The social life of information

Have you ever thought what was going to be the social life of an email you wrote? Or a project memo? Or a power point presentation?

I continue to be absorbed by this idea of companies as information creators and consumers and the way they manage the value chain of their information. As one continues to observe how large organizations manage it, one comes to the conclusion that there are several types of information assets in every organization (obvious) and that a good way to analyse them is to think about what I would call their social life (not so obvious). No, I don't mean the way this is treated in the famous book by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid.

Think about the different types of information that exist in your organization: think of bills, invoices, HR resumes, financial reports, customer correspondence, internal project information, investors information,... You can think of all your type of information simply analysing which are going to be the interactions that it's going to have in its lifetime. For example, the accounts payable department is going to be dealing with invoices for a while, and afterwards forget them and archive in some place where they can find them later if needed. You can think that an invoice has a very limited social life: some interactions in a short period of time, and always with the same people. The piece of information will not change: everyone would be able to say that it's the same before and after the experience.

On the contrary, think about the life of the design document of a complex engineering piece. You can probably see it interacting with numerous people, some recurrent, some new, always adding something, always evolving. People would think that this piece of information has changed, it is not the same from the beginning. And herein, exactly lies the complexity.

Because, it is a different piece for different people, everyone would call it differently. That's one of the reasons why in your corporate search system it is so difficult to find things. Because you describe it with words that are very different from the words that others used when they stored it.

When talking about Information Management or the Life Cycle of Information, one should consider this question: what is going to be the social life of this piece of information? And accordingly design the mechanism that will increase it's findability when needed.

This is something I'm working on because I firmly believe that the creation of wealth is going to be increasingly dependent on our ability to create information that is valuable and on our ability to access the information that is valuable for us.

IBM - Expanding the Innovation Horizon Global CEO Study 2006 - United States

IBM - Expanding the Innovation Horizon Global CEO Study 2006 - United States

In recent weeks I've found myself having some very interesting discussions about innovation in large corporations. Amongst them, I would remark one with the director for innovation of one of the leading bank in Europe and another one with the head of strategic consulting in a large professional services organization.

I normally recommend this study from IBM, as well as the Global CEO 2006 study . However, I found myself in both cases describing my own experience practicing with innovation and some of the lessons learned for a day to day effective management of innovation within large corporations. And since I've been asked in previous occasions to articulate these findings, here they go:
1- We had a structured approach to innovation. We clearly differentiated invention (a moment of magic inspiration) from innovation (a day to day obsession with improving results) and simply looked for ways to programmatically find new areas of improvement. A portfolio analysis of your business, using BCG matrix or Ansoff matrix can very well help to start with.
2- You want to have a model for decision making that incorporates all relevant stakeholders. You don't necessarily need to agree on everything, but everyone needs to agree on a model. Importantly, people must agree to disagree. In large corporations dealing with matrix like structures, with countries and divisions, this will be crucial.
3- Get the sponsoring of the senior management. Once the group has decided that an opportunity will be pursued, there will be times when other priorities will jeopardize the existence of the embryonic business. Senior management support helps ensure that there are frequent conversations at all levels that help rise visibility and monitor progress of the initiative.
4- Get an entrepreneur. Large organizations (and small) are inertial: you will need high levels of passion and energy to move the beast, so don't try to emulate: it won't work. Find someone passionate about the project, who knows about it, and can be credible about the topic.
5- Ensure focus and ownership. Once you decide for something, give someone full ownership for it. Give it 1, 2 years to see if it flies. If it doesn't, then kill it, but make sure that during the test time, there is full dedication to it. People in the organization will be too busy doing everything else they are doing now, so avoid the euphemism of 50% of time. Also, define clear boundaries and ownership; in other words: no where to hide for the good or bad.
6- Provide organizational support. Small things won't reach the needed critical mass to enter in the radar of large marketing organizations. Also, it will be immaterial in large P&L of regions or countries. You need to ensure a parallel organizational structure that ensures time, resources and support.
7- This is about innovation for results, so ensure regular reporting and business review. Again, it is important to distinguish here the invention and innovation worlds: you really want to bring results, so measure them. Don't accept the "We'll give it our best shot type of approach". Results are sacrosanct.

Yes, I know, nothing new. But with the fanfare about innovation that we frequently read, we forget that the whole purpose is to improve results. Rest assured that some people will not like this model. But that's exactly when you can start to distinguish the inventors from the innovators in the organization.