My team is in Japan and discover a big AHA moment for Toshiba!

In August, Toshiba’s research and development division decided to use IBM Connections for an internal jam to prepare for their technology preview.  The jam was conducted during a 4 day time span in early October and was deemed a success as they had roughly 400 participants across R&D, Engineering Planning, Sales, Marketing, Personnel, and other divisions.   This maxed out the number of people as they had only wanted 400 .. WOW!

Toshiba leveraged a focus on Communities. They had a main jam Community to guide the discussion rules and provide information by using wiki, files and bookmarks. The bulk of the content was contained in 10 sub communities for discussion around different themes primarily using forums and the ideation blog. Each sub community had a facilitator and leader. Prior to launching the jam, Toshiba used blogs, board updates, email and other collaboration tools to market and announce the internal jam.

The actual content of the jam is confidential to Toshiba, but here are some interesting facts from their jam.

  • Jam produced over 900 pieces of content
  • 100% of the survey participants think they should hold a jam again in the future
  • 88% of the survey participates found it successful

This Toshiba example, is indictative of using Social for Ideation or Innovation.  McKinsey says that on average a company using Social for Ideation improvements see a 20% success rate improvement in new product, offerings, or program introductions!  

What’s your story!