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Promoting Shared Value Creation Within and Across Companies

Sunday, October 16th, 2011

Many companies have donated to social causes for years. For the most part, however, these philanthropic activities were viewed as nice things to do or as ways of improving the company’s image as a member of a local community, rather than as an investment in the business. Recently, however, a growing number of companies have come to recognize that advancing social causes is not only good PR, it can also be good business. Well designed and executed social programs can provide “shared value”—delivering at least as much value to the donor corporation and its shareholders, as to the recipients.

This practice, which has been aptly dubbed “Creating Shared Value”, is already being adopted by a growing number of companies. Maximizing this value, however, is not easy. It is difficult to build commitment through all levels of the organization, develop a true Shared Value culture and, especially, maintain focus and commitment in good times—and even tougher in today’s challenging economy. Most companies, therefore, need help in making a convincing business case to their executives and their boards, getting buy-in, building commitment through all levels of their companies and in understanding the ways in which partnering with other organizations can multiply the value delivered to all parties.

The last week of September saw three separate forums in which leading Shared Value proponents have attempted to provide exactly this type of help by sharing their visions, their experiences and their best practices with other companies and institutions.

One example is a webinar sponsored by FSG, a non-profit social impact consulting firm whose Managing Director (Mark Kramer) joined with Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter to explain the concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV) in a January 2011 Harvard Business Review article. After FSG set the stage by briefly explaining the evolution of corporate philanthropy toward Shared Value Creation and by laying out its Ten Building Blocks, it introduced Corporate Social Responsibility executives from three companies, each of whom provided an overview of how they made the business case and built commitments for CSV within their own companies. For example:

  • Hewlett-Packard explained the need to align and continually reinforce vision, strategy, delivery and performance across all levels of the organization, from the board to branch executives and individual employees;
  • Intercontinental Hotels demonstrate how its four-pronged model for a Shared Value sustainability program gained commitment, not just from its own executives and employees, but also from its franchisees and its customers;
  • Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt showed how aligning its social commitment with its business objective (of “selling educational achievement”) and assisting its business leaders with the tactical requirements for managing such programs allowed it to maintain its program across the regimes of three CEOs in less than two years.

Although these and a number of other companies have certainly demonstrated commitments to Shared Value, as explained in previous blogs, I see two companies—IBM with its Smarter Planet initiative and General Electric with Ecomagination—as most embodying the ways in which companies can effectively integrate social value with their own business objectives.

IBM has been particularly active in both:

  • Explaining the metrics it uses to assess the benefits of its social and philanthropic activities and the need to continually demonstrate the strategic value these efforts deliver to IBM as a means of “ensuring sustained support for these programs within its own company”; and in
  • Evangelizing the importance of aligning business and social strategies and helping all types of for and not-for-profit organizations, academic institutions and governments work together to create mutual value.

In the last week of September, for example, IBM sponsored two forums to evangelize the value of and help other companies build their own programs—both individually and in concert with other organizations:

  • THINK: A Forum on the Future of Leadership brought panels of industry leaders together with up-and-coming leaders from government, business, academia and science to examine the structural changes that will affect all organizations in the coming decades and the ways in which these organizations can, jointly and independently, reinvent themselves to improve the world in which we will all live.
  • Regional Upward Spirals: The Co-Evolution of Future Technologies, Skills, Jobs and Quality of Life in which it convened leaders from leading institutions including think tanks (McKinsey Global Institute, Institute for the Future), universities (MIT, Berkeley and Michigan State), corporations (Boeing, IBM) non-profits (IEEE and CAEL) and regional technology clusters (Washington Economic Development Commission) to examine how technology will reshape the nature of learning and jobs, the skills that will be required in the new economy, the types of jobs that will be created (and those likely to face a shortage of qualified employees) and the opportunities for leaders in all segments to work together to create the jobs, the employees and the academic/industry clusters that will be capable of addressing the needs of tomorrow.

FSG and a couple of its clients, meanwhile, is already on the agenda for another webinar that will explain the ways in which numerous companies and organizations can work cooperatively to address societal needs—an approach they call Collective Impact (see FSG’s recent book, Do More than Give) and the Winter 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review article). This approach, as it will discussed in a November 9 webinar, depends on each party applying a common set of measures to evaluate performance and track progress.

Forums, such as those recently sponsored by FSG and IBM, play critical roles in explaining the payoff—both corporate and social—and of providing guidelines for managing such initiatives. Hopefully, we will see many, many more by FSG, IBM and many other organizations, over the next couple years.

Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Hewlett-Packard, IBM | No Responses »
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IBM’s Evolving Corporate Philanthropy Objectives

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

In two recent blogs, I discussed the growing trends by which companies are:

  • Integrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Philanthropy initiatives into their business strategies; and
  • Migrating from passive philanthropic donations of cash, to active contributions of their products, and especially the expertise of their employees to the needs of their communities.

These companies increasingly recognize that reputations for social responsibility can burnish the company’s brand, attract new customers, aid in recruiting employees and improve employee commitment to the organization. Some companies use philanthropic activities to facilitate entry into new markets, improve economies in existing markets and even increase share prices. They also see this active involvement as delivering much greater and more sustainable benefits to the causes they support.

IBM is a case in point. This is the first in a series of two blogs that examine how IBM is rapidly evolving its corporate philanthropy program to align with the company’s business strategy. This blog assesses the company’s changing priorities and their linkages to some of its core business objectives. The second blog (scheduled for June 26), looks at how the company is expanding and measuring both the corporate and social returns of these programs.

Toward a Business-Aligned Philanthropy Strategy

IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, in which the company works with communities to improve everything from their water supply to their traffic flow, facilitates what IBM views as a growing “fusion” between its business and citizenship strategies. Its efforts to address societal issues such as the environment, community economic development, education, health and literacy, increasingly rely on “IBM’s most valuable resources, our technology and talent, to create innovative programs” to assist these communities.

This has not always been the case. Although IBM has always been a major contributor to social causes, back in the mid-1980s, it often subjectively allocated contributions to causes in communities in which IBM operated and had employees. 95% of these contributions were in cash.

While struggling to get the lumbering giant back on its feet, Lou Gerstner hired a new executive to restructure the company’s social initiatives. This executive, Stanley Litow, was charged with applying the company’s philanthropic resources to address the needs of society in a way that would simultaneously:

  • Advance IBM’s own business objectives; and
  • Maximize the value of IBM’s “social investments” through donations of the company’s technology and expertise, in addition to its cash.

These focuses were further refined under current CEO Sam Palmisano, who insisted on methodically aligning IBM’s community service efforts around the company’s business expertise and on applying IBM technology and expertise, in areas including cloud, analytics and security, to societal needs. He also required quantification of the value of these investments (the value to IBM, as well as to beneficiaries) and on working more effectively with partners to better leverage and scale IBM’s efforts. As of 2009, for example:

  • 25% of IBM’s investments were in growth markets compared with an average of 1% for other companies;
  • Almost 75% of these investments were aligned around education and employee development, with most of the remainder being spread across human services, environment, health and culture; and
  • 55% of investments were in the form of technology and another 23.3% in services, with cash accounting for less than 22% .

IBM has steadily increased the resources it donates to charitable causes from less than $150 million in 2005 to more than $185 million in 2009. While this includes the company’s Matching Grants and Community Grants programs, it does not include the $36 million individual IBMers contribute through the company’s Employee Charitable Contribution campaign or the close to 1 million hours of their own time that current and retired IBMers dedicate to social causes of their own choosing under IBM’s On Demand Community program. Valuing these hours at a modest $25 per hour translates into an additional $24 million.

IBM is also expanding its commitments to its social programs, focusing on building longer-term, more sustainable relationships with its causes and its partners as a means of maintaining continuity, ensuring meaningful knowledge transfer, and of achieving long-term and sustainable results.

Educating the Workforce of the Future

While the increase in overall funds that IBM allocates to corporate contributions has been gradual, the change in the composition of these contributions has been dramatic. Education, for, example, grew from 67.5% to 73.4% over the last five years, while the percentage donated to cultural causes has fallen by half, from $11.2 million to 4.7 million.

The allocation of these educational contributions has shifted much more dramatically than the overall sums. While more than 55% of IBM’s 2005 educational contributions went the K-12 in 2005, 67.7% now goes to higher education.

As I discuss in detail in my 2010 report on IBM’s Academic Initiative, these educational resources are being applied much more programmatically and in a way that generates greater returns—to IBM, the schools with which it works and to students—than did the company’s previous efforts. It contributes hardware and software to computer science labs; funds scholarships, internships and interdisciplinary Smarter Planet research projects; and contributes IBM talent to help universities tune curricula and teach classes. Meanwhile, its Global Citizen’s Portfolio provides a range of tools to help fund employee’s lifetime learning, encourage them to mentor other IBMers and even prepare for new careers in teaching, government or non-profit service.

