Social Enterprise, Twitting Cars, Siri and Furbi

Few months ago, I had a chance already to write about so-called “social enterprise”. The term was unveiled and supported by Marc Benioff during the last Salesforce.com conference. Two months ago I discussed topic “Files vs. People”. I think, CAD/PLM vendors can learn from salesforce.com about how to support social practices. Earlier today, I came across few additional videos I wanted to share with you. In the interview, Marc Benioff is giving to Forbes, he shares thoughts about a future impact of social technologies:

Think about a product with social behaviors. Marc is talking about following “jacket”, “shoes”, etc. Marc is talking about how to socialize employees and customers. However, I can see the change he is talking about how to socialize “product”. This is a place where I find an interesting connection to product development and lifecycle management. So, the next video I wanted to share is actually a presentation of the first “twitting car” – Toyota Friend.

The video is a bit longer than I usually share, but watch it – Mr. Tomoyama shares some interesting scenarios where social networks involved- charging, reservation, inspection, etc. In parallel, you can see how Toyota investing in their cloud technologies with two strategic partners – Microsoft and SFDC.

CAD/PLM companies and social technologies

I found the idea of “socialized products” a bit different from the strategies CAD/PLM vendors were taking in the past few years. PTC social product development was mostly about how to increase collaboration. DS 3DSwYm is a community, which is probably closer to the ideas of “twitting products”, but still is not realizing these capabilities. Few days ago, during DSCC2011 conference in Las Vegas, I had a chance to talk to members of 3DSwYm team. I found 3DSwYm concept focusing on forming communities around product, which in my view can provide a subset of similar functionality to Toyota Friend.

What is my conclusion? The idea of socialized product is power and interesting. In my view, scenarios that Mr. Tomoyama presented are just a glimpse of what we can see in coming years from “consumerization of enterprise”. However, don’t be afraid. Humans are still important. The following video (I hope you’ll like it) will be a confirmation for that :).

Best, Oleg