Building The Case For The Relationship Networking Trade

The Compelling Evidence
Think about the following:

1. From a recent article in Fortune Magazine, "The Bother with MBAs": "When Jack Welch gave a guest lecture at MIT's Sloan School of Management in 2005, someone in the group asked, 'What should we tend to be learning in business faculty?' Welch's reply: 'Just target networking. Everything else you would like to know, you'll learn on the job.'" Like him or hate him: when Jack talks, huge business listens.

2. Time Magazine's "2006 Person of the Year: You" is an acknowledgement to the net as a populist movement and the ability that we have a tendency to, as individuals, now wield over the worlds of politics, entertainment, etc.

3. Academic Institutions are developing curriculums for networking education like the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)'s Social Computing Lab which has recently received a $124,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to fund a replacement course giving to ninety students for the upcoming Fall, 2007 semester.

4. High gas costs are causing more people and tiny businesses (which, in keeping with the Little Business Administration accounts for 50% of U.S. private nonfarm gross domestic product) to depend upon the net for online networking to do business, conduct meetings, etc.

5. Web 2.0, "new media" and mobile networking are gaining in popularity due to several factors:

* TeleComms are investing additional money into technology infrastructure this year (Sprint: $seven Billion, Verizon: $5 Billion) plus being acquired (Alltel's recent $24.8 billion acquisition by non-public investment corporations)

* On the wave of the infrastructure boom, larger social networks like MySpace and FaceBook still amass their followings while a flood of new begin-up networks are vying for market share.

* Generation Yers (or Millennials) embrace this new technology a lot of readily than their counterparts from alternative generations and therefore the oldest of them are now getting into the workforce (see my article from last month: Networking with the Millenials: The End of the World as We Understand It?)

6. Media big Yahoo.com simply recently employed 2 economics and sociology professors: Preston McAfee and Duncan Watts to go their analysis department and find opportunities within the areas of social networking and online markets.

7. In step with a commentary in Canada's The Chronicle Herald, social networking sites are starting to overtake pornographic-related sites as the foremost popular internet destinations.

8. The increasingly-accepted paradigm of "Markets are Conversations" (from The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinberger is being supported by the actual fact that large firms like U.S. Tv Network NBC is coming up with a launch of their own social networking site.

The Challenges Ahead
This overwhelming knowledge clearly demonstrates that relationship networking is indeed, an industry. In line with Dictionary.com, trade is outlined as "the aggregate of work, scholarship, and ancillary activity in a specific field, usually named when its principal subject". And whereas this information is sort of exciting for a network-o-phile like myself, who's been following these trends for the past three+ years, the reality of this "snapshot" indicates that there's still a long method to go for universal acceptance and efficiency.

A number of the numerous obstacles that face the trade are:

* There is not enough clear identification on whom the stakeholders are

* Whereas the business will exist, it's not however formalized

* There's no consensus amongst stakeholders as to what the definition of networking very means that

* Many of the stakeholders still arrange during a "silo"-type world, blind to the rich opportunities offered by convergent technologies, strategic alliances and other collaborations

* All business is valued upon financial capital. As Donald Trump's fast come from bankruptcy shows, he was ready to leverage his own "relationship capital" to turn his state of affairs around. What if relationship capital might be measured and connected to money capital? What are our economies missing without this key element? How may business amendment? Sadly once more, there is no consensus or standards other than on a terribly tiny scale.

* There is no consensus on the most effective ways that to evaluate folks for jobs when core competencies rely upon "folks (relationship networking) skills".

* Whereas a few enterprising networking gurus are offering certifications for relationship networking, they do not have the backing of all industry stakeholders or a neutral third-party governing body.

* There are no consistent or standardized methodologies of insuring privacy, security and due diligence on a international scale. How do we recognize if the folks with whom we network on-line are who they are saying they're?

* There is no consistent or standardized curriculum for relationship networking education

* As end-user networkers, the query we have a tendency to forever should raise is, "with so several networking opportunities out there, that are the ones that are the foremost worthwhile on behalf of me and/or my business?"

* We have a tendency to do not nonetheless apprehend at what purpose will we tend to tell whether or not our time spent networking is being invested or wasted.

* The thought of convergence, while it appeals to many networkers, others worry the "Tower of Babel" syndrome. As humans, our own egos and pride can prevent such "true networking" to take place for any extended amount of time. We tend to would be forced to develop a lot of collaborative systems on a scale that has never been seen thus far that will be aware of multi-cultural, cross gender and multi-generational issues.

The Answer
Despite the uphill battle of progress, we tend to are seeing overwhelming proof that there's a movement, albeit, a scattered one. Fortunately, there is a newly-forming, neutral third-party, non-profit organization that is trying to vary this. I am happy to be associated with the Relationship Networking Industry Association (RNIA), that aims to make networking convergence a reality. This can be done by gathering consensus of seven major communities of stakeholders: corporations, entrepreneurs & investors, consultants & trainers, recruiting corporations, member-primarily based organizations, instructional establishments and governmental agencies. Through consensus, a common body of data (CBOK) can be developed, from that the first standards can be introduced. From those standards, the RNIA can establish a certification process for acquiring minimum basic skills, ongoing education, technologists and educators. Expect to listen to additional regarding this new organization as companies like SoSsoon, eFirm and BNI are among the initial supporters. Each uphill battle will be fought one step at a time.