Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt speaks about the power of open collaboration at the 2013 IBM Connect conference in Orlando, Fla.
Jan 29 2013
Management

IBM Connect: All Roads Lead to Social Business

Big Blue builds a strong case for adopting the engagement and transparency of social media in the enterprise.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt IBM Connect 2013
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt speaks about the power of open collaboration at the 2013 IBM Connect conference in Orlando, Fla.
Credit: IBM/Flickr

It might surprise some people to see IBM so gung-ho about social media. After all, the company has a storied legacy in enterprise computer hardware and software, but it hasn’t been at the forefront building social media platforms.

Until now, at least. IBM acquired Kennexa, a social twist on employee and HR management, last year and recently launched its Social Business Analytics tool, which allows companies to make sense of unstructured data from the various popular social media platforms. The way IBM sees it, social will be the conventional way of doing business in the near future.

Alistair Rennie, general manager of IBM Social Business, tried to bring some clarity to what the company considers a “social business.”

"Social business is when an organization takes some of the incredible innovations and ideas that have come out of social networking, that we've all seen in our personal lives, and start to apply them to the way they work to the way they drive their business processes and the way they engage with their employees,” he said in a promotional video ahead of the show.

The company shined a spotlight on actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his social business, hitRECORD, an open-collaborative multimedia production platform at its IBM Connect show in Orlando, Fla. He urged attendees to open their minds to letting go of “ownership,” which he said gets in the way of collaboration.

"Once you let go of notion that 'this is mine' and others build on top of what you did, you can work together a lot better," Gordon-Levitt said, according to a report from ZDNet.

Other attendees at the show relished in the exchange of ideas and information about social business and shared pearls of wisdom socially.

Here are a few highlights from IBM Connect attendees:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibm_media/8423437595/sizes/l/" target="_blank">IBM/Flickr</a>
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