Abstract

This case is about IBM’s social media initiatives and its transformation from social media to social business. By launching several social media initiatives, IBM aimed to nurture a culture of collaboration for fostering innovation. Since the early 1970s, IBM encouraged its mainframe programmers to collaborate online using the System 370 consoles. This was followed by the launch of the w3 corporate Intranet. IBM was also one of the first companies to encourage employees to use the Internet. Taking its collaboration efforts forward, IBM explored the blogosphere in 2005 empowering employees to blog. IBM felt most of its social efforts, which had begun internally as a way for IBMers to learn and collaborate, could become products that could be offered to the marketplace. This marked the launch of Lotus Connections in January 2007. IBM wrapped all its social networking technologies into a single package – Lotus Connections, a social software suite integrated with capabilities to work in a corporate setting. This was followed by the launch of its first social networking site Beehive in 2007, which allowed employees to connect with each other, track each other’s activities, share photos, etc. After the internal social networking technologies gathered momentum, the company initiated a BlueIQ program with the stated aim of coaching IBMers to use social collaboration tools and reap its benefits. This also marked a social business transformation at IBM. The company also used social media as a channel for marketing its products and services to the B2B customers. Though IBM was leading the social software market, it aimed to address its challenge of becoming a fully realized social business and encourage other organizations to follow the lead in future. Going forward, it also had aggressive plans to extend its social software portfolio to mobile devices, including tablets.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Analyze IBM’s social media initiatives and understand the reasons behind its success.
• Understand IBM’s decentralized social media approach.
• Discuss and debate IBM’s social business transformation.
• Understand how IBM integrated B2B marketing into social selling.
• Discuss the challenges faced by IBM in becoming a fully realized social business.

Keywords

IBM, market leader, enterprise social software, culture, collaboration, innovation, social networking, social media marketing, B2B, decentralized social media, microblogging, crowdsourcing, Innovation Jams, Lotus Connections, BlogCentral, wikis, Beehive, BlueIQ, IBM Connections, social business transformation