On my flight back from Brussels (t d f) I had an enjoyable reading. Michael Docherty ’s Primer on “open innovation” and Jakob Nielsen (t d f)’s Participation Inequality in virtual communities (t d f). You might think those two texts are only remotely related but well I think there is more in it.
Michael Docherty’s introduction helps to understand what is ahead of us in terms of corporate innovation (t d f) practices and offers clues on the implementation process while Jakob Nielsen shares some (even historic) insights into how virtual communities with respect to participation and collaboration work. I think this is of particular importance because since all of our business processes (t d f) will move into the virtual realm we need to understand this new frontier especially in a restricted - say - corporate context.
So what is open innovation? Henry Chesbrough coined that term that more or less argues that competitive advantage comes from outside your corporate firewalls. So it’s about how to make use of external sources for internal growth: from closed to open shops.
Open and collaborative innovation is the new buzzword then. Docherty analyzes the guarding principles of open innovation against closed innovation along the innovation delivery chain: fuzzy front-end, development, and commercialization.
Closed Innovation
Open Innovation
So in essence it’s about opening up the entire process of innovation and business development. It’s about out-/insourcing, and most of all about collaboration (t d f) with external partners. Joint ventures are an early and well-known phenomenon of that concept.
Procter & Gamble might be the role-model for such an open approach. At least it seems to be successful.
To close this brief excerpt, the most important clues are found - not surprisingly - in the realm of implementing. Here are the:
Key Factors to Implementing “Open Innovation”
(see article for more)
- Broaden your view (where you look and your ability to see what’s there)
- Create alignment across the innovation ecosystem
- Adapt an approach for your organization’s tolerance for risk
- Put the focus on learning, not just results
I like this committment of a technical consultant the most and it leads us to Jakob Nielsen’s article, Michael Docherty:
I believe that it is not only about the technology and scouting for new ideas. It’s just as important to focus on the interpersonal, cultural, and implementation challenges. Making open innovation happen requires overcoming the significant barriers and perceived risks on the people side of the equation.
So what happens if moving your organization into the realm of virtual communities?
First you are in favor of that move because it’s the only way to connect and develop internally and externally. That days full of meetings are counter-productive and even impossible since your project-partner might be on a different continent.
Second - successful - virtual organizational development increase communication and networking between personnel and external partners and last but not least enables cross-organizational collaboration by saving costs and resources.
Virtual (business) communities might be different to real corporate cultures. In any case they have some very important characteristics. Only one - although a very important one - is that of Participation Inequality (or the powerlaw of particpation as Ross Mayfield calls it).
What does that mean? In an online environment the majority of people are not productive the we we traditionally conceive of being creative or productive. More than 90% are just consuming and only less than 1% are productive. That’s at least true for open web communities. My experience with business communities is slightly different. In any case the lesson learned is: you can’t overcome participation inequality - at least in traditional terms.
Jakon Nielsen offers now some excellent advice on how to equalize that inequality. I’d say first we need to develop a different understand of what producer and consumer means - he is doing that implicitly. Here are his clues:
- Make it easier to contribute
- Make participation a side effect
- Edit, don’t create
- Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants
- Promote quality contributors
Make participation (t d f) a side effect is probably the most important aspect. It means that users by just consuming a virtual environment leave traces (t d f) (=metadata). This way they create huge amounts of information that enriches the entire virtual environment. Amazon’s (t d f) collaborative filters (recommendation based on user behavior, PDF) are just one example of that, Flickr (t d f)’s data on populars cameras another example.. Any social software need to take that into account and leverage those traces. Promote quality contributors is another issue that refers to automatic enablers as well - and this is relevant - as to the notion of facilitating or gardening virtual environments. Unfortunately this is often very difficult to explain to corporations; it doesn’t fit the traditional mechanistic view of executive management. It has a lot to do with learning which in turn focuses on the explorative nature of that process and not necessarily on results.
This closes the circle of the new management theory of open innovation and the realities of virtual environments that will host those theories in practice (at least in the near future).
It’s about exploring, learning, leaving traces (Social Navigation, PDF), participation after all.
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Tags: Business, Innovation, Knowledge-Management, Social Software
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