At Issue

“Social computing is here to stay and our research suggests that product development is ripe to take advantage of this new way of working.”

by Robin Saitz, Senior Vice President, Solutions marketing and Communications, PTC

How many of you visit social networking sites? Maybe you have a LinkedIn account, you post on Facebook, you rate movies on Netflix, and maybe you have registered on the PTC/USER forums. Some people think this social networking stuff is pretty cool, but could never work in business. I was reading an O’Reilly Radar report and Tim O’Reilly makes a great point:

“….remember how the personal computer was dismissed by the titans of the computer industry as nothing but a toy? The future often comes to us in disguise, with toys that grow up to spark a revolution.” He was referring to Twitter, in this case. But it struck me that the same is true for social networking’s role in product development.

Collaboration is not new to product development. In fact, since the dawn of time, people have been working together to create innovative designs. In short, product development is a team sport. How well you and your company choreograph product development activities is key to the success or failure of your product and your business.

But beyond well defined business processes, which are absolutely necessary, individuals need to connect easily to information and people on an ad-hoc basis to get their work done. If you have used IM to get a question answered quickly while you are in a meeting or used Yammer to get information for a presentation, you know what I mean. Product development is already social, but it can be even more so. 

For business, social networking has evolved into social computing, and today, social computing technology has emerged as a real business application, but for product development it needs a boost. The real value of social computing in product development comes not only when you are connecting to people and documents, but when you are connecting to the content that defines your products -- and that content is helping you connect to people you don’t even know who can help you get your work done better and faster.  

But would engineers use social computing technology to do their jobs? I really wanted to know this, so I engaged Josh Bernoff and Forrester Research to create a social technographics profile of product developers using PTC products as well as those that don’t. How actively do designers and engineers participate in Web 2.0 and social media activities? How about CAD and IT administrators? Managers, Directors, and even VPs? What about across industries?  

Any differences between those coming from electronics and high tech and those working in aerospace and defense, for example? Are product development practitioners from small and medium-sized businesses any more or less active than those who work in large enterprises? Would we see consistent activity across the geographies PTC serves throughout the world? Do they use social media and web 2.0 in business? 

So we created a survey….some would say (and did) that it was too long. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. We sent the global survey out to 750,000 contacts in March 2009.  In just two weeks, we had over 7,000 complete responses – a record for PTC. Josh and team churned the data. And the results not only surprised us, but it surprised them, too! The social technographics profile for US online adults in 2008 looks like this: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/25131367@N05/2955749197/in/photostream/)

In comparison, the social technographics profile for our product development practitioners looks like this:

An astounding 89 percent of the respondents used social media and web 2.0 tools in their personal and/or professional lives. The data was so significant that we peeled away those that only use these tools for personal use, so we could look at only those who use these tools in their job. We got answers to all our questions. Here are some of the highlights:     

• All roles are active in social media; managers a little more so than designers and engineers, CAD and IT administrators a little more than managers.
• There were no significant differences across industries; however A&D was a little less likely to participate than other industries.
• Individuals from SMBs were a little more likely than those from large businesses, but all were still very likely to participate.
• Regarding geographic differences, all were active, but China, India, Germany, Korea were all more active than the US. 

While some have dismissed social networking as a fad or a toy for the teenagers and college students of the world, I have news for you: Social computing is here to stay and our research suggests that product development is ripe to take advantage of this new way of working. 

What do you think? Does social computing have its place in product development?

Robin Saitz is Senior Vice President, Solutions marketing and Communications for PTC. You can follow her on Twitter www.twitter.com/robinsaitz or learn more about social product development at www.ptc.com/go/social. PTC provides discrete manufacturers with software and services to meet the globalization, time-to-market and operational efficiency objectives of product development.