A Discussion with Ken Kaplan at Intel
Last week I met up with Ken Kaplan (Intel’s New Media Manager) at the Intel facility in Santa Clara to discuss with him additional details around the Intel Developer Panel he hosted entitled “Social Media Friend or Foe.” The spontaneous and collaborative conversation on the subjects of enterprise new media and individuals who act as change agents, was not only inspiring but revealed that there is room for this movement to evolve due to internal push-back.
Some of the great takeaways from our conversation included:
- Intel is seeking to involve more employees in the conversations with outside world. These employees must be not only observers but active contributors in the conversations, otherwise they don’t fully understand and move with the current. The IDF is a great example of the beginnings of this reach out and I believe it will continue to be.
- The intersection of the control and openness mindset creates conflicts in organizations. The true goal is to find the human intersections and how to understand, internalize, and communicate these findings going forward.
- Enterprises can create boundaries of communication, like a walled garden. Some areas are open and others are closed. The key is to organically let those with a voice contribute and potentially elevate these individuals to a higher status of job authority with regard to new media tools (social media, video, audio, etc..). When employees don’t reach out, it is comparable to being at the party and not talking to anyone but expecting value from it. You must mingle to be inspired and know the true and unscripted pulse.
- There will be many who will oppose these types of movements in a large organization but as they join in and see the value, many C’s including CEOs will be endorsers of the openness to know where to take the company, and how to raise stockholder value through innovation.
- VCs, private equity firms, and serial entrepreneurs are continually developing new media solutions that enterprises can adopt to enhance the communications with all channels of their business. Knowing the tech scouts who can see these in advance and know which products will win (and work) will be key to enterprises. Jobs descriptions in these areas are not currently on the enterprise org chart and so it is hard for many to understand their value. It is like telling someone to see a house built when only a floor plan exists.
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