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Wednesday, October 01, 2008

IBM’s Innovation Jam kicks off on Sunday

Most of IBM’s “jams” are internal affairs, opportunities for employees to get together virtually and generate ideas to address specific aspects of business like sales and managing. There have been external jams, like one a couple years back addressing urban development.

The upcoming Innovation Jam 2008, though, is pretty ambitious. IBM has invited a number of companies to participate in the online brainstorming event that begins October 5 and runs for 72 hours. The focus is on “the enterprise of the future,” with four topic areas suggested by the results of the company’s Global CEO stud:

• Built for change
• Customers as partners
• Globally integrated
• The Planet and its People

IBM’s micosite dedicated to the jam is short on substance. There’s an overview of the jam concept—a site for each theme populated with content participants can consume to get a better handle on the issues along with channels through which they can engage in conversation designed to spark ideas. (Jams are a model for online collaboration.) In the past, these channels have been both real-time and asynchronous, with champions for each issue assigned to manage the related theme in the jam.) There’s an overview of each topic and a link to the CEO survey. And there are brief explanations of the value of participation (“Creating specific, practical ways to adapt and transform their companies into what they need to be to flourish in the years ahead”) and who should participate (“individuals and organizations that believe in the wisdom of masses”).

Missing is information on how your organization can apply for an invitation (or a notice that the invitation list is closed), although you can email IBM with questions. There also is no list of companies that are on tap to participate.

The site includes a video of Marketing & Communications Senior Vice President John Iwata discussing the jam. Curiously, the video is a WMV file that requires download, not a video that plays in an embedded window. That’s a minor complaint, but it seems so old-school for a site promoting an event about innovation.

Also curious is the green focus. Certainly, reducing the environmental footprint should be a priority for any business, but this one was prompted by the CEO survey results addressing corporate social responsibility. When the general public thinks about CSR, they think about how a company treats its employees, not how much it donates to philanthropic causes or how it tackles environmental issues.

But these issues aside, the results generated from jams have been consistently outstanding, and I hope IBM will share at least the best ideas generated during this jam.