To give a little background, B.Braun is one of the world’s largest Healthcare suppliers, providing critical products to many medical fields. Their motto, “Sharing Expertise”, is more than just a slogan, this is the promise to customers, partners, and colleagues to share medical knowledge and expertise. With more than 40,000 employees and thousands of doctors and facilities using their products every day, this concept is a major achievement.
So here we were at Content World with hundreds of customers working on their own ECM strategy, looking for like minded people to explore new and innovative ways to expand on this exciting knowledge management vision. It occurred to me that what B.Braun needed was to build their own community of people who shared a similar vision and experience.
It is inspiring to discuss your vision and strategy with others, and in B.Braun’s case, they are pioneers in sharing knowledge. As we learned at Content World, they are not alone. We found the like-minded people to engage with moving forward to share ideas and learn from. The reality is that we are all inspired by meeting individuals who share a common idea. It brings great comfort that you are not alone in your vision and more importantly, it inspires you to go even further.
Back in my early conference planning days we used to have “birds of a feather” round tables at the end of each day. You post a topic you want to discuss and like-minded people “flock” to your table. Today, we could do this inherently via social media. As we continue to find comfort in sharing socially, an in-person meeting can help trigger the first dialogues.
I commend B.Braun for taking the initiative and I am sure that the contacts they made will share in an ongoing dialogue. I look forward to continuing the dialogue as this new network of “like-minded” people helps to inspire each other with ideas.
