NI-Limits Blog

With Webware reporting that AOL recently spent US$ 850 Million on purchasing the social network known as Bebo, it’s obvious that there are huge benefits associated with owning your own social network, but what does that mean for down-to-earth Enterprises and other non-technical business organizations?

Rheingold Associates have an excellent article regarding this topic, which we will blockquote here:

Online social networks are webs of relationships that grow from computer-mediated discussions. The webs grow from conversations among people who share a common affinity (e.g., they work for the same company, department, or in the same discipline) and who differ in other ways (e.g., they are in different locations, keep different hours, specialize in different disciplines, work for different companies). When the people are distributed across time and space, then these conversations need to take place online, over an intranet or private internet forum.

Within a company, a well-tuned online social network can enhance the company’s collective knowledge and sharpen its ability to act on what people know in time to be effective. We have long recognized that this kind of network is critical to an organization. Creating these opportunities to connect is often the stated or unstated purpose of facilitated off-site meetings and other communication initiatives. However, the half-life of connections made at these meetings was very short until online technology provided us with a means to support the network over time.

For example…

In order to develop a strategy for its future, an $8-billion energy company needed to identify the forces that would influence its industry. Previously, the company had used outside consultants to conduct a scenario building process with the top 15 corporate officers. Results were disappointing - final reports sat on the shelf. To make a real difference this time, the process had to go deeper and involve more people across the company to get grass-roots buy-in for recommended changes.

It wasn’t feasible to convene an all-hands meeting, and the company was in a hurry. So they opened an online network to connect people at all levels and from all parts of the company in a discussion about the business environment, economic trends, and technology developments that could affect their ability to succeed.

In addition to the expected benefits of generating an abundance of ideas and engaging a broad range of people in the company in the strategic planning process, the online network had a profound effect on the organization. During the course of the project, a major crisis occurred when there was a break in the pipeline. Activity online immediately jumped to an intense level as people logged in to find out what was happening and contribute ideas. People felt involved and that they were better able to cope with the crisis because they had timely and accurate information about what was happening. It changed the nature of the organizational conversation almost immediately. As one participant put it, “For the first time I know what’s in the minds of my colleagues on a day-to-day basis.”

Social networks grow from the personal interactions of human beings over time, as well as from from the technological infrastructure that connects those humans. This means that growing a successful online social network requires social know-how as well as technical expertise. Interactions include those that take place face-to-face, via telephone, online, and even via things we send each other in the postal mail.

Thoughtfully planned and knowledgeably implemented online social networks can enable an organization to:

1. Create an early warning system.
2. Make sure knowledge gets to people who can act on it in time.
3. Connect people and build relationships across boundaries of geography or discipline.
4. Provide an ongoing context for knowledge exchange that can be far more effective than memorandum.
5. Attune everyone in the organization to each other’s needs – more people will know who knows what, and will know it faster.
6. Multiply intellectual capital by the power of social capital, reducing social friction and encouraging social cohesion.
7. Create an ongoing, shared social space for people who are geographically dispersed.
8. Amplify innovation – when groups get turned on by what they can do online, they start inventing together.
9. Create a community memory for group deliberation and brainstorming that stimulates the capture of ideas and facilitates finding information when it is needed.
10. Improve the way individuals think collectively – moving from knowledge-sharing to collective knowing.
11. Turn training into a continuous process, not divorced from normal business processes.
12. Attract and retain the best employees by providing access to social capital that is only available within the organization.

In more recent news from Read / Write Web, it seems that even Starbucks are giving this new form of media some serious consideration:

With Starbucks’ stock beaten down from its mighty highs of $47 to recent lows of $17 in the face of strong competition from Peet’s, Caribou, McDonald’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts and a suffering economy, the coffee house chain has made many changes over the past few months. From eliminating jobs and reshuffling management to permanently shutting down lagging stores and retraining its baristas, perhaps none of these moves will be as important or effective in the long run as the development and launch of My Starbucks Idea.

No, I don’t mean my idea personally (although I do have some ideas for the company), but rather the collective ideas of every Starbucks loyalist, hopped up on caffeine. Simply put, My Starbucks Idea is a socially driven marketplace for Starbucks-related ideas that will help the company reinvent itself. All you need to do to participate is sign up on the site using a username, password, and an email address. Once you’re logged in, you can post your idea in one of 13 categories.

Every posted idea immediately shows up in the recent ideas queue, where it is voted on in a Digg-style manner. If it gets enough votes, it gets ‘promoted’ to the popular ideas list and top all-time list, from which Starbucks employees and management pick the best ideas to actually implement in stores.

My Starbucks Idea has been a huge success so far, just like Dell’s IdeaStorm before it. Approximately a month after launching, the site has gotten a plethora of great idea submissions from Starbucks-lovers, and the most popular submissions have gotten tens of thousands of points (votes) and hundreds of comments. As long as Starbucks keeps letting the community freely voice its opinion and keeps implementing the crème de la crème of the community’s ideas, the company has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

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