Clarity on PLM

I had the chance to talk with … CogniStreamer about their innovation portal as a part of some front end of innovation (FEI) research I did in preparation for Aberdeen’s Leadership in Product Development Summit. Cognistreamer is one of a number of vendors that I believe can play a role in helping manufacturers leverage social computing technologies for innovation. I am still formulating my views on the rapidly evolving landscape of software for product innovation, I hope you find my perspective useful (and I look forward to hearing yours).

What do they Do? (OK, this is really more on “Idea Management,” skip ahead for what Cognistreamer does)

Cognistreamer is one of a number of vendors I have looked into that fall into the “idea management” space. I was talking with a friend today about the need for a framework to represent idea and innovation-oriented software. It seems to me that I should start segmenting the space into different categories such as: Ideation, Incentives/Rewards Management, Scoring/Filtering, Concept Collaboration, and Business Case Development (which would then tie into Product Portfolio Management (PPM) and Value Management). Of course then I would have to add in segments for IP Management and Innovation Process Management. No matter how I segment it, I am sure there will be dissenting views (please share yours if you have one, I am open to ideas). See more of my views on idea management software in my post on software vendor Brightidea. OK, it seems like I can’t start a post on this topic without a diatribe, thanks for bearing with me.

What do they Do (post diatribe)?

So back to the point. Cognistreamer does not call themselves idea management, but instead offers “innovation through collaboration.” The solution is designed to harness and mature collaborative ideas. In my conversation with Ron Shulkin, VP North America, it was clear that they understand the issue that manufacturers don’t just need more ideas – they need to get to the better ideas quickly. Cognistreamer provides the ability to start with challenges that offer strategic guidance to innovation efforts. The guidance helps companies focus innovation effort on specific topics (if desired) through challenges. Then, they leverage social computing technologies to “collaboratively filter” ideas through algorithmic social science that scores ideas based on a combination of votes and participation to allow the good ideas to move to the top.

Beyond the idea stage, Cognistreamer progresses ideas through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis and further to a feasibility study. In this way, ideas can be advanced and promoted from step to step in the innovation lifecycle. What’s interesting is that Cognistreamer bases these promotions on the social scoring algorithm, again to allow the best ideas to move forward. The process steps and the scoring mechanisms are user-defined and can change based on campaign, a very unique approach. Throughout the innovation process, Cognistreamer employs expert reviews and collaborative assessments – an interesting use of social computing that leverages the community to help mature the idea into a concept that is ready to be reviewed in a portfolio.

What do they Offer?

The Cognistreamer product is the Cognistreamer Innovation Portal. The solution offers some interesting features including tag clouds, similarity search, and collaborative filtering based on votes, participation, and activity. The solution also provides the ability to follow ideas, and receive alerts for new activity and comments. The portal is integrated with e-mail so that users can interact with the system in their own environment. This also allows remote use, providing links to smaller web pages that can be viewed and acted on effectively using a smart phone. Some other unique features pointed out by the Cognistreamer team include “persuasive design” features that engage portal visitors on the most important topics and support for deployment in multiple languages. There is also a module called “Listener” that polls the web (including social media sites like Facebook and Twitter) for key words and automatically brings related information in as new ideas. Pretty interesting approach, and one I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Who do they Work With?

Ron explains that the solution can be used in many industries, but that about 75% are international manufacturers. Cytec Industries (specialty chemicals and engineered materials) and Case New Holland (agriculture and construction equipment) are listed on the website. Additionally the company says that Bakeart (metals and materials) has over 40,000 users, in addition to other manufacturers like Vestas (wind power). Cognistreamer is a Belgian company, and has mostly a European customer base.  The company is focused on the US market, however, and has six pilots started in the US this year.

So that’s what I hear from Cognistreamer, I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them? I have talked with others about this as well, including Brightidea and a view into the idea management application Colgate partnered on with SAP. This is a very fragmented market, who else should I talk to in this space? I found this article that Ron wrote (before he joined Cognistreamer) that ambitiously set out to list every innovation, collaboration, idea management, and content management (CMS) on the market. Who are the key players in this type of software? Who else is interested in this space?

I had the chance to talk with … the team at Brightidea about their products to generate, manage, track, and prioritize innovative ideas. Brightidea is helping companies leverage social computing technologies for innovation with a suite of solutions to drive innovation and foster the resulting ideas through the innovation pipeline. I was impressed with a number of aspects of the solution, but perhaps the most surprising observation was the solution is “enterprise aware.” That is my term, not theirs, and not something that they specifically pointed out. But in an area where I see a lot of light-weight “solutions” being built internally or quickly rushed to market, it was refreshing to see that Brightidea developed their solution to address the complexities of the enterprise. It was also nice to see that they spent quite a bit of time understanding the process by which ideas turn into winning products instead of just developing a portal and a database.

