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The Strategy Group consults on the process of Innovation, Collaboration and Globalization.
We deliver end-to-end value from thought leadership to implementation in these leading edge arenas. It’s all about the “how”.
I want to alert you to an recent excellent report on the “how” of Open Innovation. The report is a product of two years work within the Cambridge Open Innovation Network. This network is funded by Unilever and the Cambridge Integrated Knowledge Centre. The report aims to answer the question “I want to implement Open Innovation – where should I start and what should I do?”. It provides and overview of existing approaches to Open Innovation and outlines how a company can start to implement a strategy to match the organisation’s needs.
Unilever has been a long-standing proponent of Open Innovation. Not only does this report talk about the theory of Open Innovation, but it draws on Unilever’s experience, and contains the results of 36 interviews and workshops.
An excellent document. Download it now.
I have talked for some time in this blog about how collaboration powers innovation, and how most of us do not truly collaborate.
One of the key issues in collaboration internally within an organisation is having a culture of collaboration. The challenge with establishing such a culture is to align incentives as part of that culture – more often than not, this does not happen, and while evryone runs around talking about colaboration and innovation, their KPIs and remuneration is securely centred on the “ME”.
BusinessWeek has run a story on how 3M successful harnessed their culture of collaboration to their benefit. While the example in this article is not very compelling (it is of a worker using a corporate skills” directory to find an expert) the lessons learned are reasonable, and I quote them in full here.
Support networks. Build Web-based social networks that help employees with a problem find those with an answer. Support grassroots networking initiatives such as 3M’s TechForum—an employee-run group that organizes speaker events to stimulate thinking and also serves as a kind of mixer, where scientists from different labs or divisions can connect in person.
Build collaboration into your employee evaluation system. Reward employees not just for developing an innovative technology, idea, or process, but for spreading it. No company reaps the benefits of collaboration if their employees or managers are hoarding innovation in order to look good at the next quarterly meeting.
Encourage curiosity. 3M allows employees to spend 15% of their time on projects of their choosing, giving them permission to develop ideas or technologies that may be outside of their regular work focus. Such policies increase the odds of collaboration, as the path of curiosity often leads employees beyond their knowledge base, to a place where they need the advice and insight of others.
Create innovation funds. Group or department managers focused on core-related projects often don’t want to spend money exploring or developing innovative ideas. To overcome this common roadblock, companies should create an alternative source—3M calls these Genesis Grants—that employees can go to for funding of innovation projects that don’t fit neatly into existing departments.
Don’t underestimate the value of physical proximity. When 3M’s Post-it Note team wanted to accelerate product development, it had the team’s marketing, financial, and other nonmembers move into the same building with the tech folks. If different functions have to be housed in different buildings, pay for a shuttle service that makes it easy for employees in different departments to visit each other.
Today Frost & Sullivan reports that online collaboration is proving to be an effective way for businesses to save time and money on travel, while maintaining high level of productivity. The arising trend indicates that companies who discovered the advantages of online collaboration are unlikely to return to old ways of conducting business when the economic conditions improve. In addition, collaborating on the web improves the ‘green’ image of companies, as more firms are looking into ways to reduce the usage of limited resources, and are striving to become environmentally conscious.
The question in my mind is: is everyone “really” collaborating? By what measure? To what effect?
At a recent course I ran on Connected Innovation, i took a “hands up” poll. There were twenty people in the room. I asked only two questions. The first was “How many of you work for organizations where the mantra is “collaborate” and the CEO talks about how collaborative the organization is?”. Almost twenty people put up their hand.
I then asked: “And how many of you feel that you really are collaborating with your peers, sharing, and effectively solving problems together?”. Only TWO put up their hands!
We jump very quickly from “Let’s collaborate” to the technology of “collaboration”. But we ignore the governance models that are essential for true collaboration. Without these models, the use of technology is probably 50% effective, at best.
Rising expectation in the emerging economies of Asia is poised to prompt a surge in demand and a wave of innovation in healthcare. “This is a huge opportunity for forward-thinking companies,” Helmut Schuhsler, Managing Partner of TVM Capital, told delegates at the recent Science|Business conference, The Innovation Economy. Read more…
The upcoming i2i conference at the United Nations on June 8 and 9 will focus on Open Innovation, collaboration and incentivized competition. Great line up of speakers. Keynote address by Ban Ki-moon. Here is the program.
This is truly an excellent example of the intersection of Open Innovation, globalization and technology. I saw it in a SpringWise, a publication reporting on new business ideas. This is a new project that aims to bring income opportunities to those in the developing world using the ubiquitous mobile phone.
Targeting the more than 2 billion literate mobile phone subscribers in the developing world, txteagle aims to help alleviate high unemployment levels in many rural areas of countries like Kenya with a crowdsourcing approach that offers new ways to earn extra money. The service connects corporations with small tasks to be completed—currently, the most common ones include software localization and translation into local dialects for companies like Nokia—and native people who can complete them in minutes by cell phone. Tasks are sent to multiple phone users by text message—”translate the phrase, ‘address book’ into Giriama,” for example—and answers are accepted as accurate when the majority of users provide the same response. Compensation is determined by the number of times an individual’s response agrees with the consensus; penalties are imposed for wrong answers, while “don’t know” responses make no contribution. Over time the system learns a particular user’s expertise, and can actively select the most appropriate tasks for them. It can also weight answers from long-term and historically accurate users higher than others, making it necessary to involve fewer other individuals when those users respond. Payment is made either to a bank account connected with an individual’s phone number—accessible at any post office or local kiosk—or via airtime credit transfers.
Case Study
Ruth & Betty, Home-Maker / Village Phone Operator, Butare, Rwanda. Ruth is the mother of four and while she reads and writes English fluently, she hasn’t been able to find much work in her local village. She’d like to own a phone, but hasn’t been able to save up the money. Betty operates a village phone in Ruth’s village. By ‘renting’ the phone to Ruth for 50 cents/hour during off-peak times when Betty has no other customers, Ruth is able to complete 3 hours of transcription tasks – accumulating $7.50 into her savings account and $1.50 into Betty’s account. A couple of more sessions like that and Ruth will be able to afford her own phone!
Recent research undertaken by Computer Weekly in the US as part of a project with BT found that over 67% of respondents expect collaboration to become an important driver of innovation over the next 12 months. This is significant. 83% have sufficient budget to facilitate collaboration within the organisation, and 80% say the collaborative technologies being used have not been impacted by any budgetary changes affecting the wider IT infrastructure. This is also significant in light of the GFC.
In terms of the benefits collaboration brings to the organisation, 93% of respondents said better communication, 83% more effective staff, and 73% improved productivity. Faster innovation was cited by 70%, and lower costs by a similar number. In terms of how collaborative tools and techniques positively benefit innovation, 23% said saving time, 20% said collaboration enables the sharing of ideas, 17% said saving money or reducing costs, and 17% said sharing information over a wider area.
The challenge for these organizations is to build frameworks that allow collaboration to actively facilitate innovation. Most organizations continue to struggle with how to facilitate effective collaboration – just throwing in a bunch of tools usually does not work. It’s the building of frameworks such as Connected Innovation that provides the way forward.
