Cloning a "better IBM than IBM" in cyberspace !

Mohammed Thiab

Social networking (SN) has created unprecedented possibilities for communication, cooperation and collaboration among people all over the world in cyberspace, even those who never had the chance to meet in person before.

A special flavor of this cyber-net collaboration comes in the form of  "groups" that bring SN activists around a common goal or theme.  Among these groups, we have several ones in LINKEDIN and XING that are dedicated to IBMers, x-IBMers, and Co-IBMers, and no surprise these groups have attracted tens of thousands of "IBM" people, many of them are no more active IBMers (resignations, early retirement, layoffs, ..), and many of them 'dreaming' to make a come back to IBM, or (why not) something better than IBM !

I started this initiative over 3 months ago in LINKEDIN  "IBMer" group.  The discussion has been a hot one and qualified to become a "featured" discussion.  Over 100 IBMers came forward (through this discussion and through private messaging) showing enthusiasm for the idea and willingness to proceed with it, and this encouraged me to proceed with the idea and post here in  "pass the ball" site.

To put it in simple terms,  everyone breaches that "people" are the most valuable asset in any business organization.  This is even more applicable in "consultancy and professional services" organizations like the one we intend to launch through this initiative.  

Along with the people, comes the knowledge, skills, experience and contacts/connections, and this is another important asset that we readily have available in these groups.

Cloning IBM into a smaller, more focused and better IBM than IBM is pretty much doable through a phased implementation approach that blends the 'virtual" organization (de-facto mode) and "physical" organization (selectively when/where applicable).  The core team of the initiative will formalize the business model and the initial business plan to successfully launch the initiative and turn it into reality.

Lastly, along with all these IBMers coming from all over the world, we will take the essence of the IBM corporate culture to melt all differences and unify these discrete backgrounds into one uniform healthy corporate culture that all stakeholders will value and appreciate, including the workers, partners, customers and future investors.

For further discussions, you can reach me by e-mail at (mohammed.thiab@gmail.com) and you can view my LI profile at www.linkedin.com/in/mohammedthiab