The Social Business Frontier: Randal Ries on Measuring Progress

Published on the IBM Social Business Insights Blog on April 30, 2015.

“The Social Business Frontier” is a video blog series consisting of a number of short interviews taking a deeper look inside the IBM Research Labs to explore the groundbreaking and innovative social analytics research that's redefining the future of social business. 

In the fifth and final episode of The Social Business Frontier we speak to Randal Ries, IBM Senior Research Analyst, about how IBM is providing an example for businesses to measure the progress of their social business journey. A key aspect of an organization’s transformation into a social business is culture change. In order to measure culture it’s necessary to rely on traditional research methods. It’s Randal and team’s mission to understand employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward working socially. To do this they’ve developed a survey that measures different aspects of a social workplace. Their strategy helped them understand how employees felt about the value of working socially, how their management was embracing social and if there was enough education on how to work socially. Listen in to hear Ries explain how these results helped IBM understand where it is in its social transformation journey and how it can continue to grow as a social business.

Social Business Frontier: IBM Expertise with Arnon Yogev

Published on the IBM Social Business Insights Blog on March 31, 2015.

People-Centric Engagement through Social Technology

Published on the IBM Social Business Insights Blog on March 10, 2015.

There is no doubt that the future is upon us and the rate of change we experience in technology and its impact on our daily lives are advancing rapidly. Technology has made it possible for us to connect, and now social media has made it possible to do it in a more organic, human way. Facebook and LinkedIn have been around for over a decade and Twitter almost seven years. Together, they’ve fundamentally changed how we engage with each other online – and opaque social technology like Snapchat and Secret are the next evolution in this area.

Millennials who grew up in a social world are entering the workforce and becoming active citizens. What happens next? Social business.

Social business is the next step in the evolutionary process in the day-to-day functions of digitally enabled organizations. Much in the same way that the Internet revolutionized how we all work in the era of e-business; social processes, technology, and mindsets will revolutionize how people in organizations connect, collaborate, and share knowledge. 

• What Does It Really Mean to Be a Social Business
• Social business is more than businesses using social media

With and despite social and other technological megatrends changing how we live our lives, how can we stay focused on being more people-centric—more human?

I share my perspectives in this TEDxUniversityofNevada talk.

The answer is as simple as it is complex. Because of advances in social, mobile and digital communication channels, society has the ability to share ideas quickly and the opportunity to build and iterate off the ideas of others. The more data we create—and we are creating exponentially more data each year—the more human the message must be in order to garner our precious attention.

In order for messages to resonate, they need to be relevant to the individual, which is forcing us to embrace the ancient art of storytelling and bringing the importance of relationship and empathy to the foreground. Information has been democratized.

Social Business Frontier: IBM Innovation Sprints with Kate Ehrlich

Published on the IBM Social Business Insights Blog on March 5, 2015.

Social Business Frontier: IBM Social Listening Program with Mila Davidzenka

Published on the IBM Social Business Insights Blog on February 12, 2015.

Social Business Frontier: Project Breadcrumbs with Marie Wallace

Published on the IBM Social Business Insights Blog on January 29, 2015.