The Social Factor Innovate, Ignite, and Win through Mass Collaboration and Social Networking

by Azua, Maria

• ISBN13: 9780137018901
• ISBN10: 0137018908
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-13
• Publisher: IBM Press

Summary

How businesses can harness the power of social software internally, to promote innovation and create more value--The first book to focus on driving value through social networking 'inside the firewall'-Presents practical scenarios and real case studies from IBM's leading-edge experience.-Shows how to avoid mistakes that can cripple a business social networking initiative.-By one of IBM's top innovators in driving value from social networking. Millions of people are using social networking sites, and companies are increasingly experimenting with using social software to build relationships with customers. But many companies are missing their best opportunities to drive value and promote innovation through social networking: building thriving internal communities of employees, partners, and customers 'inside the company firewall.' The Social Factor is one of the first books to focus specifically on these applications. Drawing on her own extensive experience deploying social networking systems within IBM, Maria Azua systematically reviews the lessons IBM has learned, identifying a wide variety of opportunities that will be valuable in multiple industries and business environments. Azua reviews tools and technologies ranging from wikis and blogs to social search, bookmarking to tag clouds, folksonomies to virtual worlds. Executives will learn the best ways to successfully implement social technologies and build online communities - and discover how to avoid common mistakes that can cripple business social networking projects. She offers specific techniques for promoting mass collaboration in the enterprise; encouraging 'social ideation'; and monetizing social networking to empower innovation programs.

Author Biography

Maria Azua is vice president of Cloud Computing Enablement, reporting to the IBM CTO of Enterprise Initiatives. She is responsible for the technical implementation, deployment, and operations of the Common Cloud Platform offering and the external development cloud. Her responsibilities include fostering a vibrant and engaged community of ISVs, business partners, and technical communities to develop cloud computing IT methodologies and applications.

 

Prior to her current role, Maria was vice president of technology and innovation reporting to the IBM CIO. In this capacity, Maria focused on the development of innovative IT solutions and integration of new technologies, and created and managed the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) at IBM, which consists of more than 120,000 employees actively participating in creative innovations. She created and deployed a wide variety of state-of-the-art social networking tools and programs for the enterprise and is an expert in social networking corporate transformation. Her responsibilities also included the creation of the first IBM Green Data Center, the CIO IT infrastructure, and productivity enhancements through innovation.

 

Maria earned worldwide recognition for her contribution to technology innovation and her business leadership. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame, and named one of the “100 Most Influential Hispanics” by People en Español magazine in 2006. She holds 50 patents and 39 pending patents that span a wide variety of technologies including telecommunications, web servers, Transcoder technology, Java performance enhancements, and data analytics. Maria developed IT solutions for the largest banks in the world and is well recognized for her technical leadership in home-banking solutions.

 

Maria is an executive with deep technical skills and extensive experience in software development, large enterprise information technology projects, process transformation, and IT operations. She also has extensive experience managing new missions start-ups, acquisitions, application development, infrastructure transformation projects, and solution delivery and process excellence.

 

Maria is an active participant in community initiatives and multicultural activities and is a leader in the technical community-at-large. The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) recognized Maria with The Star Award for her contributions and dedication to the Hispanic community. She has a passion as great for social transformation as she does for IT technology.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xix
Dawn of the Social Age	p. 1
Social Age Organizations	p. 17
Wikis: Bringing the Crowds to You	p. 31
Blogs: Your Personal News Outlet	p. 45
Tagging and Social Clouds	p. 63
Cloud Computing Paradigm	p. 85
Social Media and Culture	p. 101
On the Shoulders of Giants	p. 121
Social Brain and the Ideation Process	p. 143
Social Innovation	p. 161
Social Economy	p. 181
Mobile Society	p. 195
Endnotes	p. 217
Index	p. 233
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.