21st Century Organization

Socialprise

  Apparently, the latest buzzword is yes – “socialprise.” That is social, as in we are humans and we interact to get work done. Seems intuitive, but it is not the first thing that comes to mind when social is used in business.

That may be a moot point as the technology to map workplace interactions and relationships is “now becoming part of standard enterprise computing systems” according to a NY Times piece MySpace Mind-Set Finally Shows Up at the Office – the ultimate mashup. Socialprise was coined by Insideview

But I think we need to make a careful distinction between “social networking” and “social network or organizational network analysis” (SNA/ONA) especially for business. Social networking platforms for business like VisiblePath (now part of Hoover’s) used by sales groups and law firms is useful in mining who knows who, what work was done with what client as people move through their normal trajectories. Insideview’s twist is to marry up search data or intelligence with social data. It certainly enhances the potential for connections if one looks around the existing network.

Social network analysis or organizational network analysis, the easier term for business leaders to accept, can be used very strategically to ferret out connections that might not naturally occur, or if they did would take years to emerge, particularly in networks outside of the organization. Call it the Outsideview.

This is not network analysis for business as usual. Instead think of mapping the intellectual property landscape to find the key contributors in a narrow field – the needle in the haystack. Boston Consulting Group did an intellectual property map for The Myelin Repair Foundation, reported in Mapping the Crowd a Business Week story. The challenge for MRF was to identify the few research scientists with the greatest number of relevant patents in order to accelerate research. The result was a network visualization allowing managers to see both opportunities and key centers or nodes of research they might not have found for years.

Touch Graph software was most likely used by BCG as they openly acknowledge creating solutions for clients – Interpublic Group -advertising, Newforth – M&A, and the British Natural History Museum – biological networks.

As social networking tools become a standard feature of enterprise computing systems for day to day business, they will lose their competitive advantage like all other tools. However to understand why a particular product or service may not have launched as well as expected, or to capitalize on macro network opportunities for technical and science initiatives, a standard platform may not be the optimal approach. Unique ONA applications will still have their place in the socialprise.

~Victoria G. Axelrod

Thinking about Open Network Business Models: Your Insights Invited

Victoria Axelrod (my 21stCenturyOrganization blogging colleague) and I are on deadline for Effective Executive, an India based business magazine published by ICFAI University Press. Working title of our piece is:

Open Net-Working Organizations - Co-generating Knowledge and Innovation

Our article explores themes we've blogged about here over the past 2 years, research for two recent Inside Knowledge Magazine articles ("Broadcasting Innovation: Organising to Connect Intelligence" and "Prediction Markets: Co-creating the Organisation", my Enterprise 2.0 Summit Hanover presentation, and our forthcoming Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability Workshop, May 5 in Las Vegas, following the Community 2.0 Conference. (As Victoria previously wrote please use code SPKRM2005 for a friends 20% discount if you can join us.)

We like to practice what we advocate so as our article is about open, networked, working we're sharing our article outline here and inviting fresh perspectives and contributions of interesting sources.  Our article focus reflects we are contributing to a special Effecutive Executive Knowledge Management edition.

Overview

"In a March 2007 "Long Live KM" online discussion through the AOK Group, Robert Buckman (described by Infoworld as "KM's father figure") wrote:

"Jerry, thank you for the kind words, but I never did try and manage knowledge. What I really tried to manage and nurture was a culture that would encourage and expand the flow of knowledge. It was because economic value could only be obtained in our environment when knowledge moved across the organization in response to a need."
~ Bob Buckman, March 6, 2007 AOK Yahoo Group Post

Two decades since Buckman's pioneering work to encourage and expand knowledge flow and innovation, taking a network view of organizations and using the tools of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) facilitates creating open, collaborative organizational cultures. More importantly, an intentional open net-working approach aids understanding how "social capital value" is created in organizations through dynamic interactions and relationships between all of an organization's participants and stakeholders. Examples from our research and experience of organizations using new open network models to promote knowledge sharing, innovation and value creation are included.

While we will revisit open working models investigated in our Inside Knowledge articles:

• Qualcomm's Venture Fest using prediction markets
• The Bordeaux Energy Colloquium, a Think Tank Network,
• Executive to Executive Marketing Networks as implemented at Avaya
• Procter and Gamble's "Connect and Develop" and innovation marketplaces like Innocentive

we're also exploring approaches including:

• Boston Consulting Group's use of mapping tools to understand networks around patents and identify high potential talent. (Did they really just use Touchgraph as Manuel Lima suggests commenting on the Business Week article?)
• IBM's use of open network initiatives including sharing research with partners and clients. (Thanks to John Maloney for this paper find.)
• The innnovative and business critical collaborative knowledge sharing initiatives presented at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, Hanover.

