IBM is a Social Business!

A social business is one that leverages social techniques as tools for organizational productivity and culture change, for engaging with diverse constituencies of clients and experts, and for spurring revenue growth and innovation for our global workforce. IBM is leading social business on all fronts – technology, policy and practice.

 Let me give you some examples of how IBM is living its vision!
First,as a company, IBM takes social networking seriously — to develop products and services, to enable sellers to find and stay connected with clients, to train the next generation of leaders, and to build awareness of Smarter Planet among clients, influencers and other communities.

Second, IBM has embedded Social into its culture. Its employees are brand ambassadors

* 1 million daily page views of internal wikis, internal information storing websites

* 70,000 employees profiles in SocialBlue, IBM’s initial social networking initiative before the adoption of Connections

* 15,000,000 downloads of employee-generated videos/podcasts

 Third, we created the Social Computing Guidelines first as Blogging Guidelines in 2005, and as Social in 2008! 

Fourth, we have changed our processes to be more engaging:

*IBM has conducted 50 Jams over the past 10 years. For example, IBM’s ValuesJam was used to develop IBM Values in 2003, IBM’s InnovationJam 2006 identified business opportunities that preceded Smarter Planet agenda. IBM Legal conducted LawJam in 2007 in support of global functional transformation.

*Human Resources utilizes social media for tech-enabled recruiting, employee education, sales training and leadership development. For example, IBM relies on social media for leadership development from an employee’s first day on the job. IBM’s Succeeding@IBM makes new hires part of a social group for 6-12 months so they can get up to speed more quickly with other new hires, they network and acclimate more quickly

Global Collaboration and Development processes leverage social!

* Generation Open — Built around social business tools, processes and management systems, GenO creates instant communities of global teams to collaborate on projects and products.

* Today, more than 130 communities of IBM professionals around the globe are collaborating virtually. This has reduced the time it would have taken to complete projects by 30%, increased re-use of “software assets” by 50%, and cut component costs by 33%.

Crowdsourcing is prevalent:* We have many other examples, such as IBM’s TAP program (Technology Adoption Program), a company-wide “open beta” where products are developed through crowdsourcing, and we’ve created some of IBM’s best-selling software products.

Gaming is used in many different innovative ways.  From INNOV8, that I started a few years ago, to City One, and onboarding game, Social Gaming enables us to educate faster and funner!

IBM is a great example of Social Business.  How about your company?!!  You will hear about some other social businesses as we move through the week!!