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Gold winner: IDEO (USA)

Written by James Robertson, published November 9, 2009

Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets, intranet innovation awards

Rich people profiles, including projects and availability. Screenshot courtesy of IDEO.

Rich people profiles, including projects and availability. Screenshot courtesy of IDEO.

Post 2 of 10 of a series of blog posts giving more insight into this year’s Intranet Innovation Award winners.

IDEO are world-renowed as design thinkers and innovators. Its 500 staff are experts in design, engineering, social sciences and business strategy. It should come as no surprise that their intranet is equally innovative.

In IDEO’s entry, they say:

‘Effective knowledge sharing is a social activity that’s enabled by technology’. This key insight, and its reverse (‘Technology alone will not increase knowledge sharing’) guided the design team throughout the implementation phase of the project.

The focus of “The Tube” (IDEO’s intranet) are people and projects, and connecting the two. This includes:

  • seamlessly integrating a range of social tools
  • creating rich staff profiles (shown above)
  • producing engaging and interactive project sites (over 1,000 at last count)
  • providing rich search tools that allow, for example, staff to be found who a) have specific skills b) are based in a certain office; and c) are free for a minimum of 20 hours in the required period
  • delivering intranet content to display screens in cafeterias globally

This entry shows the power of the intranet to support a professional services firm. It also demonstrates how the intranet can reinforce and build an innovative culture.

(For full details, obtain a copy of the Intranet Innovations 2009 report.)

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