Social, open and personalised environments for communication and knowledge management between business and educational organizations

Abstract

This pilot research describes an investigation on web-based work environments for business and educational organisations involved on collaborative projects for social innovations. The objective of this work is to identify key functionalities of ubiquitous environments for strategic communication, collaborative learning and knowledge management between enterprise and educational professionals. This qualitative study focuses on the Brazilian project Nestlé Nutrir Crianças Saudáveis (Nestlé Nurturing Project - Healthy Children) whose objective is to prevent teenagers' malnutrition and obesity through the collaboration and voluntary work of educational association professionals and Nestlé's employees. Semi-structured interviews and online questionnaires were applied to public relation professionals at Nestlé Company and project managers of educational organisations who participated in Nestlé Nutrir. Based on key findings represented to visual analytics, it was possible to identify that business and educational organization use a variety of different environments including for similar functionalities, such as the dissemination of their collaborative project, process and key achievements. This pilot study suggests, then, some recommendations on work environments applied to ubiquitous contexts through weSPOT - working environment with social, open and personalised tools. Further studies will then focus weSPOT functionalities for effective partnerships between companies and educational institutions for effective communication-collaboration and collective inquiry projects for social innovation.