Future Workspaces: progress by experimenting Marcel.Bijlsma @ telin.nl ( Telematica Instituut ) Samuel.Driessen @ oce.com ( Oc , Twitter , Blog ) www.futureworkspaces.nl

Innovation is learning

• Work environments are changing.

• Not only information is accessible anytime, anywhere but also professionals becoming always connnected.

• This also changes the role of the Intranet: how is a continuous learning process.

• In this presentation we share our experience in experimenting with innovative ICT to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing.

work-life Mixing work-private Fragmentation of work mobility Working underway Working on new locations open organizations dealing with tools and information dealing with knowledge environmental change sustainability technology change Web 2.0 demographic change The Net Generation social change new social networks economic change Wikinomics A changing playground

The human as central element. stay in sync? stay in touch? stay in flow? stay in control?

Improve social networking @ Oc

• To create a more open, transparent and connected Oc, where knowledge workers can connect freely and quickly around the globe. Socializing our intranet.

• The use of media is rapidly changing around the world. Twitter is taking off, also in the business environment. Yammer is the more secure internal version of Twitter.

• We are currently experimenting with new media. Yammer is one of these experiments.

What is Yammer?

• Yammer is a hosted enterprise microblogging site for all Oc

• Yammer supports you to:

• • tell your colleagues what you are doing

• • ask your colleagues a question

• • even the ones you dont know (yet)!

How did we start Yammering?

• started on Sept 22, 2008

• started with some Twitter users, 4

• emergently grows by filling in profile (org chart) = implicit invite

• without advertising: 97 members, members from 5 countries, 10 departments,15 update daily

• one group, HR

• after a month, made short presentation to explain experiment and answer questions (security e.g.)

Future of Yammer @ Oc?

• explicit advertising

• make more official

• in Communication toolset

Business case for Yammer?

• several stories

• ambient awareness

Evaluation Yammer @ Oc

• connect to email. Site is too far away to regularly update your status

• connecting this to key business processes

• integrate in intranet

Rabobank case

• Challenge: Increase knowledge exchange and connectedness in a group of project managers.

• Issue 1: Sharing knowledge about organisational context

• - Who has experience with this stakeholder?

• - I have an assignment at Insurance, who can tell me about the culture and the issues

• Issue 2: Access to procedural knowledge

• • - Information on tricky steps in the process (e.g. how to make a good Prince2 PID)

What obstacles to knowledge sharing exist?

• top-3 of experienced obstacles:

• we dont know what were good at

• information is badly accessible

• We dont see each other enough / we dont know what the other is doing

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Collaboration and knowledge sharing

• striking

• Not much insights in other peoples results (no utilizing of cross-fertilization)

• Not much utilizing of less obvious connections

• Intranet is a wall to ex-colleagues

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Social media experiment

• Bonus points : I go for it, I see benefits

• Penalty points : This doesnt fit me, this takes to much time and trouble in relation to potential benefit

Highlights of Top-3 of experiments

• MySite

• • portal for daily activities, directly valuable

• • Own work easily made visible for colleagues

• • Risk: different guidelines and policies needed for information storage and access

• OurSite

• • Handy tool to get overview

• • risk: is there enough motivation to keep it up-to-date?

• • risk: Do Sharepoint templates match our real needs?

• Twitter

• • Low threshold to feel connected

• • Risk: fun aspect versus professional conversation

Highlights of Top-3 of experiments

• Costs and benefits for knowledge sharing

• Emphasis on personal perspective: whats in it for me, less attention to colleague/department perspective

• Much pressure on efficiency, it must not take much time, no shattering of attention

• Preference for conservative means, unknown is unpopular?

theses

• Truly understanding the way a knowledge worker works is the key to successful knowledge management projects

• In general Intranets wrongly dont support social networking functionality.

• Email is the habitat of knowledge workers. All new tools should be able to plugin to the email client.