outputs. In some of the
cases, the benefits of using social technologies were higher outputs for the same
input, e.g., revenue uplift. In other cases, the same output is generated with a
lower amount of inputs, e.g., conducting market research with a large number
of participants at a lower cost. To make the cases comparable, we assumed a
constant revenue (assuming that the overall revenue in the industry would not
change), and estimated the potential margin improvement that would result from
more productive use of resources. By focusing on quantifying the productivity
impact from margin expansion, we are able to estimate total sector potential,
excluding effects that redistribute market share among players. However, we are
not suggesting that implementing social technologies will improve margins to the
full potential estimated; some of these benefits could be captured by customers.
Also, this method understates the full potential of social technologies; it does not
take into account other consumer benefits (e.g., the value consumers gain from
use of social technologies to connect with friends, share content, and so on).
Whenever possible, we interviewed leaders who are involved in the cases to
obtain more detailed data and cross-check assumptions on drivers and cost
relationships. We checked and triangulated those numbers with reported impact
numbers, where available. This allowed us to aggregate results and distill average,
minimum, and maximum impact figures.
To calculate productivity benefits as a percent of total costs, we derived detailed
industry cost breakdowns using external and proprietary McKinsey industry
benchmarking databases. We triangulated the resulting impacts on total costs
per value chain step with leading economists, industry leaders, and internal and
external experts on the four sectors and on the respective value chain steps (e.g.,
marketing and sales).

156
In estimating potential value that could be derived from use of social technologies
at different points in the value chain, we observed significant differences, even
within the four sectors we studied in depth. As illustrated in Exhibits A12 to A14,
we see that much of the potential benefit of social technology for semiconductor
firms rests in product development, where R&D-intensive companies can benefit
greatly from improved collaboration. In automotive, the greatest value from
social technologies would be available in marketing and sales, where social
communities are rich sources of lead generation data (Exhibit A14).
Exhibit A12
for the semiconductor industry
310
67
31
6
1
25
180
~50-65
12–15
1-2
18-22
16-48
17-21
Marketing
and sales
Product
development
Operations and
distribution
Business support
functions
Customer service
Total margin
Total revenue
$ billion
Value chain expense and
margin structure
$ billion
% of value
chain expense
or total margin
Value potential
Global 2011
~16-20
~1
<1
5-5.5
~2.5
8-10
SOURCE: iSuppli; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
Exhibit A13
for the aerospace industry
135
5
4
7
1
3
115
Marketing
and sales
Product
development
Operations and
distribution
Business support
functions
Customer service
Total margin
Total revenue
$ billion
margin structure
$ billion
% of value
chain expense
or total margin
Value potential
Global 2011
SOURCE: Teal Group; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
~3-4
0.5-0.6
0.1-0.4
0.7-1.4
1.2-1.4
0.6-0.7
~70–100
12–15
~1
20-29
10-30
7-9

Exhibit A14
for the automotive industry
Marketing
and sales
Product
development
Operations and
distribution
Business support
functions
Customer service
Total margin
Total revenue
$ billion
margin structure
$ billion
% of value
chain expense
or total margin
Value potential
Global 2011
SOURCE: Global Insight WIS database; McKinsey Global Institute analysis
~150-175
10-12
3-10
85-90
33-37
20-25
3,335
167
17
218
2,665
167
100
~90–105
12–15
~1
~40
20-60
10-12

