There has been an explosion in social networking. The growth has been fueled and driven by individuals and their desire to connect with one another. The “enterprise” in the public or private sector is just beginning to explore how business and professional networks could be used for competitive advantage. What are the greatest areas of opportunity? What role could/should the enterprise have? How could business networks enhance the enterprise’s human capital? Would this be different in public versus private sector?

Gustav Plato, CEO of iiGrowth, and Aldo Bello, Chief Creative Officer, of Mind and Media are engaging public and private sector new media thought leaders on these questions and many more in some of the leading social networks including Facebook (see posts in Partnership for Public Service and the Collaboration Project) and LinkedIn (Questions and Answers), as well as a social networking tool, Ning.

Join the discussion!  If you are interested in participating in the discussion please go to these forums, our blogs, or contact us directly.

Greenversations is a blog that can be found on EPA’s front page. It is written by EPA employees as well as guests who want to share their thoughts with EPA.
It is an enterprise wide blog. It is not considered official policy, nor does EPA verify the accuracy of the posts. Nevertheless, it is about the work the agency does, the interests of its employees, and shared interests with the public at large.

The blog covers a variety of relevant and interesting environmental issues. For example recent posts include the following:

• The use of canvas (reusable) versus plastic (throwaway) bags with a link to where you can get canvas bags
• A question that has been posted to find out if people use plastic water bottles and why?
• An informational post about community involvement in environmental decision making
• A question about what it would take to change your driving habits (this received a lot of comments – are you surprised?)

This blog certainly looks like a step in the right direction.  It could be even more powerful with a community type forum built around it.

Creating a community type forum raises the level of participation and citizen democracy to a higher level. The forum offers the venue to move from the discussion/awareness phase to the action/implementation phase. Forums, can include a variety of tools that offer the ability to bring together citizens and public officials to work on problems and achieve results.

It seems inevitable that social networking and new media will permeate government.  None of us can predict how, but there is a way to speed this up.

In order to accellerate the process government departments and agencies should look to enabling a hybrid networking strategy.  A hybrid strategy is one where leadership sets the strategic intent and direction, top-down,  for the use of new media and support of social networking to enable the mission of the department.  This includes allowing for a groundswell of grassroots efforts by encouraging this.

The other part of the hybrid approach is for individuals to drive the participation (encouraged by the leadership) from a bottom-up perspective.  Hundreds or thousands of grass roots initiatives can be formed by individuals at all levels of government.  People who are interested in global warming, or health care, or technology can easily form social neworks on platforms such as Ning, Facebook, or LinkedIn.  These networks can use a variety of communications tools such as WIKIs, Blogs, instant messaging, etc. to enable and foster communications.  They already do and the numbers are growing.  Here a a few examples.

• NAPA for example along with Mind and Media have created a site for collaboration (www.collaborationproject.org).
• For example in the intelligence community, Intelink, includes document storage, bookmarking, photo sharing, instant messaging, video sharing, wiki (Intellipedia) and email all operating inside a secure fireweall.
• LacCarling.ca is a social networking platform for government and industry to work together to communicate and advance the government’s service delivery. It has both a public and private view.

The point is that we do not need to micro-architect the outcomes, but allow for certain conditions and encourage certain behaviours.
Over the coming months, iiGrowth will look for examples of social networks and new media in government.  If you come across this blog, post what you have seen on the growth of collaborative government.

New Media.  Social Networks. Changing Demographics.  That is only part of the story.  IIGrowth is diving deep into the exciting world of human capital and organizational management strategy.  What else do we see.    New Network-Centric Business and Governance Models.  Workforce Lifecycles @ Wave 3.0. Leadership and Mastery of Collaborative Network Management.  Much More.

What do these things mean to you?  Be prepared to get engaged in the discussion.  We are working on a project with our partner Mind and Media that will address these challenges.  Together we are crafting a Future Vision for Managing the Federal Workforce with applicability to all industry sectors.

In support of this project we will be engaging you, posting questions, answering questions, facilitating discussions and creating a record of our work using all the tools at our disposal in the web 2.0 and coming 3.0 world.

