A recent Forrester survey of IT decision-makers in North America and Europe shows that a third of organisations have implemented, or plan to implement, social networking technologies in their enterprise in 2010.

While the benefits of social technology can be significant, firms need to manage the challenges of driving adoption, realising true business value, and managing risk. For some organisations, the initial response is to keep social technologies out. Unfortunately, this introduces new risks that could well be more significant. Users could provision tools on their own from public sources, out of the view and control of IT, that create more significant risk.

Even more troubling, your competition could embrace and manage the risk and place your organisation at competitive disadvantage in the market. For many, the opportunity to foster innovation using social tools is too compelling to ignore. Forrester sees an emerging pattern of adoption in those organisations that choose to proceed with social technologies.