Overview

News International Commercial and Cisco (the world's leading manufacturer of networking products), collaborated as the commercial partner for the new Business Wisdom project launching on Times Online.

This innovative project is set to engineer conversation and mass collaboration, via the internet, within the business community and is steeped in the theories outlined by Don Tapscott, an expert on the application of technology in business and author of 'Wikinomics'. He will also be working as a consultant on the technical aspects of the campaign.

Brief

In the current challenging business climate the task was to create an interactive and engaging application to tap into a global pool of knowledge, whilst allowing individual participants to showcase their skills to senior business leaders.

Approach

The project invites four CEOs to share a challenge that their companies might face over the next few years. Each CEO will host a brief video message on the bespoke Business Wisdom microsite, designed by ID Media. This will be broken down into its component parts (e.g. Marketing, HR, Technology, Research & Development) and presented to the Times Online audience.

Solution

Users will be able to browse suggestions posted by fellow participants and vote on them. The connections between each suggestion will be illustrated via a graphical visualization interface, and the highest scoring submissions in each category will then be brought together to form a holistic solution that is representative of the optimum long-term strategy.

This will then be presented back to the CEO, who will have the opportunity to endorse or challenge the collective wisdom generated by the site.