Ten Reasons Your Corporate Social Network Should be an Innovation Social Network

by Matthew Greeley

1. Adoption - There is no doubt online communities are valuable and powerful, but there is no value if your community is an empty dance floor. Generic communities based on generic tools, often have no stated purpose and employees or customers don't know why they should go there. Idea Portals are a proven way to get very rapid uptake because there is something in it for the end user. Either participating in the product direction or cutting costs instead of headcount...there's an obvious 'What's in it for me?' and that drives rapid adoption out of the gate.


2. ROI - In today's environment the bean counters are holding the purse strings pretty tightly. So a technology looking for a problem is dead on arrival. However with Innovation we are often talking to our customers about Millions, Hundreds of Millions and Billions of dollars. By connecting the benefits of social networking with the innovation process the ROI is obvious, immediate, quantifiable and large.


3. Innovation is a Social Activity - and can not be managed or automated with older transaction-or workflow-based enterprise software. By allowing individuals to interact with Innovation Management and Measurement is the first true killer app of the social software revolution.


4. Important Stuff Falls Through the Cracks with Horizontal Communities and Platforms - Like stock market bubbles, this is a lesson that has be re-learned with every generation. The instinct to build a one-size-fits-all solution to "capture more of the market" almost always leads to failure. Vendors that focus on specific niches, sub-categories, roles, functions, jobs and even specific tasks as customer is trying to get done - deliver more value, and win out in the end. If your social networking platform is generic, beware, you may be fighting with one hand tied behind your back.


5. Your Company May be Trying to Create a "Culture of Innovation" - Right Now! - Sit in on an executive meeting and the topic of innovation is likely to come up many times. By tying the roll-out of an internal social networking platform to the innovation process you ensure you are aligned with the goals of the company and your budget is less likely to be cut.


6. It's Fun! - How would you like to see all the best ideas your group, department or company has to offer? And all the innovative projects people are working on? By working on these systems, you literally get to see the future of the company as it takes shape.


7. Silo Busting is More Important to Innovation than Anything Else the Company Does - Social Networks naturally break down silos, increase communication and enable ad hoc relationships to form... while that can be helpful in areas such as customer support, it is EXACTLY what is needed in corporate innovation, where the current organizational structure often the culprit stifling creativity and collaboration. Innovation is the killer app for this new paradigm.


8. Innovation Data HAS to be Controlled by the Company - As employees proactively reach for consumer Web 2.0 tools to make their job easier with out approval from the IT department, dangerous data-ownership issues arise quickly. A seemingly harmless employee- or customer user- group setup on facebook can spring a leak in your intellectual property regime. Do you really want the intellectual property rights of your company's latest ideas to be subject to facebook's latest terms of service? Saavy CIO's will be ahead of the curve to set standards for where these types of communities can reside.


9. Inter-Company Collaboration - Many innovation initiatives involve customers, partners or suppliers. An online social network is a great way to have 'facetime' and maintain relationships when you don't see those people every day.


10. It's easy to get started - You don't need to establish an enterprise wide roll-out strategy, to run a group or product-focused brainstorm. If you are hearing "Innovate in a Recession" or "Do More with Less" you can launch your first Innovation Community in a few hours.

Thanks for listening, I'd love to hear your perspective on this. Until next time, Keep Innovating...


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Matthew Greeley is Founder and CEO of Brightidea, the global leader in On-Demand Innovation Management software. Prior to founding Brightidea, Matthew consulted for Wrenchead.com, helping them raise over $100 million in venture funding. Follow him on twitter @brightidea.

Why a Networking Culture Is Important

by Stefan Lindegaard

The reason for creating a networking culture is obvious once you look at the current and future direction of innovation. Let's start by disposing of the myth of the lone genius (the Thomas Edisons and the Alexander Graham Bells of yesteryear) arriving at a breakthrough innovation on his/her own.

This model wasn't true then, and even if it were, it simply does not hold true in today's complex business organizations. Technology and the challenges that must be solved have become so complex that many, perhaps even most, companies can no longer rely solely on their own internal innovation geniuses, no matter how brilliant those people may be.

Innovation is increasingly about having groups of people come together to leverage their diverse talents and expertise to solve multi-faceted challenges that cross multiple disciplines. To make this happen within your organization, and beyond as you move toward open innovation, requires a networking culture that is designed, supported, and modeled by your company's leaders.

Even organizations that are not ready to fully embrace open innovation are finding that employees' mindsets about networking must be stretched as more companies deploy internal R & D functions outside the corporate headquarters and around the world.

Employees start to wonder who should do innovation and where it should take place. Although this is positive, success in such situations depends heavily on the ability of the employees to initiate, solidify, and leverage external relationships.

Another key motivation for setting up networking initiatives is based on the simple fact that the knowledge of any company is inside the heads of the employees. Discovering and distributing this knowledge has always been a challenge, and now, more than ever, the ability to leverage a company's collective knowledge and experience through virtual and face-to-face networks and communities is critical to innovation.

Furthermore, establishing the ability to bring knowledge and potential new innovation insights in from external sources demands a strong networking culture supported and modeled from the top.

In one of my next posts, I will give some advice on how to create a networking culture.

Related Article:

• Tapping the Network to Facilitate Innovation

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Innovating to Compete

by Drew Boyd

Innovating is a form of competitive behavior. When we innovate, we compete with someone or something. We innovate to survive. We innovate for glory. We innovate to win. Leaders of organizations need to understand and leverage this competitive aspect of innovation to embed it into the organization.

Innovating to compete occurs at many levels:

• At the national level, governments compete with other nations for trade, economic power, and global political influence.


• At the municipal level, cities compete aggressively to attract investment, firms, and employees to stimulate jobs and economic growth.


• At the industry level, competition among sectors is fierce. Industries want to attract customers, investment, talent, and favorable government treatment.


• At the company level, firms want to be more competitive by differentiating themselves in the marketplace.


• At the business unit level, franchises compete with one another for budget resources and manpower.


• At the individual level, peer rivals compete with each other for promotion and bonuses.


• At the personal level, we compete with ourselves to achieve a new "personal best" when overcoming challenges.

Here are suggestions of what leaders can do to embrace competition and drive innovation:

1. National: Governments need to create a National Innovation Policy. The policy should outline a vision, identify opportunities, create guidelines for investment, coordinate partnerships, and nurture the development of human talent. Here is an excellent example of an innovation policy from the Czech Republic. Countries that pursue these policies will thrive.


2. Municipal: Cities compete just as nations do. At the city level, government leaders can further the state of innovation by coordinating activities between firms, entrepreneurs, venture funds, and universities. Many cities spark innovation by sponsoring innovation contests.


