Enterprise 2.0 success: BASF
22.05.12
BASF is a well-known German company with over 100,000 employees worldwide. A few years ago, when I visited German companies and participated in Enterprise 2.0 events in the country, there was considerable skepticism that collaboration based on social media would ever achieve significant uptake in a conservative business culture that is highly traditional as well as very hierarchical. Fortunately, this turned out not to be the case. These days, it’s easy to come across successful examples of European (and German) Enterprise 2.0 initiatives, however BASF has become one of the most well-documented and compelling.
Founded in 1865, BASF is a juggernaut in the chemical industry with over €63 billion in annual revenue and has over 390 production sites across Europe, Asia, Australia, Americas and Africa. One of the hallmarks of modern multinationals is that they tend to have fragmented cultures due to the many time zones and geographic locations they operate in. This is precisely the issue that enterprise social networks can help address, by bringing far-flung workers closer together by creating a unified global culture and a better connected organization.
Source: ZDNet (blog)