"Open for Business" - Best Buy's Social Technology Strategy

Best Buy is one retailer that I truly admire and for a very simple reason:
They're really innovative, bold and quick to execute on their ideas, without being afraid of making mistakes. Just to name a few of their pioneering initiatives: Geek Squad, Multi Channel Retailing, ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment), Store-wise Profiling... they surely have come up with some of best ideas in the Retailing world.

On the same lines, check them out now discussing their "Social Media Strategy" on a Youtube Video: "Open for Business" - Best Buy Social Technology Strategy.

Seeing this, I can easily say they are miles ahead of anybody else in the Retailing World. And what is impressive is their philosophy behind it, nicely summarized in this Article here: Open for Social Business by Bant Breen. 

It says this about Best Buy:
Going forward, a key characteristic for successful business formation and development will be how a company flips over the sign on the door and shows itself to be open for social business.
Some Companies (like Best Buy) open access to management. Best Buy's CMO Barry Judge shares his thoughts, addresses customer ideas, involves customers on business activities and informs on company happenings of note on his blog www.barryjudge.com. One recent action of note was Judge's choice this past summer to invite his blog readers to participate in writing the job description for the Senior Manager, Emerging Media Marketing post. Socially open leaders are willing to be led and advised on the best solutions and the right path to take. Before it was CEO knows best, and now it's let's listen to my employees, listen to my customer, my detractors and my fans. In such a model, managers act as powerful filters of concepts, instead of innovation agents themselves.

When will Indian Retail get here? They ought to know that these initiatives are possible in real-time and can be executed in parallel with their "Brick-and-Mortar Plans" - Today.