My Views on “Idea Management” Software

Put simply, Brightidea is one of a number of “idea management” vendors. I am not a big fan of that term because I think it understates the importance of what some of these companies are doing. They are not simply “managing” information or acting as an online suggestion box. They are helping companies drive innovation in targeted areas and nurture the ideas in a social setting to help them mature. That, in  my opinion, is much more than “idea management.” Moreover, the solutions that I think are adding the most value are not just ones that help gather ideas, but those that help companies determine which ones to pursue. As one manufacturer I spoke with explained getting a lot of ideas isn’t the problem, it’s filtering through all of the ideas to find the good ones. Managing ideas is boring (although it has to be done). On the other hand, using social and collaborative technologies to incubate  ideas and drive further discussion to help raise the best ideas to the top and give them a jump start in product development is compelling.

What Does Brightidea Do?

OK, with my diatribe over, let’s turn back to Brightidea specifically. I particularly liked the analogy that Vincent Carbone, Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Brightidea, offered me. He explained that what they do is similar to what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems do to manages leads. But instead of leads, they manage ideas. He points out that a sales lead isn’t worth much at first but could turn into a multi-million dollar deal. CRM systems offer lots of management capabilities, pipeline reports, etc. for leads. He says that Brightidea gives executives what they have for leads in CRM but for their ideas, including dashboards to observe/optimize innovation. I like the analogy because one of the big challenges companies face with sales leads isn’t getting a lot of them, it’s picking out the good ones to pursue through a process of lead qualification. CRM also recognizes that leads go through a lifecycle, starting small and gaining value over time as they are nurtured – or fizzling out and becoming a part of the historical record for later use. I may be taking his analogy too far, but to me it speaks volumes about their understanding of the nature of ideas.

What do they Offer?

The offering from Brightidea is the Brightidea Innovation Suite. The solution consists of three primary parts:

• Webstorm is an online solution used to collect and drive innovation. It offers capabilities to prompt, post, and discuss innovation ideas.
• Switchboard is used to prioritize, collaborate, and score ideas. It provides the ability to turn ideas into product proposals to take to the next step.
• Pipeline is the execution piece. It includes “social project management” and helps track milestones, stages, gates, and provides visibility to projects.

The suite provides a broad array of capabilities, although I am sure that some companies choose to integrate to existing tools for some of the processes covered. Brightidea demonstrated a lot of ability to customize the Webstorm sites. Each individual site can be set up appropriately to fit the social environment and match the company culture. As they explained, each Webstorm can look completely different. The innovation sessions can be directed by some upfront ideas to get them started in the right direction. They can also support ad-hoc webstorms using a button that says “run your own webstorm.” All of the ideas stay in the database, and people can search on them.

What surprised me most, as I mentioned earlier, is the ability to fit into the enterprise. The software can have multiple sites by location or can be shared across business units, geographies, product lines, business units, or functional areas. Those sites can be rolled up to higher levels based on permissions. To me, it looks like a model that is ready for the enterprise.

Who do they Work With?

So who should consider Brightidea? The solution supports multiple industries and is in use by companies both large and small. The Brightidea website lists a host of companies across industries. It doesn’t appear to have any limitations. Some examples they gave in our discussion included:

• R&D people using it
• A pharmaceutical company using it for chemical reactions
• A consumer packaged goods company putting in new names for products

In fact, I used the solution when I acted as master of ceremonies for Aberdeen Group‘s Leadership in Product Development Summit and the solution fit our process well. Unfortunately, I have to admit, we didn’t put enough of our own effort into it to get the most value out of the solution. But the potential was clear, the site was nicely developed, and it was easy enough to work with.

Brightidea also has a partner strategy. For example, HP is a global reseller. They are also including Brightidea inside other software solutions. The examples we discussed were Planview (Product Portfolio Management, PPM) and Rally Software (Application Lifecycle Management, ALM, Agile). In addition, they discussed a strategy to partner with specialty consulting firms to tailor the solution to specific industries.

So that’s what I hear from Brightidea, I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them? I have talked with others about this as well, including a view into the idea management application Colgate partnered on with SAP. Who else should I talk to in this space?

