OPEN

If
you read or read about blogs it will not be news to you that IBM is encouraging
its people to write blogs. The company is estimated to have thousands of its
employees blogging now (and has had a great deal of positive publicity as a
result – see recent articles in the FT and Advertising Age). 

Why
is this?

How has it been able to apparently loosen the "command and control" approach to corporate
communications so entrenched in blue chip corporate cultures and trust their people to open as many blogging conversations
with the outside world as they see fit?

Well,
there are three cultural factors that I think have helped it:

1. It is an American company
Blogging
and connected media have had a far greater impact and take up in America than
the rest of the world so far. So blogging isn’t as much of a mystery to decision-makers
and influencers in US companies as it is elsewhere.

2. IBM has already accepted the concept of open-source
Once
a corporate culture has got its head around the principles of open source as
something you can build business models around, applying the same approach to
communications just isn’t such a bug leap of faith.

3. It is a technology company
So it knows that big disruptive technologies come along and
change everything very quickly. If lots and lots of people are using something
new, definitely good to take it seriously. And to be taken seriously in a new
field, you need to demonstrably "get it" as they say in those
circles.