If I had to distill into a single theme the unprecedented power disruptive technologies have given us in the 21st century, it would be the power to connect.

Ever-more powerful wired and wireless communication technologies (e.g., IPv6, WiMax, WiFi, NFC, GPS, UWB, SDR), combined with ever-more powerful and easy-to-use social Web 2.O. and new media development and distribution tools, underpin our newfound ability to connect instantly. We can now connect with people – people we know, people we used to know, people we want to know, potential collaborators, customers, anyone – and information – information about people, places, things, actions and transactions – at any time, from anywhere in the world. As Mark Zuckerberg put it in 2006 on turning down the $1 billion offer Yahoo made for Facebook, which he launched from his Harvard dorm room in 2004, how many times in your life do you have a chance to fundamentally change the way people communicate?

The now-familiar term “social networking” doesn’t begin to do justice to the capability first used by the net generation to keep up with friends, as its collaborative possibilities are now being leveraged for serious work by major corporations.

Here at CSC, WikonnecT is one prominent example.

Just recognized with CSC’s highest honor, the Chairman’s Award for Excellence, WikonnecT is an enterprise application that joins the CSC Property & Casualty product development team and more than 5,000 members representing 368 P&C and general insurance companies into one application lifecycle management community. Linked to customers by WikonnecT’s more than 100 active message boards, 41 community spaces, and 30 blogs, the CSC P&C team rapidly logs and manages issues, be they bugs or requests for enhancements, moving them to work items; prioritizing the work items; and adding the work items to projects, where they are scheduled, completed and released. Though not exactly a social network per se, Wikonnect harnesses social (collaborative) power in a big way. WikonnecT is an agile open source software product development community for CSC and its industry clients, resulting in continuous small-dose improvements based on customer demand.

WikonnecT is deserving of the Chairman’s Award not only because of its proven record of improving quality and reducing costs and delays in servicing the P&C industry, but because it serves as a valuable new disruptive delivery model for all CSC areas and other companies to adopt.

Imaginatik is another way we CSC’ers connect. Imaginatik is an ideation platform we use internally to gather and promote the best ideas from among our over 90,000 employees worldwide. An ideation event is planned for a particular topic, where ideas are proffered, filtered, rated, prioritize, budgeted and executed. We recently held an event, called CSC & Green, on how we might make CSC more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly, and develop our internal solutions into an offering to help our clients do the same. The CSC & Green initiative was so successful, a CSC Green Way Board was established to steer CSC’s green strategy into action; to provide a forum for incubating, vetting and sharing green activities around the world; and to exemplify, and therefore encourage, a collaborative and proactive culture.

In various ways, CSC connects on a regular basis with the best minds throughout the company, our partner companies and our customer base.

We connect. How do you connect?