My teenage daughter is under 18, which means that she is a ”digital native.” While I may have learned how to use and am now an avid user of social technologies, my daughter never had to learn—her generation, often referred to as ”Generation Z,” is growing up immersed in them. So I usually learn something new from her every time she shows me what’s on her iPod.
This past weekend she showed me a video that really caught my attention because she referred to it as a “collab.” Since this was a video of several talented YouTube artists who had come together to create a song, I understood immediately that she meant “collaboration.” What really struck me was the idea that these artists, who shared similar talent, must have found and connected with each other through social, and then come together to “collab” on a project that would be beneficial to all of them. In fact, YouTube collaborations are an integral part of the YouTuber community, and it is basically when two or more YouTubers create video content together for mutual benefit, such as growing their audience (sources REELSEO and Vlog Nation). YouTubers who are interested in producing a collab have a variety of community oriented options to seek out and find potential partners to produce a collaboration video project with, including the official YouTube community for video creators.
Enterprises face the same need to find and tap into expertise across their ecosystem. A recent study by the IBM Center for Applied Insights discovered that the pioneers were evolving by going after their goals with five groups of social capabilities, known as “social ambitions”. One of these ambitions is “mine community expertise”.
Snippet above originally published on the IBM Center for Applied Insights blog Dec 2014
Full post below originally published on the IBM Social Business Spotlight Dec 2014
My teenage daughter is under 18, which means that she is a ”digital native.” While I may have learned how to use and am now an avid user of social technologies, my daughter never had to learn—her generation, often referred to as ”Generation Z,” is growing up immersed in them. So I usually learn something new from her every time she shows me what’s on her iPod.
This past weekend she showed me a video that really caught my attention because she referred to it as a “collab.” Since this was a video of several talented YouTube artists who had come together to create a song, I understood immediately that she meant “collaboration.” What really struck me was the idea that these artists, who shared similar talent, must have found and connected with each other through social, and then come together to “collab” on a project that would be beneficial to all of them.
Is this concept limited just to the digital natives under the age of 18? In our recent Center for Applied Insights study, Charting the social universe, three quarters of the respondents believe a social business is one that uses social technologies to foster collaboration among customers, employees and partners. Yet only 20 percent say their own enterprises have attained this level of social interaction. So while enterprise interest in the concept of using social for “collab” appears to be high, there is still a lot of ground to cover in implementation. To help, we asked respondents how they are using and deploying social capabilities, and for what business purpose. And we discovered that the pioneers were evolving by going after their goals with a group of social capabilities at a time, known as “social ambitions”:
- Drive internal and external collaboration
- Build, educate and protect the workforce
- Understand and engage customers
- Mine community expertise
- Improve business processes
While enterprises typically don’t need to create collab videos on YouTube, they do need ways to find and to tap into expertise across their ecosystem for goals such as optimizing workforce talent, increasing employee productivity, and idea-sourcing for improved products and services. And similar to the video artists seeking out talent for collab, companies going after this ambition are mining community expertise to achieve their goals. Implementing the social capabilities needed to mine community expertise often involves working with a wider group of executives than is the case with other social ambitions. It also requires a more grassroots approach: 43 percent of respondents relied on employee evangelists to help kick-start the transition. Given the grassroots nature of this ambition, here are a few other insights that may not be surprising:
- Only 19 percent have an enterprise-wide social strategy—half are still in the early stages of adopting these capabilities.
- Only 14 percent have formal quantitative metrics that they can track to performance goals.
- Being accessible via mobile is also key—64 percent of enterprises plan to have this in place within 12 months.
One example where IBM has inspired its own flavor of grassroots evangelism like this is in employee/alumni community networks. If you do a search on LinkedIn groups for ”IBM,” you’ll see nearly 3000 results, ranging from the official IBM employee/alumni network (The Greater IBM Connection) to IBM Storage Specialists to IBM Women in Latin America. The Greater IBM Connection itself was initially started as a grassroots effort by one IBM business unit for purposes of business opportunity development and talent acquisition (workforce optimization) via IBM alumni connections. It was later expanded into what it is today, a global business and professional community bringing together current and former IBMers from around the world to generate ideas, collaborate, and connect.
Other common types of communities that are deployed with this ambition include Expertise Location, Online Learning, Social Events, and Onboarding to grow and better utilize talent, locate subject matter experts, and crowdsource ideas, applications, and innovations. So what should companies who have this social ambition think about as they move forward (even if they aren’t creating a YouTube collab video)?
- Leverage employee evangelists to develop and maintain communities.
- Don’t underestimate the importance of mobile-enabled social apps.
As Brian Solis put it, “Social media spark a revelation that we, the people, have a voice, and through the democratization of content and ideas we can once again unite around common passions, inspire movements, and ignite change.” (Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web)
Julie Yamamoto 
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