Social Media at Work: How Networking Tools Propel Organizational Performance

EXAMPLES FROM TRAILBLAZERS 105

Social Media and Innovation

Social networking advances a whole new frontier of organi-

zational dialogue, setting the stage for continuous knowledge

creation and organizational agility. It brings people together as

a community. Just w hat is the role of community in today’s

organizations? In Cultivating Communities of Practice, Wenger,

McDermott, and Snyder argue that communities of practice are

vital to success in a global knowledge economy.

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They caution

that organizations are competing for market share, but also for

much more: they are also competing for key talent—those peo-

ple who can make a pivotal difference in the ability to become

market leaders and to attract venture capital.

Of course, all this theoretical grounding is notable, but the

proof is in the pudding. Read any newspaper—traditional or

on the Internet—and your head may spin from the various

stories about how technologies are being used to solicit customer

feedback and track trends to competitive advantage. But just how

are organizations using social media internally in ways that are

useful and innovative?

Geek Squad

Geek Squad was founded in 1994 and is now a wholly owned

subsidiary of Best Buy. The heart of Geek Squad’s mission is

to provide commercial technical support for home PC users.

Of course, the company does it with a unique brand, replete

with black shoes, white socks, black pants, white shirts, and

clip-on ties. Geek Squad employees have also learned to leverage

social media technologies for knowledge creation and innovation:

‘‘Geek Squad employees use wikis, video games, and all kinds

of unorthodox collaboration technologies to brainstorm new

ideas, manage projects, swap service tips [and] even contribute to

product innovation and marketing.’’

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Geek Squad employees used wikis to design and imple-

ment an entirely new product line, consisting of flash drives

106 SOCIAL MEDIA AT WORK

with retractable USB connectors, for parent company Best Buy,

garnering prestigious technical design awards along the way. Sup-

port agents have even learned to collaborate while playing online

multiplayer video games with each other. One key lesson that

Geek Squad has gained from its experience in innovating via

social media is that to inspire organizational knowledge creation

and innovation, technology-enabled collaboration must emerge

organically from the employees themselves, rather than as the

product of top-down mandates.

Philips

Beyond using wikis as a collaborative tool for innovation, some

companies are also experimenting with the use of Second Life as

a tool for innovation. As mentioned earlier, Second Life (SL) is

a free online virtual world—with people, entertainment, educa-

tion, businesses, and so on—that is created by its imaginative

residents. In SL, participants can make land purchases, including

private islands that can be used for any number of purposes, such

as business, education through virtual campuses, political use in

campaigns, recreation, to conduct trade, and so on. Some groups

purchase private islands and share the expenses among members;

this way they know that all their neighbors are members of their

own unique group.

Philips, a diversified health and well-being global company,

prides itself on its timely innovations and is now experimenting

with SL for product development in the area of lighting. It is

hosting teams of four to six people and working with internal

facilitators on small private islands to interact with product

concepts and to participate in roundtable discussions across the

globe. Philips designers are using SL to challenge users to think

dif ferently and to explore new scenarios.

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