158
8. ESTIMATING VALUE POTENTIAL FOR SOCIAL
TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS
We estimated the revenue potential for social technology providers by examining
eight provider revenue streams: advertising, e‑commerce (both physical and
digital goods), payments, donations, recruitment, marketing analytics, and
e-learning. These revenue streams have the potential to grow over the next
decade, based on greater access to social technologies (e.g., we project that
most TVs will have Internet connectivity) and the emergence of additional
disruptive social technology business models (e.g., Twitter is monetizing its
archive by selling old tweets for marketing analytic purposes),173
although it should
be noted that these are aspirational projections requiring structural changes
within these industries for the full potential to be realized. For all calculations, we
use 2011 as our base (Exhibit A15).
Advertising
Based on our discussions with experts and review of projections for the adoption
of Internet-connected television receivers, we conclude that the available market
for “social” advertising is virtually all online marketing and a significant percentage
of TV advertising. We therefore use both online advertising ($78 billion annually
in 2011) and TV advertising ($175 billion in 2011) to calculate potential global
social technology advertising revenue of $253 billion annually.174
This figure
assumes that Internet-connected TVs become standard. Advertising media such
as print, radio, and outdoor (billboards, etc.) are not currently addressable by
social technology providers and were therefore not included, although we realize
that this may change with technology (e.g., QR codes) that would turn these
“broadcast” media into interactive media.
173 Dave Thier, “Twitter to sell your old tweets,” Forbes, February 29, 2012.
174 Global advertising forecast, Magnaglobal, December 2011.
Exhibit A15
Five revenue models for social technology providers
Markets within reach for social technology providers
Revenue models
32
31
85
12
67
45
62
730
e-Learning
Marketing
analytics
Recruiting
Payments
Digital goods
Physical goods 142
254
E-commerce
Value-added
services1
Value, 2011
$ billion
1 Not exhaustive.
Less addressableAddressable
Online advertisement
and connected TV
Radio, newspaper, etc.
E-commerce Offline commerce
Online payments Offline payments
Application software
and related services
Infrastructure software,
hardware support
Donations to media Donations outside
media
E-commerce n/a
Recruitment
Research dependent
on physical location
Most consumer
research
e-Learning
n/a
n/a
Donations
Advertising
Total potential value1

E‑commerce
To estimate the revenue potential in the e‑commerce category, we aggregate
two types of content sales, physical and digital. Starting with physical content,
we assume all physical items currently sold online can benefit from social input
(e.g., recommendations from friends, using data from social sites to evaluate
products, connecting with other buyers), although social sites would account
for a small share of online sales. We estimate that by 2022, 20 percent of sales
that are influenced by social input will go through social providers who sell
products directly to consumers and 80 percent of transactions will be completed
on third-party platforms (e.g., eBay, Amazon) that are enabled with social
features. For direct sales, we apply 20 percent to the average 2011 global online
retailing market of $449 billion, resulting in direct revenue potential of $90 billion
annually.175
In addition, we take the average fee charged by third-party platforms
such as Amazon and Ebay (14 percent) and apply it to 80 percent of global online
shopping to arrive at $52 billion in potential annual fee revenue. Therefore, the
total e‑commerce physical goods revenue potential equates to nearly $142 billion.
Next we estimate the revenue potential of digital goods, including online gaming,
virtual goods (such as game weapons and avatar clothing), and digital video and
music sales by aggregating global annual revenue of each. Global online gaming
revenue was taken from DFC Intelligence’s projections of PC, console, and mobile
online gaming from 2010, using a 12 percent compound growth rate to reach
2011 figures. From this we subtracted virtual goods to avoid double counting. To
estimate global revenue for virtual goods, we used In-Stat’s statistics. Finally, for
digital video and music, we used Worldwatch Institute’s projection of global media
consumption, adjusting to count online digital download sales only. The total
potential of digital goods equates to $62 billion in revenue annually.
Payments
We size the total potential value for social technology-based payments by using
PayPal and Bill Me Later fees as a proxy for alternative payment transaction
revenues. We determine the overall PayPal fee charged by estimating the
cumulative amount of payments processed by PayPal and Bill Me Later and
divided this by PayPal’s annual revenue to reach an average 3.5 percent markup
(i.e., gross fee) on transactions. This is then multiplied by 100 percent of global
online sales and 10 percent of global offline sales—the potential market that
social technology payments could capture in 2020—to reach payment potential of
$45 billion in revenue annually.
We based IT software potential on IDC’s Worldwide Software Market Forecaster
estimation of global software revenue across 19 software categories.176
Industry
experts forecast the proportion of software within each of the 19 software
categories that could become socially enabled (system infrastructure and
middleware were not included). Since social technology is often an added feature
within software, to estimate what portion of software revenue across categories
175 Global online shopping revenue derived by averaging 2011 estimations from two sources:
Euromonitor and Forrester Research.
176 “Worldwide Software Market Forecaster,” International Data Corporation, June 2009. ERP
software used for comparison included SAP, QAD, Infor, and Epicor9. See also Koenraad
Adams, Eric Piazzoni, and In-Saeng Suh, “Comparative analysis of ERP vendors: SAP, Oracle
and Microsoft,” Indiana University, South Bend School of Business Economics, Fall 2008.

160
is “social,” we compared per-seat costs of three popular social technologies
(Yammer, Jive, and Chatter Plus) with per-seat costs of popular ERP and CRM
software suites, leading to a global IT software potential of $27 billion annually.177
Next, we used Gartner’s March 2012 estimates of the global IT services market
across six major IT services categories.178
Again, we used predictions of socially
enabled software sales to estimate the service support revenue associated with
those sales (i.e., consulting, system design and implementation, and maintenance
of social technology software). We stress-tested this by evaluating social
technology potential across six IT service categories and compared the software
services multiple reached with similar known multiple comparisons.
In addition to IT services, organizational transformation support is critical for
creating the type of company culture that will embrace social technology. We
believe social technology providers are positioned to capture some of this market
share, given their unique experience in applying social technology solutions
within enterprises. To estimate the size of the organizational transformation
service market, we created a weighted average of the proportion of organizational
consulting in five management consulting firms. We then adjusted this ratio to
only include work focused on organizational change and transformation. This was
then applied across the management consulting market.179
Finally, we applied
the same ratio used for IT services to determine the proportion of assignments
that would apply to social technology change transformations. As a result, we
estimate that the social technology IT services and change management industry
potential could reach $67 billion.
Value-added services
We estimate the revenue potential for the social technology recruiting market
at $85 billion by sizing the current global recruitment market less revenue from
temporary staffing.180
The global e-learning market size was estimated by Ambient
Insight Research at $35 billion annually. Finally, the social technology potential
for marketing analytics was sized using current global revenue of the 25 largest
market research players ($20 billion in 2011).181
These comprise 63 percent of
the global market research market, valuing this market at $31 billion. We believe
100 percent of the current marketing analytics market can be captured through
social technology.
177 ERP software used for comparison included SAP, QAD, Infor, Epicor9. Koenraad Adams,
Eric Piazzoni and In-Saeng Suh, “Comparative analysis of ERP vendors: SAP, Oracle and
Microsoft,” Indiana University, South Bend School of Business Economics, Fall 2008, and
company Web sites.
178 Gartner IT Spending Worldwide, Quarterly update, March 2012.
179 Matt Lyons, Brad Smith, and Kennedy Information, The global consulting marketplace,
2005–2007: Key data, trends & forecasts (Peterborough, N.H., USA: Kennedy Information
LLC, 2005).
180 “Global Human Resources and Employment Services,” Marketline.com, 2012; “Global
Employment Services,” Datamonitor.com, 2012.
181 American Marketing Association.

