Social Business Timeline

I have created a timeline showing events, people, resources and ideas that help explain why and how concepts such as Social Business and Enterprise 2.0 have emerged. You are most welcome to make your contributions to the timeline.


I believe the timeline will be helpful for anyone who is trying to understand or explain Social Business and Enterprise 2.0 and to show that they build on ideas and events which have emerged during a relatively long period of time.

I have added a few events, starting almost two centuries ago with the birth of steel baron Andrew Carnegie. Many of the lessons he learned on his journey to become the world's richest man in the end of the 19th century aligns with the core ideas of Social Business. I am sure there are ideas or events dating much further back that help to explain why we are now "socializing" enterprises with the use of information technology and you are welcome to add those.

If you haven't seen it already, don't forget to watch the video with Arthur C Clarke from the BBC Horizon tv programme in 1964 where he predicts that the knowledge worker will be liberated from the physical workplace in the year 2000. He sure was right that the technology would be available to us by that date, but I believe he underestimated the time it takes to change deeply rooted cultural norms, behaviors and management models. Change takes time - it doesn't happen automatically just because the technology is available to us. But the existence of technology makes change possible.
Oscar Berg