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From Seminar hosted by Googol. Yours truly as Keynote speaker. Enjoy.
Anders Bjers
Sometimes history teaches you more than you could believe was possible. Check this episode from the 70ies by James Burke. Who makes connections in history to innovations of modern time. Take that philosophy and add todays even more hyped social and digital crescendo of innovations and what that in turn triggers and are imperative for innovations that are needed to solve challenges of the modern world and our common future.
Enjoy/
Anders Bjers
Innovation and Communication: Social is about Collaboration
If it’s social – it is collaboration. When deploying new tools to both innovate how you are interacting with your colleagues, customers or others and why you are to start reaching out; then it will also mean that you will start to collaborate or make collaboration possible. By doing so you are using ways to engage and involve people around you (the company / organization / eco-system). Connections that you both plan and wish for, while others just happen.
Social Media is way too often used as just another megaphone to shout out same old prefab messages as in traditional channels. Move yourself away from that. Open up for more and you will get back value.
We see that mayor companies are doing so in order to gain leverage in organizations that includes many, many employees, leaders, consultants and others. But we also see the effect on how social and collaborative means to sense more of the relationships that are created. To sense more of the doing and potential of the organization. To sense the company and the doing of the people involved, both on the outside and the inside, so to say. So deploying a social collaboration not only means technology – often technology are seen as the silver bullet that “fixes” almost everything. Just as often, it may be the opposite. Tech is important, sometimes crucial. But so are culture, leadership, openness, trust, meaning and direction. Tech can be the facilitator, the common context that make new products, actions and flows possible, that in its turn can be considered a silver bullet for – change, improvement and innovation. This I believe.
Remember, where “social” is today is where “The Internet and the web” found itself fifteen years ago – then the “New New thing” that met both skepticism and evangelism on its potential. But just as we can’t think about life without the web today (having been normalized) – tomorrow we will consider “social” to be just as “impossible” to live without.
Let’s take a look at some disruptive tech that brings buzz and cases on collaboration.
Twitters hashtags is a good example on collaboration. A user (Chris Messina) created the hashtag without Twitters (the company) real consent. Instead, Twitter was against the use of hashtags and tried to stop it. But the pressure was stronger among users and today hashtags is something commonly used to follow a flow of conversations and collaborations let’s say among an audience or users of a brands products. (see a good story from GigaOM)
Check this Wall Street Journal article on how companies are collaborating actively with college classes on how to build online marketing. Social is a tool used extensively. Innovative in many ways and I wonder if it’s possible in Sweden?
A young Swedish entrepreneur recently developed an idea as a school assignment. His idea was to help children take important medications with a better understanding, less stress and anxiety. He created “Snorisar”. It is both a story and a product. With the help of a Facebook group he collaborated with parents on the development of the product and the idea itself, right from the start. Also, user groups were created to test the idea in order to bring in feedback before launch. The turnout was so good that today “Snorisar” is sold at Pharmacies. You can suppose that the outcome would be different and not as user friendly without collaboration. And would have cost much more.
Salesforce launched less than a year ago the Salesforce Chatter, a collaboration application for enterprises to connect and share information with people at work in real-time. Chatter is considered to be a disruptive technology that can change how people share and collaborate at work for real.
IBM is working in a somewhat similar way with its Lotus Live. But I don’t think they are grasping social in a user friendly or smart, contemporary way. You cant even share the video… A good example of a tool you should be cautious to deploy, in my mind.
Key takeaways.
- If you think social – think collaboration.
- Reach out to your relations early in the innovative process. Embrace the potential for co-creativity.
- Listen and be sure to answer back. Give feedback. Don’t shout out same messages as in traditional channels.
- When you are followed be sure to follow back.
- Make a strategy before launching social for collaboration. The tech itself is not a silver bullet. It depends on how you deploy and engage.
- Be sure to connect tech with the culture, behavior, needs, meaning and direction.
Check back for more next week. Lets dive into the subject c-creativity with the help of social tools.
Anders Bjers
This blogpost is syndicated with Googol.
IBM Lotus Live
In a number of blogposts I will examine and pay forward insights, ideas, models, knowledge and more on the subject Innovation and Communication.
Think a few moments about Innovation and Communication – soon you realize that the concepts are interlinked in many ways. If it wasn’t for communication we would not have as many innovations. If Einstein didn’t communicate his theories we wouldn’t understand or appreciate them, if Apple didn’t communicate the message “Think Different” – we would probably not view the ground breaking products in the same way and the company’s employees would for sure not have the same “Geist” to go for the cutting edge and simplicity of their developments. And certainly, if it wasn’t for new smart social tools – consumers wouldn’t be able to be co-creative in the process of improving and making new products, services and more.
There are three core levels on Innovation and Communication.
- To innovate new ways to communicate.
- To communicate innovations.
- To use communication in order to innovate.
I am certain that you may come to think about a few more. However I will focus on the three mentioned above.
Every day I am both stumbling over great cases and working on dimensions of Innovation and Communication.
Today many are seeking the perfect way to facilitate and ignite innovations. Communication is often used as a tool. We have seen U.S President Obama speak of Innovation in his State of the Union. As a follow up the White House made a Q&A on YouTube about innovation in the 2011 budget. Also there is an Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation using the blog as platform.
The Swedish Government recently held talks in Stockholm on how to ignite more innovation in Sweden. And the European Union are launching an Innovation Union with the same aspirations – since more innovations may give way to more growth. Some ways to use fairly new tools of communication for the sake of spreading the message about innovation.
Below is the trailer for EU:s Innovation Union. It´s great as an ambition. But, they only communicate What buzzwords we can associate with Innovation. We need more – we need to get emotionally attached and the Why – that why that motivates people to make innovations sprout from European minds and hearts and in harmony with common needs and challenges to overcome.
The race for more innovation is on and so is the use of communication to manifest the union between innovation and the urge to improve our world.
Stay tuned for more about Innovation and Communication.
Anders Bjers
This blogpost is syndicated with Googol
