Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The social networks have evolved from their initial use as a personal communication tool to become a major global phenomenon, transforming them into a important communication channel that has been firmly adopted in the business world with tools like Zyncro.

If used properly, this new social relationship between companies and their employees and customers presents major benefits for organizations, such as helping to improve communication and customer service, or increasing productivity and encouraging self-directed learning among employees.

Yet I think one of the best returns from implementing a tool like Zyncro in an organization is being able to map the knowledge generated internally each day and encourage all members of the team to participate in the business directions.

The most innovative companies see participation
as a vital pillar in the way they are and act.

Nonetheless, the “how” question still remains ever-present: How can we create processes that respect our customers’ and/or employees ’ contributions and that recognize the diversity of roles among customers, partners, suppliers and employees? How can we balance their diverse know-how? If we add the context 2.0 to the equation, with technology providing us with an arsenal of collaborative tools, the scenario becomes even more complex. “Designing participation” is a fascinating challenge that is gaining in importance in numerous business sectors.

The social web has unveiled new opportunities and new challenges. As users, we’ve matured. We know that participation can offer us a wide spectrum of options: from simple feedback on an article or proposal to co-designing and co-producing new content and knowledge.

Bob Ketner, head of Tech Virtual highlights three different methods of participation:

• Casual participation: Contributors participate spordiacally by making comments and contributing ideas.
• Tutorized participation: Contributors with interests, experts in key topics or members of the community whose collaboration becomes more sophisticated and sustained over time.
• Network of experts: Opinions from a networks of experts on real projects and contents

Looking at tutorized participation, for example, it involves professionals with new competences like a design mindset or skills in managing the cognitive load i.e. the ability to discriminate and filter information by order of importance and to understand how to optimize the cognitive function using a variety of tools and techniques. We could dub them the “curators and designers” of creative production.

Dolors Reig in her post 9 new professions for the connected individual (in Spanish) puts forward two professional roles that she believes to be essential in a participative, co-creative business environment: the collective intelligence organizer, rather similar to the social communicologist but focused on getting knowledge products that are useful for the organization; and the participation expert who is responsible for showing the training and leadership possibilities in general and who encourages employees to exploit collective creativity and intelligence potential.