How can social computing solve product lifecycle management (PLM) problems? Here’s a peek into some research, Issue in Focus: Social Business Collaboration and the Product Lifecycle: Combining the Power of Social Media with PLM, that helps clarify things a bit. I’ll start with some of my thoughts on the value of social computing for product innovation and product development and then poke some fun at myself for totally missing something in regards to social computing in PLM (again).

Some Thoughts on Social Computing in PLM

First, let me step back. For those of you that follow my blog, have seen me present, had a drink with me, or passed me in a hallway you have probably heard me wax on about how Facebook fails for product development. I have probably overused it, but it was a powerful moment when a COFES attendee in my presentation on social computing and PLM said “We will not design an airplane on Facebook!” It was a passionate, and brilliant, statement. What that led to was the basis for my views on social computing and PLM. In short – the concepts behind social media sites like Facebook can provide a lot of value for product development, but sites like Facebook, twitter, Dropbox, and others are not the right approach.

There are major gaps that would need to be filled, but one of the primary issues is that social media sites don’t have any connection with the context of product development – the product. They also have no domain expertise (or interest) in PLM. See the post for more details, including a clever (if I don’t say so myself) chart on the differences in using social media for personal use versus product development.

A Bit of Mythbusting – Why I Might be Wrong

So I had my ideas set. I believed that the only possible way that companies could get to a socially enabled PLM solution was by integrating social computing techniques into PLM. In fact, vendors like Siemens PLM, Dassault Systemes, and PTC have been hard at work doing just that. But something happened recently that made me ask the question. What if I was wrong!? Now I have been wrong before, and I like to confess to it. In fact, to be fair, I missed the impact that social computing would have on product innovation processes in my 2010 Predictions for PLM. My crystal ball failed me, I didn’t even ask the question in my 2009 survey. I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly. But I am a firm believer that the use of social computing in PLM is both highly valuable, and entirely inevitable. It just makes too much sense.

A new company came along that made me think differently. No, it’s not Facebook or anyone like that. It is a new company called Nuage. They have a lot of PLM and product development expertise, and decided to come at the problem differently. They are building a platform for companies to collaborate first, and then adding in proven PLM capabilities. I have to admit I was surprised that they would do that, and I promise to follow up more on them over time. What they convinced me was the a social computing platform could be socially enabled as opposed to an existing PLM solution “going social.” My myth that the only path was for PLM solutions to add social capabilities was busted. There is a bit more to the story, but that is for a different time. For now, back to the research.

The Research Findings

The research reiterates findings from previous Tech-Clarity research, including Tech-Clarity Insight: Going Social with Product Development and Tech-Clarity Insight: Product Collaboration 2.0 – Using Social Computing Techniques to Create Corporate Social Networks in regards to the value that social computing in PLM can offer. In addition, it defines what a social business collaboration platform requires to become a socially capable PLM solution, including the ability to:

• Manage business processes
• Put conversation in the context of products and projects
• Integrate effectively with underlying data and documents
• Provide security for IP
• Allow people to easily share and discuss product development information
• Understand the complex relationships between product data
• Provide the right level of control

Of course the main finding from the research was that there are two potential paths to achieve socially capable PLM, not just one. In fact, there are probably three:

• Add social computing capabilities to existing PLM solutions (or wait for your vendor to do it)
• Implement social business collaboration solution and implement PLM capabilities into it (or find a vendor doing it, now an option)
• Some combination of the two

This is a pretty interesting development, for sure.

Implications for Manufacturers

So what does this mean to product developers? The concept of adding PLM capabilities to a social business collaboration platform is worth investigating. There are four things to remember from the report that I believe are important for manufacturers to take away from the research (but go ahead and read it yourself, you might find more):

1. New product development is an inherently social, team-oriented, collaborative process that can be significantly improved with social computing.

2. The greatest benefit will come from combining the collaborative power of social computing with the control provided by PLM.

3. To realize the potential business value of social product development, the next generation of solutions will need to combine both social computing techniques and proven PLM best practices in a seamless way.
4. New market entrants lead to the possibility that social business collaboration software can be enabled with best practice PLM capabilities.

So that was a quick peek into some recent research on social business computing and PLM, 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 more free research and white papers about PLM and other enterprise software for manufacturers from Tech-Clarity.

