Links for this week (weekly)

  • We examined the activity of a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 to find out how people are using the service. We then compared our findings to activity on other social networks and online content production venues. Our findings are very surprising.

    tags: twitter, microblogging, socialnetworks, adoption, participation

  • The value of social media is relative to the cycle of social media transformation that is vetted through the marketplace of peers. Past industries were started, enabled and created by conversations that led to innovation.

    tags: socialmedia, socialsoftware, transformation, cycle, innovation, value, currency, transformationcycles

    • Conversations are filled with information which is shared with others.  The internet, in its current stage, enables the propagation of conversations from one to one to millions at the click of a mouse.  The acceleration of conversations at rates beyond past experiences facilitates the transformation of information into knowledge.   Subsequently a few people discern the knowledge gained and move to the creation of innovation in product, service and delivery (marketing, service and reach).
  • A lot of organizations are struggling with what to do with a host of costly, high-maintenance technologies that they have introduced in the last decade, hoping these technologies would produce (a) improved internal productivity, and (b) better relationships with customers. They have achieved neither objective. So they’re stuck with some very large and expensive lemons, three in particular:

    tags: implementation, intranet, organization, socialnetworks, adoption, methodology, enterprise2.0, problemsolving, generationy

    • Real-Time
      Conversation: IM + Google Wave
    • Virtual
      Presence: Screensharing
      + Document Sharing:
    • Mindmapping
      Tools:
    • Blogs
      for E-Learning and E-Newsletters:
    • Canvassing
      Tools:
    • Simulations
      and Scenario
      Planning:
    • Proximity/Affinity
      Detectors:
    • Problem-Solving
      Facilitation:
  • Are you a fully engaged knowledge worker? If the answer is “No,” then the boss needs to know why knowledge workers can’t be managed in the traditional sense.

    Here’s the message you need to convey to your employer.

    The need for change to modern management is firmly grounded in our increasing insights regarding the power of “emergent” human behavior.

    tags: knowedgeworkers, knowledgemanagement, management, tacitknowledge

    • Knowledge workers are an investment rather than an expense. They not only desire considerable personal autonomy but also the responsibility and accountability for running at least some part of an organization. They need to be treated as partners or associates and not as typical Industrial Age employees.
    • Further, tacit knowledge must be allowed to “emerge” through voluntary collaboration or self-organization. People are seldom aware of exactly what unrelated knowledge they possess until confronted with a problem or an opportunity.
    • The organizational sweet spot is like the sweet spot on the strings of a tennis racket. In a general sense, the sweet spot of the racquet is the area of the string bed that produces the best combination of feel and power. In an organization, the sweet spot is created by the overlap of a formal and an informal system.
    • Therefore, we need to place greater emphasis on developing constructive social contexts that support the dynamics that allow people to establish meaningful relationships and in the process share tacit and explicit knowledge to the fullest extent possible.
  • tags: enterprise2.0, socialmedia, socialsoftware

  • Researchers at IBM and MIT have found that certain e-mail connections and patterns at work correlate with higher revenue production

    tags: MIT, IBM, socialnetworks, value, connections

    • Researchers at IBM Research and MIT’s Sloan School of Management found that the average e-mail contact was worth $948 in revenue. To unearth that and other data, they used mathematical formulas to analyze the e-mail traffic, address books, and buddy lists of 2,600 IBM consultants over the course of a year.
    • To be sure, not all networking yields dividends. The IBM-MIT study found that consultants with weak ties to a number of managers produced $98 per month less than average. Why? Those employees may move more slowly as they process “conflicting demands from different managers,” the study’s authors write. They suffer from “too many cooks in the kitchen.”
  • Web 2.0 tools can offer competitive advantages to firms in sectors where innovation produces winners and losers. Senior executives in large-scale corporations are increasingly aware that innovation is not restricted to R&D departments but is a dynamic social process. Proctor & Gamble, for example, now outsources more than 50% of its new product development through horizontal collaboration.

    The UK-based think tank, Demos, believes that social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo can be used to encourage staff to forge productive relationships with their colleagues. “They are part of the way in which people communicate which they find intuitive,” says Peter Bradwell, author of a recently published Demos report. “Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact. Often people are friends with colleagues through these networks and it is how some develop their relationships.

    tags: productivity, enterprise2.0, problems

    • Most managers and employees consult colleagues with whom they have close professional ties, regardless of competence. When seeking solutions problems, most people do not diversify their human options. While this instinct is understandable, countless studies have demonstrated that it’s also counter-productive. The only winner is the status quo.
    • Web 2.0 software knocks down corporate silos, moats and walls by encouraging open communication and information sharing. Expertise and solutions to problems no longer remain “hidden”, they are actively sought out and exploited. Since Web 2.0 tools foster transparent communication visible to all, the collaborative input of any employee, even far down the formal hierarchy, will be known, recognised and perhaps rewarded. Status and prestige incentives are thus built into the collaborative process. When collaboration is a win-win for everybody, buy-in is universal.
    • Most experts agree that the key to implementing a successful Web 2.0 strategy in the workplace is to encourage openness, don’t impose many restrictions, encourage bottom-up participation, and don’t over-react to criticism when it comes. One common pitfall is allowing a company’s Web 2.0 strategy to get highjacked by IT departments and middle mangers who attempt to control and neutralise its potentially destabilising impact – especially on them.
  • As from the common practice of working with this model they have added a input level to the diagram that discribes the denominator of the classical ROI formula in terms of costs for the Intranet management. “Output” describes the produced content by the input – in quantity, frequency, reach & actuality, comprehensability & usability. “Outgrowth” explains the perceived messages from Intranet output – measured for example by the knowledge about the contents of the distributed messages/information. “Outcome” indicates the effects from the “outgrowth” in regards to the changed behavior in terms of participation in any Intranet services. At the top of the model “outflow” pictures the business effects of the changes in behavior.

    tags: enterprise2.0, socialcomputing, output, outgrowth, outcomes, outflow, strategymaps, measurement

    • At this point I would like to focus on the part of “information management & distribution” as this is a precondition for the impacts on collaboration and also seen as the more difficult part to measure.
    • While the GPRA is nowadays not differentiating between level 2 & 3 and therefore proclaims only a three-level model (output / outgrowth & outcome / outflow), for a further discussion on how Enterprise 2.0 is effecting the business value a differentiated four-level model would be more suitable

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Head of People and Business Delivery @Emakina / Former consulting director / Crossroads of people, business and technology / Speaker / Compulsive traveler
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