Social Computing and Business Strategy

Social computing methods that apply in business situations require ideation, review, and decision making by a group of people. Social tasks can produce results when given the right context and level of support, but they need to work within the larger context of the processes and structure of the sponsoring organization.

These methods are becoming common in marketing or social media activities: communicating ideas to people, helping spread the word, and collecting and sharing views. Such efforts are evident in a number of the examples from Slideshare, blogging, and BoingBoing.net, to the public interactions of Ernst & Young and General Motors. Sales processes frequently benefit from other social tasks for companies, such as Amazon.com, BurdaStyle, Netflix, last.fm, and Pandora. These organizations provide recommendations and guide customers to other products and options that might interest them, thereby increasing the possibilities of return or additional sales. Verizon Wireless and SAP Developer Network introduces new methods to support customers through the combined collective wisdom of employees and other customers. IBM’s InnovationJam, InnoCentive’s crowdsourcing methods, and the Apache Foundation’s open source software-development efforts show social computing methods that support research and development activities through brainstorming and shaping ideas and goals, or by outsourcing entire projects.