For the last 18 months, Intel has invested a significant effort to develop a full strategy & implementation roadmap for social computing within the enterprise.  I am pleased to announce the release of a white paper Developing an Enterprise Social Computing Strategy that I did jointly with Malcolm Harkins, Chief of Information Security. The paper details our approach towards embracing the use of collaborative technologies while addressing the mitigation of legal, HR and governance issues.  Here are some key areas you will find detailed in the paper:

• The business focus for social computing (also refer to: Why Intel is investing in Social Computing
• Collaborative approach IT, HR and Information Security
• Intel's integrated architecture
• Intel's approach to determine early use cases, business value and vendor/solution evaluations
• Results of a security risk assessment
• Phased implementation plan
• Initial results after 3-1/2 months into deployment & adoption

There are a lot of key takeaways within this paper.  The biggest one that I hope you will walk away with is:  Enterprise 2.0 is a challenging effort.  Yes, there are risks.  But Intel hasn't discovered any new risks introduced with 2.0 technologies that doesn't already exist with 1.0.  We believe the opportunities outweigh the risks. In fact, we are convinced that inaction carries much greater risks: that the enterprise will not realize the benefits that social computing can deliver, and that employees will increasingly turn to external, unsecured tools for communication.  IT has a leadership opportunity to get ahead of and deliver emerging platforms, at a fraction of the cost of "standard" collaborative infrastructure, to enable their business to stay one step ahead of the competition. 

I hope you enjoy the paper.  I welcome your perspectives and learning about that strategy that is yielding success for you.

Over the last several months I have engaged with conversations both internally within Intel and externally around the work I am doing with enterprise social computing. Inevitably someone always states, “Knowledge management has been attempted and failed over the last several years. Why is it going to be different this time?”

Warning- the following might be considered heresy by KM loyalists :):

From my perspective I believe social computing will ultimately achieve what traditional KM has been attempting to do for years. Call it a paradigm shift, but unlike traditional KM, social computing is not about managing knowledge. Rather, social computing is about enabling more effective people interactions. Therein lies the yellow brick road to bringing knowledge to the forefront. How could I possibly make this claim? Because tacit knowledge is a key portion of the knowledge this is relevant and necessary. Traditional knowledge management tactics have struggled to effectively capture and harness tacit knowledge. Within Intel, we have substantial efforts to document processes- especially within our engineering and manufacturing organizations. Many white papers have been written. But at the end of the day, all that captured and managed knowledge isn’t enough to effectively transfer a process completely or in Intel terms “copy exact.” It takes the documentation, white papers plus a team of people to do the knowledge transfer. Ultimately tacit knowledge is at the heart of the matter. It is the golden key. With social computing, we are finally able to see more light at the end of the tunnel.

So what does this mean for us, for you? There are a number of environmental pressures that are descending on Intel and peer companies. The first – Knowledgification- essential for economic growth in the 21st century: I recently had an opportunity to hear Gene Meieran, an Intel Fellow and employee for 34 years, speak at our Intel IT Technical Leadership conference. Gene stated that during the 20th century, the #1 innovation was electrification- the delivery of cheap power to homes and factories. Gene makes the case that the capturing and sharing of knowledge between people, organizations and communities, will be the force that drives the economy in the 21st century. Knowledge is the glue the holds our virtual universe together. The global sharing of information will change the world for the better - if we do it wisely. Knowledgification also powers radical innovation. Radical innovation is rarely seen in mature companies. It is risky, has high failure rates and is birthed by individuals. Gene argued that it is the institution’s job to enable the culture of innovation. The role and responsibility of IT is to create an environment that supports collaboration and sharing of information across time zones, across geographies, across organization hierarchies. IT must develop technology that allows people to work better and more effectively (asynchronously and synchronously) than we currently are today.

The second environmental pressure is one of the biggies. Starting in 2012, the U.S. is going to experience a large portion of our workforce aging out of the system. Yes, baby boomers will be retiring. That means that tacit knowledge gets up and walks out the door. As a 40 year old company, this should be enough to have Intel shaking in its boots. If effectively implemented early, I believe social computing provides the ability to extract and capture knowledge tidbits or knowledge streams- a fundamental portion missing from KM today. Instead of exerting even more efforts to formally document, house, realize knowledge - social computing captures the knowledge that is shared informally via conversations and people interactions. Social computing naturally fits over ways that people connect and share knowledge, tacit in particular. Metcalf’s law of exponentially increasing the value of your knowledge network, by increasing its volume – can be achieved.

You may be thinking I had a big breakfast of motherhood and apple pie this morning. But I challenge us to think differently. I challenge us to look in the mirror and determine if we have achieved the highest levels of being a learning organization. Do we feel we are effectively capturing tacit knowledge today? What is the business impact of having large amounts of knowledge walk out the door? How much does the knowledge transfer process cost today? Could there be a better way? I believe there is a better way and it’s wearing social computing boots. Knowledge boots that keep the knowledge from walking out the door and boots that kick radical innovation into high gear. Are you ready to try on a new pair of boots?

