http://www.capgeminisupertechiesshow.com Capgemini Super Techies Show Season 2: The LinkedIn Challenge Presentation

1. The LinkedIn Challenge
Leverage technology to optimize LinkedIn’s marketing and
product strategy to accelerate its mission of making Indian
professionals more productive and successful

2. The Facts
• World’s largest professional network
• 238,000,000+ members globally
• 21M+ members in India
8M+
CANADA
57M+
EUROPE
42M+
APAC
84M+
USA
21M+
INDIA
13M+
BRAZIL
4M+
AUSTRALIA

3. Background on Challenge
In its line of business:
• LinkedIn has realized that professionals come in all shapes and sizes
• It also faces the complexity of an emerging market like India with different
market dynamics, varied cultural nuances across the country, and differential
access to technology and information

4. Background on Challenge
Examples of complexities unique to India include:
• Different market dynamics (e.g. 50% of population under 30, greater
individual competition, varied languages, long commutes leading to
expectations of being available on-the-go, etc.)
• Different modes of access (e.g. mobile vs. desktop)
• Different levels of knowledge (both technical and internet/social)
• Different patterns of tech adoption (e.g. basic phones vs. smartphones)

5. The Problem
There are many questions to tackle and various different ways to
solve them
There maybe several different ways to express one’s ‘professional
identity’ and many different ‘use-cases’ relevant to reach and
engage Indian professionals spread out across the country

6. The Challenge Statement
Leverage technology to optimize LinkedIn’s marketing and
product strategy to accelerate its mission of making Indian
professionals more productive and successful

7. The Challenge Statement - Details
The challenge is all about:
• Prioritizing among the various professional segments in India
• Leveraging new technology trends (e.g. Big Data and Analytics, SoLoMo,
cloud, web apps/HTML5, etc.) in those segments to explore levers that will
help LinkedIn:
o Accelerate awareness levels of its rich feature-set
o Drive easier ways to adopt them
o Enable new ways to express one’s professional identity to accelerate
LinkedIn’s impact on the lives of Indian professionals and, thereby,
achieve its mission (“Connect the world’s professionals to make them
more productive and successful”) even faster

8. The Challenge Statement - Details
Here are some sample questions you may want to ask yourselves
as you try and better understand the challenge and frame your response:
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Are there large portions/segments of Indian professionals that are not being addressed by or not
leveraging social media and professional networking today? If yes, why?
Where do people go for professional information today? What do they like about that channel and
how can LinkedIn replicate the benefits it offers online?
Are there access or knowledge barriers that prevent easy usage? How can these barriers be
overcome?
Does “what is relevant” (professionally speaking) change by city, industry, age group, etc?
Which other pieces of information will help develop a more holistic view of LinkedIn for
professionals?
Are parts of the current LinkedIn experience confusing or complicated? How can it simplify these
parts?
What methods of user education and engagement have been successful for other online
properties?

9. The Challenge Statement - Details
Measures of Success
By design, LinkedIn has intentionally left the challenge statement expansive so
you have a broad enough canvas to play with.
However, while that may mean the constructs of your answer can vary from
each other, evaluation of the solution will be objective and based on the
following framework:
IMPACT/BENEFIT (over ~2-3 yr horizon)
# of profs impacted * Avg PVs per prof
Speed to market
NOTE: While your answers may not have exact
quantification, the more important part is the logic
behind your thinking. Being able to use it to get to
rough ballparks would be even better
COST
• Cost efficiency of solution
• Technical feasibility

10. Important Points to Remember
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LinkedIn is a very members-first organization so your creativity should be bound by
ensuring a quality, clutter-free user experience
•
LinkedIn aspires to be, and is already on its way to become, the professional publishing
platform and daily professional dashboard for every professional
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Being a consumer internet company, LinkedIn believes in solving problems at scale (as
opposed to relying on too much manual intervention)
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LinkedIn seeks 10x leverage in everything it does (meaning that it likes to be able to reuse and tweak features, tools, etc.)
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LinkedIn is in the quality game, not quantity, so relevance is its secret sauce; further,
LinkedIn has developed core competencies in Big Data Analytics that you can assume
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LinkedIn has many different assets (e.g., Slideshare, Pulse) already accessible to it but
equally believes in striking partnerships with the right partners who can assist in its
mission