Social Business Research at Almaden

Ten years ago there was a significant shift in the way people interacted with each other: the web came to the workplace and became a serious business tool for organizations in industries of every kind. The evolution continues with the coming of age of Social Business as social computing, analytics, policies, governance and cultures are integrated into enterprise design and organizations are focused on socially-enabling business processes.

Jeff Pierce, IBM Research - Almaden
Mobile Computing Research Lead

In a recent media event at IBM Research - Almaden focused on how Social Business is helping organizations around the world embrace a new culture of transparency and collaboration, IBM GM for Social Business Alistair Rennie spoke to about 6 reporters and 4 analysts about IBM's strategy and IBM mobile computing research lead Jeff Pierce led a discussion about user studies and mobile devices in the Social Business world.

The attendees had access to a number of mobile/social Research demonstrations, including the crowdsourcing mobile phone app CreekWatch, IBM Connections and a few Twitter analytics projects developed out of the Social Media Analytics & Engagement area of IBM Research - Almaden. Much of the research is developed out of behavioral studies - including the interesting result that even as early as 2007 some users were already managing their activities across an average of 6 devices - many of which were published in the last 3 years:

Smart Phone Use by Non-Mobile Business Users
Presented at Mobile HCI 2011

Understanding Information Preview in Mobile Email Processing

Presented at Mobile HCI 2011

No Smart Phone Is an Island: The Impact of Places, Situations, and Other Devices on Smart Phone Use

IBM Research Report

Triage and Capture: Rethinking Mobile Email

IBM Research Report

Also! ReadWriteWeb's article "IBM Rethinking Mobile Email" from December 2011

"It's on my other computer!": Computing with Multiple Devices

Presented at CHI 2008

Following the event, influential Forbes blogger Haydn Shaughnessy reported on the evolution of social media to social business highlighting IBM's embrace of social technologies across the organization. The article discusses IBM's evolution into a social business and cites IBM as a category leader in social software. 

Jennifer Okimoto, Social Business Consultant from IBM's Global Business Services division, and speaker at this event, shared her thoughts on "Social Business Game Changers," which include behaviors, skills and attitudes: 

You can learn more about IBM's Social Business here.