We have officially completed our exploration process to determine the value of social networking within our enterprise. This is included conversations with industry analysts; IT peers; a proof-of-concept (POC); usage model work; focus groups and human factors engineering. The first lesson we learned is to not call it "social" networking. It was wrought with images of kids throwing virtual pies at each other. Our new terminology for the capability within the enterprise is now Professional Networking.

We took a look at professional networking’ s ability to solve some key challenges for Intel and tested a short list of vendor platforms to determine which one, if any, could meet our requirements. Below are some key findings and conclusions.

Employees see a significant ability to tackle increasing feelings of isolation and difficulty finding knowledge.

In particular, POC participants noted the ability to put a face to a name; extend and create their network; and locate experts as valuable features. As one participant stated, “Providing people better ways to connect, and find that knowledge from experts, would really help with silo’d information and make Intel feel more productive.”

There is substantial value in improving the attraction & retention of the next generation workforce.

Professional networking is expected by the next generation workforce. See What Gen Y Teaches Us About Enterprise Social Networking for learnings from focus group conversations with recent college graduates. Intel has opportunities to deliver expected new ways to learn, interact and access information immediately. This is not a trend, it is reality.

What Strategies are Critical for Success?

In addition to exploring the business value of professional networking, we learned a lot about what strategies are critical for success and what key road blocks need to be removed. What are the most critical strategies surrounding the deployment of professional networking?

Professional networking must bolt into an integrated social collaboration framework.

The strength of professional networking doesn’t just lie with the people information in the tool, but with the added context that other tools bring. For example, my profile lets people know that I am the Enterprise Social Media Program Manager but doesn’t present any documents, blogs, wikis or discussions forums to discover my “knowledge” around social media. A robust social stack provides the full rich picture.

Integration across social tools and traditional collaborative tools such as email, meeting workspaces and instant messaging is critical.

We heard loud and clear that the professional networking application should not be a disparate application. At a minimum, it must be integrated across social tools such as blogs, forums and wikis. Additionally, it needs to be engrained in work flow processes. This means that it is integrated into internal white pages; enterprise search results; email v-card, presence, to name a few.

Employees want only one profile to maintain; it must be unified.

If time is dedicated to update and enrich a profile, employees want only one. In addition, employees want to be able to leverage the profiles to search and find experts. In a survey done by our Enterprise Search program team, finding people was the third most important search employees want to do.

Deploying professional networking successfully is not as easy at it sounds. See The Best Social Tools Don’t Make a Social Enterprise, which highlights some of the key challenges. In a nut shell, if IT doesn't act, business units will. Also, if a strong investment in enterprise social computing has lacked, then the success of professional networking will be at risk without a solid core social stack. The core stack brings to the forefront the information and knowledge associated with the people.

Our goal is to have professional networking deployed by the end of the year. However, we still have a bit of work to be done.

I would love to hear how your company is approaching professional networking. Are you finding the same business value, challenges and strategies necessary for success?

Are you considering social networking in your enterprise? Surprise! We are too. We started off the process with certain perceptions about what the application should do and shouldn't do. If you think that your employees (especially the younger ones) want social networking within the enterprise just to have "fun" - think again. If you think it is purely for improving collaboration and productivity - ponder more. How do we know? We did a focus group with employees who are recent college graduates. Here is what we learned.

• Pulling in an existing external social networking application into the Intel environment is viewed very negatively. Even a "like" experience wasn’t well received. Gen Y'ers use social networking to connect with friends and to share outside-of-work experiences. They don’t want their personal life to become exposed in a work environment.

• Fun in the work environment is more directly tied to “physical” spaces/experiences and not a social networking application. There was even an allergic reaction to the term “social” as applied to the networking application. Social = their life outside Intel. They said within a business environment it needs to be a professional network.

• They expect to put a name to a face before they reach out to that person.

• They want tools that will help them to find relevant & trusted information/people faster. An analogy they used to describe the tool is your school yearbook entry + phone book+ management hierarchy.

• The application needs to be integrated with current destinations & other communication tools. Presence and a unified profile are very important to them. They want the ability to view another employee's profile in our internal Phonebook or email and within that application begin an instant message session with them. They explicitly stated that if we create another disparate application, they will not use it.

• They want the power to personalize. They don’t want to be fed the information that an administrator thinks they want- they want to decide what it is they will receive. They prefer the "iGoogle" like personalization.

• The application must be easy to use & not require a lot of time. Recently, a lot of them are getting turned off by some social networking applications because they are too busy- too much noise.
  
  Gen X and Baby Boomers – do you agree with the younger generation? Other IT shops, what are you seeing in your environments? I would like to hear from you. In my next post, I will share with you what some others in our work force said when I posted these results in our blog.