In writing about open network approaches we're alert to investigating when such models appear not to work effectively. Hence we're striving to understand what caused Boeing's decentralized 787 supply chain to become a critical factor in the company's high profile and costly aircraft delivery delays.

Yesterday discovering Robin Teigland's presentation on Slideshare, (displayed as a "Related Slideshow" to my Hanover presentation), I was reminded of the potential value that can be created through openness in knowledge sharing. This is especially so when you intentionally start by "looking around" as John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid encouraged in "The Social Life of Information", 2000.

Hence this blog post sharing our article themes and ideas. Any and all reactions to our focus and examples, insights into Boeing's supply chain issues, and or fresh insights and interesting open net-working business models are welcomed and appreciated.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Facebook Groups in Business Investigation: First Findings- Energy Demands, Joy of Emergence

Our Facebook Groups in Business, peer-to-peer action research initiative, emerged from conversations with fellow conveners, blogging partner Victoria G. Axelrod and colleague William L. Anderson, through the summer of 2007.

By December 2007 an extraordinary group of entrepreneurial and generous Facebook Group owners, willing to give their limited time but masses of talent, had assembled to investigate our starting premise:

“Facebook may, but also may not, become THE enterprise social networking platform, but it's here, use is growing, so we need to understand the phenomenon and learn from it.”

Jenni Beattie, Ray Cha, Dave Duarte, Eric Edelstein, Francois Gossieaux, Adam Kovitz, Niki Lambropoulos, Kimberly Samaha:  THANK YOU ALL.      

We were also fortunate, and appreciative, of the volunteer contributions of an equally talented group of advisors on study design and analysis:

Patti Anklam, Jill Howell, Jeffrey Keefer, Josh Katinger, Danielle Ravich

Our first findings were presented to the University of Warwick's Knowledge Innovation Workshop's March 4, Northampton meeting.  While just a start at revealing our learning, the slides are posted here. Hopefully too our experience will serve as seeds for others to build on. It's clear there's a multitude of opportunities to better understand how Facebook and net working can create value for businesses.

Essential Lessons

Reflecting on our FGIBI experience the following stand out for me:

1. Open Research: Joy and Work

The slides do not necessarily reveal the joy of being part of the Facebook Groups in Business Investigation. Of course the effort was greater than I suspect any of us imagined. FGIBI was an entirely volunteer initiative that engaged remarkable and very busy people with whom it was a privilege collaborating.

One of my learnings was about facilitating such an open research project. Now I have even greater respect for what is accomplished through open source software development.

2. The Power to Convene that Facebook Provides

Through Facebook and email communications we engaged owners of 9 Facebook Groups from 6 countries and 4 continents. (Our 21st Century Organization Facebook Group was the 10th participant.)

Only one group owner was known face-to-face before FGIBI began.

To me this capacity to connect is both attention getting and powerful.

3. Extreme Talent and Sense of Adventure

Everyone of our Facebook Group owners is an extraordinary talent in their own fields and I would say, visionary.  That they were willing to join 3 unknown conveners in a volunteer project testifies to their adventurousness.

4. Energy, Structure and Audience Relevance

For me slide 10 in our presentation, (assembled in the pre-dawn hours before the KIN presentation) is the most interesting because both of what it promises, and what is not revealed.

The numbers in no way tell the story of the relative levels of energy and initiatives that drove, or not, activity in each Facebook Group.  We tried to track steps owners were taking to impact activity levels but my observations are anecdote based.

Many factors played into group activity levels and growth rates. These included effort and initiatives by the owners, other marketing initiatives undertaken at the same time in the business, and simply relevance of the group interest area to Facebook members generating viral growth.  Clearly whether a Facebook Group is closed and private, for example for use within an organization, or open to all is significant for the growth trajectory and value proposition too.

5. Facebook Conceals Understanding Wherein It's Power Lies

The conveners' conversations that inspired FGIBI were about network effects. Victoria and I were immersed in studying network laws for our Connecting Intelligence article last May when Facebook opened their platform to developers and usage took off. (See Alexa graph, slide 7.) Our interest quickly jumped to wondering how network effects operate in Facebook, or not, in the context of Valdis Kreb's instruction:

"You do realize that Metcalfe's law does not work for social networks"

Hence our ambition in gathering Facebook Group data included tracking the ties between Group members.  For example, when new people come how are they connected to existing members? Do they know the owner and/or another member, or are they unknown?

Practically tie data was impossible to gather especially for larger groups. Only Kimberly Samaha persevered in gathering this information, but manually, as Facebook provided no tool for doing so.