3. Industry: To be more innovative, firms within the same industry need to band together and form trade groups to facilitate and coordinate programs that sustain the vitality of the industry. Trade groups can no longer focus just on government lobbying. They need a coordinated approach to technology transfer and scientific investment. They need to address the systemic flaws in their industry that stifle growth.


4. Firm: Companies need to train their employees how to innovate using systematic tools and processes. Firms need to "innovate on demand" and maintain a healthy flow of new projects into the pipeline. Most importantly, innovation strategy must be pursued within the context of competitive strategy.


5. Business Unit: The business unit is where innovation happens. Innovation is a team sport, and franchise leaders need to deploy teams using facilitated workshops to create new products and services. Leaders should allocate resources disproportionately to those who systematically produce new pipeline concepts...organically.


6. Individual: People succeed through innovation. An employee's value and vitality is sustained by the ability to generate novel ideas day in and day out. People need to see innovation as a skill, not a gift, that can be learned through university or corporate training programs.


7. Self: At this level, it starts with a simple question: "Am I an innovator?" Says Steve Banhegyi, "Your self image controls your level of personal innovation. Your ability to innovate rests largely on who you think you are. You are as innovative as your narrative allows you to be."

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Growing a Garden of Innovation

"Companies are actually living organisms, not machines. We keep bringing in mechanics, when what we need are gardeners." - Peter Senge


by Mitch Ditkoff

Sustainable innovation, the endless effort to find a better way, cannot be achieved by robotically lining up best practices and imitating them. The real catalyzing agent for renewable innovation is the ground from which these best practices spring - the confluence of purpose, people, and processes better known as culture.

From where will the next wave of groundbreaking innovation come?

Not from organizations mechanically mimicking each other's best practices, but from organizations with the authentic commitment to take their stand on ground that has been cultivated for breakthrough.

If you check the contents of the most popular books on innovation, the same topics show up again and again: strategy, systems, process, leadership, customer focus, risk, speed to market, prototyping, metrics, mass collaboration, market intelligence, technology, and creative thinking.

Clearly, all of these topics are important. But none of them can take root in an organization without one fundamental element being in place - a consciously created culture of innovation.

Is such a culture simple to create? Yes. Is it easy? No. And the reason why it is not easy is because the ground of most organizations is hard, untilled, and in major need of clearing.

The metaphor that most clearly conveys the effort required is creating a garden.

To experienced gardeners, the steps needed to create a garden are simple. To the inexperienced gardener, it is a tangle of complexity.

Yes, gardening demands sustained and methodical effort. And yes, sweating comes with the territory. But getting a yield - something to harvest - is a fundamentally straightforward task.

If your company is clear about the effort required, creating a culture of innovation (lets just call it a garden of innovation) is simply a matter of taking the time to execute each step thoroughly 0- in the time honored way gardeners have always practiced their craft.


1. WHET THE APPETITE

If you are serious about being a gardener of innovation, the first thing you will need is hunger - a real appetite for results.

Growing a garden takes sustained effort. It is hard work - most of it unglamorous and unappreciated. Hunger for a yield is the serious gardener's real motivator. Yes, the serious gardener likes being outdoors and, yes, the serious gardener likes getting exercise, but the ultimate product of his/her labors - the harvest - is what it is all about.

Without this level of commitment, the gardening effort remains only a hobby and does not have the roll up your sleeves and get dirty quality so essential to reaping a result.

If your workforce has no appetite for innovation, you will need to find a way to whet it. If you choose not to, people will sit idly by, waiting for R&D, senior leadership, or the tooth fairy to lead the charge. And while they may talk about growth, shovels, and the need for bulk purchase of mulch, talk will not put food on the table.

Fortunately, somewhere, deep inside everyone in your organization is the impulse to create. This impulse is innate. Your task is to awaken this impulse and help people own the effort to innovate. If they do not own the effort, the only thing you will be eating at harvest time will be your own words. (P.S.: Winter is on the way.)


2. STAKE and PREPARE THE GROUND

Amateur gardeners, fueled by visions of ripe tomatoes, have a tendency to plant before they are really ready. Unclear about how large a garden they can sustain, unsure about what is needed to prepare the ground, unable to resist the impulse for a quick yield, they rush in willy nilly.

The result? Lots of wasted effort and the kind of sweating that signifies almost nothing. The same holds true for organizations who claim they want a culture of innovation.

The antidote is a simple, two step process (though the description of the process is much simpler than the execution).

First, an organization needs to get clear about the scope of the effort they want to make. It needs to stake its territory or, more precisely, define the fields in which it wants to innovate. (If it tries to innovate everywhere, all the time, it will only deplete its resources and exhaust its workforce.)

Secondly, it needs to prepare the ground for planting.

This task includes removing obstacles that will interfere with growth, as well as enriching the fertility of the soil. Weekend gardeners cringe at this kind of preparatory effort. It does not feel like fun and there is nothing immediately to show for it. But without this effort there will be no foundation - no ground - for future success.


3. FIND THE SEEDS

You can have ample space to plant a garden. You can know exactly where that ample space is. And you can have lots of fertile soil in this ample space. But unless you have healthy seeds to plant, space is all you will ever have.

If you want a garden of innovation, you need seeds. Not just one kind of seed, but many. Indeed, the more varied seeds you have, the greater your chances for an interesting yield.

In the realm of innovation, ideas are the seeds. All innovation begins with an idea. Ideas are the fuzzy front end of the innovation process - the alpha and omega of new growth. No ideas, no innovation. Its that simple.

The big question, then, is this: Where will your company get its new ideas? Is there an existing process? And if so, is this process working? Can you count on your workforce to deliver high quality, game changing ideas? Or is there something else you need to be doing in order to tap their brilliance?


4. PLANT THE SEEDS

While it is true that some seeds, spontaneously carried by the wind and landing on fertile soil, find a way to plant themselves, most gardens require that seeds be planted in a more dependable way.

If your company is sincere about its intention to create a culture of innovation, it will need to refine its seed planting process. More specifically, it will need to establish a more effective way for the carriers of seeds to increase the odds of those seeds taking root.

Yes, aspiring innovators will need to become more adept at pitching/planting their ideas. But at the same time, the people to whom new ideas are being pitched will need to become more receptive to the possibility that something new is worthy of taking root.

Having a silo of healthy seeds is a good start, but ultimately those seeds need to be planted - and they need to be planted in a way that will radically increase the odds of them growing into seedlings.


