Today I received a short note from Adam Christensen re: IBM Jams... He pointed me to his case study on the most recent InnovationJam. I really like the concept behind the case, as I believe the argument is quite often true... How many companies are doomed to failure when implementing new innovative technologies that are grounded in social media?
In short, here’s the main point: too often social media is taken on as a stand alone experiment devoid of a proper value statement and not rooted in the business model or organizational mission. And just as I said in a prior presentation that social media in conflict with corporate culture is doomed to failure, so too is any social media project without regard to what business you are actually in.
And with the right corporate culture, you can end up with results like IBM: 150,000 participants, 46,000 ideas drilled down to 10 unique business ideas – from those ideas IBM created 10 mini business units – each funded with $10 million. A total of $100 million invested and with complete buy-in from all of the stakeholders of the firm.
In one word: Wow.
One of those business strategies IBM is implementing, which also happens to be the overall corporate strategy, is the Smarter Planet agenda. "The gist is, the major systems that make the world work – financial, health, food, traffic, energy, etc. – are all largely broken and in need of being fixed. And the solutions to those problems have a big technology underpinning."
Check out the Smarter Planet blog here.
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