What I learned this week … came after reflecting on this video on social computing in PLM I ran across on PTC’s website. I spent a significant amount of my time and energy last year trying to understand the implications of the social networking explosion on product innovation, product development, and engineering. It was interesting to listen to the podcast with the benefit of time moving on a bit to reassess the situation and see what will likely happen in 2011. So what happens next?

Brief Background and Views

Take a look at the video, but my viewpoint in a nutshell is:

• Social networking and social media have ramped up significantly in our personal lives (Facebook, YouTube, etc.)
• Social computing is continuing to gain ground in work environments and applications (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)
• Product innovation is a team sport (inherently requiring collaboration and cross-functional participation)
• Facebook and similar tools aren’t appropriate for new product development (NPD), but the concepts are (see Facebook fail post)
• The content for the social interaction around product development and engineering is the product (making it a natural to integrate it with PLM)
• Early adopters are on the move and gaining benefits (see early results from the Spike research I worked on with Kalypso)

My Crystal Ball Says 2011 Will Bring…

First, I don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t see the future. All I can do is tell you that this is one of the most obvious directions companies will take. This is as close to a “no-brainer” as they come. I do believe that social computing is happening in product innovation and NPD and will continue to expand. The tie to product data is also intuitive to me, although it will take more time and work. So here are my thoughts:

• Collaboration – This will happen sooner rather than later, it is the proverbial “low hanging fruit.” Companies will leverage generalized applications like Microsoft SharePoint, as well as specialty applications like Vuuch. The PLM vendors are actively working here as well, including PTC with SocialLink and Dassault Systemes with SwYm, and Siemens PLM. Integration to product data and existing PLM process will take longer, but the direction has been set. With so many companies still trying to get the basics in place (let’s face it, there are a lot of product data management (PDM) projects still in the works to put the foundation in place) I don’t think that this will cross into the majority this year, but there will be a lot of projects going on.
• Discovery - Finding ideas, people, and information internally is coming. While collaboration is typically within the known product development or engineering team, discovery extends this to a broader group. I think we will see progress on this in 2011. This can start relatively easy with discussion groups and innovation portals. I see a lot of companies experimenting with this. I believe a lot of this will be internally focused, however, which doesn’t stretch business models or existing processes but enhances them.
• Product Knowledge Management -This is an interesting one, and I think it will take longer. The promise here is not only to collaborate and discover, but to capture that interaction for future reference. This requires integrating the interactions back into the product record and storing them. The value is there, but it has to be done in a coordinated, integrated fashion so will take longer (in my opinion).
• Community, VOC, New IP -Developing external communities and gathering ideas from the outside is something I have always said will take longer. I am rethinking that. It requires people to think differently and develop new business models. But I have seen innovative companies get behind this.  For example, Kimberly-Clark talks about an innovative program in this interview. My opinion has changed as I view this as a standalone initiative. Full integration to innovation processes and NPD (and particularly engineering) will likely take longer, but a good idea that doesn’t require a huge investment is not going to wait in an innovative company. I see vendors like Brightidea, Congistreamer, Imaginatik, Spigit, and a host of others making an impact here in addition to the traditional companies.

Implications for Manufacturers

Things are happening. The world is changing the way we communicate, and the leaders will find a way to be more innovative and drive higher levels of profitability. Innovation has started and will continue. When? That is the big question. My crystal ball only works backwards (researching what has already happened). But I think we will see a lot of progress this year. Check back with me in 2012 when my crystal ball (aka rearview mirror) is working.

So those are my thoughts for 2011, I hope you found it interesting. Let me know what you think, or more importantly what you are planning to do about it!

I had the chance to talk with … SAP and their customer Colgate in June, and learned that they have been hard at work improving the way manufacturers innovate. I was attending an SAP customer event on PLM to get updated on the progress of SAP’s PLM efforts. SAP continued to showcase their new PLM interfaces (now including Recipe Management for the process industries). But the thing that caught my attention most was a presentation on a newly co-developed solution for product innovation codenamed “Edison.” While this isn’t a formal SAP product as of yet, it shows some real promise on how companies can use social computing to drive innovation.

Note: Hopefully this wasn’t the only thing I learned in June, but things have certainly busy and I am behind in sharing!

