Social technologies can be used in product development for ideation and detailed design by facilitating collaboration between internal teams and external partners. While prior attempts to use social media for work failed to provide the right context, new social technologies offer cloud-based collaboration platforms specifically designed for professional networks working on shared projects. These tools make collaboration more accessible and trackable compared to traditional methods. However, changing collaboration presents challenges as methods of collaboration are rarely documented and enforced like business processes.

1. Social Technologies in
Product Development
Chad Jackson
President and Principal Analyst

2. Agenda
• What are social technologies?
• How can it be used in product development?
• What is the value of social technologies?
• How does it change product development
interactions?
• Have we been down this road before?
• Is anything different now?
• What’s the challenge in changing collaboration?
• Summary

3. What is social media?
Social media includes web-based and mobile based
technologies which are used to turn communication
into interactive dialogue between
organizations, communities, and individuals.
Social media technologies take on many different
forms including magazines, Internet
forums, weblogs, social
blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or
pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking.

4. What is social media?

5. How can it be used in PD?
• Ideation • Detailed Design
– Means to generate or – Means to facilitate
mature new product collaboration on a
ideas or concepts product’s design
– Use a group to drive – Internal design team
direction of the idea that could include
– Referred to as suppliers and partners
“Crowdsourcing”
– Proctor & Gamble

6. How can it be used in PD?
• Use Cases
– Any time you need to
talk to someone else
while designing a
product… which is a LOT
• Replaces existing tech
– Email
– Phone, desk or mobile
– Physically tracking
someone down

7. What is the value?
• Let’s start with our
personal lives
• Naturally drift apart in
our personal lives…
both in terms of
physical distance and
being busy
• Lose touch friends
and family

8. What is the value?
• We build up
professional
connections
throughout our lives
• Naturally drift apart in
our careers… both in
terms of physical
distance and being
busy
• Lose professional
contacts

9. What is the value?
• We have the same
issue with work
• Geographically
dispersed
• What are the value
added activities in the
detailed design
phase?

10. Will social media tools work?
• What is the context?
– Our personal lives
– Our personal network of
friends and family
• What is the objective?
– Stay in touch and
communicate what’s
going on in our lives

11. Will social media tools work?
• What is the context?
– Our professional
careers and work
activities
– Our professional
network of coworkers
and peers
• What is the objective?
– Stay in touch and
communicate what’s
going on in our careers

12. Will social media work?
• What is the context?
– Our design activities
– Our design project peers
• What is the objective?
– Resolve design issues
more quickly
• Popular social media
technology will not
work

13. Have we been down this road before?
• Forums for
every object in
PLM systems
– Part of product
record
– Never used
• Chat enabled
within CAD
applications
– Easily accessible
– Resolve CAD
issues, not
design issues?

14. Is anything different now?
• Vuuch
– Context is
deliverable-centric
(page for every
deliverable)
– People are invited
via email
– Correspond about
that deliverable
through many
applications
– It is all tracked in a
single location in the
cloud

15. Is there anything different now?
• PTC’s SocialLink
– Context is the product
in the PLM system or
community of practice
– People involved are
those already involved
with that PLM product
or community
– Includes
chat, wikis, microbloggi
ng, etc.
– Everything is tracked in
the PLM system

16. Is there anything different this time?
• Nuage
– Newly launched PLM-
ish system
– Public accessible
system, must like
Facebook
– Connects are
professional network
– Share and collaborate
on files
– Located and
accessible in the cloud

17. How does this change things?
• Traditional efforts
trying to get a hold
of someone
– Try different
mediums..
phone, physically
walking and finally
email
• Social Technologies
offer more
accessible medium

18. Challenges in Changing Collaboration
• Process change is vastly
different than
collaboration change
– Processes have been
documented to a great
extent
– Compliance to processes
can be measured
• Methods of collaboration
are rarely documented…
they just happen
– That makes an explicit
change difficult to
manage
– How do you enforce a
change in collaboration
methods?

19. Summary
• The well known social media tools provide the
wrong context and objectives for work
• Social technologies have an advantage over many
existing forms of collaboration today
• Some attempts have been made to push these tools
in the past, in a different form, with little success
• New social technologies offer capabilities that
provide the right context
• Collaboration is difficult to change due to its lack of
documentation and problems with compliance

20. Thank You
Chad Jackson
President and Principal Analyst