Author: sandraanncarter (Page 117 of 137)

Crowdsourcing is a top value of Social Business.   Crowdsourcing is the act of soliciting input (knowledge, insight, ideas and other forms of social capital) from a widespread, diverse population in order to produce an optimal solution, product or service. Often either monetary or non-monetary incentives are provided as motivation.

How do you select your crowd for this innovation?

Some suggestions!

1. Decide if you want an open “crowd” — i.e.  everyone and anyone, or an invited “crowd” based on a set of criteria.
2. Where do you find that crowd?   Do they hang out on LinkedIn? Facebook? In a particular communtiy?
3. How do you reward them to come to your “crowdsouricing party?”
4. Articulate your goal and process clearly so that the right people stay.  For instance, Community to Innovate 2015 Technology Trends.   We will start brainstorming in community y, for 3 days with votes deciding the winning ideas.
5. Make sure it matters enough to your team — SR team as well — to participate with your Crowd!

And always thank the Crowd!!!!

1. And always remember to say Thank you!

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/)

This weeks Social Business Coffee Break features the new job types that Social Business will drive in the marketplace.

I find it fascinating how many jobs were created by the internet. Like web master, SEO expert, etc. SOCIAL will do the same! Love to hear your thoughts!

All:

I was invited to Farmer’s to present new Leadership Skills in a Social Business world. First, I view this as a insightful move from the executive team.  The line up of speakers was impressive and their focus on coaching and 21st century skills was amazing.

As I did 4 sessions to the highest senior team, I think I learned as much as they did but on different things.  Here’s what I learned from Farmer’s.

• Farmer’s is commited to leadership 2020.  This meeting focused on the leadership skills required to get them there.  So many times companies focus on strategy and priorities. They focused on people.
• As I love to say, culture eats strategy for lunch.  Their culture is one of authencity and teaming to lead them to that growth.   It is impressive.
• While growth is top of mind, the thing that impressed me the most, was their focus on “not at any cost”.  They reminded me about the mission of “caring for people” and how that has impacted their company.  They care for people — their employees, agents, and clients.   This oozes from everything they did.

I often say that becoming a Social Business will amplify your culture and values.  I was very impressed with Farmer’s Insurance as a company, and its leadership team and have no doubt that Farmer’s Journey will be successful.

Being just in Germany, I had read that Germany was not yet ready for Social Business.  But studying the facts, and seeing the number of German companies already adoption social at great rates, like Bayer, Sennheiser, and more I think that Germany maybe behind in Social adoption for personal reasons but not in business. A recent report for Dell from Trendstream showed that 70% of German businesses are using social media for business purposes and 40% for customer acquisition

In the chart below from the Global Web Index, we see that Germany is the second country in its use of Social to research products and find new products to buy.

 What are your thoughts on Germany and Social?   What about your country?

I just got back from Germany at the Social Business JamCamp!  First, the team and people are pictured below who came up with this creative idea to deepen client relationships!

The Tour began with the Bus Tour!

Then ended with a 2 day session on Social Business — one day focused on Internal Social Business, and one session focused on External Social Business!

Even though reports show slower pick up of Social for personal reasons, we see Germany as a best practice adoption region for Social Business overall.

I was just in Germany at the #JamCamp!  I met up with one of the earliest adopters of Social — Bayer!

I wanted to share their storyas  told to the audience by Kurt De Ruwe, the visionary CIO who began this social collaboration revolution inside the company. (See Kurt and I below after our lunch together discussing next steps!)

With over 111k employees, Kurt and team had several challenges. They had several teams working on the same problem across the world with duplication of effort and no real sharing of the solutions.   With an aging population,  Kurt had  35% of the people with thorough process and tool knowledge that were going to retire in the next 7 to 10 years.

So he set out to help Bayer become more competitive.  With a primary Social question in mind, he drove to create a culture where sharing is seen as normal and to stimulate the innovation process.

He piloted a set of communities in R&D (for innovation) and O&I (for social knowledge management of  best practices).  His progress and viral usage was amazing.

The pilot he started in the Materials Areas is now set to be ssed throughout his company. The R&D team focused on innovation, communities to spark the spirit of the team, and to facilitate crowdsourcing of ideas.  For O&I, he wisely worked on setting up places of sharing, communities to drive better practices, and to reach the teams at all levels.   

The success of his innovation stimulation and best practice sharing was built on a set of simple principles: