Interesting insight on some internal use of collaboration and social applications within Cisco (e.g., blogs, wikis, social bookmarks). Also, note that Cisco has a collaboration software group headed up by Don Proctor.
Another tool is social networking, that new-time religion that Cisco has embraced with a convert's fervor. In September it launched a website that is a microcosm of everything evoked by the phrase "Web 2.0." There's a Ciscopedia, where people can build an evolving body of lore about anything fellow Ciscans might want to know. There are text blogs and video blogs, discussion groups, and "problems and solutions links." There's an internal version of MySpace, which provides not only title and contact info but also personal profiles, job histories, interests, and videos. Soon it will show whether a person is reachable by, say, office phone, cell, IM, or telepresence, and offer a one-click connection.
And there's more. "We're going to use social bookmarking to allow us to take the pulse of the organization," says Jim Grubb, who built the website (and whose day job is putting together John Chambers' demos). They'll do that by aggregating the tags employees create into "tag clouds" when they click on sites. Tracking these will allow a Cisco honcho to get a snapshot of the current hot-button issues for marketing or finance. If an employee is tagged as the go-to person for virtualization, say, he could earn a bonus for this previously unacknowledged expertise. That's down the road. Asked for a here-and-now example, Cisco marketing head Sue Bostrom laughs (proudly) and recounts the six-month online campaign to develop and select a five-note "Cisco sound" for TV and Internet ads. "Ten thousand employees voted," she says, "and 1,200 partners also participated."
.....
The best proof that all this team building can pay off comes from Marthin De Beer's emerging-technologies group. Charged three years ago with cooking up $1 billion businesses from scratch, his team's first project was to develop the telepresence system. But that had been Chambers' baby. In search of second acts, De Beer a year ago set up an internal wiki called I-Zone that has so far generated 400 business ideas. "Better still," he says, "another 10,000 people have added to those ideas." His team measures which notions draw the most activity and cherry-picks a handful to unveil at Cisco's quarterly leadership-development program. Normally at such gatherings, promising up-and-comers from across a company hear lectures, bond, and ponder case studies. But De Beer decided to use these sessions to take the most promising I-Zone ideas and pound them into real-world business plans. Three of the nine notions so tested are now in active development.
.....
Don Proctor, head of the company's new collaboration software group, describes Cisco's evolution as a three-stage process. "We have been focusing for our whole history on product innovation," he says. "Over the past five years we've put a lot of focus on process innovation. Now we're entering a new phase focused on business model innovation. That's a necessary step for us because as we go forward we're going to be in businesses that are even further from our roots than the businesses we are in today."
Cisco under the direction of Craig Tobias has launched an external wiki system which will be used to create all of Cisco's customer support documents in the future.
http://supportwiki.cisco.com
I have been using it for a few weeks now. It is a very nice start.
Posted by: Mark Parker | June 12, 2008 at 02:41 AM