Collaborative Thinking

Drawing Parallels & Making Connections Between Youth & Employee Learning

One of the things I like to do is to explore areas outside the enterprise space to see if there are connections, crossover transitions, or parallels that can be learned and applied back to the enterprise. Below are two videos that I thought have some of those attributes. They are not about the enterprise, E2.0, collaboration, social networking etc - but there are moments in both videos when you see an enterprise implication. While  new media literacies, self-learning, and participatory cultures may come across as esoteric topics, I might argue that addressing these challenges is fundamental for improving information sharing, collaboration, and decision-making (much more influential than throwing social tools out into the workplace).

Summary:

In this video, John Seely Brown (JSB) discusses the need to embrace change (in the context of preparing the younger generation for the workplace). What's important to have a strong sense of curiosity and a "questing" disposition. These attributes help drive a constant state of learning. Other topics include: the value of communities (interests, shared practices), the importance of situated learning. JSB makes a great point on the need to "learn how to join" - joining can be a frightening experience for many (think about this in the context of employees joining communities re: will people accept me, do I have the right background (identity), how do I gain "social footing" in this group, etc). Once people join, they learn a lot through osmosis ("dwelling in the experience").

The closing remarks are relevant to today's workplace re: rapid change, skills having a short self-life, how we need to create our own context, how we need to use our experiences as scaffolding for learning, how we need to accelerate what we know so we can improve our own performance. A final reflection on what you are doing now needs to be the platform for what you do next was a great point - metaphorically, think of your journey as a trajectory through life space not fixed points (e.g., Job A, Job B, Company X, Company Y).  

John Seely Brown from New Learning Institute on Vimeo.

Summary:

In this video, Mimi Ito asks an open-ended question (in the context of kids), as to why we assume that socializing and play is not a form of learning? Generationally we may look at what kids are doing with new media and consider it a non-productive use of time. However, Ms. Ito argues that media creation, and the participation that goes long with it, is a form of learning. She also points out that a lot of what kids do with online spaces and media reflects friendship-driven participation. However, in a study she found a minority that took participation to the next level where media and participation was "interest driven". When kids become engaged beyond friendship, they tend to use new media to developer specialized interests and improve literacies even further.

This is the type of situation that has more of a business context (interest-driven participation) where we want employees rally around a topic, network, join/create communities, etc. This is a skill often learned unconsciously through new media interaction. It also brings back the notion of "tinkering" mentioned in the JSB video. I thought the idea that new media, the "tinkering" process, and self-learning gets back to ways that people increase their own intellectual and personal development. How do we encourage "interest driven participation" within the enterprise might be helped by understanding how this skill emerges as kids grow up.  

Mimi Ito from New Learning Institute on Vimeo.

 

Social Media & Innovation

Now that the SharePoint 2010 report on social computing is in the production queue, time to move on to my next report: 

Working Title: "Leveraging Social Media Within Innovation Strategies"

Target Audience: Innovation program managers, innovation project teams, decision-makers involved in collaboration and social media strategies, IT managers, architects, and others involved in knowledge management efforts.

Problem Statements:

• Have economic realities impacted innovation efforts?
• Innovation is a broad term, what’s an effective way to categorize an initiatives scale and scope?
• How is social media helping innovation become more participatory?
• What use case scenarios illustrate how social tools augment innovation efforts?

Background: Innovation has been a re-occurring theme within organizations over the past decade. In the past, innovation efforts were often the purview of assigned groups and driven by formal processes (often with mixed results). Internally, the topic is sometimes considered an off-shoot of knowledge management (e.g., "ideation”). Externally, the term is associated with crowdsoucring. Fusing internal and external thinking and approaches towards innovation has become more the norm, leading to an “innovation renaissance” influenced by social media trends. Organizations are exploring use of social application to make innovation a more open and transparent activity co-owned by its participants. However, contributions from non-traditional participants (customers, employees) presents its own set of challenges in terms of community management, decision-rights, and business alignment.

Thesis: Management and R&D teams are no longer the only participants in an organization's innovation efforts. Social tools have made innovation a more open and transparent effort where customers and employees become active contributors. However, leveraging the free-flow of ideas needs some level of structure to transform ideas into actual business outcomes.

Of Course You Want Opt-In As The Default, Of Course You Want Everything Public, Said The Nice Social Networking Site Operator... Trust Us.

Google seems to have quite deceptively hidden some information that Buzz is an automatic opt-in regarding "following". Sure, you can turn it off, but it's not intuitive and you are not pro-actively notified. Disclosure - to say the least - is done in an avoidance fashion. 