IBM is rapidly moving into the collaborative Web 2.0 world.  IBM has already been active in using customer facing Web 2.0 technologies to enable its customer facing business as shown in its Virtual Business Center housed in the 2nd Life Virtual World.  It has also announced building its own virtual world, called Metaverse, in several news articles including eWeek, Information Week, and ZDNET.  These articles also address “Bluepedia” which is IBM’s internal Wiki.

At IBM the Web 2.0 world is fostering an environment that promotes communication and information exchange within IBM.  As a former IBMer (from the late 90s to the early 00s under CEO Lou Gerstner) one of the more attractive elements of working there was our use of technology to simplify the back office operations (accounting, human resources, supply chain) so that we could focus on our clients and service delivery.   At the time, although we were hoteling, and attempting to work in a distributed environment, the social aspects of being an IBM employee were a challenge.  That is now changing.

IBM leadership, many of whom were there, back in the day, have recognized the benefits of social networking as applied to internal business environments.  Keep watching large innovative companies as you look for examples for how to enable your own emerging business.   Figuring out how to apply these Web 2.0 technologies to your own business, and business culture, cost effectively, will enable your firm to innovate and execute.

Are you behind the curve?

Network-centric innovation is one is one of the fastest moving business model disrupters in many years. What we are seeing is that the world’s largest firms, like IBM and Proctor and Gamble (P&G), as well as emerging and medium sized firms, are moving away from purely internally driven innovation. They are accelerating their efforts in forging new business models by expanding their use of external partners (individuals or companies). They are “plugging in to the network”,  just like Apple IPods and MP3 technology plug into one another. The network centric innovators need each other to be successful and depend on one another by conducting collaborative co-creation of services, products, and technology.

If you do not practice network centric innovation you are already behind the curve. The good news is, that is not a problem as long as today you take your first steps and begin to build your own network center innovation model.

Why the sudden shift towards network centric innovation? Actually it is not that sudden. Like Malcolm Gladwell, of the New Yorker, and author of the book Tipping Point, points out that change so often happens quickly and unexpectedly. However, this is not a surprise, but really a natural phenomenon (Malcolm points out that the phrase actually comes from the world of epidemiology and is a name given to that moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass.). So yes, the network centric innovation movement has reached critical mass, but just like the Tipping Point it is built upon years of germination.

Who is doing Network Centric Innovation?

There are a number of examples of network centric innovation models. Take the time to visit the following sites to see what ideas you come up with for your own Network Centric innovation model.  You will see that the ideas are sound and unlike the e-marketplace phenomema of the dot.com era, these are highly competitive arenas that are the foundation of a market economy.

Nine Sigma (http://www.ninesigma.net)

Nine Sigma works on behalf of its clients to source innovative ideas, technologies, products and services from outside their organization quickly and effectively by connecting them with the best innovators from around the world.

Innocentive (http://www.innocentive.com)

InnoCentive connects companies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations with a global network of more than 125,000 individuals.

Idea Crossing (http://www.ideacrossing.com)

Idea Crossing provide a forum for individuals to voice new ideas and be rewarded in the process through the design, production and operation of innovation competitions. They attract communities of innovators inside and outside an organizations’ walls, using a web-based platform Challenge Accelerator® that is also designed to work with various complex stage gates of innovation competitions.

Fellow Force (http://www.fellowforce.com)

Fellowforce.com was founded “To Connect Organizations and Talent, through Open Source, for limitless ideas, innovation & solutions”. Fellowforce.com aims to open up organizations for outside-in participation from experts, consumers, and other interested parties to generate powerful new options through this collaboration.

Cambrian House (http://www.cambrianhouse.com)

Cambrian House states that they are the “home to the world’s first Crowdsourcing community: a diverse collective of creative, tech-savvy and entrepreneurial minds. Cambrian House is Community Owned”. They are a Web 2.0 company where members are owners. Members earn points for participating by posting in Cambrian House forums, as well as submitting or commenting on ideas and businesses.

Insight (http://insight.businessobjects.com/home)

Insight is a Web community to “connect passionate number crunchers with the information and collaborative tools they need to solve the biggest challenges facing businesses and social organizations today”.