IBM wants to persuade the corporate world that social networking can create real business value. It's a big ask
Cambridge, Massachusetts enjoys a world-class reputation as a place where innovative ideas become commercial hits. Disposable razors, fax machines, Polaroid cameras and computer spreadsheets were all invented here, thanks to the city's two intellectual hubs, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Today, despite the economic malaise sweeping much of the US, Cambridge's prosperity seems by and large to be holding up, with construction firms hard at work on new premises alongside the Charles River for a host of biotechnology and computer firms, as well as smart loft apartments for those employed there.
At first glance, the IBM Research building in East Cambridge typifies the average American workplace, with its cubicles, water coolers and motivational posters. But it is here that the computing giant is planning to develop the social networking technologies that it hopes will transform working lives, in the US and elsewhere, at its new Center for Social Software.
Announced in September 2008, the Center is effectively a "think tank", where the company's own researchers will work alongside customers and academics on building applications that will extend to the corporate world the kinds of collaborative activities seen on consumer sites such as Facebook (also a Cambridge invention) and MySpace. Over time, the ideas generated will feed back into IBM's product portfolio, and in particular, its Lotus Connections corporate social networking product.
"It's vital to us as an organisation that we tap into external ideas about the future of collaboration," explains Bob Picciano, IBM's general manager for Lotus. "We know that social networking is increasingly integral to society in general, as we've seen from the popularity of a number of consumer-focused sites. What we need to understand better is how it can be applied to create real business value and real business outcomes."
The idea for the Center for Social Software, he says, was born out of discussions he began in early 2007 with Irene Greif, an IBM Fellow who leads the company's worldwide research efforts in the area of the Collaborative User Experience (CUE) and has been appointed director of the new Center. While IBM has long engaged this kind of research both internally and externally, she explains, the Center will formalise the company's efforts to attract top social computing scientists from around the world and get them to collaborate with IBM, its customers and its partners.
"We're well aware that, in many respects, IBM is way ahead of its customers in terms of the comfort level it feels about new social networking technologies. But I passionately believe that company representatives that come here and spend time with us as corporate residents of the Center will go back to their own organisations as committed evangelists," she says.
It's a bold statement. But in order to deliver, IBM must rely on the voluntary participation of its customer base, at a time when most business leaders are more preoccupied with cutting costs and maintaining liquidity than "blue-sky" thinking.
Even Greif concedes that the timing of the Center's opening hasn't been helpful in fulfilling its aims. The original plan was that customers would pay IBM for the privilege of sending corporate residents to the Center for three months at a time. Now, those plans are under review, with the company considering offering "immersive experiences" of one to two weeks in duration, at a much lower cost.
For now, however, Greif is unwilling to say how much those costs might be. "We'll be piloting various approaches over the summer, for introduction in the Fall, once we've a better idea of what the market will be for these services," she says.
That's not to say, though, that IBM has drawn a complete blank in its efforts to recruit corporate residents. Business information provider Thomson Reuters is already working with the Center to come up with ways for its employees to explore and share the information about patient treatments and outcomes held in its vast databases, according to Bill Marder, senior vice president and general manager of the company's healthcare division. "We're making much better progress than we could ever achieve purely by our own in-house efforts. We could do this alone, but it would take far longer and cost far more," he says.
Testimonials like that will be vital to the Center's success. The involvement in its activities of Andrew McAfee, a Harvard professor widely attributed with coining the term "Enterprise 2.0", won't hurt either. McAfee accepts that there is widespread resistance to the introduction of such tools in many areas of business, but believes that hard, quantitative data on its benefits will be "incredibly useful" in persuading bosses of their benefits.
"Busy, pragmatic executives generally feel that it's not their job to build social capital between their employees. It's to shift products out the door and get money coming in. So we need to provide them with more precise details on how they can use such tools to achieve those aims," he says.
Over the next few years, for example, he plans to use new IBM recruits as "guinea pigs" for his research in the area of operational improvement, by exploring how their use of social networking tools impacts their overall productivity as employees. "My hypothesis is that those who use the right tools at the right time will do better than their counterparts who don't. Right now, it's just an article of faith. My aim is to test it rigorously."
For now, it's clear that there is much work to do, and IBM, along with other technology companies, will need to work hard to convince potential customers that they can deliver the kinds of technologies that tomorrow's workplace will need. It's no coincidence that, just a few blocks down the road from IBM's Center for Social Software, rival Microsoft has recently established its New England R&D Center, bringing together computer scientists and social scientists "to understand, model and enable the computing and online experiences of the future".
But, in the final analysis, how widely these tools are deployed will be up to the user, according to Anthony Bradley, an analyst with IT analysis firm Gartner. In a recent report, he points out that many social software projects fail, because IT managers wrongly assume that successful communities form spontaneously, just because social networking tools are provided.
They have much to learn, he says. "Enterprises are starving to exploit new social methods of mobilising communities to achieve radical, not marginal, business impact. But they are just now beginning to understand how to catalyse communities for significant enterprise gain."
Posted 18 March 2009 : Director.co.uk