As I've said before - social networking providers, especially in the consumer space (Facebook, LinkedIn, and now Google), are in a dilemma. They need people to be open in order to create the type of network effects that support their agendas and business models. Only grudgingly will they be transparent when it comes to options available to manage privacy settings. They simply are not the trustworthy advocate for member privacy that they present themselves as when it comes to up-front disclosure, proactive notification and granular levels of consent (refer to Privacy & Social Network Sites: A Case Of Conflicting Agendas). 

No one should be surprised... disappointed, yes.

WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw

There is a huge privacy flaw in Google's new Twitter/Facebook competitor, Google Buzz.

When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow.

A Google spokesperson tells us these people are chosen based on whom the users emails and chats with most using Gmail.

That's fine.

The problem is that -- by default -- the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile.

In other words, before you change any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see who are the people you email and chat with most.

.....

A Google spokesperson tells us the followers lists are public by default so that people can quickly find new people to follow. Obviously, that's a good thing for Google, which is hoping to get as many people using Google Buzz as soon as possible. It's also meant to be helpful for users. And for those who are unconcerned with telling the world who they email most, it is. But for everyone else, it's terrible.

It gets to a deeper problem with Google Buzz: It's built on email, which is a very different Internet application than a social network.

The good news for Google is that this is a very easy problem to fix. Google must either shut off auto-following, or it must make follower lists private by default as soon as possible.

WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw

Facebook Developers | Integrating Facebook Chat Everywhere

Finally... certainly took a while. Interesting given discussion of Facebook offering traditional email services as well.

Every day people send more than two billion chat messages to each other on Facebook. Today we're making it easier for people to extend those conversations with their Facebook friends to instant messaging clients beyond Facebook.com. Facebook Chat now supports Jabber/XMPP, the open standard for instant messaging. Now developers can integrate Facebook Chat with their Web-based, desktop, or mobile instant messaging products.

Facebook Developers | Integrating Facebook Chat Everywhere

Community Input: SharePoint 2010

OK - this is all draft - nothing is final - everything below is a work-in-progress. I wanted to obtain feedback though... leave comments, thanks...

Context
Losing the battle but winning the war?

• Many organizations have invested in Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 as strategic infrastructure for content management and collaboration.
• However, the market responded negatively to the social tools included within MOSS 2007. Thought-leadership was lost as competitors (e.g., IBM, Jive) delivered social platforms that were far superior to what was delivered out-of-the-box by Microsoft. Microsoft partners (e.g., Atlassian, NewsGator) whose products integrated into SharePoint in ways that alleviated some of the worst functionality (e.g., wikis and communities) filled gaps in social tooling. 
• Burton Group research on enterprise social networking in 2008 found that organizations were tired of tool-by-tool approaches when it came to social tools (blogs, wikis, social networking). This buyer-preference has included virtually all vendors to expand offerings of single social tools into suites or platforms.
• That same research also indicates that many organizations often position internal social computing efforts (e.g., Enterprise 2.0, social networking) as a component in their overall collaboration strategy. The association that social computing is tightly interwoven with collaboration strategies has influenced some decision-makers that technology solutions are therefore best enabled through a single platform.
• These dynamics favor a strong social computing comeback by Microsoft as SharePoint 2010 improves on its core collaboration tools but also delivers (based on current beta), social capabilities that, while not best-of-breed, are comparable to current market offerings.

Thesis

• Improvements in SharePoint 2010 make it a compelling social computing platform for organizations interested in an intranet on-premises solution that includes tightly-coupled infrastructure for collaboration, content, and search.
• Strategists that dismissed leveraging MOSS 2007 for social computing will re-visit that decision in situations where SP2010 remains strategic overall
• Re-evaluation of third-party extensions to SharePoint will be a natural part of that due diligence process
• Competitive offerings will be assessed by how well they integrate in an overall SP2010 ecosystem - even when the competitive offering is retained for its social capabilities
• However, Microsoft’s long-term impact on social computing trends will not dominate if organizations have to wait another 3-4 years before subsequent enhancements to application-layer capabilities.

