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A new study is examining the value of social networking technologies to business collaboration.

Social networking technologies are seen by companies as a major opportunity for improving collaboration, managing knowledge, connecting with clients, and generally helping individuals to feel part of a business.

Dr David Good

Social networking (SN) sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have taken communication in the 21st century by storm. As businesses increasingly embrace the technology to connect individuals and share information, a new study funded by Boeing is developing methods to measure its value to organisations.

‘SN technologies are seen by companies as a major opportunity for improving collaboration, managing knowledge, connecting with clients, and generally helping individuals to feel part of a business,’ says project leader Dr David Good in the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology. ‘But, there is little understanding of how SN technologies evolve, what impact they have in practice and therefore how one can best deploy them for business efficiency.’

In the past, SN structures were studied without much regard to the individuals that form them. However, Dr Good, PhD student Michal Kosinski, together with Dr Alan Blackwell from the Computer Laboratory and collaborators at Boeing believe that successful collaboration depends on the interaction of the SN structure and the individual characteristics of its members.

To investigate this problem requires the amassing of vast amounts of information on collaboration efficiency, SN structures and individual traits of network members, and then analysing the data using an interdisciplinary approach.

To understand individual traits, Michal Kosinski, working with David Stillwell from the University of Nottingham, has developed a Facebook application that allows its users to complete a psychometric test and receive feedback. More than four million people have now taken the my Personality test, providing a huge dataset that links SN data with such traits as personality, life satisfaction, interests, education and demographic profile.

Results of the Facebook study will assist the team in evaluating the use of an in- house SN tool available to Boeing’s 160,000 employees and its relation to collaboration efficiency and tactical decision making.

SN services are predicted to replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communication for 20% of business users by 2014. With such escalating use in mind, Boeing collaborator Dr Anthony Majoros comments on the widespread benefits of this new research: ‘For businesses to develop an effective culture around SN that places the technology at the centre of collaborative and communication activities, it’s important to develop the qualitative and quantitative measures that this project aims to do.’

For more information, please contact Dr David Good (dg25@cam.ac.uk) or Dr Alan Blackwell (afb21@cam.ac.uk).


Boeing

Boeing is the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial aeroplanes and defence, space and security systems. The company strives to work with the best technical talent in developing new aerospace-related technologies and has established multi-year collaborative research relationships with several UK universities, including Cambridge.
With the future of aerospace being driven by developments in technology, Boeing is continually looking globally for new ideas and innovations. To help achieve this, the US-based company has established strategic relationships with universities around the world.

In the UK, Boeing is collaborating through multi-year agreements to conduct research and technology programmes with the University of Sheffield, Cranfield University and the University of Cambridge. Not only are these programmes helping to expand Boeing’s technical reach and business concepts, but they also have long-lasting benefits in helping to stimulate British aerospace innovation.

Boeing’s framework agreement with Cambridge to conduct collaborative research began in 2003 and has recently been extended to 2014. Currently, nine projects are running, involving research teams in the Department of Engineering, the Computer Laboratory and the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology.

The principal focus has been to conduct research and development in areas such as automated reasoning, intelligent systems, natural language and information processing, information manipulation and information security, new materials for high-end engineering, and the interface between humans and computers.

Professor Cardwell, from the Department of Engineering and the lead principal investigator in the collaboration, explains why the relationship with Boeing has proved such an extraordinarily healthy example of industrial collaboration with academia: ‘Boeing facilitate – they make it easy for us to do the academic research that we think is relevant, while keeping in mind the best interests of the company. It’s a very productive, very supportive way of doing research. Their open-minded attitude makes it possible for new objectives to be set as new discoveries are made.’

Applications of the research are as varied as developing new materials for energy-storage systems, assessing the potential of social networking technologies to improve knowledge management and communication in businesses (see above), and improving the operation and security of airports.

For more information about Boeing, please visit www.boeing.com/


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