5. FENCE THE GARDEN

If you have ever planted a garden, you have experienced the phenomenon of uninvited predators showing up at all hours to devour your tender, young seedlings. Deer, raccoons, moles, rabbits, and a host of other unidentifiable varmints seem to have no other mission in life but to downsize your dreams of winning the state fair or, at the very least, eliminate all possibility of you having fresh lettuce for dinner. It comes with the territory. And it will continue to come with the territory unless you fence your garden.

Organizations of all shapes and sizes experience the same phenomenon.

Promising new business growth ideas - the tasty indicators of breakthrough innovation - are routinely devoured by ravenous corporate naysayers. That is, unless the organization finds a way to protect their aspiring innovators.

Your role, as a gardener of innovation, is to fence your garden and protect your people from the overly acidic scrutiny, doubt, and premature evaluation of predominantly left brained, metric driven, analytical inhibitors of innovation. It can be done. It must be done. And you are the one to champion the process.


6. TEND NEW GROWTH

Conceiving a garden is relatively easy. It requires no special skills, discipline, or education. Anyone can do it. Indeed, anyone does do it every single Spring and Summer. Getting a harvest, however, is an entirely different matter. It is not so easy - and unlike conception, requires skill, discipline, resources, and the ability to learn on the job.

In the same way, conceiving new ideas is relatively easy. It happens every day of the year to millions of people. Bringing them to fruition is not so easy. Along the way, they get neglected, mishandled, and trampled on. What starts out as a brilliant new possibility, often shrivels on the vine. Most organizations have no conscious process for nurturing the growth of new ideas.

As a result, many powerful, new ideas never mature.

They may break new ground, but they do not necessarily flower and bear fruit. The good news? It does not have to be this way. With the right kind of sustained effort, gardeners of innovation can dramatically increase the odds of exciting new ideas becoming part of the harvest and making it to market.


7. THIN and TRANSPLANT

Inexperienced gardeners, intoxicated by their need for a big harvest and overcompensating for their fear of having nothing to show for their efforts, tend to plant too many seeds too close together. Their fear usually dissipates in a few weeks when the first sprouts emerge, but then another challenge surfaces - what to do with the apparent bounty of new growth?

While the profusion of greenery certainly looks good to the untrained eye, the reality is different. New seedlings start competing with each other for water and nutrients. Roots entangle. Left unaddressed, the results are disappointing - row after row of stunted, scraggly plants.

Savvy gardeners respond quickly, thinning out new growth to make room for a select number of the healthiest plants to flourish.

Really savvy gardeners go one step further - transplanting the healthiest of the thinned out plants to new, roomier locations.

Organizations trying to raise the bar for innovation face the same challenge. Intoxicated by their need for impressive growth (and wanting to involve as many employees as possible in the process), they get overwhelmed by a profusion of ideas and initiate too many projects - ideas and projects that end up competing for the same, finite resources.

The result? Scraggly, stunted, and undeveloped ventures.

The antidote? A clear strategy for how their organization will evaluate, select, and fund new initiatives - along with a process for identifying promising new growth to be transplanted for future development.


8. CELEBRATE THE HARVEST

All cultures around the world have a holiday, ritual, or ceremony dedicated to expressing gratitude for the bounty of the harvest. In their bones, they understand the purpose, power, and privilege of giving thanks. Their recent harvest may have fed the body, but the collective acknowledgment of the harvest feeds the soul, strengthening everyones resolve to begin the growing process again the next season.

Corporate cultures could learn a lesson or two from this age old practice.

Historically, organizations have been severely lacking when the time comes to acknowledge the harvest and the people whose efforts were essential to manifesting that harvest. The endless demand for output drives most business leaders to conclude that acknowledging successes is a waste of time - a luxury no bottom line watching organization could afford. Somehow, deep within the collective psyche of senior leaders, lurks the fear that celebrating successes will invariably lead to a fat and lazy workforce.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

People flourish when their efforts are acknowledged - not only individually, but as an entire workforce. If you are serious about establishing a sustainable culture of innovation, remember to take the time to acknowledge your gardeners. For their effort. For their resilience. For their collaboration. And for whatever harvest they are able to manifest.

Food for thought?


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Mitch Ditkoff is the Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions and the author of "Awake at the Wheel", as well as the very popular Heart of Innovation blog.

Open Innovation Side Effects

by Stefan Lindegaard

Open innovation will not only lead to new ways of making innovation happen. Innovation leaders and their executives will also experience side effects. I think most of these effects will be positive, but some will be mixed or perhaps even negative.

As innovation leaders and their executives implement open innovation practices, they can just as well start figuring out how to deal with side effects of open innovation such as described below:

• Open innovation is very much about managing change. If a company can handle the change process related to implementing open innovation, then they have learned valuable lessons that can be used in change management situations. In the current and future business climate, I think everyone should appreciate working in an organization that is agile and prepared for changes.


• Often, the biggest enemy of innovation is the company itself as the company begin to focus more on its needs than the needs of the market. When you begin to innovate with partners, you will see that these partners either focus on their own needs - and then innovation will definitely fail - or you will see that they come together and funnel their resources towards a market need. If the latter happens, then you have a great chance to succeed with innovation. Pressure from external partners can shift awareness from internal needs to market needs and this move can be helpful beyond the innovation process.


• Open innovation can bring along new organizational structures. As open innovation becomes the way to innovate, the functional/divisional or matrix organizational structures as we know today will change - or perhaps even break down. I am not sure what will be next...


• Open innovation will be one of the key drivers in bringing in new types of communication tools into the organization. Think LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Once the initial resistance has been defeated, this can benefit many business functions.


• Customers are one of the first places to look for external input. Although, there are dangers involved in listening to customers when it comes to innovation, the increased focus on customers can lead to better relationships with them. This can change the role of sales and marketing units as they need to get even more involved in innovation.


• At a recent open innovation conference, Cisco said that they are trying to move from a culture of competition to a culture of shared goals. This was by large driven by a desire to make innovation happen with external partners. There is much talk on changing the not-invented-here culture, but perhaps open innovation will drive even more corporate culture change.


• As you work with external partners, you are exposed to other ways of getting things done. You bring diversed thinking into the organization. This can make you consider whether your current practices are good enough, whether you have to adjust these or perhaps even develop new next practices for your organization. An example: You get new perspectives on collaboration. Perhaps this can inspire to better interaction and collaboration between business units.


• Overall creativity as well as overall complexity increase with open innovation. The increased number of actors provides new ways for people to be creative. This can also increase the level of complexity, which is also driven by fact that the organization is no longer itself in control.

Let me know what you think of this and please share your own views.


