Most often ideas need some attention and enrichments from others to grow to a more mature state before a good decision can be made whether an idea should be picked up to start a project. Hence the seed-metaphor; a seed also needs some attention and enrichment (water) to grow. The nice thing about the upcoming social software tools (Enterprise2.0 software) is that they suit this approach very well. First of all with tools like idea management software it is very easy for employees, and possibly suppliers and clients as well, to contribute ideas. But the real difference stems from the fact that you can use the collective brainpower to enrich (or grow) these ideas. A third interesting aspect of these type of tools is the fact that ideas (and their enrichments) get stored online. So far my story about software tools, because as the name implies they are merely the tools to become more innovative; It’s all about the way you use these tools whether your company will be successful at innovating.

To come back to the failure aspect, another quote in this context is very apt. It is a quote from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, directed to his employees: “I hope you fail often and I hope you fail fast”. As I described before, Google is a very innovative company. What Schmidt implies with his statement is that he wants Google employees to try out a lot of new ideas. In his quote the company culture is pronounced that it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes or formulate an idea that won’t make it. It is part of the process to come to new successful products or services as long as you learn from the mistakes and failures. The more you fail, the more you learn; while the faster you fail, less costs are made to learn. This learning from failures and uncovering rapidly whether an idea is worth an investment in time and money to develop further is very well supported by social tools like idea management software. Like stated before, all the failures (ideas that won’t make it now) are stored online. So others that come up with the same idea at a later stage won’t have to spend time and money to do research for that idea. While over time, the market might have changed or new technologies might have come available and an idea that was rejected before might be great to develop now.

Probably the most crucial aspect in the above described situation is creating a company culture where failure is not punished but stimulated. A CEO stating that exact message is a very important drive for a company to become more innovative.

No related posts.

1. Strategy and tactics: There needs to be a clear vision for the development of the community. This vision needs to be translated to types of activities the members should be encouraged to engage with. You need to develop multiple scenarios because some activities catch on and others do not. If activities do not catch on one should be able to quickly shift into another scenario. It is important to take into account the ‘What’s in it for me?’ question from the participants perspective and to check if there are no barriers that get in the way of these activities.
2. Change management: To many organizations, achieving a state where people openly share, connect with each other, collaborate, and innovate requires a significant change in culture. Even though we believe that culture does not dictate our behavior, but it is the aggregation of our behaviour that defines culture; you need to actively promote the right behavior and deal with barriers such as fear, hierarchy, and knowledge as power. Senior management plays an important role by setting examples and endorsing exemplar behavior.
3. Reactive moderation: There are numerous standard tasks that need to be performed. Examples are: making sure people have a complete profile, contacting inactive members, managing login issues, dealing with unwanted behavior, etc.
4. Proactive moderation: This role is what we often refer to as ‘the magic’. You need to constantly scan the community for activity that, often with some orchestration, can help you realize your strategic vision. This role requires to ‘see through’ a standard question or idea and envisage its potential. Then try and identify and connect participants that can contribute. If the activity has significant potential, we often co-opt a senior manager to publicly endorse the initiative.
5. Relationships and stakeholder management: This role lies within the client organization. There needs to be a very well networked person to make the connections with relevant people within the organization or with senior management to find people to further activate initiatives selected through the proactive moderation.
6. Role models: You need commitment from senior management to behave as a role model. They should endorse behavior that is in line with the vision of the community, activate people to take ideas they post a step further, and ask the community questions or challenge them from time to time.
7. Content management: Communities are enriched by content. Interviews need to be sourced with members, senior management, industry experts or other interesting and engaging people. Content needs to be well planned and prepared in advance so it can be deployed at appropriate times, such as during lulls in platform activity.
8. Technical management: A plan needs to be in place to role out functionality related to the maturity of the community. Technical management works closely with the other community management roles to create a road-map of functionality. A close coordination with the scenarios is needed to match the functionality to the scenarios being played.
9. Project management: Moderating and activating a community typically requires performing a great number of tasks. These tasks are either dynamic or routine. Dynamic tasks are responses to what is happening in the community and routine tasks cover things such as contacting all people that have not completed their profile. Rigorous project management is a must to make sure all tasks are covered and completed. We have developed software tailored to managing communities and these tasks in particular.
10. Champions management: Your community will have members that are more active and set the right example. It is important to build relationships with such users over time and involve them in activating the community. The most important role these champions have, is being an antenna for ideas, problems, or solutions that are worth sharing. They then convince people to take their ideas, problems, or solutions to the community.