Note for frequent readers: I typically do not mix research results with mentions of specific vendors, however without mentioning a credible new market entrant I didn’t think the post would make sense. If it weren’t for somebody willing to take this new approach, I would still be sitting back believing that PLM would have to go social and that the other option wasn’t viable (due to lack of focus and interest by the social media sites, for the most part).

I had the chance to talk with … Rob Fisher of Madison Electric Products following the 2011 Spike Summit. Amy Kenly of Kalypso presented his company with the Spike Award for Manufacturing for theirs Sparks Innovation Center. I think you will enjoy hearing about the opportunity that they saw and how they took advantage of it to develop some great new products.

Note: You can also listen to my interview with Spike Award winner for CPG Justin Winter and my interview with Spike Award Winner for Technology CDC Software.

The Sparks Innovation Center was created to gather product ideas from the large network of electrical contractors that Madison counts as customers. They realized that there were lots of potential product ideas in their customer community, and developed a crowdsourcing site to tap into that knowledge. I was impressed that Rob is as excited about helping the budding innovators in his customer base as he is developing new, successful products for his company (which they have done). This one is definitely worth a listen.

Rob’s presentation (along with mine and a number of others) is still available for replay by registering and attending the virtual event via the Spike Summit Expo. The entire virtual event was a great experience, and between the speakers and the award winners we all heard some great examples of social computing can help improve product innovation and product development.

Let us know what you think of their innovation center and crowdsourcing initiative. Do you like it? Have a similar example to share? Please feel free to check out the blog for more on social computing and product development or read a report on social computing and innovation.

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I had the chance to talk with … Robert Roy of CDC Software following the 2011 Spike Summit. Amy Kenly of Kalypso presented CDC Software with the Spike Award for Technology based on their use of social strategies, processes and supporting technologies to improve innovation, product management, and product development. Rob provided some great insight on the processes that CDC Software uses to get product feature ideas from their customer base for release planning as well as how they use social computing tools to collaborate during their agile development process.

Note: You can also listen to my interview with Spike Award winner for CPG Justin Winter and my interview with Manufacturing Spike Award Winner Madison Electric Products.

The CDC presentation (along with mine and a number of others) is still available for replay by registering and attending the virtual event via the Spike Summit Expo. The entire virtual event was a great experience, and between the speakers and the award winners we all heard some great examples of social computing can help improve product innovation and product development.

Let us know what you think of their program. Do you like it? Have a similar example to share? Please feel free to check out the blog for more on social computing and product development or read a report on social computing and innovation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I had the chance to talk with … Justin Winter of Diamond Candles following the 2011 Spike Summit. Amy Kenly of Kalypso presented Diamond Candles with the Spike Award for CPG (consumer packaged goods) based on their use of social strategies, processes and supporting technologies to improve innovation and product development. Justin provided some great insight on the program they used to get new product ideas from their customers.

Update: You can also listen to my interview with CDC Software for winning the Spike Award for Technology and my interview with Manufacturing Spike Award Winner Madison Electric Products.

I enjoyed hearing Justin’s presentation at the Spike awards. His presentation (along with mine and a number of others) is still available for replay by registering and attending the virtual event via the Spike Summit Expo. It’s a pretty cool experience. I was impressed with the way that Diamond Candles was able to share information with their customers, receive new product ideas from them, and then introduce the new products back to the customers. It was an interesting way to combine outbound marketing with crowdsourcing and gathering voice of the customer (VOC).

After talking to him, I even bought a candle. Wish me luck,  I hope I get one of the $5,000 rings in mine! If you don’t know what I am talking about, take a look at the Diamond Candles web site, their goal is to “make buying candles fun again.”

Let us know what you think of their program. Do you like it? Have a similar example to share? Feel free to look around the blog, you will see a lot of information on the use of social computing to improve product innovation, product development, and engineering.

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I would like to give you a quick peek into some blog posts by Evan Yares on social product innovation that I think are worth sharing, and that bring up a good question. Where will social solutions for engineering and product development actually come from? For those of you that know me, I have been fascinated by the intersection of product innovation and social computing. And if you know me, you probably know that I have some opinions… but let’s start with what Evan has to say. And in the interest of not musing too long, let’s start with his first post which brings up an interesting metaphor for social product development – the humble pencil.

