Social Business Survey: How Fast to Mainstream?

The recent survey on social business that MIT Sloan Management Review conducted in collaboration with Deloitte clearly indicates the growing importance of social business across all industries over the next three years. The survey asked respondents whether social business was unimportant, somewhat unimportant, neutral, somewhat important, or important to their business. The following chart shows just those who answered “important,” cut by industry type.

Clearly, there is a significant gap between perceptions of the importance of social business by industry. Only Entertainment, media and publishing see social as important at meaningful levels today (37.4%), with respondents from other industries ranging from 7% (Energy and utilities) to 29.4%.

But the speed at which respondents expect to close the gap — just three years — is striking. Respondents from the consumer goods industry, for example, were four times more likely to say that social tools will be important in three years, compared to today.

We’ll be looking at this and other questions more closely as MIT SMR and Deloitte continue to analyze data and conduct interviews in preparation for our research report release this spring.