Why is IBM placing such a focus on education in general and higher education in particular? First, there is a huge need. Education is the Number One-rated corporate philanthropic priority of CEOs in general, and of IT companies in particular. It is also cited as the single greatest need by community managers. Second, IBM, like many tech companies, is already struggling to find adequate numbers of people with the skills required for today’s jobs. It sees even greater talent shortages in the future—particularly for the type of “T-shaped” people (those with a broad understanding of multiple disciplines and skills, combined with deep skills in a specific field) that will be required to develop, market, implement and manage the type of Smarter Planet solutions on which IBM is betting its future.

IBM is working, first and foremost, to help universities educate adequate numbers of people with the skills that it will require in the future, while simultaneously identifying and forming relationships with the most promising of these students while they are still in school. IBM’s need for T-shaped people, however, goes well beyond its own direct needs. It is also working to ensure that such people are available to IBM partners and customers and that these people are familiar with (and ideally have favorable impressions of) IBM and its technologies.

Improving Life in IBM’s New Growth Markets

As I mentioned, there been a big shift in the geographic destination of IBM’s charitable contributions. In 2005, for example, almost 70% of IBM’s donations went to the U.S, with Europe, Japan and Canada accounting for much of the remainder. By 2009, 25% of these funds went to emerging and developing countries, with contributions to Asia Pacific and Latin America both more than tripling over the last five years.

Why the big shift to emerging countries? Three primary reasons. First, as great the needs of the developed world, those of poorer countries are even greater. Second, IBM is becoming much more global, with about two-thirds of its revenues now coming from overseas, and three-quarters of its employees now based overseas—with particularly rapid growth in emerging countries, especially India and China.

This leads to a third, more pragmatic reason. IBM, like most other large corporations, sees much of its future growth coming from these countries. While it is already established in some of these countries, it has little presence in many of the smaller countries and, even in those in which it is well-represented, has little exposure in second- and third-tier cities.

Contributions to these countries generates exposure for IBM in preparation of marketing efforts, gives IBM employees a better understanding of the needs of these areas and helps to build IBM’s bona fides as a corporate citizen of these countries. Meanwhile, programs including Corporate Service Corps, Executive Services Corps and Smarter City Challenge provide emerging country communities with pro bono consulting to address critical Smarter Planet-related needs. These engagements deliver direct and immediate benefit to these countries while simultaneously providing them with an idea of the even greater benefits that may be achieved though broader, paid engagements. The consultants, meanwhile, provide a very human face to the giant corporation.

IBM is clearly channeling its philanthropic activities more strategically than in the past, insisting that they deliver value both to their beneficiaries, and to IBM itself. But as the company increasingly views these contributions more as investments than as gifts, it is also insisting that every given dollar worth of contribution produce the greatest possible return. My June 26 blog examines how IBM is both amplifying and measuring the returns—both social and corporate—of these programs.

Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, IBM, IT Industry Role in Education | No Responses »
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Partnering Strategies for a Smarter Planet: Developing Win-Win Partnerships with IBM

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

This is a summary of my new January 2011 report “Partnering Strategies for a Smarter Planet: Developing Win-Win Partnerships with IBM”. For more information on this report or to purchase it for $995, click here.

IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative is the foundation of what, if successful, may represent one of the most fundamental corporate transformations of all time—transforming IBM from a provider of IT solutions into an architect of solutions to some of the world’s biggest, most pressing needs.

IBM intends for its application of IT tools to real-world “where digital meets physical” needs to enable it to leverage its strong position in the maturing, “relatively small” IT market into an entirely new role—that of being the primary digital enabler (and, in some cases, the centerpiece) of solutions for dozens of other much bigger markets, from healthcare to energy and transportation to government. The company’s contributions to solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems could also provide very nice side benefits, including enhancing the company’s already strong brand image.

The benefits of IBM’s Smarter Planet focus, however, are likely to transcend society and the IBM Corporation—they are also likely to benefit a number of IBM’s partners. Maximizing these benefits, however, can require some careful balancing.

Smarter Planet Ecosystem Benefits

IBM bases its entire Smarter Planet vision on an obvious (at least to those of us in the IT industry) proposition—traditional real-world infrastructures and processes can be made much more effective and efficient by making them more:

  • Instrumented, as through the use of sensors;
  • Interconnected, as by the Internet; and
  • Intelligent, through the use of analytics.