What they are Doing

The solution, presented jointly by SAP and Colgate, is labeled as an “idea management” solution. To me that description falls a bit short of what they have developed. The solution handles a broad range of the innovation process, including:

• Idea Solicitation – to help target innovation as opposed to an all purpose suggestion box
• Idea Submission – to capture ideas from participants, including any supporting media they choose to submit
• Review and Processing – to help companies find the ideas they want to focus on, including search, filtering, sorting, tagging, and commenting
• Evaluation – allowing companies to score innovation and promote the good ones
• Execution – although this was a little less clear to me, this is the idea that the promoted ideas would flow into SAP’s PPM solution to turn into product development projects

The first thing that stood out to me as evidence that this was based on practical experience was that they didn’t assume that getting more ideas was better. I run into vendors all the time who like to talk about helping their manufacturing customers get more ideas. All of my research and interviews end up with the same conclusion from manufacturers: “I don’t need more ideas, I need help sorting through all of the junk to find the good ones!” Manufacturers want better ideas, and they want a way to make sense of the volumes of input they get. Kudos to Colgate and SAP for getting this right, which I have to imagine came from Colgate’s real-world experience in innovation.

Another thing I was impressed with was the objectives of the project. They set out to build something “simple, usable, flexible, and extendable.” As well thought out as the solution seems, it doesn’t appear that they over-designed it. The solution does not look or feel like SAP, but instead is a light, web-based experience. While this might not be appropriate for the highly transactional world of traditional SAP solutions, it is ideal for this application where broad use by untrained participants is a key to success. After all, you don’t want all of your innovation coming from a few trained insiders!

One final point that Colgate made which I think is important to consider, is that the solution is not only valuable in the front end of innovation but throughout the new product development process. In fact, early use of the tool at Colgate has helped solve supply chain issues like cost reduction.

Implications for Manufacturers

The use of social computing techniques to drive innovation is beginning to take shape. SAP is clearly interested in providing this capability, as are standalone innovation management solutions such as Brightidea, Imaginatik, Ideajam, and others.  Some upcoming research I will publish soon with Kalypso shows that many manufacturers are getting started in the use of social media in innovation, and those that did are going to increase usage next year. Times are changing, and it will be interesting to see who can best take advantage of this new opportunity.

So that is what I heard from SAP and Colgate, I hope you found it interesting. Who knew? I didn’t, if you did let us know about it. Who else should I be paying attention to in this space?

I had the chance to talk with … PTC and their customers at last week’s PTCuser user conference. PTC has been busy, making a number of significant announcements. I will clearly not do justice to such a big event in one short blog, but I hope to hit the highlights for you and share my thoughts on the implications.

Note: Just to be clear, this is the last PTCuser because the conference is changing and will be renamed PlanetPTC.

What I Learned

PTC is still serious about mechanical CAD. They believe that there is still innovation happening in that space, and that it will be an interesting market in the future. Good news for mechanical engineers and those that are fans of PTC CAD solutions including Pro/Engineer and CoCreate. They announced Project Lightening which is a multi-year strategy to reinvent mechanical CAD, but promised deliverables in the near term. Not much information here yet, but from conversations with PTC product managers this is a big focus area. Expect some significant focus on making MCAD much easier to use.

PTC is pushing the PLM boundaries. PTC furthered InSight product analytics by announcing product cost analytics and expanded Arbortext into service documentation and instructions. By going into areas like product analytics (particularly in areas like cost), PTC continues to push the envelope. PTC has a broad vision for PLM, and has already stretched the scope of PLM to include product documentation and engineering calculations in the past, and they don’t appear to be done yet.

PTC is making good on their Social Product Development initiative. The new SocialLink product is a great example of this. They added a new product, but also demonstrated how these new social computing capabilities will work across the entire PTC product portfolio. That is the right way to do it (in my opinion). The capabilities are generalized and part of the infrastructure (in large part thanks to Microsoft), but the application of the capabilities is happening in the solutions themselves. This allows product managers from each product line to decide how their users can benefit. Expect more here over time.

PTC has refocused on a Small to Midsize Business (SMB) PDM system – ProductPoint is no longer trying to be both a simpler PDM offering for the SMB and PTC’s answer to Social Product Development. With the introduction of SocialLink and other social computing capabilities, ProductPoint is now free to be a SharePoint-based PDM system. Good news for the SMB who doesn’t need (or can’t attain) a full PLM system.

PTC enters PPM market – PTC is launching a product portfolio management solution based on Microsoft technology. The early indications are that PTC’s solution is more focused on project roll ups and programs than decision support in product portfolios and R&D investment. Stay tuned for more on this in the future as I learn more.

PlanetPTC replaces PTCuser – PTC users have asked PTC to take a broader role and responsibility in the user event. PlanetPTC also includes a community site and virtual events like webcasts, showing that PTC really believes in the power of social media.