If you are interested in how this ties into our methodology and vision, you may also want to check out these earlier posts:

1. Successful implementation of communities part 1
2. Successful implementation of communities part 2
3. Successful implementation of communities part 3
4. Community management in innovative projects
5. Start hiring guy #3
6. Stop pitching social media to management

No related posts.

During the third exercise you check the activities against 8 barriers that can hinder the community performing these activities. If the activities or the people involved in these activities are hindered by any of the barriers described below, it is best to find other activities that are less hindered. There are ways to deal with these barriers, but I will discuss these in a later post.

Freedom and time

In many cases engaging in online collaboration or knowledge sharing does not tie directly to peoples day to day work. This becomes more the case as the work people do is more standardized. The moment someone helps solve a colleagues problem in another part of the business, this will take up time without direct benefits to the helpers business. Of course on a larger scale this does add value to the company as a whole. However, we see many cases where management does not want to allow people time to engage in such activities because the results do not add directly to their bottom line. If people aren’t given enough freedom and time to engage you will be dependent on those that will engage in their own time. Ask yourself if that group is large enough to make your community vibrant.

Transparency

The use of enterprise 2.0 technology within your company will increase transparency in your organization. It will be more transparent who is competent in certain areas and who contributes. It will also be more transparent how decisions are made. There are many people within organizations that believe transparency will not benefit them. The resistance stems from the fact that people think they will be held accountable for certain actions or colleagues will think less of their competences than before. Because this barrier is so personal and threatening to people, you can expect them to put up a big fight against transparency.

Knowledge is power

There are people that hold their position because they have valuable knowledge. These people are often afraid to share because they believe it will make them obsolete. This barrier is also a fear barrier and hence very powerful.

Fear of stupidity or fear of being ignored

There is nothing worse than looking stupid or being ignored where everyone can see. This barrier has most impact in the initial stages of a community. If a community is not very vibrant yet, the barrier to engage with the community is larger than in situations with a lot of vibrancy. Have a close look at the people that are to engage in the activity to make sure the percentage of fearful people is not too large.

Negative marking of people

In many communities there is a small group of very active people. Especially in the early phases of a community you need to manage their activities a little bit. In the early stages the community often still has to prove its usefulness to the company. Skeptics and threatened people will be looking for ways to damage the initiative. An easy way to do so is to target enthusiastic people. In almost all communities I’ve seen, very active people are marked as “having nothing better to do.” Be prepared for this and subtly protect these people from themselves and the skeptics.

Confidentiality

The fact that confidential information could leak easier when using a community with so many people involved, is a valid concern but also an important weapon of the more skeptical people. It is the most heard reason for people not to engage.

Competition

Map out other community initiatives within the company and analyze if your community, when successful, will threaten them. Also talk to IT to establish if the platform you are likely to chose does not conflict with their plans. If so, plan to deal with it. There is nothing more deadly for a community than a change in technical platform for any reason other than an improvement for the community.

Management participation

As with everything you want to achieve within an enterprise, if management does not endorse the initiative, forget it.

If you are starting a community it is best to start the community with activities least hindered by the barriers described above. As the community becomes more vibrant and gains more trust you can start initiatives that have more barriers to overcome.

Of course there are strategies to deal with the barriers described here. I’ll write about these in the near future.