Since all these of these capabilities are already available, IBM and its partners have opportunities to begin providing real value around them today. And since all of these capabilities will be ubiquitous in the future, these markets will grow rapidly into huge opportunities. Companies that develop, tune and develop proof points around their current offerings have the potential of establishing themselves as leaders in these markets of the future. And, oh yes, their solutions also have the potential of providing big societal benefits in the normal course of doing business.

But how can companies achieve the market traction required to establish themselves in such new markets? Individual ISVs typically lack the visibility and the scale; large physical market vendors (like Eaton and General Electric) have little experience with sensors, Internet enablement or analytics; and IT system vendors (including IBM) lack the experience, not to speak of the brand permission and customer relationships, required to build smart buildings and power grids.

The solution, of course, is to build an ecosystem that seamlessly integrates the products, expertise and brands of thousands of complementary companies into compelling solutions to pressing needs. And while a number of vendors are building their own ecosystems around specific classes of solutions today, IBM’s Smarter Planet is, by far, the broadest (encompassing 25 different initiatives), the biggest (consisting of thousands of partners) and the most highly visible (with 35-40% customer recognition).

Dancing with Elephants

While IBM is building both standards and go-to-market ecosystems around each of its 25 Smarter Planet initiatives, those for Smarter Buildings and Cities are currently the most developed, followed by those around Energy and Sustainability. But even within these, IBM’s own offerings, much less its brand and customer relationships are limited. This leaves plenty of white space for partners.

Consider, for example, Smarter Buildings. While all partners must, at a minimum, provide products and services that contribute to an end-to-end solution, IBM particularly values partners that can deliver additional capabilities. Partners like Honeywell, Schneider and Eaton, for example, have established relationships with real estate developers and construction companies and can provide IBM (and other ecosystem partners) with the brand permission and deep customer relationships required to play in areas like smart building design and operations. They also have deep expertise in areas such as HVAC and lighting and may often offer performance-based energy contracts (which IBM does not). IBM not only encourages, but depends on such partners to take the lead in many accounts.

IBM, in turn, also provides considerable value to these companies. First, as mentioned, the Smarter Planet brand provides considerable market recognition and an established base of partners. IBM, of course, is also more likely to have IT and C-level contacts among companies looking to build new buildings and retrofit older buildings and can bring partners into Smart Data Center contracts. It has the IT skills required to integrate all building systems into a seamless network, the digital dashboards required to monitor and manage them and the analytics software to optimize performance and anticipate and prevent disruptions. Just as importantly, it has a huge, established ISV program with well defined processes and a library of Industry Frameworks that greatly reduce ISV’s work in building applications.

IBM certainly provides partners with new opportunities to expand into new and vastly larger markets than most could hope to enter alone or with their own smaller ecosystems. Meanwhile, its extensive technical and market development assistance programs can proactively help its partners capitalize on these opportunities.

But while all participants can value from participation in Smarter Planet ecosystems, such relationships are not without friction. There are risks to dancing with IBM, as there are with any giant. Although the company has relatively few products that compete directly with those of its ecosystem partners, IBM has huge technical, consulting and outsourcing services organizations and it values account control at least as much as any other company.

Partners, therefore, must tread carefully. On one hand, in order to gain the greatest value from the relationship, they must understand the types of value they can provide that will make them most valuable to IBM at different stages of the market and of specific customer engagements. On the other hand, they must simultaneously ensure that their brand, their value adds and their customer relationships are not subsumed by or eventually subjugated to those of IBM.

The bad news is that uncertainly and jockeying for position is inherent in all new markets. Maneuvering is always difficult and sometimes imposes great stress in the relationship. The good news is that as markets grow (and those for Smarter Planet solutions inevitably will) relative roles always seem to sort out, go-to-market relationships are solidified and coordination processes are formalized. Partners will increasingly recognize and agree on when and how they can work together, and when they will not. These relationships have become so common in the IT industry that a word has been coined to describe them. The word is “coopetition.”

