Title: Benchlearning – A learning-format for best practice and knowledge sharing

Authors: Benedikt Scheerer and Simon Dückert (Cogneon GmbH)

Abstract: In today’s business environment, industry and market entry barriers are vanishing (e.g.: in the automotive industry Google and Apple are about to enter the market). Moreover, due to the fierce global competition, companies are forced to come up with innovative (often also more complex) products. The digitalization even is about to rapidly transform also the business models of companies. Under those ever-changing market environments, the need for stronger cross-departmental, company-wide and even cross-company collaboration and also knowledge sharing becomes essential to cope with the mentioned challenges. Internal social media tools serve as the communication infrastructure for this needed knowledge sharing. Additionally, social media values transform the company culture.

In recent years, innovative companies have thus implemented those social media tools within the boundaries of the firm. Although names for these vary e.g. (Social Intranet, Corporate Social Network, Social Business, Enterprise 2.0) the challenges companies face when adopting these tools, especially after the technical implementation, are quite similar.

In 2011, we worked closely with a couple of customers in our region, e.g. adidas and Schaeffler. In our projects with them, we discovered that they were facing similar challenges regarding knowledge sharing efforts. Accordingly we discussed the idea of a cross-company learning format regarding knowledge sharing efforts. We chose Benchlearning as a format.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.