So that’s what I hear from PTC, I am sure I missed something. I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them? What else would you like them to do?

A quick peek into some research on … on social computing for product development. Why does Facebook miss the mark? Can it be fixed? I have been talking for some time about the potential value of social computing in PLM and have mentioned before why Facebook will fail. I am preparing for a presentation next week, and decided to pull my thoughts together. So here they are, I look forward to your feedback.

The Research Findings

There are two parts to the findings. The first is a list of concerns that I have heard, here is a short list:

• What relevance do status comments and photos have to do with serious engineering?
• How will we protect intellectual property?
• What does Facebook know about business processes or how to manage them?
• What does Facebook know about engineering data? CAD files? Projects? Engineering in general?
• Why would I trust my business performance to a technology platform like Facebook that doesn’t appear stable or perform well (sorry Facebook, that is just my practical experience not a sound technical analysis)?
• How do I have time to pay attention to this in addition to everything I already do?
• How do we address security concerns?

OK, part two. Can it be fixed? Yes, but I doubt they will do it. There are two reasons:

• They are not focused on this and don’t have domain expertise
• They don’t have the ability to connect to the underlying context, the product data

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Let’s see what Facebook can teach us about PLM. Here are my thoughts (and if you happen to be in Helsinki next week stop by to see this live):

Implications for Manufacturers

Don’t look to tools like Facebook to help you with social computing in PLM. But don’t discount the concepts. Learn from them. They are compelling. And manufacturers are getting started. In fact, I look forward to sharing research that I am doing with Kalypso that gives some great insight on what companies have been doing.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on Facebook failing in PLM, I hope you found it interesting. Yes, I know they didn’t design to tool for product development, so I am really not picking on them. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective.

Please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

What I learned this week … came from a great post on Hypertextual titled Positioning with other IT systems: the liquid nature of Enterprise 2.0. I really enjoyed reading the post, and some of the underlying information linked to it including How Enterprise 2.0 fosters Knowledge Capture. There are some very powerful thoughts here. I think the post does a fantastic job of discussing the value that social computing has to offer PLM (and other applications such as ERP, SCM, and CRM). I see things slightly differently regarding social computing and PLM, but I believe it is in a complementary not a conflicting way. I will respond to the post directly, but I felt I had more to say than I could fit into a comment so decided to share here.

Enterprise Applications Roles

To summarize a few key background points from the post (please read the post, it is worth your time and I will not do it full justice here):

• Referencing Michael Grieves’ book Product Lifecycle Management, Driving the Next Generation of Lean Thinking, the author (Cecil Dijoux) points out that the interconnecting nature of ERP, PLM, SCM, and CRM in relation to domain knowledge and business activities. The model here shows ERP overlapping in certain activities and domains. I couldn’t agree more.
• Later he states that ERP, PLM, SCM, and CRM systems “have very clear boundaries and a strict scope of responsibilities.” That is a good model to work from, although I believe that there are overlapping “grey areas” where roles need to be defined on a company basis. See The Evolving Roles of ERP and PLM in Manufacturing for more of my thoughts there, including how PLM develops plans for manufacturing and quality that are executed in ERP. Oleg has also been posting some very interesting points on ERP and PLM in PLM Twine.

Social Software and Enterprise Applications

More importantly, the Cecil goes further to point out two areas where traditional enterprise applications fall short, and social computing software (what he refers to as ”Emergent Social Software Platforms” or “ESSP”) “fill the gap”: 

• Tacit Knowledge – This is information that is corporate knowledge, and frequently poorly captured. I love the way Cecil describes the issue; “Some studies show that between 25 and 50% of the communication between knowledge workers remains tacit and uncaptured. The question is how can we be productive and comfortable with our daily work if about half of the raw material we’re working with is wandering around ?.“ Knowledge management is a tremendous issue in product innovation, product development, and engineering. In the underlying post on Enterprise 2.0, Cecil says “It is easier and less intimidating for knowledge workers to capture knowledge on collaborative platforms (wiki, blogs, forums etc …)  then on word documents and then knowledge management systems.“
• Communities – Product development is about people, or as I have been known to say “product innovation is a team sport.” Again, I love what Cecil has to say. “ESSP make it easy to build communities which, in the enterprise context, are built around common areas of knowledge, business expertise, and professional know-how. These communities juxtapose different types of experts (technical, marketing, sale, integration) on a specific domain. This allows to build multi-dimensional expertise in very confined and otherwise unreachable locations in the company activity and knowledge map.”

