A design expert responds on Social Business strategy

March 8, 2013

I came across this post by Idrees Mootee on his blog. It is his response to a blog post by Peter Kim of Dachis. I read through Peter’s post, and while I might differ on how I would express what he says, I agree with several of his arguments.

A good Social Business strategy cannot be a ‘me too’ one. As in the case of any substantial innovation, the strategy must be rooted in the enterprise’s own context. A friend used to say it well – “If you want to grow a rose in your garden, you cannot just pluck one from your neighbor’s garden”. That however is true of any strategic effort, and not just particular to Social Business. I prefer to look at Social Technology (more than Information Technology) -driven innovation as part of a larger domain of Enterprise Innovation. Perhaps the whole point of calling it ‘Social Business Strategy’ is to communicate with the larger conversation in the industry, where the term ‘social’ has been badly mauled in my opinion.

Any innovation strategy must be anchored within the larger strategic framework of the enterprise. Misalignment is dysfunctional in all cases, and is not true for Social Business Innovation alone. I advocate the creation of a Transformation Program which manages the Social Design product platform and brings an overall discipline to the prioritization and execution of innovation initiatives. This again is not a new idea. The typical ‘social media’ evangelists perhaps do not have exposure or familiarity with such ideas, so it is not surprising that this needs to be made explicit and emphasized. Given the general culture of the industry, there is a tendency to promise quick returns and discount the complexity and challenges involved in designing solutions that provide enduring advantage.

The other point Peter makes is one I have been advising my clients for a long time now. If this new trend is transformational, and I am convinced it is, then it must become a part of an enterprise’s business practices, just as six sigma or knowledge management have become integral to the way you do business. However, the new paradigm brings with a whole new set of practices that everyone in the enterprise is not proficient in. If an enterprise then wished to accelerate the spread of this innovation widely, it must establish a practice, a Center-of-Excellence, which provides a number of different kinds of value. It helps bring others on line with the new ideas, hand-holds them in their application, provides a place for accelerating learning, etc. Before the practice has reached maturity, an entity such as this can play a critical role in success.

What then is Idrees Mootee so upset about? (I have great respect for him – amazing pioneer in the field of design).

I think I would be upset too – if all this was positioned as something radically new, as something that was happening now. What is radical is the kind of innovation that is possible and the velocity with which new designs are emerging. There is an urgency here, an Enterprise State of Emergency, and people are trying to understand how to go beyond the popular narratives. He is right though, that some of these trends have been going on for quite some time. I have discussed elsewhere that Innovation with “social technologies” is not new – that is exactly what the Knowledge Management and Collaboration initiatives from 15 years ago were all about. I think a reconciliation between the two is possible. Idrees Mootee was most likely not Peter Kim’s audience for his article!