Evan’s Thoughts

First, it is great to see such great work and a refreshing approach. Evan is wicked smart and has a unique way of seeing things (Don’t worry, I blocked Evan’s IP address so this doesn’t go to his head). Evan’s musing on I, pencil really made me think. People have been collaborating on developing products for years. The point from the essay was that no one person knows how to make a pencil. It is the work of many with different skills and purposes (think supply chain, not final production). Evan’s takeaway from it is “How do we give people better tools to help them work together, and make better products?” – which is exactly the point, isn’t it?

Implications for Manufacturers – My Thoughts

My thoughts you ask? You didn’t? Sorry, I will share them anyway. To me, the idea of social product development offers the ability for a supply chain to collaborate in parallel. Perhaps before they are even a supply chain, but more of a collection of capabilities and know-how. As I,pencil points out – not many in the supply chain knew (or cared) about the pencil – they just played their role as a means to their own end. It took someone else to pull all of the pieces together. But what if we get all of the right skills together in a (virtual) room to invent a better pencil? What if the materials experts, the mechanical experts, and those that are looking for a writing solution (and perhaps a marketing visionary to represent voice of the customer as well) shared ideas interactively without filtering in between levels based on what one person thinks is possible or a good idea? To me, that is the promise. Of course there will be lots of very tactical (but important and valuable) uses that simply mimic an engineer walking down the hall to talk to another engineer – but the promise of co-creation and co-innovation is even more exciting! I firmly believe that social computing will expand the possibilities of what humans can invent by connecting more minds and allowing people access to more of the world’s collective knowledge. And now that we have an iPad 2 with a camera, maybe we just do have a better pencil (and paper, and …). But even with a great visionary (thanks Steve Jobs), products like the iPad relied on an innovative supply chain to pull it all together.

So how do we capture this opportunity? Evan’s next post was on the future infrastructure for social product development. I will follow shortly with some thoughts there as well, starting with what Evan has to say. It’s great to have Evan’s voice exploring these topics, we are all better when we share and expand on each other’s ideas.

So that was a quick peek into some recent reflection on social innovation, 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. And feel free to join Kalypso and others in the upcoming Spike Summit to hear me share some research on trends in how companies are using social innovation. It should be a great discussion. And I think what you hear will surprise you.

This is an invitation to speak your mind on the use of social computing in product innovation, product development, and engineering. I have the honor of helping one of my favorite innovation and PLM consulting firms, Kalypso, with some new research. Please take our survey on using social media for product innovation now.

My Thoughts

I have been a clear proponent of the use of social computing to improve innovation, for some history see:

• Mythbusting “Facebook and Business Don’t Necessarily Mix”
• Social Software and PLM – Gap Filler or Intelligent Network?
• Why does Facebook Fail for Product Development? (and how to fix it)
• Connecting Social Interaction with Product Information (Interview)

My Predictions

One of my favorite things to do is “mythbust” analyst and research predictions. It’s great fun to go back and see what people predict and compare it to what actually happened. I particularly like to poke fun at myself when I was wrong (and maybe brag a little on the occasion that I am right). Of course I cheat and use research to fuel my predictions, so I stack the deck a little bit. So here is what I posted in 2011 – The Year Social Computing Explodes in NPD and PLM?:

• Collaboration – “will happen sooner rather than later“
• Discovery – “is coming“
• Product Knowledge – “will take a little longer“

Your Chance to Make it Real

Way more important than my thoughts and predictions are what companies (like yours) are actually doing. Am I spot on? Did I blow it? This is where you come in.

Please take the survey now!

(It shouldn’t take more than about 10 minutes or so. And if you like, we will send you a copy of the results.)

So that’s what I believe is happening in the world of social computing and product innovation, I hope you found it interesting. More importantly, tell us what you think by taking the survey! One last time, the link is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CQ37WKP

I had the chance to talk with … Dassault Systemes CEO Bernard Charles and his team at Dassault’s 2009 customer conference today. I attended the general sessions in the morning and then spent some time speaking with DS execs in a smaller group setting. Once again, Bernard and the team painted a very different picture of PLM than some might have in mind. Dassault does PLM, but the vision does not stop there. It doesn’t matter if you call it PLM 2.0 (as Dassault does) or put some other label on it – DS has a very unique view on what the future will look like. And they have plans to play a broader role than CAD, CAE or product design.

