BAHJAT ABUHADBA DILION RATH JESSICA SMITH Chapter 9 : The Wiki Workplace.

BAHJAT ABUHADBADILION RATH

JESSICA SMITH

Chapter 9 : The Wiki Workplace

Unleashing the Power of Us

Robert Stephens Created Geek Squad 2002 Best Buy acquired

60 employees $3 million

Now 12,000 employees 700 locations across North America $280 million


Stephen’s is now leading the company in a bold effort to move Best Buy away from products and into services

CEO Brad Anderson “Robert Stephens has been at the heart of our service

culture that we’re building across our company.”


Geek Squad employees use wikis, video games, and all kinds of unorthodox collaboration technologies to brainstorms new ideas, manage projects, swap service tips, and socializes with their peers.

They contribute to product innovation and marketing

Result: Deep, long-term

transformations in the culture, structure, process, and economics of work

Shift from closed hierarchical workplaces with rigid employment relationships to increasingly self-organized, distributed, and collaborative human capital networks that draw knowledge and resources from inside and outside the firm


Geek Squad Good example of how technology and demographics

are coming together in a radical workplace and meritocracy that is rewriting the rules of engagement at Best Buy and showing the world how the new wiki workplace can produce superior bottom-line results

Geeks, Wikis, and Global Domination

Greek Squad secret sauce is the people and how the collaborate Retain talent

Branding, “hiring the best people’, and the fun workplace ethos

Stephens learned to engage his agents in a continuous process of innovation and improvement that keeps the agents motivated to perform at their highest level


Example: Geek Squad agents instinctively started using

online multiplayer games to stay in touch as the organization grew from 60 to 12,000 employees in just three years

Initially, Stephens created a wiki, but it was slow to take off

Stephens realized the employees had all self-organized online by playing Battlefield 2.

It proved to be the most effective and efficient collaborative tool.

384 colleagues simultaneously played at once


Product Development Agents applied their intimate knowledge of

customers and technology to design award-winning products for Best Buy Pragmatic Flash Drive

No cap, folds into itself Thinly, reinforced loop for key chain Won a prestigious German design award

PR Stunts Predicted when the Star Wars movie came out the business

would pick up because IT workers would be getting movie tickets

Posted downloadable excuse notes on the web 800,00 downloads

Rise of the Wiki Workplace

Geek Squad’s successes signal the value of bring high-technology adoption, creativity, social connectivity, fun and diversity into the workplace.


There has long been recognition that organizational bureaucracy impedes innovation, agility, and success Typical office – long

rows of desks, regimented in army fashion, with typists clicking away from 9 to 5

– Teamwork– Corporations have

become networked in the sense that they build business webs with partners on a platform of information technology

– Traditional hierarchies were bosses still expect to bosses.


Net Generation Most large corporations are geographically dispersed Fuels the need for people to communicate and work

together while being separated by great distances Net work technologies allow companies to run

cohesive yet decentralized operations by linking employees in virtual teams and communities of practice


Competitive pressures are making organizations more agile, more focused on the customer, and more attuned to dynamic competitive strategies

Firms Less hierarchical and decision-making authority then they

used to be Less likely to provide lifelong careers and job security, and

more in need of continuous reorganization to maintain or gain competitive advantage

Decentralizing their decision-making function, communicating in a peer-to-peer fashion, and embracing new technologies that empower employees to communicate easily and openly with people inside and outside the firm


Net Generation is embracing new web-based tools such as blogs, wikis, chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks, and personal broadcasting

These tools enable employees to engage and co-create with more people in more regions of the world, with a richer, more versatile capability set, and with less hassle and more enjoyment than any earlier generation of workplace technology.


Whereas, previous generations value loyalty, seniority, security, and authority, the N-Gen’s norms reflect a desire for creativity, social connectivity, fun, freedom, speed, and diversity in their workplaces

Companies are going to have to understand the Net Generation and the individuals who will emerge as its leaders

Bottom-up innovation

-Geek Squad: was one of best buys many tale innovations.

- Dennis Gil: a leading best buy manager had many ideas on improving best buys day to day operations.

- Because of Dennis’s efforts, true effective communications was established between executive mangers and operational managers.

Social Computing in the Enterprise

-Ross Mayfield, CEO and founder of SocialText, one of the growing number of start-ups that supply social computing especially wikis to enterprises.

- He is a strong advocate of drilling through the rigid organizational hierarchy. He takes Best Buy’s experience as an example.


- Mayfield believes that today's firms should adapt to the trends in social networking and positively take advantage of these new habits rather than the other way around.

- Example on WIKIS: IT wikis have been used to strengthen a collaborative environment in a European based investment bank.


- Many supporters of the use of social computing technologies find it as a way to document the decentralization a lot of companies have come to in their project creating processes.

- A problem nowadays is solved in many cases outside the formal setting of the firm thus giving it an informality nature.

Notable Trends

- Inevitable changes should be employed by originations as adaptive enhancing tools.

- Firms should always spread the culture of dynamic continuous improvement.

- One should not that prominent trends such as Wikipedia is better than yesterday and tomorrow will better because most of today's project are scopes of continuous improvements.

Peer Production in the Workplace

Weaves internal and external resources together

IBM and their InnovationJam Happened in September 2006 Covered by 2, 72 hr sessions Consisted of over 100,000 participants CEO, Sam Palmisano committed up to $100 million to

develop the ideas with the most social and economic potential

Teams

Not a new conceptEffective tool for problem solvingWikipedia: 16,000 people actively peer-

produce the siteSlashdot: 250,000 people actively peer-

produce the site

Time Allocation

Is the time allotted for specific activities Google: employees are required to “Goof off”

with 20% of their timeWhat this does: allows employees to conjure

up new ideas and product road maps

Decision Making

Considered today as the invisible hand of the marketplace

Markets are being put to work in corporate strategy, planning, and having company stakeholders inform company decision making

Consists of: forecast product sales, spot emerging trends and technologies

Resource Allocation

Basically placing the most tradable resources in the correct marketplace

Thus, removing internal politics and sets up a dynamic where teams buy and sell access to resources based on their independent judgments about how badly the resources are needed

Results

The wiki workplaceWhich consists of: the development of self-

organized interconnections and forming cross-functional teams capable of interacting as a global, real-time workplace

In the near future, this will be incorporated into a corporate hierarchy

BAHJAT ABUHADBA DILION RATH JESSICA SMITH Chapter 9 : The Wiki Workplace.

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