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Collaboration and team identity

by Larry Irons, March 8, 2010 | Comments

On the relevance of social learning

Harold Jarche recently offered a framework for social learning in the enterprise in which he draws from a range of colleagues (Jay Cross, Jane Hart, George Siemens, Charles Jennings, and Jon Husband, all members of the Internet Time Alliance) to outline how the concept of social learning relates to the large-scale changes facing organizations as they struggle to manage how ...

Culture in Social Business Design

by Larry Irons, October 1, 2009 | Comments (1)

Social Network Analysis applied to the ecosystems of organizations

My last post discussed the Open/Closed culture fallacy in social business design. I made the point that leaders of large corporations are typically unable to answer the key strategic questions posed by David Armano of the Dachis Group in a recent important post, Re-designing Your Business Culture. Among other questions, David asked: Do we want real connections established between employees, ...

Social Business Design

by Larry Irons, September 28, 2009 | Comments (1)

The Fallacy of Open/Closed Culture

Think about a closed business culture. Try to visualize what it looks like. What do you see? Does it look something like a pyramid? Now, think about an open business culture. Try to visualize it. What image comes to mind? Does it look something like a spider web turned on its side? These two imaginings pose similar relationships between their parts. A three dimensional ...

Learnscapes in social business design

by Larry Irons, September 2, 2009 | Comments

Making learning scalable

About a month ago I read What Would Andrew Do?, an unbook by Jay Cross and friends. I've mentioned Jay's work in previous posts dealing with elearning 2.0 and collaboration in informal learning. In particular, its important to remember that focusing on informal learning doesn't mean we must disregard the relevance of formal learning because learning is never 100% formal ...

Dachis Framework on social business design

by Larry Irons, July 22, 2009 | Comments

Insights from HP's WaterCooler

Does your organization approach using social media in its business as something to fear or as something to evangelize? Several recent observers note that incorporating social media into business involves changing the culture underlying communication patterns and decision-making in many large organizations.Amber Naslund, for instance, tells us that adopting social media means changing the mindset on how to do business. ...

Social business design

by Larry Irons, July 8, 2009 | Comments

The importance of multichannel team collaboration

David Armano recently asked the question, Is the Hub and Spoke Model Adaptable? Anyone who ever worked on a project team in a large organization, especially corporate enterprises, probably recognizes the hub and spoke team design depicted in the graphic above. In this post I take a closer look at the hub and spoke design's purpose in hierarchical, bureaucratic, organizations--the kind associated with industrial ...

Social Business and Open Empathy Organization

by Larry Irons, May 20, 2009 | Comments

Revisiting the Golden Rule

I first took real notice of the term "social business" in a post early this year over at Peter Kim's blog. The concept of social business is not limited to those enterprises seeking to "generate social improvements and serve a broader human development purpose," though these are certainly admirable goals. Rather, social business is increasingly discussed as a frame of ...

Listening to online brand conversations

by Larry Irons, January 30, 2009 | Comments

More on the engagement gap

A recent report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council provides an interesting set of insights into the engagement gap. The engagement gap refers to the difference between the influence of the Internet in consumer decision making and the amount of spending, and effort, by corporations and government agencies in trying to interact with and shape the thinking behind those decisions. ...

Transformation as a deep metaphor for design

by Larry Irons, January 8, 2009 | Comments

Thinking about innovation and change

Bruce Nussbaum recently declared Innovation is Dead, initiating a lively discussion around the issue of whether one term for change is better than another. Before listing out Bruce's key points, it is important to recognize that he isn't saying that innovation is unimportant. Rather, he is pointing to the necessity of approaching meaningful change as a transformation of relationships between ...

Considering social media's business value

by Larry Irons, December 8, 2008 | Comments

	The ROI Debate A month ago, Don Bartholomew asked the question, "Is 2009 the Tipping Point for Social Media accountability?" Don summarized the meaning of his question about accountability as follows: So far, the spirit of experimentation has provided a sort of ‘get out of jail free' card with respect to having to demonstrate the value of digital and social media programs and ...
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Exploring the say-mean gap in design research

by Larry Irons, December 3, 2008 | Comments

Understanding brands through deep metaphor

In recent posts at Skilful Minds I discussed different gaps, from the community gap in particular to the encompassing engagement gap. Each of those discussions attempted to size up a disparity between the attention currently given to the importance of community and social media by companies and the reality of the commitment of resources to them based on recent research ...

Metaphorical refrigerators

by Larry Irons, November 12, 2008 | Comments

	Design challenges in ubiqutous computing I've been meaning to write about Dan Saffer's Masters Thesis since reading it a couple of years ago. A recent post by Mike Kuniavsky provides an opportunity to do so. Also, it appears that Dan left his position at Adaptive Path to found Kicker Studio, a product design company. In The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design, Dan noted that ...
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Bringing personas to life in social media

by Larry Irons, October 23, 2008 | Comments

Nokia's 7610 Supernova

David Armano recently made a distinction between interactive advertising and social media which he depicts in the image on the left. He noted that many companies mistake interactive advertising with social media and notes that the two differ in the place of PEOPLE in the strategy. Specifically, David points out that interactive advertising involves Human-Technology Interactions. Whereas, social media involves ...

Stop with the Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

by Larry Irons, October 2, 2008 | Comments (1)

Customers aren't targets for social media

Keeping up with social media is a real challenge these days. However, one theme seems constant whenever you read blogs about social media, especially among marketers and so-called optimizers who target, target, target to drive, drive, drive customers to their client's social media asset, i.e. video, blog, community, etc. More than a few advocates of social media seem like they aspire ...

Closing the Engagement Gap

by Larry Irons, September 3, 2008 | Comments

Innovating Engagement through Customer Experience

A few weeks ago, I discussed the 2008 Tribalization of Business Study, sponsored by Beeline Labs, Deloitte, and the Society for New Communications Research, to discuss the gap between the importance many enterprises attribute to the development of communities and the accompanying investment in that engagement strategy, whether focused on internal stakeholders, or externally on customers. I noted that the findings ...

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