A growing number of organizations have started to use informal social structures and decision making as a means to increase innovation and productivity. These so-called

social organizations

, typically use tools and practices originating from social media to facilitate communication with employees, customers, and partners (a k a networked organizations). The new social technology makes it possible to share and use information in new forms of collaborations within and outside the enterprise.

Competitive Intelligence and Business Analytics (CIBA) services have much to gain by taking advantage of the possibilities of social technology and will have to face new demands relating to user expectations as well as technological developments. In particular, it is essential that new CIBA solutions are easy-to-use for both causal users and experts, and that they can take advantage of the vast amount of available heterogeneous data that is created by new practices.

The research project

Competitive Intelligence and Business Analytics: using Social Computing for the Knowledge-intensive enterprise (CIBAS)

is a collaboration between academic researchers of the Department of Media Technology at Södertörn University, and the companies M-Brain, Comintelli and Glykol. The CIBAS project investigates new tools and services for future people-centered CIBA that support the needs of social enterprises today using web technology for social computing. The project will rely on a user- and customer-centered methodology and investigate issues concerning interaction design and information architecture, in order to meet the technical requirements of social computing.