Ease of Creation in Innovate versus Traditional Communication Channels
Social Networking vs Traditional Channels
At a meeting today we showed the designs for the new Innovate Corporate social networking application to a very significant client and the reaction was in my view extremely interesting.
The design was clearly great, the functionality of corporate social networking was absolutely acknowledged and the whole idea of bringing this out as a central application of Claromentis 6.0 – with all the new Ajax emphasis and other aspects is appreciated.
The main concern was one that we at Claromentis are going to have to thoroughly understand and plan for. “If Innovate is this easy, and employees really embrace it – what will happen to existing more corporate channels?”
This is a very valid concern in certain types of organisations. They focus considerable effort on consistent messaging and adherence to standards and quality initiatives – then along we come with a great way for all staff to cut through everything and just collaborate with each other to escalate whatever idea they find fascinating – providing an attractive and immediately responsive environment with content, resources and information that we have designed from the ground up to facilitate breaking through all barriers.
So Innovate is designed to cut through everything and foster idea creation through to innovation. But companies put up barriers and control systems for valid reasons.
If collaboration platform vendors like Claromentis facilitate tearing down walls to encourage participation, and that turns out to be exactly what employees want to embrace – as I could clearly see everyone in the room knew they would - it is dynamic, expressive and well designed - how will we then help our clients to maintain a balance between innovative cooperation and logical adherence to methodologies and approaches that have kept the business centered in its value proposition as defined by the management team and many years of experience?
Of course we would argue that complacence and standards are dangerous for any company in a fast moving world, where successful innovation can change the game in a remarkably short time. Our job is to provide superior collaboration platforms.
But I do think it is true that free expression using corporate social networking must have a clear space and not simply be allowed to run riot with existing internal communications and controlled documents. This is going to be a very exciting space – as a result of the meeting today we decided that innovate will from the first release support a plug-in environment to allow hooks and behaviors relevant to each client. We will really enjoy working with our clients as they learn to create a balance between established practices and innovation.
Our client today actually maintains our nuclear submarine fleet – as one of its many business areas - and personally I would like to think that the relevant staff aren’t being encouraged by Claromentis corporate networking to just have a quick play this evening with a new idea to quickly see if it works…
