Recommended Reading

This post "How One CEO Facebooked His Company" in his Fortune column "Fast Forward" by senior editor David Kirkpatrick is well worth reading by anyone interested in corporate leadership in this "web 2.0" era. Even in the heart of Silicon Valley, there are (still) companies where the concepts of social media, citizen journalism, user-generated content, wisdom of crowds, etc., are barely understood and rarely discussed. These companies are often older entities, founded prior circa 2004 and the rush to the digital web. They are often companies selling products and services for the enterprise market or selling services into niche segments.
What these companies are not recognizing is that even if they don't believe their products or services are impacted by the digital web, their customers are being impacted and their competitors know this.
When competing with technology, it's imperative to keep-up with and understand the latest trends, especially those impacting the customer base in a broad and profound way. Those technologies are moving mainstream and, as such, need to be considered in any new endeavor.
I really like the way the CEO profiled in David's post uses a simple approach to move his whole company forward. The results speak for themselves, providing value to the company, the employees and to customers.