I can’t agree more with what Cecil says about how social computing helps capture tacit knowledge and develop communities. I went back to check, I said almost the exact same things in Going Social with Product Development, although in a different way. What I said is that there are three areas where social computing will help PLM specifically:

• Enhance product development team execution and collaboration
• More naturally capture and share product knowledge and expertise
• Enable the discovery of new IP and product value

I think the alignment with the second point and Cecil’s point on tacit knowledge is clear. My thoughts on communities are represented in both improving collaboration within existing teams, but also discovering new product value through “social discovery.” Please see more detail in the report Tech-Clarity Insight: Going Social with Product Development: Improving Product Development Performance with Social Computing.

My Complementary View

So where do I see things differently? Cecil talks about social computing filling gaps in the enterprise system landscape. In his words, “This provides a liquid nature to ESSPs that helps them to seep in and fill up any gaps left by other systems.” I see this very differently. Maybe it is my old scars from the days when enterprise workflow was going to do the same thing. Instead, I see social computing as a new part of the infrastructure that helps connect and extend applications like PLM into a community. The social software is important, but the product lifecycle management domain expertise is crucial.

What is the key difference in views? Integration. I believe that social software is a part of the answer. But social computing needs to be addressed in the context of PLM. See How Will PLM Get Social? for more of my insight. How will PLM capture knowledge and make it useful unless it is tied back to the underlying product record? It will help, but it will miss the mark. To me, the value in social computing is not as a gap filler. Yes, it fills the gaps of capturing tacit knowledge and developing communities. But instead I see it is a new way to connect and extend PLM to capture and discover knowledge in the context of the product. It is also a way to improve collaboration in the product development community. Perhaps Cecil will agree, we may just be looking at different aspects of the same topic.

Implications for Manufacturers

If you have read this far, you clearly have an interest in the intersection of social computing and PLM. I have only one piece of advise. Keep learning. This is going to have a big impact on how companies innovate and bring products to market, and the manufacturers that are experimenting with social computing techniques in PLM and developing corporate understanding will have a big advantage in the future. We don’t know what that future will look like, but I can tell you it will be different and you don’t want to be caught left behind. On this point, I believe Cecil would probably echo my thoughts. And if you haven’t read his posts yet, go back and learn from them. There is a lot you can take away from his posts.

So that is what I learned from Cecil on Hypertextual (Merci Cecil!) along with some of my perspective. I hope you found it interesting. Let us know what you think.

A quick peek into some research (and some “mythbusting”) on a post by Christopher Null on Yahoo News titled “Facebook and business don’t necessarily mix.” Great, catchy headline. But does it really reflect the underlying research from MIT? I don’t think so. I will also share some comments posted on the PDMA blog from a study by Kalypso that don’t sync up with the commentary. And, I will provide an opportunity for you to speak your mind by participating in a current research study on social media and product innovation.

Commentary and Reactions

I don’t know the author of the post, but when I read it something didn’t sit right with me. For the most part, maybe it was that the title of the post didn’t match the underlying premise. To be fair, I know that some editorial gets “help” with their titles to grab attention (which this one certainly did, at least to me). But here are my thoughts (and feel free to “bust” them yourself, I realize I don’t own all the right answers).

Facebook and Business Don’t Necessarily Mix (Busted) – OK, I know I am picking on the title. But let’s own up to two realities:

1. You don’t have a choice. People on social networks are going to talk about your products. Whether you initiate the conversations or someone else does (customers or competitors), it is going to happen. As the post in PDMA ”Do you use social media in innovation?” points out, Social media on your terms is a much better idea than letting others take control of it for you. You MUST get ahead of this.

2. This isn’t what the MIT research says. The post Mr. Null references, “Pitch may fail on Facebook – Study: Social media don’t always create good buzz“, is much more aptly titled. What is says is that buzz can be positive or negative, and that it can actually hurt sales. According to the Boston Herald blog, the research (which I haven’t read, and is not published yet as far as I know) quotes the author as saying that “found that online buzz only helps when new products are at least half as good as consumers expected.” Now that is interesting! The author, P.J. Lamberson, an MIT Sloan School of Management visiting assistant professor, is said to use math to study large networks.

