Wiggio: A Collaborative Innovation Network

This article will focus on a platform that gives small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) some great benefits. It is known as Wiggio: a collaborative innovation network. In simplistic terms you can consider it as an intranet, in reality Wiggio is much more than that. Now, as a consultant who has supported many SMEs, I have found that very few have the budget, resources or experience to set up a basic intranet. Those that do usually adopt Sharepoint: unfortunately I feel that Sharepoint has had its day and is very limiting in what it can offer.

By comparison Wiggio have positioned themselves as a provider that helps people work and communicate in groups, this is where their name comes from: W.I.G or work in groups. I personally think that it should be considered as a collaborative innovation network (COIN). The concept of COINs was first introduced by Peter Gloor and is defined as:

“A cyberteam of self motivated individuals with a collective vision, enabled by the web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information and work.”

In my opinion such networks do not have to be made up of external individuals. Every organisation, business, educational establishment or even club should have a COIN in place to support their workforce, students or members. Organisations will never succeed if they do not make knowledge accessible to everyone and they will never gain trust if they fail to operate in an honest and transparent manner. This is where Wiggio comes in because it allows entities to create these collaborative innovation networks and a whole lot more.

Unlike other document sharing sites, Wiggio has a range of tools that makes life so much easier and really efficient. They include:

Adding Files: You can quickly add files that you can share with your group. It will also notify the group when a new file has been added.
Sharing Web links: You can add links from the web, you could call it another form of social bookmarking but restricting it to your group.
Scheduling: If your group does not have access to Outlook, you can use the built in scheduling services to create an event or a “To Do” list. It will email or text the person or group before the start.
Mass Messaging: You can use Wiggio to send mass messages via emails, text (SMS), voice messages or even video messages.
Polling and Surveys: You can set up simple polls and surveys to test the understanding or feelings of the group about a particular subject.
Conference Calling: The facility will allow you to create a conference call for up to 50 people.
Webinars or Video Conferencing: It can create a virtual meeting (webinar / video conference) for up to 10 people.
Chat Room: You can use it to instigate a chat room for an unlimited number of participants.

These type of features often require users to pay, but on Wiggio they are all free! Some may ask how do they make their money, well in the future they will be looking to add premium features to the platform. Lets hope they don’t restrict the use of the features already highlighted above as they are very useful.

The one thing you should consider if you want to use Wiggio is site security. Wiggio say that they take privacy and data very seriously. They now have thousands of businesses and organisations hosting their files on Wiggio, these are stored in a private instance on Amazon’s Cloud servers. They also store duplicate copies of every file to ensure redundancy. Each group is not publicly searchable and is private to the members of group the group only.

I have never had an issue although I would recommend that it is not the right place to host very sensitive information. If you do need to store such information then you should look for a provider where a contract can be agreed based on a clear understanding of the required conditions. We must remember that Wiggio is a free site.

You should also be mindful that the data you store on this platform will be hosted in the USA, this means that individuals operating from the UK or Europe must be mindful of the Data Protection Act 1998 (or European equivalent) in that the holding of information about living people should remain in Europe.

For more information about Wiggio go to www.wiggio.com.

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Alan Shaw

Director & Senior Lecturer at Strategic Planet & Leeds Beckett University

Dr Alan Shaw is a Senior Lecturer and Marketing consultant focusing on a range of sectors. His main interests are in strategy development, social marketing, digital marketing, advertising, consumer behaviour and marketing application.