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Related McKinsey Global Institute publications
www.mckinsey.com/mgi
eBook versions of selected MGI reports are available at MGI’s
Web site, Amazon’s Kindle bookstore, and Apple’s iBookstore.
Download and listen to MGI podcasts on iTunes or at
www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/multimedia/
Online and upcoming: The Internet’s impact on aspiring countries
(January 2012)
This report explains how the Internet today connects about two billion
people worldwide. Half of these are in the “aspiring” world—countries as
varied as Algeria, South Africa, China, Iran, and Mexico that are climbing
the developmental ladder quickly, with diverse populations and inarguable
economic potentialities. It examines the impact of the Internet in populous
and fast-growing aspiring countries, where it offers even greater potential
than in the developed world.
Olivia Nottebohm
James Manyika
Jacques Bughin
Michael Chui
Abdur-Rahim Syed
January 2012
Online and upcoming:
The Internet’s impact on
aspiring countries
High Tech Practice
The great transformer: The impact of the Internet on economic growth
and prosperity (October 2011)
The Internet is changing the way we work, socialize, create and share
information, and organize the flow of people, ideas, and things around the
globe. Yet the magnitude of this transformation is still underappreciated. The
Internet accounted for 21 percent of the GDP growth in mature economies
over the past five years. While large enterprises and national economies
have reaped major benefits from this technological revolution, individual
consumers and small, upstart entrepreneurs have been some of the greatest
beneficiaries from the Internet’s empowering influence.
The great transformer:
The impact of the Internet on
economic growth and prosperity
James Manyika and Charles Roxburgh
October 2011
INTRODUCTION
The Internet is changing the way we work, socialize, create and share information, and
organize the flow of people, ideas, and things around the globe. Yet the magnitude of this
transformation is still underappreciated. The Internet accounted for 21 percent of the GDP
growth in mature economies over the past 5 years. In that time, we went from a few thousand
students accessing Facebook to more than 800 million users around the world, including many
leading firms, who regularly update their pages and share content. While large enterprises and
national economies have reaped major benefits from this technological revolution, individual
consumers and small, upstart entrepreneurs have been some of the greatest beneficiaries
from the Internet’s empowering influence.
And yet we are still in the early stages of the transformations the Internet will unleash and the
opportunities it will foster. Many more technological innovations and enabling capabilities such
as payments platforms are likely to emerge, while the ability to connect many more people and
things and engage them more deeply will continue to expand exponentially.
As a result, governments, policy makers, and businesses must recognize and embrace the
enormous opportunities the Internet can create, even as they work to address the risks to
security and privacy the Internet brings. As the Internet’s evolution over the past two decades
has demonstrated, such work must include helping to nurture the development of a healthy
Internet ecosystem, one that boosts infrastructure and access, builds a competitive
environment that benefits users and lets innovators and entrepreneurs thrive, and nurtures
human capital. Together these elements can maximize the continued impact of the Internet on
economic growth and prosperity.
THE INTERNET IS DRIVING ECONOMIC GROWTH
From an obscure network of researchers and technology experts three decade ago, the
Internet has become a day-to-day reality for more than a quarter of the world’s people. Today
two billion people are connected to the Internet, and almost $8 trillion exchange hands each
year through e-commerce.
Strong contribution to GDP growth
Across a range of large and developed economies, the Internet exerts a strong influence on
economic growth rates. Our research shows that the Internet accounts for, on average,
3.4 percent of GDP across the large economies that make up 70 percent of global GDP. (See
Exhibit 1.) If Internet consumption and expenditures were a sector, its weight in GDP would be
bigger than the energy or agriculture industry. (See Exhibit 2.) The Internet’s total contribution
to global GDP is bigger than the GDP of Spain or Canada, and it is growing faster than the
GDP of Brazil.
Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity
(May 2011)
Big data will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of
productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus—as long as the right
policies and enablers are in place.
Big data: The next frontier
for innovation, competition,
and productivity
May 2011
Internet matters: The Net’s sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and
prosperity (May 2011)
The Internet is a vast mosaic of economic activity, ranging from millions of
daily online transactions and communications to smartphone downloads of
TV shows. But little is known about how the Web in its entirety contributes
to global growth, productivity, and employment. McKinsey research into the
Internet economies of the G-8 nations as well as Brazil, China, India, South
Korea, and Sweden finds that the Web accounts for a significant and growing
portion of global GDP.
Internet matters: The Net’s
sweeping impact on growth,
jobs, and prosperity
May 2011
Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends
to watch (August 2010)
Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional
business models. Senior executives need to think strategically about how to
prepare their organizations for the challenging new environment.Two-and-a-half years ago, we described eight
technology-enabled business trends that were pro-
foundly reshaping strategy across a wide swath of
industries.1 We showed how the combined effects
of emerging Internet technologies, increased com-
puting power, and fast, pervasive digital communi-
cations were spawning new ways to manage talent
and assets as well as new thinking about organiza-
tional structures.
Since then, the technology landscape has contin-
ued to evolve rapidly. Facebook, in just over two
short years, has quintupled in size to a network
that touches more than 500 million users. More
than 4 billion people around the world now use
cell phones, and for 450 million of those people
the Web is a fully mobile experience. The ways
information technologies are deployed are chang-
ing too, as new developments such as virtualization
and cloud computing reallocate technology costs
and usage patterns while creating new ways for
individuals to consume goods and services and for
entrepreneurs and enterprises to dream up viable
business models. The dizzying pace of change has
affected our original eight trends, which have con-
tinued to spread (though often at a more rapid pace
than we anticipated), morph in unexpected ways,
and grow in number to an even ten.2
The rapidly shifting technology environment raises
serious questions for executives about how to help
their companies capitalize on the transforma-
tion under way. Exploiting these trends typically
doesn’t fall to any one executive—and as change
AngusGreig
Jacques Bughin,
Michael Chui, and
James Manyika
Clouds, big data, and
smart assets: Ten tech-enabled
business trends to watch
Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional business
models. Senior executives need to think strategically about how to prepare their
organizations for the challenging new environment.
1James M. Manyika, Roger P.
Roberts, and Kara L. Sprague,
“Eight business technology
trends to watch,”
mckinseyquarterly.com,
December 2007.
2
Two of the original
eight trends merged to form a
megatrend around distributed
cocreation. We also identified
three additional trends
centered on the relationship
between technology and
emerging markets,
environmental sustainability,
and public goods.
The Internet of things (March 2010)
More objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability
to communicate. The resulting new information networks promise to create
new business models, improve business processes, and reduce costs
and risks.
Artwork by Harry Campbell

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