“Conventional Wisdom” (Plausible) – Mr. Null starts his article with “conventional wisdom now holds that if you want to have a successful product launch, you need to exploit Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace to get the word out about your product.” Is this really conventional wisdom? Are most companies using social media today? My experience says no, but I could be wrong. I will admit, my focus is more on social computing for product innovation, product development, and engineering (PLM) and not product launch. But my experience says that companies are experimenting with the use of social media, but it is far from standard operating procedure. The only evidence I have is from some preliminary results from the study being run by Kalypso (Disclosure: I am helping them run the study) that indicates that the use of social networking and social computing in product launches is still not fully developed. In fact, only about 1/2 of companies are using social media for product launch. Further, companies that are using social media are only using it on a small percentage of their initiatives. In other words, we are very early in the use of social media, and it is far from conventional wisdom. On the other hand, the preliminary results show that about 90% of companies that are using social media for innovation are planning to increase usage next year, with none indicating they were reducing it.  Why is this Plausible and not Busted? The research is not done – please participate in the survey and I will share results back with you via the blog.

Bottom Line (Busted) – After being generous with the last mark, I was fully planning to Confirm the post’s bottom line. Then I read it again to copy it here, and I disagree. “The bottom line is simple: Viral marketing, in which a conversation about a product is actively encouraged, can turn good or bad in ways that traditional marketing and advertising typically cannot. Unless a business pays careful attention to the tone of that conversation, the company could find itself shelling out millions on a viral ad campaign, only to have the unwanted effect of decreasing sales instead of increasing them.” I copied the whole comment over, because I agree with the first part. Yes, viral marketing can turn bad. But then it says business need to pay attention to the tone of the conversation. The underlying study (from what I can see) doesn’t say that. It says that your products have to meet expectations. In other words, it’s saying you can’t just manage the tone because it is out of your control.

Implications for Manufacturers
So what should manufacturers do? Learn from the study. What I hear is don’t over-hype your products, and don’t try to push a bad product through social media. It seems to me the harder you push how great a product is, the more likely you are to get dissenting view from customers. The study doesn’t say your product has to be good, it just has to meet expectations at least half-way.

Continue to experiment and learn. Social media is changing the way we interact with products. Be a part of the change and experiment. The last bit or preliminary data I will share from the Kalypso study is that those that are doing it are seeing business benefits (revenue, time to market, reduced cost). This is real, get on it.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on social networking and business, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective. Please feel free to review free research and white papers about product innovation and product development from Tech-Clarity.

What I learned this week … came from a blog post  in the PTC Social Product Development blog. The post, How will PLM get Social, was written by … me. OK, perhaps this is cheating a bit, but PTC asked me to write a guest blog post and I liked it so I decided to share it here as well. The question I think this posts answers is “if social computing in PLM is going to provide value, how will the PLM industry get there?”

The Potetential of PLM and Social Computing

I have posted a number of time (see Going Social with Product Development as an example) that I believe there is significant business value to be gained from the intersection of social computing in PLM. Why? Because product development is inherently a team activity. Getting a product right requires contributions and feedback from people from all corporate walks of life. The most brilliant technical product that doesn’t fit a market need is wasted technical beauty. The fantastic market breakthrough that can’t be manufactured effectively is at best a squandered market, and at worst an opening for a competitor to introduce the leading product in a market that you created. The blockbuster product that can’t be introduced into new geographies is a lost opportunity. OK, ok, you get the picture and I know I am preaching to the choir. There is gold in the hills of social computing in PLM, even if it’s just inside the enterprise. And if the opportunity for innovation internally is high, extending outside is potentially greater.

So if we agree, the question becomes “how do we get there as an industry?” Here are my thoughts:

Figuring it Out

I believe that manufacturers need to experiment and learn to see what works. This is an area for process innovation, not an area where standard best practices apply. This is uncharted territory, and requires exploration. Multiple pilot projects, sharing ideas with other companies, and a willingness to fail are important factors to success. It will take a while to get this right, but those that get there first will not only have the advantage of their success. They will also have the advantage of the knowledge and experience they develop through the process.

Building It Out

Most of the early efforts will require custom work. As of today, there are no standard, off-the-shelf applications that provide everything a company needs on a “plug and play” basis. There are lots of components available, but they need to be assembled and integrated to meet needs as they are defined. Without proven best practices, it is hard to expect a standard solution! Having said that, some PLM vendors are helping blaze the trail. They are investing in helping manufacturers “figure it out” based on their own understanding of product development and building social capabilities directly into their products. (Note that by the fact that PTC asked me to contribute to their blog on this topic, you can safely assume that they are taking social computing in PLM seriously.) These built-in enablers are a big boost to manufacturers in helping enable their programs as they learn and experiment to determine where the specific business value is for their particular company.

