SAP is announcing a new relationship with Innocentive today focused on helping SAP get creative about how they can create new products.
SAP is sponsoring a part of the Innocentive site where both SAP and other SAP users such as customers, can post problems. SAP considers this to be an open marketplace for their customers can go to get solutions. The organization posting the problem also posts a bounty of how much they are willing to pay for the solution.
Innocentive has worked with other large organizations like Proctor and Gamble, but they have not worked directly in software before, and this will present an entirely new set of Intellectual Property issues.
The first bounty SAP has posted? Help them figure out how to use Social Networking in the Enterprise.
The future of social networking inside SAP may have been foretold best by Mark Yolton, Senior VP of the SAP community network, when he said “We will only be posting problems which are not core to our business”.
Larry beat me to the punch with a post on Between The Lines.
Social networking in enterprise? A big question from a big company. I wish I had a really good answer because I sure would like to pocket that bounty.