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Innovation Perspectives - Trend Spotting Collaboration

This is the seventh of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on 'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?'. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Vyoma Kapur

Typically, a corporation would hire a market research or a consulting firm to keep up-to-date with the latest consumer trends. Millward Brown, Iconoculture and Forrester are examples of firms which use sophisticated research techniques to advise their clients on how consumers are behaving today, and how they might behave tomorrow. Whether we are talking about changing media habits, evolving taste buds or the growing popularity of a certain sport, keeping tabs on consumer lifestyles does not happen automatically. Time, effort and capital need to be invested to stay ahead of rapidly changes and adapting business operations accordingly.

However, trend-spotting does not always have to be a function of active, dedicated research. Often, passive observation can result in insightful findings of emerging habits and trends. With an observant eye, anyone can identify and take note of valuable information around him or her in the physical space. With information at our fingertips, we are also equipped to browse through the virtual space of blogs, forums and social networks at our convenience. Such an enormous amount of content can tell us something about every facet of consumer lifestyles. Hence, active observation of social activity is a resource everyone can and should take advantage of when it comes to trend-spotting and understanding emerging behaviors.

This is not to say that casual observations should not be verified or backed up by data. Noticing something is only starting point of successful trend-spotting. Following that, objective and unbiased research needs to be carried out before a particular trend or behavior can be evaluated for business.

Therefore, for an organization to optimize its market research efforts, all its employees should take personal responsibility for trend-spotting and then sharing key observations internally. An internal communication system, where employees can post and discuss observations could be implemented. An open forum would enable everyone in the company to either back a particular observation ("I have noticed that too") or reject it ("I have noticed quite the opposite of that").

Employees could be given incentives in the form of prizes for the "Trend-spotter of the month". The most relevant observations could then be taken to the next level where their implications for business are discussed and further action is taken. Such an effort in open collaboration would facilitate the movement towards more effective and holistic ways of trend-spotting.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?' by clicking the link in this sentence.

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A marketing professional turned entrepreneur, Vyoma avidly supports and practices open innovation. Earlier this year, she founded Colspark LLC (www.colspark.com), a crowdsourcing platform to help companies tap into student talent for ideas and solutions.

Making Your Organization Understand Open Innovation

A Lesson from General Mills

by Stefan Lindegaard

Changing organizational culture is one of the most difficult tasks when it comes to open innovation. What can you do? Well, General Mills gave a great example at the recent CoDev conference. By sending more than 20 people to the conference, they sent a strong signal - internally as well as externally - that they are committed to open innovation.

I really liked this move and thus I did an interview with Mike Antinone, who is Sr. R&D Manager, Connected Innovation in General Mills Worldwide Innovation Network, in order to get a better understanding on this.


What made you decide to send this delegation to CoDev?

We had two main reasons for sending our GWIN team to CoDev this year. The first was really around team building. We have added several new team members as we expand our global innovation entrepreneur program and we wanted to have some time away from the daily demands of the office to foster an added sense of community.

The second area for us was to collectively learn and leverage the insights and best practices of other open innovation leaders represented at the conference and then create a plan of action to determine how we can best incorporate those insights and practices into our group.


What were the objectives?

We feel great about the progress that we have made with our Connected Innovation program, but we also wanted to put some serious thinking into "Next Practices" - those practices that we will need in the future to drive our program ahead and distance ourselves from competitors. We did not want to just go and listen, take notes, have a quick discussion then go back to our daily routine. Our goal was to create tangible action steps that we would incorporate into our development plans for our program.

We began our preparations about six to eight weeks before the conference. We divided the group into four teams with each team being responsible for a given topic. We chose to focus on three key objectives for our company. These were:

1. Driving profitable growth through Connected Innovation


2. Creating and leveraging more successful partnerships


3. Driving Connected Innovation throughout our company

Each team then created a list of questions they wanted answered about how we as innovation entrepreneurs could dramatically impact the three objectives outlined above. Our goal was to collect as many facts as possible.

The fourth team set up a series of networking opportunities, both before and after the conference to provide stimulus for answers to our questions. Some of those networking opportunities included:

• Smaller match-making events at the conference. We prearranged a series of discussions with conference participants. We met during breaks, at lunch, etc. to engage in a dialog about areas we wanted to advance and grow as an organization.


• Utilization of CoDev LinkedIn site. We posted several questions on the LinkedIn site to gain additional insights and make connections


• We also made sure we had prepared germane questions for each of the speakers to ensure we were tapping into their area of expertise.

Our team stayed in Scottsdale an extra day after the conference ended to have a working breakout session to summarize our key findings and to create an action plan going forward. During this session, we created list of "we-should" statements in our breakout sessions that were then reduced to three major areas of focus for each category as we continue to develop our program.


Which lessons have you learned so far?

It was very powerful to have our entire group at such a stimulating event. We had many opportunities to interact with each other, build on what we heard, and engage thought leaders with differing points of view. The conference provided us with a great opportunity to assess our program, consider new elements and chart a course as we continue our Connected Innovation journey.


Conclusion

I am impressed. Such an initiative can anchor open innovation in your company as it provides a great opportunity to build a common language based on what the team learned at the conference. This can really help develop the next practices of open innovation at General Mills.

Can you talk your executives into this kind of commitment?


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Finding Experts In Your Pursuit of Innovation

by Gil Yehuda

I attended a KM conference recently where a speaker remarked on how difficult it was to find experts in his company. He suggested that HR create a database and every employee should declare that they are an expert in something. Then when a manager needs to find an expert for an innovation project, he or she could query the database.

There's more to this story, and I'll share the details in two blog posts that I plan to publish about this conference. But I wanted to take an excursion and talk about expertise locators.

The expert database idea is doomed to fail. It will never be accurate or updated. But the problem of finding experts in your company is real. One would think that there should be a way to organize a list of experts. Databases are the wrong solution (I'll explain why). But what solution would work?

I'm excited about the approach that Aardvark is taking to solve this problem in the consumer space. I think it would translate well to the corporate space too. First let's talk about the mechanics of the solution, then why it is so interesting. When you sign on and set up your profile, you declare the topics that you consider yourself to be an expert in. They list many, and you can add any you want. So far, this seems like a database. But wait. Then you connect your network and set up how large of a network you want to engage with. You can invite people directly, via Facebook, gMail contacts or other means in order to set up your network. Then you specify how far you want your awareness to traverse - e.g. to limit interactions to your friends only, or include their friends in your trust circle. OK - you set it up like you would many other social networking sites. If this was an enterprise vendor - then you'd set it up via active directory so it would know which division you are in, who you report to, etc.

