CorpU Weekly Digest: Social Learning (2012-July-02)

Topics: Social Learning

Here are this past week's headlines in social learning: 

• (1) IBM's VP of Social Software, Jeff Schick, Offers His Views in MIT/Sloan Management Review on How IBM Builds Vibrant Social Communities ; 
• (2) Telus Communications' Dan Pontrefact's academic article on restructuring budgets in order to implement social learning ; 
• The Business of Learning: Microsoft Acquires Yammer for US$ 1.2BB ; 
• Books: Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential Through Secure Base Leadership ;  
• Webinars ; 
• Conferences

 IBM's VP of Social Software, Jeff Schick, Offers His Views in MIT/Sloan Management Review on How IBM Builds Vibrant Social Communities
In an interview with MIT Sloan Management Review's executive editor David Kiron, Jeff Schick talks about how, as part of the big picture of creating collaboration capabilities, IBM thinks about what kinds of things companies can do to create go-to forums, the incentives that make people participate and the value — both financial and creative — that social tools bring to a workplace. IBM has almost 70,000 communities that represent every science, every industry, every product, and every standard. Some are made up of a narrow access-controlled list of people, maybe focused on an acquisition, and some are communities with tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand people, sharing information about a particular focus area. Connections are an integrated social software platform for business, with profiles, blogs, Wikis, discussion forums, communities, ideation, rich media, micro-blogging, a wall-type feature. It’s positioned so that it’s meant for the enterprise. You leverage it in your intranet or your extranet or Internet, so it can run in your intranet or on your dot.com or dot.org or dot.edu or whatnot. The big picture is to create collaboration capabilities. Read MIT Sloan article "How IBM Builds Vibrant Social Communities"

 Telus Communications' Dan Pontrefact's academic article on restructuring budgets in order to implement social learning
The word social learning has taken on an entirely new meaning as a result of the technological revolution that has brought us Web 2.0. Where once it would have referred in the workplace purely to the lessons that employees can learn from the process of co-operating and working together, it now encompasses a whole swath of social media tools that are increasingly ubiquitous. Many people recognize that training managers need to make social learning part of their training tools, but, in this article, the author cautions that this adoption not be another "me-too" approach to budgeting but rather a reconceptualization to present to leaders and the rationale behind budgets. As the author notes in "Development and Learning in Organizations," social learning can be implemented effectively without costing too much or crowding out other training methods which remain valuable and relevant to the organization. Read the article "Learning with and from others: restructuring budgets for social learning"

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 The Business of Learning: New Major Products, Mergers, Acquisitions, and Partnerships

Mergers and acquisitions are apace in the enterprise social media collaboration and communication space: on June 25, Microsoft confirmed it was acquiring Yammer for US$ 1.2BB. With a user install base of 5 million, Yammer is used by more than 85% of the Fortune 500. This follows on the tail of Salesforce.com acquiring Buddy Media for US$ 698MM on June 4, Oracle acquiring social intelligence application Collective Intellect on June 5 for undisclosed terms and social media marketing campaign creator Vitrue on May 23, and SAP acquiring buyer-seller collaboration network Ariba for US$ 4.3BB on May 22. Microsoft plans to allow Yammer for the short-term to operate independently, like its acquisition of Skype, though there is interest in integrating Yammer into the Office 365 suite of applications within a year's time. The remaining large stand-alone social media collaboration networks — Jive, Moxie Networks, BroadVision — may see more activity in the coming months as the space heats up. Read the press release. 

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 Books To Read

Have you ever been led by someone who cared for you like family, and dared you to achieve more than you ever thought possible for yourself, your organization, and even society? Award-winning author of Hostage at the Table, George Kohlrieser and creator of IMD's world-famous High Performance Leadership Program, along with his coauthors Susan Goldsworthy and Duncan Coombe, explain how becoming a secure base leader releases extraordinary potential in others. Part of the Warren Bennis leadership series, "Care to Dare" shows you how to become a Secure Base Leader so that you release your followers from the fears that get in the way of their performance. It shows you how you can unleash astonishing potential by building the trust, delivering the change, and inspiring the focus that underpins sustainable high performance. From extensive interviews with executives from all over the world, as well as from surveys with more than a thousand executives, the book reveals the nine characteristics that Secure Base Leaders display on a daily basis. The research shows that a primary difference between a successful leader and a failed leader is the presence or absence of secure bases in his or her life. Definitely one for the bookshelf and for downtime reading. Buy now

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 Webinars 

Choosing the Right Authoring Tools for eLearning Development
Presenter: CommLab India Register now

Learning Design Process
Presenter: CommLab India Register now

Gamify Your Training: Use Gamification to Increase Employee Engagement and Improve Feedback
Date: Thursday, August 2, 2012, 1pm ET
Presenter: Greg Greunke, President, Tuzooni & Greunke Register now

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 Conferences

2012 ICOI The International Conference of Organizational Innovation
Date: July 10-12, 2012
Location: Indonesia Register now

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