Business Drivers for Social Networking

1. Business Drivers for Social Networking Kathryn Everest IBM Canada Ltd

2. Terminology

3. Networking is important for individuals … “Graduating from college and getting a job with a big corporation was pretty exciting. My thinking was “I’ll go in and do a good job and they’ll take good care of me.” Now, looking back, I see that my thinking was pretty naive! I learned quickly that going in and doing a good job was not sufficientand that I couldn’t count on a company to take good care of me. I came to realize that I was responsible for creating visibility for myself within the company. I needed to build a network, work that network, and honor that network. I needed to focus on building relationships and becoming known within the departments and divisions where I wanted to work and further my career. I needed to find out who I needed to know and be known by. I needed to find a mentor and get a career strategy in place. I needed to take charge of my career and my career network.”

4. And organizations • As more 21st century companies come to specialize in core activities and outsource the rest, they have greater need for workers who can interact with others (companies, suppliers, customers) • Thus the traditional organization, where a few top managers coordinate the pyramid below them, is being upended. • Raising the productivity of employees whose jobs cannot be automated is the next great performance challenge – and the stakes are high. • Companies that get it right will build complex talent-based competitive advantage that competitors won’t be able to duplicate easily – if at all Source: The McKinsey Quarterly, 2005, Number 4

5. Demand for Growth Drives a Need for Innovation • Innovators grow faster • 75% of CEOs indicated that collaboration was important to innovation • Top sources of innovation were employees, business partners and customers • To thrive in this environment companies must: • Weave communities into the product development process • Execute innovative ideas quickly CEOs: sources of new ideas and innovation Business partners Employees (general population) Clients Research and development (internal) Consultants Sales or service units Competitors Other Associations, trade groups, conference boards Think tanks Academia Internet, blogs, bulletin boards 45% 35% 25% 15% 5% 5% 15% 25% 35% 45% IBM Institute for Business Value. CEO Study 2006

6. Changing expectations about work What new tools will they expect to use? How can we help them collaborate and innovate? Source: Lancaster, L.C. and Stillman, D. When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work. Wheaton, IL. Harper Business, 2003.

7. What is a social network? • A social network is a network of people • But it is not about the people themselves (which solutions like expertise location focus on) but it’s about relationships • The value is in the relationship or tie “between” people – and the reciprocal activity of giving and receiving Similar to other networks. For example, what good is a “super computer” that is not part of a computer network, or that only a small part of the organization can access, or where the is insufficient bandwidth? We need connections and bandwidth to really leverage these assets.

8. So if people are the nodes, and the connections are their relationships, what improves “bandwidth”? • Trust is key to information sharing and collaboration (one of the key reasons why information from people is preferable to other sources) • Research* has identified two types of trust that critical to collaboration: benevolence-based trust and competence-based trust. • Benevolence based trust is based on what others have experienced of your behaviour and conduct • Competence based trust is based on what others believe you know • This research also identified that knowledge sharing did not require a strong tie, but rather that the trust was there ** • “people reported getting their most useful knowledge from trusted weak ties” * Source: Trust and knowledge sharing: A critical combination, IKO White Paper, 2002

9. Social networking is not new, and its importance has been known for years • Social networks are personal relationships that help keep us informed, develop opinions, to make decisions, and accomplish work goals. Networks expand our knowledge and increase our circle of influence • Research over the past twenty-five years consistently reveals that people rely heavily on other people to find information as well as learn how to do their work • Networking is a key differentiator in knowledge workers who are high performers • Provides an “enduring infrastructure” for knowledge, learning, and innovation “Our heavy reliance on other people for information and learning is one of the most consistent and robust findings in the social sciences. It also matches our intuition and lived experience in organizations: other people are critical to our ability to find information, learn how to do our work, and develop professionally” Cross, Abrams, Parker, Trusted Networks: Assessing How Whom You Know Can Bias What You Learn, IKO, February 2003

10. What research supports Networking? • Research validates that networking is a key competency of high performers • Research validates that knowledge of the network is a key differentiator in high performing teams • Research validates that trust and diversity are key to efficient and effective networks • Collaboration and effective networks lead to flexible, creative and more responsive organizations