As a participant you can ask questions and answer questions. When you ask a question, you specify the topic, and Aardvark sends the question to those people in your network who said they are experts in that topic. Similarly, you can expect to get asked questions once in a while (you determine how often) about the topics that you said you are an expert in. This participation continues - every so often you get a question, and if you have the time and the answer, you help out. If not, that's OK too. After all, you are helping out your friends or their friends - something that we do all the time.

But many times you'll find that you are not so much of an expert that you think you were. You start getting questions you can't answer. Aardvark will ask you if you want to modify your topics. It does this in a very subtle way. If you decline to answer a question, it just asks - are you busy now (if so it will not bother you for a while) or is this a topic that you don't want to be asked about? Sometimes you get a question about a topic that is similar to one that you said you were an expert in, and Aardvark asks you if you want to include that topic on your list. You can set that up automatically so that it adds topics to your expertise list if you answer questions about them. Your answers get rated "helpful" if they are indeed helpful. There are other features too, it's pretty clever and easy - and I dare say, fun to use.

Most importantly - Aardvark refines your list of topics based on your ability to answer questions. It is better than a static database could ever be.

But the big "aha" about this for me is thinking about a corporate version of Aardvark. Over time your expertise would be recognized based on what you actually know and share - not based on what you once answered in an HR survey. This solves a very challenging business problem with a simple, fun solution.

At this conference I introduced myself as someone who helps companies solve problems by leveraging social software tools and behaviors. Finding experts is a problem. Creating a closed stagnant database is a poor solution to that problem. But creating a dynamic system is a much smarter approach. First of all you get people answering questions - which saves time and money. And secondly, by leveraging social computing tools (and staying away from emails that hide conversations) it becomes clear who the experts really are. Employees might want to answer questions to demonstrate what they are capable of. And administrators can manage the system so that no one person gets too many questions. Let's say you get no more than two questions a week - that's not such a burden. Let's say the answer is "go to the corporate librarian" - OK, that's a good answer too sometimes. But having this kind of system solves a set of business problems that the old database would never solve.

It also solves one other problem - improving knowledge. Let's say I give an answer to a question that is not complete or correct. Then another friend/coworker (who is in the network and is also an expert in the topic) steps in and contributes more to the answer. The person who asked has the benefit of a better answer, and I get the benefit of learning something I didn't know. Next time someone asks I'll know more, or I'll refer the question to my friend who knows this topic better than I do. That's a win all around.

The next question is how to get experts to share their expertise? I'll post the response I gave at the conference - look for it next week on this blog.

Disclosure: I have no relationship with Aardvark and do not know if they plan a corporate edition. I'm just mentioning them because I'm impressed with what I see in their approach.

Editor's Note: Google recently acquired Aardark for $50 million. What will they do with it? I guess we will have to wait and see.


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Gil Yehuda is web strategy consultant at GilYehuda.com who helps organizations leverage Enterprise 2.0 tools and behaviors to meet their business goals. He is a former Forrester analyst and Enterprise Architect.

Ideas Are Core to Enterprise 2.0

by Hutch Carpenter

Brian Solis spoke recently on what the future of social networks will be. Ideas, it turns out. As I wrote on another blog post:


"Solis, leading thinker in the integration of social media and PR, recently spoke on an intriguing concept: ideas connect us more than relationships. The premise of his argument is that ideas are what elicit passion in people. They animate us, and if we find someone with a similar interest in a given idea, we connect."


Then there was this observation by Intel's Enterprise 2.0 lead Laurie Buczek on the only quantifiable value they found in their Enterprise 2.0 efforts:


"Where we did quickly find quantifiable business value during an ideation proof of concept. Ideas that are discovered and turned into action have produced dollarized return of business value."


Both Brian and Laurie are pointing to the unique nature of ideas. Brian talks of ideas as connectors. Laurie talks of ideas being 'discovered'. If Enterprise 2.0 rests on delivering value through collaborative, emergent and social means, ideas are the top basis for leveraging these qualities.

Of course, from a pragmatic, what-do-businesses-care-about perspective, innovation is a top priority.

The top-down, Board-level importance of innovation is not a surprise. As I've seen repeatedly with our enterprise innovation work at Spigit, ideas are an excellent bottom-up basis for Enterprise 2.0.


Ideas Are Me

Perhaps the most important aspect of social is the ability to express what you're thinking. Ideas fit this dynamic quite well. Ideas are...

• Expressions of my creativity, ingenuity and problem-solving

Inside companies, we see things that we know can be improved. We see opportunities that need to be explored. We know a good answer for a particular challenge put forth by managers.

Every time you have an idea, a bit of you bonds to it. Your way of thinking, your understanding of context, the experiences you've had, the expertise you bring to bear, the work aspirations you have.

Ideas can be small, giving you satisfaction in fixing something obvious to you. They can be big, offering the possibility of work that elicits your passions.

This is powerful stuff. It is a unique intersection of something that helps the company with something that personally satisfies you.


Ideas Are the Basis for Finding Like-Minded Colleagues

When I post an idea, I create the basis for finding others. That because when I post an idea, I'm making...

• A call for your interest

Think about that. The act of publishing an idea is a broadcast across the organization. It's a tentative query to see who else feels the same way. Or if not the same way, who has an interest that overlaps mine.

This is unique to ideas. Ideas are potential. They are a change from the status quo. There are others who share at least some aspect of your idea. In large, distributed organizations, where are these people?!!

My idea is my call to form my own virtual team, to see who can help me accomplish something of value to me and the organization. I contrast this with other types of activities one might do under the Enterprise 2.0 umbrella: status updates, project tasks, writing a common document, adding content to knowledge wiki. Those aren't calls to form virtual teams.

Ideas have a unique quality in team and community forming, consistent with the emergent nature of Enterprise 2.0.


Ideas Are Social Objects

A key consideration of any framework for interaction is, "what are we going to talk about?" Within the enterprise environment, an idea is...

• A social object for our interaction

The concept of social objects is powerful. It illuminates the core basis for why two or more people interact. They share an interest in some thing. We are complex beings, with multiple different interests. We won't ever match up with someone else exactly in terms of what animates. But social objects allow a sort of miniature Venn Diagram of our common interests to flourish.

Hugh MacLeod pragmatically notes, "The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else."

Leading designer Joshua Porter, also known as Bokardo. In his post, Finding Innovation in Design, he describes the AOF method of social experience design:

• A = activity you want to support
  
• O = social objects that define the activity
  
• F = features are actions people take upon social objects

You build social-oriented sites around a core set of objects and activities which attract people.

Ideas, because they represent something new, something that can affect your daily work, are terrific social objects. An idea is a proposal, and a natural basis for interacting. Contrast this with posting a document, or a page of knowledge, or a status update. Those are lower wattage, more ephemeral social objects.