No related posts.

We like the term ‘Connected Business’ as it better describes what this technology does. It is set of tools to break down silos in large enterprises and have their employees connect to one another. Employees that are connected to one another have access to each other’s knowledge, skills, and experience. This connectedness then leads to more problems being solved in less time and more innovative ideas being tested and enriched in less time. On the back off these advantages enterprises can save  money because there is less need to purchase knowledge through consultants and commissioned research.

So you become more operationally excellent because of the improved problem solving, you become more competitive because you become more innovative, and you get all this at lower costs. Yes, it’s as simple as that.

No related posts.

The key value gain for enterprises that engage with social platforms is that employees are enabled to solve more problems, improve their practice and test or enrich new ideas.  All without raising the costs of doing so.

The knowledge and experience of thousands of colleagues can be easily accessed through a social platform. If you have an idea or a problem you can search the community for shared knowledge or discussions on that topic or find experienced colleagues by searching profiles or discussions they participated in.

Many enlightened enterprises have recognized these benefits, however most struggle to create and maintain vibrant communities on social platforms.

I recently wrote a post on the importance of addressing the “what’s in it for me?” question for potential users of an online community. If potential participants do not clearly see what they can get out of participation, they will not engage. We regularly run workshops with participants to identify how collaboration would add value for them, with who they would collaborate, and on what subject collaboration and sharing would add value.

If you have answered the “What’s in it for me?” question. There is another factor that has great influence on the potential success of an internal enterprise community. It  is related to the fact that enterprise 2.0 technology, or social media, help overcome a number of important barriers.

Firstly, space and time. If you have people in several different locations it is difficult and costly to bring everyone together to collaborate. It also makes it difficult for employees on different continents to know what their colleagues are up to. By having rich personal profiles, listing your projects, and having technology for online collaboration, you can lower the barrier of space and time significantly.

A second barrier has to do with the fact that, without tools, people are only capable of effectively networking with about 150 people. This phenomenon is often referred to as Dunbars’ threshold. Online networked communities can help overcome Dunbars’ threshold by what is called ‘loose ties’. An on-line community with loose ties and search capability can let you access a multitude of other peoples skills and experience, beyond the scope of your physical network of 150.

Imagine you have a problem or an idea; you can enter a community and do a very focussed search on profiles within the community, quickly identifying relevant people to talk to. You can also ask the community an open question and the people with the relevant knowledge will reply. Finally, and Linked-In is a good example of this, you can have loose connections with a large number of people. The platform then updates you periodically of all the activities of the people in your network.

For the third barrier we go back to Dunbars’ threshold. It is the reason why small companies are able to have successful collaboration and large enterprises struggle. W.L. Gore is an example of a company that is very collaborative and innovative. To maintain this level of collaboration they cut up any business unit that grows over 150 people.

The traditional answer of most governments and enterprises to this issue has been hierarchies. With hierarchies Dunbars’ problem can also be solved. When it comes to collaboration and innovation hierarchies also have a number of significant downsides. The main reason hierarchies hold back collaboration is that communication needs to travel great distances, up and down the ranks, to reach it’s destination. Add to that the fact that there is a lot of internal competition, power play,  politics and there is a big barrier to surmount if collaboration (and innovation) is to occur. Communities can help get around this barrier because the participants interact directly without having to work through the hierarchies. We call this the democracy of participation.

When companies plan to start a community, the barriers are often overlooked. Having defined the “What’s in it for me?” question and created a list of things people will do together on the platform, you need to test all of them to see if they actually lower one or more barriers. The more barriers are lowered, the better your chance of creating a vibrant community.

No related posts.

Do you think you could pick the eventual winner of the X-factor out of 14,000 contestants upfront? Do you think an expert like Gordon, one of the Dutch jury members, can pick the winner upfront? And lastly, would you put money on his ability to pick the winner upfront? Personally, I wouldn’t bet much money on his ability to pick the right one out of the more than 14,000 candidates. The funny thing is, that a lot of companies take these low-chance-of-success-bets in regards to their innovation processes. The X-factor program however, has a very efficient innovation process.