What do they Do?
Dassault is one of the largest PLM vendors in the market. For more on what they do, see past posts One-to-One: Reinventing Dassault Systems? and also One-to-One: Dassault Strives to Make 3D Accessible to All in the SMB with V6.

Where is Dassault Systemes Going?
DS is clearly a leader in the PLM space. How do they view themselves in the future? Some key tenants of the DS vision shared today include:

• 3D Lifelike Experience - “see what you mean” or “SWYM“
• Social Innovation
• Smart Products
• User-Generated Content and Involvement – “from Consumer to Consum’Actor“
• Sustainable Development
• Business Processes – core processes for 11 industries and ~50 industry sub-segments
• PLM Online for All – web-based and SOA

What Does it All Mean?
First, expect Dassault to push the 3D experience hard. Second, don’t expect them to limit the use of 3D and lifelike experiences to an engineering audience. In the manufacturing industries, expect to see them continue to offer 3D applications for new areas such as sales and marketing. DS sees themselves playing just as much of a role helping companies define the product experience (packaging design, shelf placement, consumer interaction) as they do defining the product itself. They have already brought solutions to market and have done some work (not commercial product yet) in areas such as eye tracking technology to analyze customer reaction and behavior. Keep your eyes on the 3DVIA brand and how it fits in with ENOVIA. Note that these solutions have potential in many other industries than manufacturing (or even gaming, another current DS market), with the opportunity to enhance the web to incorporate lifelike experiences. Bernard pointed out in the general session that the Web “does not have emotion or allow people to experience or interact.” What is needed, he explains, are 3D and smart objects that offer realistic simulation and comply with the real-world rules of physics. To me, this feels like a very different vision for PLM than I hear elsewhere.

Also, expect DS to push into more social aspects of innovation. This was one of the biggest topics we discussed in our smaller group. Bernard tells the story of how social networking techniques are helping within Dassault, and how they are learning through their use of Blue Kiwi (a software company they have invested heavily in) and of their own 3DVIA solutions. I don’t think they have it all figured out, which I respect. As I have seen in the past, DS is willing to experiment and learn (as their customers are learning) to leverage new social computing technologies.

I believe that social computing in PLM is a significant new evolution of PLM – see Social Computing Drives Innovation and related posts. Dassault sees this as well. As Bernard said “A year ago, I would have said social software is an add-on, now it is at the core of what we do.” A pretty powerful statement to say the least. There is more to say here, but the post is already getting long (sorry).

What about Product Design?
Don’t take this the wrong way. Dassault is still 100% in the PLM “1.0″ game and working hard to have the best design, analysis, and data management solutions they can bring to market. Dassault continues to invest heavily in their core solutions and the V6 platform. CAD and CAE are not as static, mature solutions as some would like to believe. Some examples of continued investment in the core solutions include:

• Systems Design and Simulation - in Bernard’s words, “Smart products is the future of CATIA” – see post about mechatronics and one of Dassault’s partners in One to One: Big Blues Unprecedented Mechatronic Opportunity for more.
• Continued Development to Support New Manufacturing Materials -composites, nanomaterials, …
• Integration and Interoperability – as an example, Simulation Lifecycle Management of SIMULIA data in ENOVIA

There is more here, but that is not the focus of my (rather lengthy, sorry) post.

Takeaways and Implications for Manufacturers
A demo of 3DVIA and the new iPhone application was a great example of the uniqueness of the DS vision. Instead of a car or plane Bernard showed 3DVIA on an iPhone. He took a picture of the furniture on the stage, and then added a table from the 3DVIA library. Not satisfied with the boring table, the model is sent via e-mail and a designer modifies it in 3D Shape. It is published back to 3DVIA, pulled up on the iPhone, and now we see a picture of the stage with a newly modeled table along with the existing furniture. The punchline is that “3D opens the door to the world we imagine.” Not a standard main-stage demo for a PLM company. Expect Dassault to push further with their vision of making the virtual world better reflect the real world.

So Dassault Systemes vision is different. To be I am not concluding that it is better, but I am concluding that it is unique. It is not for me to decide what companies will gain the most value from, only the customers and the market can decide that.

So that’s what I hear from Dassault Systemes. Bernard and the team are clearly not satisfied with a goal of leading today’s market, but shaping the future market as well. I hope you found it useful. What do you think? What else should I have asked them?