Growth of online business intelligence

July 9, 2009 Brian Mackie Leave a Comment

Forbes Insights and Google have paired up to produce an interesting study, “The Rise of the Digital C-Suite”, examining how younger generations of executives (the CEOs of tomorrow!) are increasingly using the Internet as a key source of business intelligence.

Some of the findings that really seem to stand out, especially as this is a trend that is likely to keeping on growing, are:

• The Internet is the most valuable resource for executives for gathering business information, outstripping at-work contacts, personal networks, trade publications, etc. In fact, 74% of respondents rated the Internet as very valuable (5 on a 5-point scale).
• During work hours, 70% of executives prefer to read “traditional print media” online rather than in print (30%), and 69% prefer to access “traditional broadcast media” online rather than over the air.
• Executives under age 40 (which the report calls “Generation Netscape”) are by far the most likely to engage with emerging Internet technologies:

65% of under-40 executives maintain a work-related blog weekly or more frequently. That figure is 41% for 40 to 49-year-olds and 10% for those above 50 years.

65% of the under-40 executives contribute to or read Twitter at least weekly. That drops to 44% for 40 to 49-year-olds and just 7% for those who are over 50 years old.

Certainly shows that executives are readily embracing the Internet and happy to evolve with it, as social media and other emerging technologies become ever more salient.

Filed under: aggregation,enterprise products,media monitoring,news,search,Web trends