Ideas Become Projects

Ideas get attention. They propose to change things, and they will need work. An idea is...

• The basis of a future project for us

What makes ideas so powerful is they are changes to the status quo. This means:

• They're going to affect people's daily work
  
• They require some work to make happen

This imbue ideas with a certain vitality. It gives them a power not seen with with other types of social computing activities, save projects themselves.

Another important aspect is that ideas will elicit passion in certain users, those we talked about earlier. If there is a chance to become part of a project team working on the idea, that is exciting. Consider times in your life you got to be part of a team, working on something that excited you.

Ideas have these qualities: possibilities, change to work routines, chance to be part of an exciting initiative. Projects have a certain aspirational quality for us employees, and ideas tap this aspect well.

There are many types of content and activities - social objects - that are part of a social computing initiative. I'd argue ideas, for a host of reasons, should be considered top amongst those social objects.


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Hutch Carpenter is the Vice President of Product at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Reputation and Innovation

by Drew Boyd

Sustainable innovation requires structured methods. But it also requires collaboration and information sharing among colleagues. Innovation is a team sport - groups produce better results than the lone genius. So how do you create a more favorable context for collaboration and sharing in your business unit?

Reputation is what matters. The degree to which a technical worker will share information with a colleague depends on that colleague's reputation for returning the favor. The rule of reciprocity states that people give back to those in the form they have received from others. It is a social rule taught by every human society to its members - you give back to those who have given to you. But the key is: to make the first move. You have to be seen as someone who gives and shares information with others, and has a reputation for returning the favor when others give to you.

Dr. Prescott Ensign and Dr. Louis Hebert investigated this phenomena by surveying more than 200 pharmaceutical scientists working in the R&D operations of 63 different companies in Canada and the United States. They found that technical workers often hold critical information privately without fear of sanction or consequence. What motivates them to share with others is when they see the other person as likely to give back - the other person has a well-deserved reputation for giving information back to the other person that is meaningful. The complete results and analysis of the study are described in the book "Knowledge Sharing Among Scientists."

Here are the key findings (from Sloan Management Review, Winter 2010, Vol. 51 No. 2, pp 79-81):

• Past behavior by individual scientists, and the groups they belong to, influences whether knowledge is shared.


• Longer duration of interaction positively influences the flow of information.


• Quality matters more than quantity of information shared.


• Pre-existing personal and professional relationships increased the likelihood of knowledge sharing.


• Individuals who were already obliged to another person were less likely to be helped by that person that someone who was less obligated, not obligated or owed a favor.

Organizations who want to be more innovative need to do two things. First is co-location of knowledge workers and team building. Putting people in close proximity to one another and getting them to socialize will make them more likely to have the day-to-day, random encounters where they can share critical tidbits of knowledge and information. The second is training. Companies are recognizing a key gap in the skills of influence. People can be trained how to systematically and ethically influence and align their co-workers. Six universal principles of persuasion such as Reciprocity are well-described by Dr. Robert Cialdini in his book, "Influence: Science and Practice." Companies are even conducting formal training courses in the practice of influence to make their knowledge workers more effective.

For individual innovators:

• Make the first move. Share critical information with others even if they have not given anything to you. Make sure the information is meaningful and customized to that specific individual so that they feel especially obligated to return the favor.


• When you receive information from others, reciprocate in kind. Build a reputation as a person who is willing to give back to others who give to you.


• Develop informal social relationships and networks within - and outside - your work group.


• Learn the principles of influence and how to deploy them in the workplace and increase the level of knowledge and sharing.

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Small Business Needs Social Software

by Hutch Carpenter

A general observation of collaborative work is this:


"The larger and more diverse are your personal network of contacts, the higher the quality of your ideas and project work."


In the enterprise market, the opportunity being seized by companies is to better connect employees. The sheer size of these firms makes it obvious that they are not optimizing collaborative activities. Social software plays an important role in helping that. SunGard's CEO has a great take on this issue in the New York Times.

But what about small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs)? Do they have issues with maintaining connections? We'll tackle that issue in a second. First, however...

The Challenge of Growth: Traditional Collaboration Modes Don't Scale

When a small company starts out, it's rather easy to stay on top of what colleagues are doing. There just aren't too many of them. You easily banter, bounce ideas off one another and contribute your part to projects.

It's natural human interactions.

The problem is that small businesses continue to rely exclusively on the tried-and-true methods of collaborative work as they grow. Keep on with the emails, the desk meetings, the lunches. Sure, it's fun to keep with those who sit essentially in your visual perimeter. But it means you're missing out on a lot of valuable ideas and insight from colleagues.

The graphic below shows the challenge of scale in collaborative work:



The easy interactions of old are now replaced by the departmental exchanges, and the daily work inherent in those micro environments. The small firm mentality that employees enjoyed with fewer employees is no longer applicable as the company expands.

Yet as research has shown, employees who are able to break out of departmental silos and leverage a diversity of connections perform better in terms of innovation.

So how does this fit SMBs?

Metcalfe's Law Hits Dunbar's Number

Metcalfe's Law. Initially addressing fax machines, it speaks to the value of networks. Specifically:


"The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected participants."


For those who study the value of information networks, this law makes sense. You increase your number of information sources. And all things being equal, the person with greater information has a decided advantage in term of:

• Awareness of key issues
  
• Long tail knowledge of different issues
  
• Access to information that will solidify an idea
  
• Identification of colleagues who can help advance an idea or a project
  
• Different points of view and information that make up for the knowledge limitations we all have

Every new connection inside a company increases these information advantages, for all members of the network. The problem occurs when employees are only using traditional methods for making and accessing these connections: email, desk conversations, departmental meetings.

They run into Dunbar's Number. I use Dunbar's Number here as a heuristic, describing the mental limit we each have to stay in top of what others are working on. With traditional means of engaging in collaborative work, the Metcalfe's Law advantages of information diversity are limited by our Dunbar's Number ability to keep up with the new connections.

This graph describes the issue, and SMBs' opportunity:



Up to a certain point, employees can stay on top of what their colleagues are working on, and interact relatively easily. Is this up to 150 employees? Maybe. As Danah Boyd noted about Dunbar's Number:


"He found that the MAXIMUM number of people that a person could keep up with socially at any given time, gossip maintenance, was 150. This doesn't mean that people don't have 150 people in their social network, but that they only keep tabs on 150 people max at any given point."


150 is a maximum number. Meaning for many of us it's less. And I'd argue, in a work context, where we're busy delivering on the daily tasks that define our jobs, it's an even lower theoretical maximum.

