Social media is now an accepted marketing tool, but how many companies are confident it generates solid business returns? What are the metrics and analytics to measure success? What new insights can be gained from studying networked customers? And how can companies use social media to foster real experimentation and innovation?

Pecha Kucha at Supernova 2010

The video is in Mediasite format (requires Microsoft Silverlight plugin), because it integrates the talks with the presentation slides.

Panel at Supernova Forum 2010 featuring Moderator Ethan Mollick (Wharton), Chad Dickerson (Etsy), Steve Cohen (Morgan Lewis), Steve Barsh (PackLate), Andreas Weigend (Weigend.com) How can startups develop a distinctive culture, and sustain it as they grow? Are the characteristics that define today?s high potential technology startups the same as five or ten years ago? And does the current environment of low-cost infrastructure and open information sharing give new companies an advantage, or make it harder for them to maintain a competitive edge and reach critical mass?

On topics such as privacy, network management, technical standards, advertising, copyright, open access to platforms, and use of data, when do private governance mechanisms work effectively? How can government involvement help or hinder those efforts? How can best practices be defined and promoted? And are the answers any different in an era of broadband platforms, mobile smartphones, and cloud computing, and social networks, than they were in the early years of the web?

Organizations that thrived in the prior era will not necessarily succeed in the Network Age. Yet the inertia of established practices, incentives, and culture is extremely powerful. If an organization needs to transform, how can it determine the proper path, and what does it take to achieve real, sustainable change?

The old business models for media clearly aren’t working any more. User-generated content is at least part of the solution, but how can it match the quality and scale of what it replaces? Are original shows produced for the web and other interactive media a third category between professional and amateur content? Can new approaches incorporate the best of traditional and social media? What data and examples can we point to as guidelines for success in restructuring media and advertising businesses?

How is innovation different in a connected environment, where clusters of organizations can easily collaborate and open platforms can draw from huge communities of contributors? Whether in venture capital, entrepreneurship, or corporate strategy, there are new opportunities build networks that are greater than the sum of their parts, but also challenges to generating value in an environment of open information exchange.