NEOpreneur's software helps Big Blue

It's 3:30 a.m.--a busy hour for capitalists in Cleveland. Come on...I know I'm not the only one of us up today at this ungodly hour thinking about what has to get done today and the next weeks and months. It's just part of the game when you're out there capitalisting--trying to create jobs and boost the economy.

Well, here's a good story to kick this off. Recently discovered that Valdis Krebs, a local NEOentrepreneur who's been out there in the trenches for a few years already, was instrumental in helping IBM become a better company.
"It was back in 1990. We were looking at the AS400 division," says Gerry Falkowski, former IBM organizational development leader, now a private consultant who coaches top execs. "Wanted to know how to get the global team to work better and smarter. First we did an ONA (organization network analysis); then we used InFlow (Valdis's Macintosh-based social network diagramming software package) to build network diagrams from my org analysis. We were able to come up with powerful recommendations to improve teaming and cross functional working. It was very successful, though a bit crude at the time. I asked Valdis, 'Could you write that to run on Windows?' IBM paid him well to do so. I brought that tool into IBM, and we developed consulting methods around it. I had 150 people train on how to use the tool and how to consult."

Today, after much manipulation and finagling and getting Tom Peters to write about it, Gerry says, "I can now look at these [InFLow maps] and almost immediately see what’s going on by measuring the frequency of interaction. 'You are not working well together!'" Those of us who've seen Valdis show his mapping examples here in NEO have caught on pretty quickly, too. Want to see who's keeping who out of the loop? InFlow reveals all.

Read more about what's happened to IBM since InFlow. And give one Cleveland entrepreneur a big pat on the back for helping make it happen. Let us know what company you're helping transform next, Valdis.