Why Social Computing Aids Knowledge Management
Social networking tools promise to help companies harness the knowledge inside the heads of their employees and put it to work for the business.
A case in point: the Idea Zone, an internal wiki where Cisco staff can post and comment on business ideas. Since it was started in June 2006, more than 600 ideas have been posted and vetted, and four new business units have been started.
The Web makes it possible to build markets around many things, including knowledge for hire. In a sense, that's what sites like Elance and Innocentive offer: expertise that companies bid on to expand their own knowledge. Then there are expert networks like that of Gerson Lehrman Group. GLG's knowledge marketplace connects customers to subject matter experts who can consult in person or over the phone, depending on the customer's preference. It's a broader, more consulting-oriented tool than Innocentive, which connects companies to scientific researchers with specific knowledge.
GLG says sales hit about $220 million in 2007. (Editor's note: This story was updated on July 7, 2008, to correct information in the previous sentence. Read the correction.) It has a network of 175,000 consultants, and between 20,000 and 30,000 business leaders, all of whom have worked in senior management for companies with more than $100 million in revenue. Users of the service can tag the expert or documents, rate the person and add notes. The average call lasts about 40 minutes and costs about $300. Companies can subscribe to the service.
"We've taken knowledge management outside our own four walls," says Jonathan Glick, GLG's director of research operations. "It makes knowledge management an asset."
-M.F.
A Better Way to Collaborate
Also exploring social networking is Flowserve, an industrial manufacturer of pumps, valves and mechanical seals. Flowserve's CIO, Linda Jojo, felt the company needed a better way to capture institutional knowledge and communicate it to employees across its far-flung offices: Flowserve does business in more than 55 countries, and IT has people in a dozen of them.
"We want to create more relationships within IT," she says. "So if you're in Brazil and you're running into a problem with Oracle databases, you can find the people within Flowserve who might help you." Jojo felt that a social networking application like Facebook could act as a virtual employee water cooler but she had reservations about its privacy and security.
So Flowserve built an internal version of Facebook and launched it in December 2007. The project was spearheaded by two business analysts—recent college graduates who Jojo asked to design something to bring employees together. It took them a few weeks, working part-time, to get the tool ready. Despite no formal announcement, interest in the tool has been building.
