His interests were to solely help the customer… but after reading Ron Amundson’s comments above here… you can see how a “slippery slope” can be viewed from inside a very large 20th century corporation.

People fear the unknown… and when someone is being a social media renegade outside of the normal channels of influence… Bob’s company got spooked.

Bob needs to work for an innovative company… and get out of the early 20th century one.

Good luck Bob.

There are regulatory hurdles for sure to say nothing of liability issues plus a plain old PR mess within the local ag community. The average Joe is likely to be non to happy to learn that the field he passes on a daily basis is actually some type of GMO corn used in the realm of infectious disease pharmacology, whether it be curative or weapons grade is less of an issue that it exists at all in his neighborhood. Its one of the reasons biotech crops and associated info is held very close irrespective of intellectual property issues, as its a PR nightmare waiting to happen.

Then add in it being an F500 company, and its likely there is a huge after sales support infrastructure, likely involving a multitude of third parties. It does not impress third party support at all when a customer has insider information that they themselves are not privy too.

All of these things combined point to the need for centralized message control, and what might have started out as something very positive and forward looking, ie the forum, made for a ton of upset throughout other parts of the organization, whether it be regulatory, pr, third party support, legal, etc, The end result, it got shut down while they try to see how social media could work (likely a long term decision process as it impacts so much of the org), and no one bothered to explain to Bob what the system wide ramifications were (likely being a large entity, few folks could see the system issues as a whole).

He sounds like a real go-getter employee, and had he understood what the issues were, he likely would have amended his approach well before getting in trouble with his superiors. (Yep, I’ve had Bob style guys working for me in the past and have had to reign them in a bit. A full explanation goes a long way in such matters). Ultimately though, he was pushing the limits, and without some type of approval, even an informal skunkworks style, that can backfire pretty fast in a large org.

This is all too familiar. Bob could really be any of us. Bob should consider showing his boss and other folks transcripts of his talks, and these posts… but it is entirely possible the writing is on the wall. It’s sad, because they’re going after a guy who wants to do the right thing for the company and the customers.

Ultimately, perhaps should probably consider shaking the dust off his feet and going to work for the competition.