IBM is a leader in social business, and I like how their latest report frames the opportunities for companies who want to go in this direction. Based on their research, companies that are doing this are using social business to do three things:

1.  Create valued customer experiences
2. Drive workplace productivity and effectiveness, and
3. Accelerate innovation.

That’s the why. Everyone wants and needs these things, right? Well applying social software and the ideas behind it to the way you lead and manage your organization (my definition of social business) is how you get there.

I think the customer experience part has been getting most of the attention. That’s using social media in your marketing. Listening to customers, building community, etc. Personally, I’m more focused on the productivity and effectiveness part, and the report has interesting stories about companies getting better at transparency and collaboration. This, by the way, is what IBM says are the “basics” of social business in the productivity and effectiveness realm:

• Create an infrastructure that allows employees to set up collaborative spaces and individual profiles;
• Apply social tools to important learning initiatives;
• Using social techniques to identify areas of improvement from suppliers and intermediaries.

The more advanced stuff includes gaming, crowdsourcing, and more elaborate use of social data.

Where’s your organization on all of this?