Browse > Home / Business, IT / Nissan’s N-Square: The beginnings of social networking at corporate Japan?

Nissan’s N-Square: The beginnings of social networking at corporate Japan?

November 1, 2007
By Ken Worsley


According to Business Week, Nissan is busy setting up a social networking system called N-Square to allow its employees to communicate better with one another while reducing the amount of time spent in non-productive meetings:

But lowering costs is not just about trimming waste at factories. For Nissan, developing better, high-tech cars in less time and with fewer resources is just as vital—and harder to do. That requires employees to work with others who might not be sitting in the next cubicle…A social networking site, says Simon Sproule, the Nissan executive in charge of N-Square, gives employees a way to circumvent the formal bureaucratic channels and create unexpected partnerships.

No doubt, this will make an interesting experiment. Will sempai and kohai be able to communicate differently on a social network? One thing’s for sure: should the idea work, there’s going to be a big market for those who specialize in building and consulting on social network intranet projects.

Filed Under Business, IT 

Social Bookmarks:
del.icio.us:Nissan's N-Square: The beginnings of social networking at corporate Japan? digg:Nissan's N-Square: The beginnings of social networking at corporate Japan? newsvine:Nissan's N-Square: The beginnings of social networking at corporate Japan? furl:Nissan's N-Square: The beginnings of social networking at corporate Japan? reddit:Nissan's N-Square: The beginnings of social networking at corporate Japan?
Related Posts:
Corporate social responsibility?
Corporate Social Resonsibility Comes Back
Goodwill Group showing anything but
Blogosphere: Mixi’s new Terms of Use to allow it to sell crowdsourced content?
Internet Advertising in Japan: The Dentsu Take on Things

Comments

6 Responses to “Nissan’s N-Square: The beginnings of social networking at corporate Japan?”

  1. DCNative on November 1st, 2007 4:29 am

    It seems to me that Nissan has been taking an innovative approach to their entire business strategy lately. They’ve redone everything, from redesigning their cars, concentrating on their marketing image, and even their management practices. I was just reading somewhere else how successful they’ve been in the last 6 months with sales up practically everywhere. I’ve found it pretty impressive. Their cars are actually looking pretty good too! I actually think this commercial I’ve seen on TV was pretty clever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5PgHAHAoRw . I think they’re going to have a pretty good ‘08.

  2. Ken Y-N on November 1st, 2007 8:55 am

    Of course, won’t the problem be people wasting their time in the SNS instead?

  3. anonymous on November 1st, 2007 9:55 am

    Ask any Sony (Japan) employee about their internal SNS (Sony Unified SNS, I think?)

    Be sure to ask them if, as Sony is a global company, the SNS is localized in all the languages that Sony employees do business in. Oh it isn’t? It’s only in Japanese?

    Very global of Sony.

  4. Ken Worsley on November 1st, 2007 1:03 pm

    Anonymous, Don’t Sony’s employees in Japan speak and read Japanese? I don’t see how any other language would make sense for their Japan-based employees, nor why they would need to communicate with employees on a global level, aside from a select few positions.

  5. Durf on November 2nd, 2007 3:11 pm

    Nissan does need something like this . . . The “meeting culture” there is quite stifling, from what I’ve seen of it.

  6. Ken Worsley on November 2nd, 2007 3:41 pm

    Of course, won’t the problem be people wasting their time in the SNS instead?

    I wonder if it has solitaire.

    Durf, I haven’t seen Nissan’s “meeting culture,” but I have seen several others, and they’ve all been been pretty stifling. Boring, useless, unproductive…the list goes on. Is the best way to reform this to have people not meet and communicate face to face? I do think something like this will open new channels of communication, which is great. But, it hopefully isn’t seen as a replacement for face-time or face-mail.

Got something to say?