Which means at some point, small businesses begin to lose out on those information advantages when they rely only on traditional collaborative work modes. In the graph above, that's the part of the graph where Dunbar's Number crosses over Metcalfe's Law.

Call it the Metcalfe's Law Opportunity Gap.

At that point, companies need to look at systems that allow employees to share and filter information, and to interact with others outside their daily sphere of contacts. To access non-redundant information and points of view.

This is a problem well-known to large organizations. It also applies to SMBs as well. It's why they need social software at a certain point in their growth trajectory.

This is an important issue for innovation. So many of these employees will have front line customer and supplier experience, and ideas for the business. But visibility on these ideas will get harder and harder as the firm grows.


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Hutch Carpenter is the Vice President of Product at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Innovation Perspectives - Innovating a Health Care Fix

This is the seventh of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on 'What product or sector is in desperate need of innovation?'. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Mark Roser

In looking across various sectors the area of healthcare stands out as a particular opportunity for innovation. And, regardless which side one takes politically, there is no doubt a surplus of opportunities for improvement. In the US, government healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid) together with private healthcare account for a significant percentage of GDP.

As professionals involved in open innovation, readers of this blog will no doubt bring a valued perspective on how we can deliver innovation in this space. Whether we work in the healthcare field or are simply consumers of healthcare, the lessons that we learn from open innovation collaboration are intrinsically required in innovating the future of healthcare.

Each health transaction is touched by a multitude of stakeholders:

• Patients and their network - family members, caregivers, friends, etc.
  
• Doctors (generalists and specialists) and their network - health technicians, clerical staff, reimbursement specialists representing the doctor, professional societies, etc.
  
• Health institutions (hospital, medical center, practice, etc) and their network - administrators, IT specialists, physical plant & facilities management, etc.
  
• Pharmacies and their network - pharmacist, pharmacists assistants, retail pharmacy operators, etc.
  
• Pharmaceutical companies and their network - scientists, clinical experts, marketers, etc.
  
• Payers (insurance companies or government body such as Medicare Medicaid) and their network - claims specialists, underwriters, administrators, customer service experts, etc.
  
• Primary researchers (who develop new cures) - NIH, Universities, entrepreneurs, etc.
  
• Educators - internet websites, magazines, professional development & continuing education, etc.
  
• Regulators - FDA, etc.
  
• Media - TV news, magazines, etc.

Classically, there has been a variety of silos that keep these parties separated. The silos were further reinforced because each silo had its own vocabulary and position within a cultural hierarchy.

As specialists in open innovation, we can be helpful by demonstrating ways in which collaborative efforts can be realized. Collaboration is quite a challenge; it requires that each of us - wherever we fit in the overall network - has a responsibility for being sufficiently self-aware that our universe is much bigger than our immediate circle. We have a responsibility to learn the language of the networks around us and understand that the current relationships that exist between silos are not set in stone, but rather a reflection of our history. We can see the weaknesses in the current system and instead of finding fault, we can find ways to bring people together.

By behaving in small ways, and demonstrating collaboration we become the change that we wish to see.

Regardless of your political views on healthcare, there is opportunity for us each to help.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'What product or sector is in desperate need of innovation?' by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Mark Roser has been working with companies internationally for over 12 years to identify new markets, clarify product & service growth opportunities and lead exploratory development programs. He can be reached at mark.roser*at*openinnovators.com

Value Networks and Innovation

by Tim Kastelle

Today I will tell you why it is so hard for you to get your innovative new idea to spread quickly. Well, one of the reasons, at least. It's because the economy is so interconnected. This is a bit counterintuitive - after all, I was just telling you how we can use networks to spread ideas. The good side of networks is that they can make it easier for ideas to spread. The problem with networks is that to get people to actually adopt your new idea, you often have to get them to break links within their existing network, and this can be very difficult. That is why it is important to understand how to build a position within the value network.

Value networks show up in most of the various business model frameworks. The idea is that when you have an innovation, you have to understand what products, services and routines are related to your new idea. Once you understand this, you can then figure out how much of the value network you need to control yourself. Anders Sundelin just wrote a terrific post on his Business Model Database blog describing how you can map the value network for your innovation, anlyse your position within it, and take steps to improve your position. He does a great job of explaining the mechanics of value network analysis. I would like to show you why it's important.

As an illustration, here is a model of the value network for mobile phones, adapted from the book Invisible Engines by Evans, Hagiu & Schmalensee. It shows the postion within the value network that Apple has taken with the iPhone:



Apple has chosen to control everything within the circle - in other words, everything! Even the application developers don’t have full autonomy, since every new app has to be approved before it shows up on iTunes. The advantage to taking a position like this in the value network is that it is easier to coordinate the system. Because Apple controls nearly everything, every time they have a new idea, it is relatively easy to decouple the existing value network, insert the innovation, and move along. The disadvantage is that having such tight control over the value network limits the scope of the innovations that can emerge.

In contrast, look at the position within the value network that Google has taken with Android:



They have taken almost the exact opposite approach, controlling only the operating system directly. This greatly increases the the range and number of innovation opportunities within the value network. There are two big downsides though. The first is that they are at the mercy of the other players within the value network. One of the reasons that there are very few Android phones here in Australia is that all of the handsets using it so far have been lousy. The second problem is that with less control over the network, all of the innovations within this network take longer to diffuse as there is no central coordination.

Google has the market pull to take a position within the mobile phone value network that is similar to Apple's if they choose to. So we have to assume that this is a strategic decision, and that their bet is that the increased innovation scope provided by their more open value network will outweigh both Apple's first move advantage, and also their relatively slow increase in market share.

And this illustrates the problem that most of us face with our value network - we can usually only control a small piece of it - as Google does with Android. This means that not only do our end users have to prefer our idea, but we also have to get others within the value network to stop using our competitors. This process is slow, difficult, and frustrating - and it adds an extra delay to the spread of our great new idea. Innovations require many players within the value network to unconnect from competitors before they can reconnect with us. This unconnect-reconnect process is often independent from the process of customers adopting our innovation, and it adds another delay to the spread of our new ideas.

There are many different models of business models available for you to use. I don't care which one you use, but you have to use one of them. They all include an element like the value network as one of the key things that you have to understand and manage when you try to get your innovative ideas to spread. The better your understanding of this network, the more effective you'll be at innovating.

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Tim Kastelle is a Lecturer in Innovation Management in the University of Queensland Business School. He blogs about innovation at the Innovation Leadership Network.

Using Networks to Spread Ideas

by Tim Kastelle

Yesterday I talked about some of the benefits and challenges of distributed innovation within organisations. One of the biggest challenges you face when you make everyone responsible for innovation is this - how do you get new ideas to spread throughout the broader group? This is part of what John and I are studying in our major research project at the moment. We have a three year grant to look at innovation networks within project-based firms. As we're getting further into the research, it is becoming clear that this issue of idea diffusion is one of the biggest problems that these firms face.

