
The overall diagram represents the social business, but each of the intersections has some interesting implications on various parts of the business. First thought, let’s define each area:
Collaboration:
Collaboration is people or organizations working together to accomplish shared tasks / goals, facilitated by the effective combination of communication, tools and processes. Collaboration can occur between individuals and organizations (although you could argue that organizational collaboration is still really individual). Tools designed to support the collaborative process must be focused on connecting people first, then providing access and availability to required content, data and information. Unlike some of the “collaboration” tools of the past that were designed to control content / files, true social collaboration tools are people-centric, with content sharing and communication as a secondary function.
Content:
Content in the social context is most often social media, although it can take other forms as well. Social media is a mechanism designed for sharing through social interaction and using the Internet as a highly scalable and highly accessible platform for distribution. The socialization of media democratizes content creation, and broadly distributes content curation, and information access. Because social media is distributed over the Internet, information, news, and content can become available in near real time or even real time and on any device that has connectivity. Content creation and consumption have become highly available on any device and at any time. Forms of social media include user-generated content (wikis, discussion forums, blogs) and rich media (video, photos).
Community:
Community most often manifests itself as a social network. Social networks are a group of individuals or organizations, either public or private, that are connected to each other through some common thread and share information with one another on topics of interest. Social networks are not new or unique to the Internet, but the nature of the relationship created is somewhat altered in an online setting. In the past relationships were generally defined by proximity and length of exposure, which was fundamental in establishing a trust bond between the individuals or groups involved. In an online setting, relationships tend to be defined by interaction and connectivity, which can make value and trust very fragile. Often because of the unique online environment, trust is aided by the network effect, making trust relationships transferable 1:1:1 through trust filtering.
Collaboration, content and community are the building blocks of the social business. Each of these elements can be combined to create functions that support some social process. Here are a few examples:
Collaboration – Community:
- Peer to Peer Customer Support Communities
- Partner communities
- Crowdsourcing product / service feedback
Collaboration – Content:
- Crowdsourcing contact data
- Crowdsourced (employee) product documentation
- Crowdsourced training material (employee sourced)
Community – Content:
- Product / service issue resolution and support documentation that is the output of a peer to peer support community and is harvested by the business as an addition to its corporate knowledge base.
- Customer loyalty programs
Collaboration – Content – Community:
- Co-innovation on product / service development (could be partner – company, customer – company, supplier – company, etc.)
- Supplier networks
- Partner selling / lead management
These are only a few examples of the many use cases that can be defined using the three C’s. How is your company using content, collaboration and community?
Michael,
How do Applications fit in? Business applications (SFA, CRM, ERP, MRM, etc.) often encompass those core business tasks running the business. Collaboration is required to handle the inevitable exception and ad hoc workflows that are not covered by these structured applications focused on known process efficiencies. Community is required for some collaboration, and content includes the resolutions of these collaborations, but they’re virtually all driven and made more meaningful when linked to the relevant business processes and objects… the Applications.
Maybe consider “3 C’s + 1 A”?
Samir
Your definition of collaboration really hits home with my own experience and understanding of the term. I would take it a step further – and address some of the questions Samir put forward – by saying that the applications should focus on addressing the business models from the 3-C model. SalesForce is a great example of this. By tying in the social element directly into the workflow, and honing in on both the networks of the prospects/customers as well as the staff, you have an artificially intelligent tool that is able to make associations and synergies in ways the earlier people-to-people models could. This is so important, and something I think only a handful of great content management systems are really focused on doing right now.
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This is a great post and really aligns with what we are trying to evangelize at Teambox.
In business a community is a transparent model for those who can benefit from seeing workflow and content then aid in the collaboration of meeting goals.
Your points are insightful and clear to the reader. THANKS!
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I’m always a fan of taking information and representing it in a visually engaging way, which is why your venn diagram for social business really stood out to me.
Although I do think content is the most important of the 3 C’s, good content cannot be created without collaboration…and good content falls on deaf ears without community. The best way to gather exclusive, important and creative content is by utilizing the other portions of your diagram to make connections with the people who know what they’re talking about – thought leaders – in your and other fields. The community builds the content and that’s an important thing to remember.
Thanks!
Pawan Deshpande
getcurata.com
CEO, HiveFire (creators of content curation solution Curata)
[…] how are employees supposed to collaborate if they can’t even communicate? Michael Fauscette, Group Vice President of Software Business Solutions at IDC, defines “collaboration” as […]