Institutionalizing It

As the manufacturing industry becomes more experienced, best practices will emerge. At that point, PLM vendors will have a business process “template” to build from in the same way they had when building applications for configuration management or concurrent design. At this point, the infrastructure vendors (such as Microsoft) will have many of the core capabilities available in their technology stack. Those common components can then be assembled, tailored, and integrated into existing PLM business processes to create socially-enabled PLM. The key in institutionalizing these capabilities is to combine the generic social capabilities with the knowledge of product development, and then integrate the general capabilities into solutions that handle the specific needs of engineers and product developers (such as protecting intellectual property, linking to product configurations, etc.)

Implications for Manufacturers

So what does this mean to today’s manufacturer? First, get started. It’s challenging to start on a journey when you don’t know the final destination. That is something that is being discovered along the way, and you can change course as you go. Start with small investments and short programs that contribute to corporate learning. Second, partner with your PLM vendor. Share your emerging best practices with them so they can help drive their product strategy. Some are investing today, others will follow suit. Be a part of the build-out. Finally, take advantage of the institutionalized, standard solutions as they become available. Share in the investment that your PLM vendor has made and implement best practices. But don’t wait for them to emerge, help create them. One company’s best practice isn’t always as advantageous to another. Focus today’s efforts on unique value that helps your company achieve its business strategy.

So those are my thoughts from the PTC blog reconstructed here, I hope you found it interesting. There is more that could be said, but I will leave it at that for now and I look forward to your feedback. I also invite you to read more of my thoughts on social computing in PLM on the ClarityonPLM blog by clicking the “social computing” tag in the tag link.

A quick peek into some research on … the use of social computing and “Web 2.0″ techniques to enhance product collaboration. The report, Issue in Focus: Product Collaboration 2.0 - Using Social Computing Techniques to Create Corporate Social Networks not only discusses how social media and Internet-based technologies can improve product collaboration in corporate social networks, but also how manufacturers’ use of social computing allows them to capture and leverage the interactions as a new source of corporate product knowledge.

The Research Findings

One of the key messages of the report is that companies are starting to embrace social computing and “Web 2.0” capabilities to take advantage of social media for business purposes, creating “corporate social networks.” It is important for many companies to make a clear distinction between personal use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, etc.) and “real work” using social computing. While many large companies have shut down access to social media sites, these same concepts offer the ability for engineers, product developers, marketers, manufacturing resources, sourcing, and others in the product innovation process to share and contribute.

There are two primary threads to the research:

• Improving Collaboration – As reported in my previous post and research Going Social with Product Development, capabilities like presence detection and interactive file sharing help make existing collaborative processes better. This is particularly important to replace the day-to-day “water cooler” conversations that have disappeared in today’s globally dispersed, virtual organizations and support processes such as concurrent engineering. For example, manufacturers can create a virtual “community space” to give team members a central location for information. This collaboration extends beyond Engineering as well, and helps product developers include downstream considerations from Manufacturing, Purchasing, Quality, Service, and other departments early in the design process.
• Capturing Product Knowledge – Another key finding of the research is that as manufacturers adopt social computing in PLM, they are developing a digital record of the product development process. Decisions, discussions, false starts, brainstorms, and other interactions can now be captured and stored electronically. Using PLM, they can also be associated to the product and the project to form a permanent record of the process. By integrating this social interaction with search capabilities in PLM (see Unlock My Product Data! Business Intelligence in PLM), the potential to turn collaboration into a corporate asset is tremendous. Beyond capturing internal knowledge, corporate social networks can also be used to collaborate with suppliers and customers to gain better insights into the “voice of the customer,” capture requirements, and generate new product ideas - developing new knowledge and intellectual property (IP).

Implications for Manufacturers

There are significant business benefits to be unlocked by applying social computing techniques to product development. Manufacturers have an opportunity to improve collaboration inside and outside of the enterprise by leveraging these new techniques. After all, social computing is about sharing content within a community. Isn’t that what collaboration is all about? Sharing and getting feedback? And while the thought of using Facebook or Twitter to share your intellectual property may not sound that appealing (as we discussed in Flogging the Facebook for Product Development Horse), the same concepts are being applied to (and integrated with) PLM.  I believe that these capabilities will be a big part of product innovation moving forward, and that companies that get started sooner will have a big advantage over their peers. This is a new and exciting frontier, and we all need to explore and learn so we can tap the new potential ahead of the competition.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on social computing and collaboration, I hope you found it interesting. Does the research reflect your experiences? Do you see it differently? What are your plans? Let us know what it looks like from your perspective.

And as always, please feel free to review more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.