Thesis Key Points

1. Intranet on-premises solution: Right now, I don't see SP2010 being viable/credible for external social media if organizations objectively compare/contrast what the market offers with competitive solutions. Also, there is still a lack of parity between SaaS and on-premises that may leave customers not being able to deploy hybrid environments or pursue more pure SaaS-based solutions. I think the SaaS weakness will hurt Microsoft in external social media scenarios as well. Competitors that have consistent external/internal solutions are viewed well by clients I talk to that are looking for cohesion across social tooling for communities and social networks that span internal and external audiences as well as support for consumer social web standards and integration with consumer public social sites.
2. Tightly-coupled infrastructure: These is not a lot of architectural modularity in my opinion. There are more integration points however, and a lot of cross-dependencies, and inability to really substitute components.
3. But - for self-described "Microsoft Shops" this release will be good enough to satisfy the vast majority of IT organizations. It should even cause Microsoft to regain some lost accounts that are using other products. I've already talked to a few that are at least pausing to have that discussion.
• Note: I chose wording here carefully - SP2010 is a release that IT organizations will like because it makes life easier in SharePoint shops (development, operations). However - technology is not the deciding factor when it comes to social computing - even with this release, organizations that focus on the user experience, community, and social networking needs of people in business areas can still make a credible case for solutions that leverage alternative technology platforms.
• Alleged IT cost savings by going with a single solution is only one side of the coin. Strategists need to weight IT costs vs. business benefits to get a total perspective. Sometimes SharePoint will make sense, sometimes it will not. It does not defacto make things better or easier from a business perspective.
• Granted - determining the intangible organizational value of social computing is not easy. Although, for instance, I find most of my Jive solutions in shops that have SharePoint. That might have been because of the deficiencies in MOSS 2007 but it also could be due to Jive being a very good social platform. Organizations need to avoid making this decision based solely on IT costs and vendor preferences from IT organizations. 
4. However - the last point is critical - Microsoft needs to come out with a story (believable) that it will somehow be able to release application-layer feature upgrades more quickly than 3-4 years. That could be the tipping point for some organizations to keep investing in a more modular, loosely-coupled architecture and keep their "social platform" separate from SharePoint.

Privacy & Social Network Sites: A Case Of Conflicting Agendas

Earlier this year, Facebook's Zuckerberg said that the age of privacy is over. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, LinkedIn's Hoffman echoed that sentiment (view the video below) - musing that privacy was an issue of "old people" and that younger people are not so concerned over privacy. Many will disagree that privacy is a concern only to certain demographics and many will also disagree that people have to cede privacy simply to leverage social networking. It borders on the absurd and demonstrates either a lack of knowledge about a complicated challenge - or reveals the dilemma operators of social network sites face in terms of a credible business model. In this case, I believe it's both. LinkedIn and Facebook simply do not seem to understand the social dynamics around privacy and compound the problem by implementing technology in a way that exacerbates the privacy challenge (perhaps more so in the case of Facebook).

In order to establish sustainable business models, operators of social network sites will continue to change terms of service and other policies to forcefully encourage people to become uncomfortably public. Twitter perhaps has avoided some of these issues because there are few controls over how people share information Twitter begins the relationship with its members in a more transparent manner - that "everything is on the public timeline". However, Facebook long ago set expectations by offering members a more complete set of controls for people to share information on a perceived limited basis. So when executives from consumer social network sites talk about privacy, I react to whatever they say with a health dose of skepticism. It is self-serving in fact for social network site execs to go on stage and diminish the value of privacy when they benefit by its very erosion (to the dismay of members).

The risks and rewards of sharing information online | John Gapper's Business Blog | FT.com

It can be hard to find an actual disagreement at Davos, given the social effects of sticking a lot of people in workshops and asking them to flesh out the future of the world convivially.

So it was encouraging (for a journalist) to come across a clear and important divide in the first session I attended this morning, on internet social networks.

The topic was privacy, a contentious one for social networks such as Facebook (represented in the session by Randi Zuckerberg, sister of its founder). Facebook’s recent changes to its privacy settings to open up more content to the public caused a backlash.

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, the professional social network, told the session that “all of the concerns about privacy tend to be old people issues.” Young people generally put mobile phone numbers on social networks because “the value of being connected and transparent is so high.”

The risks and rewards of sharing information online | John Gapper's Business Blog | FT.com 

  Key Video From The World Economic Forum’s Social Networking Powerhouse Panel

FINRA And Social Media

Worth reading the complete PDF for guidance on blogs and social networking web sites.

FINRA Issues Guidance to Firms, Brokers on Communications with Public Through Social Networking Web Sites

Washington, DC ― The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) today issued guidance to securities firms and brokers regarding the use of social networking Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs to communicate with the public.

The guidance in Regulatory Notice 10-06, which is presented in Q&A format, clarifies the responsibilities of firms to supervise the use of social networking sites to ensure that recommendations are suitable and their customers are not misled. The Notice also addresses the recordkeeping and other responsibilities of firms.

"Social networking sites and blogs raise new regulatory challenges, particularly in the areas of supervision, advertising and books and records requirements," said FINRA Chairman and CEO Rick Ketchum. "Our goal in issuing this notice is to ensure that firms and brokers use social networking sites in an appropriate manner."

The notice emphasizes that each firm must develop its own policies and procedures ― in the context of its own particular business model and compliance and supervisory programs ― designed to ensure that the firm and its personnel are complying with all applicable regulatory requirements when using social networking sites. Some technology providers are developing systems that are intended to enable firms to retain records of communications made through social networking sites. As the Notice states, however, "FINRA does not endorse any particular technology to keep such records, nor are we certain that adequate technology currently exists."