11. In Thinking for a Living Tom Davenport concludes: “While network development might be somewhat innate to a given person, we also found that managers can do a lot to support effective network development in their organizations. Perhaps the most important point here is not to equate networking with socializing or more communication. Very rarely do overburdened knowledge workers want more offsites or meetings for purely social objectives. Rather, helping employees develop an awareness of who knows what in the organization allows them to know whom to turn to forhelp. Job titles and organization charts alone provide little guidance as to whom people should seek out when a new problem or opportunity comes along. In part this can be facilitated by such technologies as skill profiling systems or expertise locators. However, technical solutions have to be wed to interventions that promote the quality of relationships and collaboration in these settings. “

12. Why is the time right for Social Networking Software? Net Generation Social Networking is being adopted by many groups Virtual / Remote Work Necessary to network beyond workgroup – need to reach across the organization and the world Growth of Knowledge Workers ChangingDemographic Social Networking Software as an Enabler Complexity necessitates collaboration No one person or organization can be the expert anymore. Complex issues require multi-disciplinary perspectives Need to Drive Innovation Need to Improve Performance Trend Towards On the Job Learning

13. It takes more than just “a mechanism to collaborate” for people to successfully collaborate SocialNetworking Culture Collaborative Tools

14. Profiles Find people by name, expertise, or keyword to locate someone with the experience and knowledge you need Reporting chain view to see the structure of your organization View experience, skills and past projects Easily access a person’s communities, blogs and bookmarks

15. Profiles Search Integrate into applications to enable collaboration

16. Profiles Good Practice …

17. Dogear Centrally store your bookmarks and share them with others Subscribe to your coworkers' bookmarked web pages Filter bookmarks by "tagging" them with as many keywords as you want

18. Communities Tools for finding, joining and creating communities See what communities are new, popular, or active Tags help you find the community you need by filtering content

19. Blogs Easily create blogs to share knowledge with a wide audience Exchange viewpoint and share perspectives to increase innovation Keywords can be used to search within a blog or across multiple blogs

20. Activities Organize and work with all your tasks, both individual as well as group projects, in a single place Create templates for repeated tasks to capture best practices Tap your professional network to get things done

21. Social Software is already at work in IBM Profiles IBM’s internal BluePages application provided the basis for Profiles. BluePages holds 578,254 profiles and serves 3.5 million searches per week. It is the hub of both user requests and all applications authentication for IBM. Communities IBM hosts over 1400 online communities. IBM forums have 147,000 members and over 1 million messages. Blogs IBM’s BlogCentral has 39,531 blog users (owners and commenters) with 94,061 entries and 93,120 comments, as well as 20,040 distinct tags. Dogear IBM’s internal Dogear system has 393,979 links from 12,676 users, and 16% are private. There are 991,116 tags and 4,146 watchlist subscriptions. Activities IBM’s internal Activities service contains 33,138 activities with 248,324 entries and 59,825 users. Data is as of December 13, 2007

22. Next Steps… Exploration of Technology (EOT)Present and demonstrate the business benefits and technical capabilities of Enterprise 2.0 Software, especially the value it brings when teams collaborate, share, and communicate effectively. Recommended that participants have an understanding of their business needs. **Session is offered free of charge** Proof of Technology (POT)Specifically targeted for technical persons who need to understand how social software helps enable collaboration and innovation in their business. No prerequisite knowledge is required. However, it is recommended that participants have a basic understanding of the J2EE architecture and web applications, as well as their own business needs and current IT technologies. **Session is offered free of charge** Lotusphere Comes to You Roadshow Taking Lotusphere on the road. This is a full day conference with executive keynote speakers, product demos, hands-on labs, and product showcases from IBM Business Partners. Upcoming cities: Toronto and Montreal. Social Networking for Businesses Virtual Tradeshow Hear from other IBM experts on the topic of social media via a live virtual event. For more information, please contact Marian Lee at leem@ca.ibm.com

23. Thank You