A Shout Out for Linkedin

Ok, so I haven't posted in a good long while - In fact I never finished my last post, but I will get back to finishing the post...promise

Anyway, this post is all about Linkedin (I usually eschew promoting companies however...). Here is a company that I think is starting to get it right.

Social media is really in its infancy - everyone is trying to figure out: How do I make money?; How do I keep it going and sustain meaningful dialogue, collaboration etc.? To be completely honest I'm not wild about most of the SM environments out there or how people are using them. Very little of the conversations I've observed or have been actively involved in, has resulted in anything truly meaningful largely because of the lack of a shared goal or outcome to take the conversation beyond "What I know" to What we "need to understand" in order to accomplish something.

To put this post in context, I've been involved in SM before there was SM - This is not to say I'm an expert- SM has emerged so quickly and is changing so rapidly that anyone claiming to be an expert .... but I have been involved with on line collaborative forums, knowledge building environments etc., since the late 90's (the dial-up era). In these pre-lotus notes days, dialogue / discourse seemed more focused and meaningful - why? simply because conversation was driven by a problem or challenge to be solved - namely, how can we bring expertise together in such a way that the sum is greater than its parts.

Last week @Fast Company published a short article titled

LinkedIn Launches An Incubator To Turn Employees Into Entrepreneurs

According to the article,

 "The program that allows any company employee with an idea to organize a team and pitch their project to executive staff once a quarter. Those whose ideas are greenlit by cofounder Reid Hoffman and CEO Jeff Weinr, among others, then get up to three months to spend developing that project"

This is both a great KM strategy for determining the level of talent and expertise which resides within Linkedin as well as being an effective means to capture good ideas, build engagement and foster collaboration targeted at achieving a collective and meaningful outcome - Well Done Linkedin!