Regulatory Notice 10-06 is a response to the expressed need for guidance explaining how FINRA rules governing communications with the public, recordkeeping and supervision apply to social networking sites. FINRA has previously issued guidance on the application of communications regulations to Internet communications in its Guide to the Internet for Registered Representatives, as well as in numerous podcasts.

FINRA - FINRA Issues Guidance to Firms, Brokers on Communications with Public Through Social Networking Web Sites

CRM Meets Twitter: Will Vendors And Organizations Take The Time To Get It Right?

About a decade ago, the industry witnessed the rise of what some called "e-CRM" where CRM suites were extended to include interaction via the Internet. Back then, much of the focus was on e-mail response management and chat. Some analyst firms at the time referred to that interaction layer as Collaborative CRM (vs. Operational CRM and Analytical CRM). In many ways, we're seeing the continued evolution of CRM as organizations reach out even further to interact with various audiences and constituencies (e.g., "Social CRM") in environments where they already participate (e.g., Twitter, Facebook). There are similar issues that were true back then and are also true now. CRM can still be treated as a technology endeavor or as a very enterprise-centric program that delivers only a veneer of customer-centricity rather than something truly authentic. The promise of melding CRM programs with social environments faces the same hurdles that I witnessed years ago (becoming techno-centric oor too enterprise-centric). Although I do not include CRM as a formal part of my research, I do pay attention to social media and its intersect with many different areas (such as CRM).

The demo's below are interesting but there are issues that organizations need to consider that relate to identity, privacy, and security. For example, identity assurance of Twitter accounts comes to mind - not just the ability to ascertain the identity of a "customer" but for the customer to ascertain that the "company" Twitter account is valid and that the people behind those accounts are authorized. For some industry segments, there are issues or audit and compliance that need to be supported (e.g., FINRA) or simply to satisfy e-Discovery policies.

The other concerns I have is that traditional CRM vendors are "repaving the cowpath" when it comes to the design point for extending CRM to social tools. For instance, I have concerns that integration of CRM for marketing via Twitter will simply make it easier for organizations to spam all followers with promotions rather than engage people in a more meaningful way (and wrongly thinking that they are truly using Twitter in a social manner). Organizations might not explore the idea of "employees as brand ambassadors" via social media and instead use existing processes and tools defacto to create a corporate persona around social tools. There can be a balance. For instance, when I look at Bank of America (BofA_Help), the signature line of the BoA rep at the end of each Tweet is a nice touch.

Source:

1. Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/glfceo/status/8221149519

2. SAP demos new Twitter integration By Barney Beal, News Director 18 Jan 2010 | SearchCRM.com

Finding The Right & "Seeding Points" In Social Networks

Interesting reading...

The Buzz Starts Here: Finding the First Mouth for Word-of-Mouth Marketing - Knowledge@Wharton

New research led by Wharton marketing professors Raghuram Iyengar and Christophe Van den Bulte, working with University of Southern California preventive medicine professor Thomas W. Valente, has found that traditional targets may not be as influential as previously thought. The pharmaceutical firm that sponsored the research for their recently published paper, "Opinion Leadership and Social Contagion in New Product Diffusion," had its "a-ha" moment when they found Physician No. 184 on a map.

The map was part of the researchers' presentation that reported the results to the sponsoring firm. Charted on the map was a tangle of points and lines representing physicians practicing in a large city and the connections between them. Researchers had tracked how prescriptions of a new drug spread from one physician to another, depending on who talked to whom and referred patients to whom.

Mapped out on the screen, the story became clear: The medical community was actually divided into two sub-networks split apparently by ethnicity, with one sub-network dominated by physicians with mostly Asian names and the other with mostly European names. Connecting the two, like a spider suspended on a thread between two webs, was the dot for Physician No. 184 -- a doctor the company's marketing department and salespeople barely knew.

The Buzz Starts Here: Finding the First Mouth for Word-of-Mouth Marketing - Knowledge@Wharton

Social Media in the 2009 Inc. 500 - Center for Marketing Research - University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Updated from 2007...

Social Media in the 2009 Inc. 500: New Tools & New Trends

Conducted By: Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Eric Mattson CEO, Financial Insite

The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted a new in-depth and statistically significant study on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. This new study revisits the Center’s study of Inc. 500 social media usage for the third consecutive year, making it a valuable and rare longitudinal study of corporate use of these new technologies.

The new study compares adoption of social media over three years (2007, 2008 and 2009) by the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine. For details about the 2009 Inc. 500 and the complete directory of the included companies, please visit Inc. Magazine's website at www.Inc.com.

Social Media in the 2009 Inc. 500 - Center for Marketing Research - University of Massachusetts Dartmouth