In a lot of companies, two or three ideas are selected out of all the ideas that exist within the company. The other ideas do not get a chance of growing or showcasing progress. The ‘innovation’ budget is divided among these two or three ideas and these ideas are developed until launch. If you would be able to pick the two or three right ideas at the start, you would be one of the worlds best predictors and you could make a lot of money at the bookies with that gift. But personally I don’t believe that anybody is that good. Apparently, The makers of X-factor don’t trust Gordon to be that good either. They have set up a process to select the winning idea/singer.

Would you put your money on this contestant, in Britain’s got talent
(the English version of X-factor), after only seeing her?

Innovation process at the X-factor
The 14,000 candidates go through a first screening phase in which a large portion falls off. But also quite a large number of contestants progress from this first phase and they start a continual process of training and showcasing progress. Each time the best ones are selected to progress to the next round. This process goes on until the best candidates reach the finals and in the last episode the ultimate winner is chosen. In the final steps of the process, public voting by text-messages is introduced next to the judgement of the jury.

Organise innovation the X-factor way
The process described above reflects the way an innovation process at a company should be as well. At the first stage of the innovation funnel, very liberal selection criteria should be in place. In that way you will not dispose a ‘rough diamond’ idea, which does not look like a good idea at the beginning, but might potentially evolve into a killer idea. In the next steps, the continuous learning process of evolving the ideas throughout the innovation funnel ensures that ideas will develop to their full potential. The lessons learned from ideas that do not make it along the process, fuel the further development of ideas that are still in the process. The public voting done at the X-factor show translates to asking your customers for input on the ideas in development. If companies organise innovation in the X-factor way, they will become more efficient in their innovation process.

No related posts.

The size is an important factor in the ongoing community survival simply because this is related to the total number of postings and viewers (Koh et al., 2007). Consequently, it seems important to attract many community members, because more members generate more discussion. Especially in the start-up development period high activity in a community is important in order to lead to a successful community. Moreover, a large community entails a greater diversity in opinions and ideas and also creates a larger knowledge base. Building a large community seems to be beneficial, however, members seem to have difficulty gathering valuable information when a community is very large (McLure-Wasko & Faraj, 2000). Small communities build an intimacy that leads to fuller disclosure and richer insights.  The optimal size of a virtual community regarding effective communication is rather difficult to estimate and seems to be related to the needs and the effort involved, to perceived rewards, as well as the community’s role in the wider social network of the individual (Yeoman et al., 2003). A blogpost by Jeffrey Henning argues that the optimal community size is highly dependent on the purposes attached to the community. To ensure an ongoing community survival and encourage members to continue to interact, the optimal community size should be maintained. This means that new members should be attracted and current members will be leaving constantly.

A CoP normally is constructed of a core group of members that supply social and intellectual leadership and the other group of peripheral members (lurkers). In general it is considered that only 1 percent of members are active in posting and blogging. The critical mass is achieved when this active contributor base in a community is large enough to both satisfy the needs of the contributors as well as those of the lurkers (Tedjamulia et al., 2005). Too little contributors cause an inactive community and too many will lead to chaos and disorganized content if there is no effective organization and technological tools. A proper method for creating a successful critical mass is by checking whether a particular member is an active participant, a lurker or even inactive. The community manager should filter its members in order to create a more active community. The number of members needed for an active community might be lower when a few very active users produce enough content and results. These top-contributors are able to constitute the critical mass, activate and encourage lurkers and attract new members.

