I agree with you, social connections make a big difference, perhaps even more so in start-ups — if I can’t trust your organisation it goes a long way if I can trust you.

Your comments regarding the team work and collaboration culture are interesting — this kind of culture is exactly how we try and operate internally and with our clients. Perhaps this is one reason why I keep coming back to the topic and my desire to have start-ups be willing to work with Enterprises, because I know we could get real value out of some of the fantastic tools emerging.

The success of the business relationship depends on social connections as much as it does on technology.

In our experience at Attensa, we’re finding that the enterprises who are looking at social networking technologies behind the firewall, tend to have corporate cultures driven by collaboration and team work. The technology and applications are new to everyone involved and there is great give and take (ok…mostly give on the startup side) to meet the customer demands. The upside is the resulting deal (most companies are frugal and fair - and that’s a step up from cheap) and the rapid evolution of the product based on meeting the demanding real world requirements shaped by creating new applications for new ways of doing business.