THE SOCIAL ENTERPRISE

Prof. Chris Dellarocas

www.dellarocas.com
dell@bu.edu

Boston University School of Management

 Social enterprise:
Social media
Distributed co-creation
Collective intelligence
In the beginning - all business was social
Then business starting scaling
Then business started scaling
 But social could not scale
so it disappeared from business
 Corporations started to develop
some really bad habits

Targeting
people

Segmenting
people

“Campaigning”
It‘s like companies are at war
with customers
Then came the Internet and Social media
 And because humans are hardwired to be social

Social re-entered business and commerce with a vengeance

What does this mean for business?

 Traditionally “non-business” human behaviors

become relevant to business
 New ways of relating to consumers
 Consumers becoming part of your value chain
People need a sense of purpose
and have an innate desire to be
helpful to others
Some people love status more than money
People value fairness and are
willing to spend a lot of effort to
punish unfair treatment
United breaks guitars
So, to survive and thrive in the world of social media,
you need to…

Accept that consumers* are now

(re)empowered to act as social beings
* and your employees

So, you need to…

Enhance your digital strategies with

social strategies
 Digital vs. Social Strategies

Digital Strategy
 Helps broadcast commercial messages and seek
customer feedback in order to facilitate marketing and
sell goods and services

Social Strategy
 Helps people improve existing relationships or build new
ones if they do free work on the company’s behalf

 For example…
Digital Strategy: Facebook page
Fiskars
Threadless
Yelp
Online reviews in exchange for social
connections
Cisco
Cisco Learning Network
How to design a social strategy?

Find your tribes

Both inside and outside the org
And get them to help one another
Across functional areas
 Find your tribes
Both inside and outside the org
And get them to help one another
Across functional areas
How to find your tribes

Identify passions, lifestyles or needs that

people form groups (tribes) around and
where your products can play a useful role
The product
The tribe
The store
The tribe
The company
The tribe
Tribes vs. traditional market segments

 Traditional segments are based on people’s

individual characteristics (e.g. age, gender,
income)

 Tribes are based on social behavioral

characteristics (who you like to hang out
with and what you like to do/talk about with
them)
 Find your tribes
Both inside and outside the org
And get them to help one another
Across functional areas
 Find your tribes
Both inside and outside the org
And get them to help one another
Across functional areas
 Provide
proper
incentives

And get them to help one another

Identify
genuine
needs to
connect
Incentive design framework [Dellarocas 2012]
Design Design Design
intrinsic status material
incentives incentives incentives

“Love” “Glory” “Money”

Feeling of purpose
Competitions
Reciprocity
Points and ratings
Monetary rewards
Fairness
Membership levels
Virtual currencies
Relationships
Honor badges
Perks and privileges
Sheer Fun
Leaderboards and
rankings

Manage interactions among incentive features

The SAP Developer Network
Stats:
1.4 M users
400K+ business experts

Original Incentive System:

Point system leading to
personal rewards
Results:
Bullying behavior in the
community

New Incentive System:

Point system leading to
donation to good cause
Results:
No more bullying in the
community

Source: Francois Gossieaux

 Find your tribes
Both inside and outside the org
And get them to help one another
Across functional areas
 Is this marketing?

Is this customer support?

Is this knowledge management?

Is this recruiting?
To summarize…

Find your tribes

Both inside and outside the org
And get them to help one another
Across functional areas
 Designing social strategies
requires a leap of faith for most
organizations
Segment Community

Customer Partner

Channel Network

Hierarchy Crowd
My suggested social pilot project approach

 Step 1: Think tribes (not segments) - their passions and needs

beyond just your products

 Step 2: Think how you can help them (not sell to them, not get them
to do something you think is worthwhile, even if it’s charity)

 Step 3: Figure out how you can best offer this help through online
communities, twitter, facebook, youtube etc.

 Step 4: Assign joint responsibility for this project across departments

(marketing and customer support is a good start)
Inspiration – Further Reading