Think Tank 2.0

Cécile Demailly

It’s hard to remember the exact genesis of our Think Tank Groups. As often, with good ideas, it surfaced from a beam of little hints…

From Think Tank to Think Tank Groups

I remember several discussions with Margaret (1) around our potential to foster more international networking and the great plans for the evolution of our members’ platform. There was also a constant desire from our members to be involved in “promoting women’s professional progress” (2). Also, our successful Think Tank was regularly quoted in the Press and we wanted to find a way to allow members to participate. Last but not least, our member’s platform, already an innovative and powerful set of networking tools, was ready to launch a new collaborative section.

At the same time – second half of 2006 – I was reading about the nascent Enterprise 2.0 (the use of freeform social software within companies) concept to find out its potential impacts on market sensing and strategic development (technology exchange or customer advisory boards) … that’s how the Think Tank Groups kink popped up! The idea was to gather communities to foster innovation: a group of inexperienced people, volunteering to collaborate, can bring more groundbreaking and rich insight than isolated experts. The challenge was to freshen up the venerable Think Tank institution with social networking and web 2.0 technologies.

Diverse discussion with the European board and the board of presidents helped to frame the project, and prioritize subjects we would focus on: dual career/mobility, regional specifics, mid-career breaks (off/on ramps) and succeeding in new jobs. Sustainable and pervasive subjects! The Think Tank Groups project was launched in January 2007 as the 5th major EuropeanPWN initiative with Women on Boards, Mentoring, Publications and MBAs relationship. How to research and what to produce was left open to future teams: best practice sharing, innovative tools or white papers – everything was possible.

Lessons learned
Given that we started with a group of women who have no knowledge of the web 2.0 concept, we are experiencing something along the lines of a full migration from traditional project work to collaborative work. We learned a few lessons that can be useful for any collaborative project:

• Anonymity doesn’t work: the groups work better when members are given the opportunity to introduce themselves and explain why they’d like to work on the subject – also, face to face meetings are refreshing ‘add-ons’ to the virtual work, when possible (we are distributed in 10 cities across Europe ….)

• Carefully choose the subjects, share common understanding: initial discussions are essential.

• Find good leaders: our co-leaders (up to four per group) are key players, acting as “the glue” and animating the groups. They also play a major role in proposing tasks and coordinating work – often members join the group to help but aren’t sure about how to get involved.

• Welcome advisors who have some research experience and can coach the teams on methodology.

• Usability of the tools is compulsory: we’re still struggling with getting bulk emails and forums to come together, how to facilitate animation and avoid double work.

• We can do better than the 1% rule (3): we have learned that when working with volunteers who have limited time available, not everybody jumps in easily, depending on the period of time, up to 10% -20% of the groups’ members are regularly involved.

Collaborative work: an opportunity for women?
It seems that women have the potential to make the most of this new wave. As seen on social networks, where women lead the game (4), they seem at ease with community tools, maybe because of their propensity to use holistic frameworks. Is their pragmatic approach key to efficient use of web 2.0? Could be another topic for our research ….

Cécile Demailly
VP Think Tank Communities
EuropeanPWN
January 208

Special thanks to the women who are growing this initiative: all the Think Tank Groups members (around a hundred now) and especially our co-leaders
Catherine Strasser
Miriam Ponce
Ursula Teubert
Ariane Latreille
Myriam Ballarati
Shellie Hollubeck
Lorraine Tillbury
Benoite Lavaud
Sandrine Joseph
Trista Bridges
Ana Neira
Dina Zavrski-Makaric
Ann Bouisset
Isabelle Jammot
Emmanuelle Muller

A very special thank for instrumental help to EuropeanPWN’s Community Manager
Pernille Giraud-Sauveur , who helps us to make the most of the platform.

(1) Margaret Milan, past EuropeanPWN President
(2) EuropeanPWN-Paris March 2006 members survey results: 61% of members joined to “promote women’s professional progress”; 51% would like to get more involved.
(3) Guardian techology research: what is the 1% rule
(4) Rapleaf blog post on 7 January‘08