6. The Magic of Emergence

When first announcing FGIBI"s ambitions we had no idea if anyone would respond, and if they did, who might be interested.  In fact, the variety and serious business intent of the Facebook Group owners who joined our investigation, and the positive experience working with them, was more than I could have planned.

Further, simultaneously two of our Facebook Group owners, Kimberly Samaha and Niki Lambropoulos undertook interesting, independent Facebook research in addition to their contributions to our initiative. Their studies are represented in the slides.

In addition our new found connection to Kimberly Samaha through FGIBI lead to featuring her Bordeaux Colloquium as an innovation open network model in an Inside Knowledge article Victoria Axelrod and I were writing. 

7.  Facebook's Holes Limit Potential Use as an Enterprise Wide Net Working Platform

When data gathering began last December media stories aplenty described how adding data to Facebook is a snap, but removing it from Facebook servers is not.  Privacy and security concerns abound.

Regularly using Facebook also revealed the gaps in the administrative tools, especially no granularity to display content to a members of a particular Facebook Group, or subset of Facebook Friends.

It is no surprize then seeing the emergence of networking platforms designed for the enterprise by addressing privacy and security concerns, and integrating with existing knowledge sharing and technology systems.

My March 6 presentation closed asking the question:

What is the future of social networking in the enterprise?

At minimum I hope our first findings provide fuel to the conversation. Opportunities to address questions and discuss our experience are welcomed. 

~ Jenny Ambrozek

The AppGap: Collaboration, Flows & the Right Brain

                            

Thanks to Intuit Quickbase, the visionary sponsor, and Hylton Jolliffe who assembled the blogging team,  I'm a privileged contributor to TheAppGap blog that assembles news, views and reviews about the future of work.

The joy of being a TheAppGap blog contributor is being closer to the latest observations from fellow bloggers Patti Anklam, Matthew Hodgson, Jon Husband, Bill Ives, Shiv Singh and Jim Ware and participating in the broader conversation about Work 2.0.

Not suprizingly, collaboration and emerging tools for working more efficiently in an information overloaded world have become a focus. Jon Husband's "Managing the Flow" post explores a topic that concerns me: the changing work challenges and skills demanded as a cadre of collaborative tools and now enterprise networking platforms (like IBM's Lotus Atlas and Trampline Systems SONAR), increasingly stream information and now organizational network connections. How do people and organizations adapt to work and manage in this world?

My latest TheAppGap post relates to changing skills with a question around whether more "right brain" talents become critical as Dan Pink argues in "A Whole New Mind".  Will the M.F.A. become more in demand at the expense of M.B.A.s, a topic the New York Times explored April 6?

As everyday work demands grow the challenge always is taking time to look forward. Still I hope you will regularly find moments to join us at TheAppGap to consider the future of work and the gaps to be filled to maximize opportunities.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability - WHY?

I recently attended a presentation given by a colleague who holds a senior position with a global financial services firm nominally on the topic of social capital and networks.  My colleague was open in admitting the the idea of organizational network analysis (ONA) had not yet been "sold" to the organization.

It seemed clear to me why it had not.  There was no business or strategic imperative stated that would make undertaking ONA of value to the organization.  Tactical benefits of identifying high performers (top talent) and information flows was the rationale- good for the current state of effectiveness and efficiency for today but that only helps you hold your own not give you a competitive advantage for the future.

If I do not have a context - Where is our business going and what are we trying to achieve to stay sustainable? my analysis will only confirm the present. Glazed eyes of senior execs. Maybe we bridge some gaps, however for all the effort the big gains are lost.

Making the strategy happen is what lights up business leaders. Being able to identify competencies and skill sets we need to make that future happen needs to be the rationale of the person proposing organization network analysis. Social capital is that illusive bond that your current talent may have and future talent need to be masters at building. 

Social capital is "created by a network in which the people can broker connections between otherwise disconnected segments" or "structural holes" according to Ron Burt. ONA exposes social capital opportunity - the external networks to be brokered by your current talent and new talent entering the firm - for innovation and growth.

Have you ever wondered why some firms seem to have cultures of constant renewal, regeneration and sustainability - it's their social capital capacity.

My partner Jenny Ambrozek just returned from the Enterprise 2.0 Summit at CEBIT in Hannover Germany where her presentation on Structural Holes addressed the importance of identifying the business driver up front.

We will be presenting our workshop on Social Capital:The Glue for Sustainability at the NJOD Annual Sharing Day on May 1st and Community 2.0 Conference at Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas May 15th.  For friends 20% discount use code SPKRM2005 when registering.

The business environment is too complex and moving too fast to not know your social capital capacity - your sustainability depends on it!

~ Victoria G. Axelrod