Community leaders should attempt to attract community builders to affect others to engage in the community. Moreover, through word-of-mouth communication or advertisements, leaders can accelerate network effects to achieve a perception of critical mass. In general, a large member-base is assumed to be beneficial, because this increases the amount of knowledge and its diversity available and can increase the competitive advantage of a company (Voelpel et al., 2008). Very large communities are usually structured into subgroups in order to encourage active participation (Wenger et al., 2002). In short, long-term participation depends on a sufficient base of content and interaction and on the community’s ability to organize the searching for information properly (Tedjamulia et al., 2005).
Literature:

• Koh, J., Kim, Y.G., Butler, B. & Bock, G.W. (2007). ‘Encouraging Participation in Virtual Communities’. Communications of the ACM; Vol. 50; No. 2; pp. 69-73
• McLure-Wasko, M. & Faraj, S. (2000). ‘‘It is what one does’: why people participate and help others in electronic communities of practice’. Journal of Strategic Information Systems; Vol.  9; No. 2-3; pp. 155 – 173
• Tedjamulia, S.J.J., Dean, D.L., Olsen, D.R. & Albrecht, C.C. (2005). ‘Motivating Content Contributions to Online Communities: Toward a More Comprehensive Theory’. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences; pp. 1-10
• Voelpel, S.C., Eckhoff, R.A. & Förster, J. (2008). ‘David against Goliath? Group size and bystander effects in virtual knowledge sharing’. Human Relations; Vol. 61; No. 2; pp. 271-295
• Wenger, E., McDermott, R. & Snyder, W.M. (2002). ‘Cultivating Communities of Practice: A guide to managing knowledge’. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

No related posts.

The survey focuses both on using Web 2.0 as external-facing tools as well as internal-facing tools. As an Innovation Consultant working on Enterprise 2.0 projects my interest points toward the internal-facing use of the tools.

It is encouraging to see that the Enterprise 2.0 projects we are working on are getting more widely accepted and appreciated.

For example I have been working on several internal wiki projects, during all of these projects the idea of an external-facing wiki came up. I think that addressing the external community is far more effective when using blogs, social networks or communities, just as the figures in the report show and the following statement also underlines this: “However, only 33 percent of respondents expect to employ wikis on an external-facing community, believing that wikis are of greater benefit to employees than consumers.”

For another client we created and managed a platform to increase innovation within the company. This platform is aimed for the most innovative employees in the company to share their knowledge, improve internal communication, and to connect with each other. The following quote from the report underlines our efforts:

“Organizations working on project with the use of these Web 2.0 technologies will increase knowledge-sharing and employee collaboration (82 percent), improve internal communications (78 percent) and help employees find and help each other (59 percent). Ideally, these applications will improve horizontal and vertical cooperation, provide a convenient platform for knowledge sharing, facilitate closer collaboration between employees, nurture teambuilding and create loyalty to their organization. “

No related posts.

In the first place, Enterprise 2.0 is gaining traction in more companies; the initial small pilot projects have grown into serious applications that do change the way organisations are working and business is done. As a result companies plan to spend more on Enterprise 2.0 in the next year.

Secondly, the focus is less on technology and more on application of technology. The survey reveals that the technologies of P2P and web services have decreased in usage and that applications like blogs and wikis have grown. That’s a good sign showing that users are in charge of Enterprise 2.0, which is an imperative for successful introduction and use of Enterprise 2.0. In our experience, organisations where users drive Enterprise 2.0 are far more successful than organisations where IT is in control of Enterprise 2.0.

Third interesting point is that organisations are saying that the introduction of Enterprise 2.0 asks for and leads to other ways of organizing and collaboration. It’s not the technology, but it’s the change in the way people work that delivers value of Enterprise 2.0.

That’s also why application of Enterprise 2.0 tools can help organisations to become more innovative. The collaborative, grassroots way of communication of Enterprise 2.0 can be used as an important stepping-stone toward a more open culture, which is a prerequisite for an innovative company.

No related posts.

E20portal can be of great help when convincing a corporation to adopt Enterprise 2.0 tools using the industry reports, success case stories and the blogs of experts.

No related posts.