Posted in Business Trends, Corporate Social Responsibility, IBM, IT Industry Trends, Smart Infrastructure, Societal Forces, Technology's Impact on Job Skills | No Responses »
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How IBM is Helping Entrepreneurs Build a Smarter Planet

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

IBM, like all other large IT vendors, has many types of programs to help small software companies build solutions atop the vendor’s infrastructure. These programs range from:

  • Huge “breadth programs”, such as Software Group’s PartnerWorld ISV & Developer Relations program, which provides technical and marketing support to thousands of ISVs of all shapes and sizes; to
  • Highly-focused “depth programs”, such as that of its Venture Capital Group, which builds strategic partnerships to help VCs identify and nurture portfolio companies that can deliver particular value to the IBM ecosystem.

The company’s new Global Entrepreneur Initiative is intended to combine benefits of both. The initiative, which was announced in Bangalore at IBM’s annual Venture Partnering Symposium, is intended to “help entrepreneurs gain the skills they need to bring new ideas to market faster using IBM technology to accelerate industry transformation and fuel innovation.”

This effort casts a wide net to identify particularly promising start-ups that, while not having hit VC’s radar screens, have the potential of significantly advancing IBM’s Smarter Planet initiatives in specific segments. Once it identifies these companies, it will provide them with a broad range of the type of deep support capabilities intended to accelerate their development and deepen their relationships with IBM. But while this initiative is different from those of the above mentioned efforts, it is linked directly to both. It, for example, was launched by IBM’s Venture Capital Group and is intended to bring promising start-ups to the attention of the company’s VC partners. Much of the support, meanwhile, will be provided by IBM’s ISV & Developer Relations Group.

Looking for a Few Good Smarter Planet Entrepreneurs

The criteria for participation in the initiative are broad. Candidates must:

  • Be privately-held;
  • Have been in business less than three years;
  • Be actively developing software aligned to IBM’s Smarter Planet focus areas; and
  • Develop their solution on the IBM software platform.

Qualification for admittance, however, is rigorous and selective. The solution, for example, must not simply be “aligned” with, but must offer “transformative opportunities” around Smarter Planet. The company must be judged to have a “competitive opportunity to survive in the market” and its solution must have the potential to “provide real value to customers”.

This, however, is only the first cut. Those start-ups who qualify are invited to participate in one of what IBM expects to be a minimum of seven SmartCamps that will be held in different countries over the next six months. These camps are networking and mentoring events that bring start-ups together with appropriate IBMers, VC and university partners and differing combinations of 19 global industry and technology associations in the host country. These associations include TiE Silicon Valley and the Mass Tech Leadership Council in the U.S.; the National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs and SE Business Innovation & Growth and Enterprise UK in the United Kingdom; The Israeli Venture Association and SvoiBiz in Israel; TiE, and the Indian Angel Network in India and Journees de L’entrepreneur and ADEN in France.

While IBM and partner representatives will help all participating start-ups assess and tune their messages and business plans, they will also serve as judges for the next stage of the qualification process—a competition in which each of roughly 20 to 30 qualifying start-ups presents its Smarter Planet value proposition and business plan. While each SmartCamp will produce a single winner, all finalists will be admitted to the program.

Although thousands of start-ups will apply for the program, IBM expects that no more than 10-20% will be admitted. The total is likely to consist of “a couple of hundred companies, not a couple of thousand”.

Membership Has its Privileges

Those who qualify enter a three-month mentorship program in which IBM will help them build their business plans, optimize their architectures and develop joint value propositions. Each start-up will have access to a custom-designed package that combines:

  • Free access to IBM’s software portfolio and relevant industry frameworks (such as for Smarter Water, Smarter Buildings and Smarter Health Care) through a cloud computing environment;
  • Technical architecture support through access to IBM software engineers and scientists, product development assistance from dedicated IBM project managers and access to the 8 million developers in IBM’s developerWorks program;
  • Business plan mentoring, industry insight, marketing support and go-to-market assistance, both directly from IBM and its full network of partners, including academics, industry experts and government leaders;
  • Improved visibility among, access to and potential for funding from IBM’s VC partners; and
  • Credibility among and IBM’s help in accessing IBM customers.

Much of this assistance will be coordinated by IBM’s ISV & Developer Relations Group, and delivered though its global Innovation Center network. The company’s new Global Entrepreneur partners, however, will have access to more personalized, programmatic and deeper access to more services than are available through other IBM’s other developer programs.

It is too soon to assess the number of partners IBM’s new Global Entrepreneur program will ultimately produce, and how many of these companies will yield the type of transformative Smart Planet business that IBM seeks. The program, however, is generating interest, with more than 200 applicants in the first 30 days since the program was announced.

Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, IBM, Innovation/Entrepeneur, IT Company Strategies, IT Industry and Companies, IT Industry Trends, Job and Career Opportunities | No Responses »
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IBM’s Plan to Transform University IT Education And Spur Student Enthusiasm in the Process—Summary

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

This week’s blog is an overview of the findings of my new report, “IBM’s Plan to Transform University IT Education: And Spur Student Enthusiasm in the Process” in which I examine how IBM’s university alliances have evolved to emphasize education in areas that transcend IT skills, and the long-term benefits that IBM is likely to derive from this approach.

IBM started its Academic Initiative in the 1950s when it helped universities create Information Science programs. It extended this program around specific IT and engineering skills and then, in 2003 added a Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) initiative.

This SSME initiative went way beyond the university efforts of IBM—as well as most other vendors—that traditionally focused on “hard” science and technology skills, such as around programming, database design, electrical engineering and physics. SSME, in contrast, emphasizes the needs for universities to encourage multi-disciplinary education and the need to develop T-shaped skills, which combine deep skills in one or more fields, plus a high-level understanding across many others. IBM worked with universities to help professors expand the focus of their own courses and departmental curricula and, most importantly, to coordinate curricula across multiple schools within a university.

It, for example, encouraged and helped schools refocus engineering education around real-world problems and train engineers to work in multi-disciplinary teams. It also challenged business schools to evolve their traditional focus on management of manufacturing companies (which now accounts for less than 20% of developed-country economies) to developing a similarly rigorous management science around services (which already account for about 60%). Some 40 universities have are going further, creating truly integrated curricula that cross traditionally sacrosanct boundaries—integrating courses across schools including management, information science, engineering and social science. A few have even begun offering new cross-school degree programs around SSME-related themes.

Smarter Planet—Using SSME to Change the World

IBM’s huge, corporate-wide Smarter Planet initiative is, in many ways, the application of SSME to critical, real-world problems. SSME, after all, is an effort to create a science around decomposing and recomposing service-based processes, optimizing service supply chains and value chains and creating interdisciplinary research centers to design and optimize complex “service systems”—combinations of people, organizational networks and technologies that are aligned around a specific objective, such as designing and managing more livable cities, more effective healthcare systems and more efficient energy networks.

This effectively transforms SSME from an academic discipline into an instrument for addressing societal needs. It provides universities with the tools required to create education tracks and, eventually, degree programs around social goals—thereby attracting and making it easier for students who want to “change the world”. Moreover, IBM’s efforts to help shape educational curricula across Smarter Planet initiatives now transcends traditional information science, engineering and business schools to reach into areas including mathematics, architecture, healthcare management, public service, urban studies, and others.

Although such programs may not attract those students who are driven to become hedge fund managers or musicians, they do have the potential of attracting and providing “employment-ready” educations for millions of other students with similarly strong drives in other fields.

Engineering a Path to an IBM Job

Virtually all corporate university education programs share a common goal—to facilitate the education of students with the skills and perspective required to address the talent needs of the sponsor corporation, its customers and its partners. It’s easy to see the direct benefit that IBM can gain from programs that teach System z mainframe skills, that Intel can gain from multi-core architecture design programs or that Wal-Mart can derive from the University of Arkansas’ supply-chain optimization program.

But what benefits will IBM gain from encouraging universities to launch broad, non-vendor specific programs like SSME, healthcare management and transportation system design? The company’s logo isn’t on or necessarily associated with these programs, nor is IBM the first place most newly-minted graduates would look for a job to solve world hunger—unless, perhaps, you know about IBM’s Smarter Food program and its projects to increase agricultural yields, improve sustainability, reduce waste through the optimization of supply chains and improve food inspection processes.

That’s where some of IBM’s multiple university outreach programs fit in. The company has 4,000 University Ambassadors, typically IBM domain experts, who volunteer to work with universities to engage with faculty members, develop classes around real-world problems, deliver guest lectures, participate in seminars and otherwise engage with professors and students. The company also provides education tools, such as its INNOV8 Business Process Modeling (BPM) simulation game and is adapting many of its other courses to new learning methods, as through support of community portals and wikis, discussion forums, blogs, and Facebook and Twitter communities.

