IBM's annual Innovation Jam attracted nearly nearly 80,000 online participants and generated a host of bright ideas, writes Karlin Lillington
AS CORPORATE social networking events go, IBM's annual Innovation Jam, which took place this week, is one of the world's largest.
As other companies debate whether it is ever safe to throw employees and clients into an online room together to talk freely, IBM revels in the input of tens of thousands of people all over the world who take part in the three-day group discussion along a set of themes.
What emerges are, as with most discussion-boards throughout the world, plenty of ramblings that go nowhere and comments that often leave a viewer bemused.
But there are also a vast range of thoughts and ideas that may end up in products and services, or influence the choices for new areas of research and development or investment for IBM.
IBM Ireland's recently announced €7 million research centre for advanced water development, based at its Mulhuddart, Co Dublin campus, is one such fresh area for RD that emerged directly out of a previous Innovation Jam, says the company.
"What's special about this Jam is the scale," says Suzanne Dirks, Dublin-based leader for the Global Centre for Economic Development, IBM Institute for Business Value.
"It's very large and global." By mid-week, nearly 80,000 people had logged in to participate from every corner of the world, making more than 25,000 posts. On the invitation-only Innovation Jam website, an interactive map showed 491 logins from Ireland, and 171 individual posts so far.
The overall topic of the 2008 Jam was "the enterprise of the future", coming from the topic of the most recent IBM CEO survey, a major study done by the company every two years.
The four themes were Built for Change, Customers as Partners, Globally Integrated, and The Planet and its People.
Like recent Innovation Jams, this year's was both "internal and external", says Dirks, involving client companies, IBMers, and for the first time, even a few journalists. "It's basically acting as a deep dive into the CEO study," she says. She calls the Jam a "collaboration forum" that allows people around the world to throw ideas about in any direction they like. Sometimes the contributions are comments, sometimes questions, sometimes suggestions.
Among the Irish contributions was one post kicking off a discussion on meeting the challenges of an ageing society, which pointed out that Ireland might have more time to consider policy, social and economic changes from an ageing society, because its population is still relatively young.
Meanwhile, an Indian contributor noted that along with water contamination - the Irish RD centre's focus - IBM is tackling other "green" areas for technology solutions, including global warming and rice production.
"Our solutions will become new revenue stream for us and it helps our clients and partners to achieve their goals and so helps our planet," he notes.
One subject heading hinted at a new and intriguing area of technology development: "Greed chips and monitoring".
Perhaps some embedded device for the world's financial traders, then?
Disappointingly, a closer reading of the thread revealed it to be just a typographical error.
The participant meant "green chips".
But sure enough, another participant noted that the typo was "innovation at its best!".
"Greed chips" had got him thinking about computer programmes that could monitor the profit and loss models for a company or government body, signalling when they go out of accepted bands.
The Jam concept isn't new to IBM - the company has been doing them in various forms since 2001, first to solicit ideas from employees, and then as a way of getting customers and research partners involved. The 2006 Innovation Jam had participants from 104 countries and 67 companies and resulted in $100 million being invested in 10 new IBM businesses, according to IBM.
The company has also used the Jam format for social issues: for example, the UN World Urban Forum in 2006.
The Jam website uses a range of Web 2.0 (social networking) tools, from chatrooms to discussion- boards to interactive features like the maps.
During the Jam, "hot topics" are pulled out and highlighted and a group of forum moderators keep the conversation going by prodding along slow topics and choosing those to highlight.
For each theme, a number of discussions are jump-started by someone making an opening statement to which others can respond.
The Jam is part of a four-month process that involves three months of preparation, the Jam itself, then a month of post-Jam analysis, says Dirks.
Once the Innovation Jam wraps up, IBM employees will begin to sift the thousands of posts and collate them into a "catalogue of ideas".
The sifting isn't a punishment, laughs Dirks and IBM Ireland's head of communications Jim OKeeffe, who will both be involved in reading through the posts. "I volunteer for this!" Dirk insists.
After a meeting in New York, the catalogue will be posted back onto the Jam website and participants are invited to read them and make further comments.
"It's a great opportunity to get inside, to hear directly from customers," says Dirks. "That's very valuable."
