Month: November 2011 (Page 3 of 3)

Keeping with our focus on crowdsourcing this week, here is a great view by Cemex on their structured approach to crowdsourcing through an app called Think n Build. Cemex is a $14B company based in Mexico that provides high quality building products to customers in 50 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. They produce, distribute, and sell cement, ready-mix concrete, aggregates, and related building materials.

A true brick and mortar company!!!

Cemex structures their “innovation lesson” into 5 steps for all their employees!

1. The Challenge.  They open the innovation with a “challenge” to all employees.   This challenge is simply a problem statement.
2. Brainstorm.   Employees go in and brainstorm on the challenge.
3. Rating.   Employees rate the ideas and refinements.
4. Priorization of the ideas.   Based on the ratings, doability, and a number of factors, the ideas are sored.
5. Implementation and Execution.     The best ideas get implemented!

Hundreds of ideas for growth have been explored in this manner!  Have fun watching the video and be bold in trying this yourself!

IBM is eating our own cooking with being a true Social Business…crowdsourcing our Social Business ads!

By leveraging the “Wisdom of Crowds”, we took the best of the best from our Social Jam in February.

What do you think?!
Sandy

Happy Monday ! November is already here! Hard to believe.

This Monday’s coffee break is around the value of Crowdsourcing! The McKinsey Study showed that on average crowdsourced products are 20% more successful in the marketplace. Pretty compelling in today’s economy!

Have a listen and this week we will focus in on crowdsourcing examples!

Beginning November 8, the W3C Organization is hosting a worldwide event, called a Social Business Jam, a three-day online event to discuss how best to apply social technologies to maximize business effectiveness. W3C is a well respected standards organization in the tech industry and is responsible for key ideas that make it possible for you to read this page with your web browser. It is interesting that they are inviting business, government, and academia leaders for an open discussion on issues around social business and understand the role of open standards. A glimpse into their motivation may come from recent data reported that more than 50% of social technology users still have doubts about the effectiveness and value of the technology to their productivity at work.

Participants have the opportunity to interact with the Special Guests during the event, ask questions, raise challenges, and confer with speakers and other participants using an online discussion format that transcends schedules and world time zones. I see that Tim Berners-Lee will be one of the those Hosts. Should be exciting to see Tim’s views on Social Business.

The W3C event is free and the six topics described on the Jam information site are relevant to anyone attempting to move beyond just social media.

Registration is open and free.

I am excited and proud that IBM is a supporter of the W3C Social Business Jam as an industry focused, vendor neutral event.

I recommend you check out the Jam and register today: (http://www.w3.org/2011/socialbusiness-jam/)