Enterprise Gamification, Big Data, Social Support, Total Customer Experience, Pull Organizations, Social Business. Are these purely the latest buzzwords to enter the market or significant trends that companies should keep an eye on?

Oracle recently sponsored and presented at the 5th Social Business Forum, one of the largest European events on the use of social media as a business tool and accelerator. Through the participation of dozens of practitioners, experts and customer success stories, the conference demonstrated how a perfect storm of technology, management and cultural change is pushing peer-to-peer conversations deep into business processes. It is clear that Social Business is serving as a new propellant of agility, efficiency and reactivity.

According to Deloitte and MIT what we have learned to call Social Business is considered important in the next 3 years by 86% of managers (see Social Business: What Are Companies Really Doing?, MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte). McKinsey further estimates the value that can be unlocked in terms of knowledge-worker productivity, consumer insights, product co-creation, improved sales, marketing and customer service up to $1300B (See The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, McKinsey Global Institute). This impacts any industry, with the strongest effects seen in Media & Entertainment, Technology, Telcos and Education.

For those not able to attend the Social Business Forum and also for the many friends that joined us in Milan, we decided to keep the conversation going by extracting some golden nuggets from the perspective of five of the most well-known thought-leaders in this space. Starting this week you will have the chance to view:

• John Hagel (Author of the Power of Pull and Co-Chairman Center for the Edge at Deloitte & Touche)
• Christian Finn (Senior Director, WebCenter Evangelist at Oracle)
• Steve Denning (Author of The Radical Management and Independent Management Consulting Professional)
• Esteban Kolsky (Principal & Founder at ThinkJar)
• Ray Wang (Principal Analyst & CEO at Constellation Research)

• How pull organizations are addressing some of the deepest challenges impacting the market.
• How to integrate social into existing infrastructure and processes.
• How to apply radical management to become more agile and profitable.
• About the importance of gamification as an engagement lever.