Earlier this week, we did a pilot study for a student's part of the project. Their question concerns how people search within their networks for information that they need. Because we haven't made a good video talking about this yet, here is Venessa Miemis explaining some of the issues:



(there's more good stuff from her here)


So the network facilitates innovation, as well as the diffusion of information - but how? That is what we're trying to figure out because the 'how?' part has generally been treated as a black box. To get at this, we will map networks within four groups of people in one firm that share a knowledge area, but who are spread across a number of different locations. This week, we tested the survey on a small group in the firm, and we learned some interesting things even from this.

This is one of the networks that we mapped. It shows the links based on responses to the question 'who provides me with significant knowledge?' In this case, we defined significant knowledge as that which was essential for solving a work-related problem. There are a couple of interesting things that we learn from this.

The first is that it is a relatively sparse network. This surprised the group - the manager thought that we wouldn't learn much from this team because they worked very closely together and they are highly cohesive. Still, even within a highly cohesive team, knowledge is not evenly distributed.

The second issue concerns the diamond formed by the four people in the middle of this network. This group of four was at the core of all of the different networks that we mapped. The surprising thing here is that this structure actually reflects the formal hierarchy of the group pretty closely. Organisational network analysis often shows that the informal networks are quite different from the formal structures of the firm. But that doesn't appear to be the case here. We've actually found this in other parts of our research in other firms as well. So we're starting to think that in distributed innovation networks, hierarchy is actually more important than we expect it to be. This is still very speculative, but it's potentially interesting.

The bottom line is that when our innovation efforts are distributed, it is critical to understand the structure of our knowledge-sharing networks.

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Tim Kastelle is a Lecturer in Innovation Management in the University of Queensland Business School. He blogs about innovation at the Innovation Leadership Network.

Three Enterprise 2.0 Themes to Watch in 2010

by Hutch Carpenter

Enterprise 2.0 continued its growth and maturation in 2009. We saw the rise of the Enterprise 2.0 consultancies, including Dachis Group, Altimeter Group and Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0. Andrew McAfee published his book about Enterprise 2.0. We saw the rise of the 2.0 Adoption Council. And based on what can be gleaned from vendors, more enterprises are deploying social software.

For 2010, three themes will impact the sector. These aren't the only ones, but I expect to see plenty of news, features and industry mental energy covering these.


#1: Impact of SharePoint 2010

It's coming. SharePoint 2010. Microsoft's upcoming release for the enterprise received good attention during the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas. Features include:

• Social profiles
  
• An actual wiki
  
• Blogs
  
• Activity streams
  
• Status updates
  
• Presence status
  
• Social bookmarking
  
• Tags
  
• Ratings

As a list of capabilities, this certainly is impressive and quite a departure from SharePoint 2007's social software efforts. The devil is in the details, of course.

But generally, customers who have been "making do" with 2007 will suddenly have an attractive option from Microsoft. SharePoint 2010 will likely be a big catalyst for Enterprise 2.0 growth.

The coming release of SharePoint 2010 is forcing many vendors to evaluate their positions in the market. Going head-to-head with the same or fewer features is going to be tough. What differentiates your offering? My Jaws picture refers to this dynamic facing Enterprise 2.0 vendors.

There will be articles reviewing 2010. There will be blog posts dismissing its capabilities or lack thereof. But there will be impact in the corporate world.


#2: Enterprise 2.0 Becomes "Like Air"

At Defrag 2008, I caught Charlene Li's presentation, where she said, "social networks will be like air." The premise of her talk is that social network aspects will become less a destination URL and more an integrated part of experience throughout the web and mobile.

We're seeing signs of a similar shift in the enterprise. Enterprise 2.0 is becoming less a destination and many of its concepts are being integrated into non-social software apps. Salesforce's Chatter and Tibco's Tibbr were end-of-year examples of this. As Dana Gardner writes on Seeking Alpha:


"This is a clear sign that the enterprise software and social software worlds are munging. Get ready to see a lot more."


Salesforce and Tibco won't be the last. Expect more announcements in this vein for 2010. Mike Gotta noted that this concept was called "contextual collaboration", and was promoted by Matt Cain in the late 1990s. The web 2.0 tools of today are better, more diverse, more scalable and better adapted to human behaviors than whatever was available a decade ago.

Putting these tools in-the-flow will be a powerful basis for expanding Enterprise 2.0's reach. A challenge for standalone general tools of today is that they require employees to toggle between different apps. This can make it tough to get traction. For example, Intellipedia has been making a difference, but it's still just "a marginal revolution." Not all agencies have made it part of daily work.

In the European Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Group on LinkedIn, Oracle's VP of Enterprise 2.0 for EMEA asked this question:


"What the article doesn't cover and where I would be interested in your views is how the use of E2.0 tools would enable the Business Processes themselves to be changed. Or innovated completely. For example, how do you bring Crowdsourcing, Idea Engines, Prediction Markets etc and integrate those into ERP systems?"


Yes, even Oracle is discussing this concept. Watch how this theme unfolds in 2010.


#3: Enterprise 2.0 Market Stratifies

I see the Enterprise 2.0 market splitting into these two models:

1. General collaboration suites that replace intranets and portals


2. Specialized applications that deliver tangible value around a specific activity

Watching the progression of general collaboration suite vendors, I've always believed their ultimate goal is to replace existing 1.0 intranets and portals. After all, once an Enterprise 2.0 vendor's solution...

• has the ability to store and organize files,


• provides pages for company-wide and team-specific communications,


• offers powerful search capabilities,


• includes APIs for third party integration,


• can be organized into multiple spaces, and


• has a superset of the elements of the corporate directory,

...why would a company maintain both the intranet and the social software suite. Pick one. The Enterprise 2.0 vendors still need to mature their product further to become the company intranet/portal. But I see that as their destination.

Meanwhile, a new crop of vendors have dispensed with the pursuit of all-everything suite approach. Rather, they build applications that integrate social in solving specific problems (e.g. Spigit for innovation management). Gartner analyst Anthony Bradley tabs these vendors' offerings as "activity-specific social applications". These vendors build in functionality that solves specific problems for companies, usually with definable ROI.

I expect the general collaboration suite vendors will offer their own specialized modules as well, in order to offer tangible ROI solutions to their customers.

Watch how this stratification dynamic plays out in 2010.

Those are my thoughts - what do you think?

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Hutch Carpenter is the Vice President of Product at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.