It also has an active university research program through which it funds professors and graduate students to conduct specialized research and all types of fellowship and internship programs in which it works with professors to identify high-potential students. It also partners with universities on IBM’s annual Battle of the Brains competition, the most recent of which attracted more than 28,000 students from 2,000 universities worldwide. These competitions engage interdisciplinary teams to tackle real world problems. The theme of these competitions? Would you guess they are typically aligned around one of IBM’s 21 (and growing) Smarter Planet themes?

IBM will certainly not attract or hire all of the graduates from SSME and Smarter Planet-theme programs. Nor does it want to. Although it hopes, and is positioning itself to identify and recruit some of the most talented graduates, its ultimate objective is to seed the world—its businesses, governments, NGOs and universities—with people who think about the world’s needs (and solutions) in much the same way that IBM does, who have been touched by IBM Ambassadors and programs, who understand IBM products, and who recognize that IBM is dedicated to addressing the same types of needs as are they.

This all leaves me with two questions. When will other corporations recognize the long-term payoffs of this broader approach to partnering with universities? And, how will they reach professors and students in the myriad fields that will be increasingly reshaped and redefined by IT?

Posted in 21st Century Careers, Business Trends, Corporate Social Responsibility, Creating the 21st Century Workforce, Education System and Institutions, Globalization, Immigration and Offshoring, IBM, IT Company Strategies, IT Industry and Companies, IT Industry Role in Education, Job and Career Opportunities, Skills Requirements, STEM Careers, Technology's Impact on Job Skills, Universities and Grad Schools, Workforce Trends | No Responses »
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IBM’s Role in Creating Tomorrow’s Workforce

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

My October 5, 2009 blog, Technology Vendors‘ Roles in Addressing the College Conundrum,  assessed some of the primary changes that colleges and universities must undergo to help prepare their students to find and to succeed in the knowledge jobs of the 21st century. It explained the critical roles the private sector can play in helping colleges make these changes and why IT vendors are particularly well suited to help.

My July 27, 2009 blog, How IBM is Helping Universities Develop 21st Century Workforces, provided a high-level overview of IBM’s Academic Initiative and Global University program. I recently completed a deeper examination of IBM’s initiative and wrote a more detailed report (IBM’s Effort to Create the Workforce of the Future) that explained these programs within the context of IBM’s employee development program. In this report, I spelled out the benefits the programs will deliver to universities, students, IBM partners and customers—and to IBM itself. The entire report is available for purchase on my web site. To whet your appetite, here’s a summary of the report’s primary findings.

IBM has been one of the leaders in partnering with universities and other organizations to ensure the availability of the type of IT professionals required to build, run and optimize the types of IT infrastructures and solutions that have become the foundations of 20th century organizations. While it is continuing with these efforts, it is now focusing its primary efforts on partnering with universities and adapting its own employee development models to ensure the availability of a new type of professional—what it calls a “T-shaped person”.

These T-shape people, whether IT professionals, business professionals or public service professionals, must be interdisciplinary generalists, rather than narrowly-focused specialists. Although they must certainly have deep skills in specialty (the vertical axis of the T), they must also have sufficient understanding of a broad range of related disciplines (the horizontal axis) to allow them to see contextual linkages, to constructively participate in interdisciplinary teams and to continually adapt their visions and their contributions to rapidly changing conditions and needs. But whatever the individual’s specialty (whether IT, business, scientific or any other field) all must understand how to apply IT tools to the needs of their profession.

Therefore, IBM is adapting how it works with universities to leverage its traditional relationships with IS, engineering and business departments, into all types of disciplines, from psychology, through public affairs through medicine. These new relationships are multi-faceted, including everything from help in designing courses and curricula; providing required hardware and software; funding research, scholarships and internships; and helping to create interdisciplinary research centers that bring together academics, businesses and government officials to address gnarly problems in areas including transportation, energy, food safety and environment.

IBM’s initial goal in creating T-shaped professionals and research centers is to feed the company’s own need for qualified people. It selects future employees from among this expanded pool of graduates and is adapting the company’s internal employee development programs to transform these interdisciplinary graduates into solution-focused professionals who can proceed through any of five broad career paths.

But if these efforts go as anticipated, they will accomplish much more. They will help promote independent research that is aligned around IBM’s primary market objectives, provide solution-focused employees for IBM customers and partners and ideally inspire a new generation of students to understand how they can use IT (ideally IBM’s IT) to bring new value to their own fields. Ideally, many of these fields will align with the rapidly expanding sets of market needs being addressed under IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative. It can, in other words, be a win-win proposition, helping everybody, with the exception of IBM’s competitors.

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