Innovation: Decentralized & Internally Networked

How do you structure an organization to optimize innovation?  What are the most effective innovation pathways and processes?  Who is responsible for innovation?

Does any of that matter???

I recently participated in a conference on driving corporate innovation, and all of those business considerations - and a few more - were presented and discussed and analyzed.  I think they miss the point.

Innovative organizations today no longer try to structure and schedule innovation.  Instead, they respect the emergence of the individual within the organization, and they create a culture and environment that supports individual actions.  According to Gartner, the "Managed Anarchy Model" yields significantly more great ideas over time than does the Conventional Model; natural selection rather than management selection.

Individual behavior and corporate culture are facing increasing dissonance.  Gen Y has become famous for not following the established corporate rules, for being tethered to technology, for lack of loyalty to corporate employers.  But Gen Yers are also actively involved in social issues; they want to follow their instincts and passions and creatively change the world.  Aren't those great innovation characteristics?  Corporations need to tap into that individual drive.

With the prevalence of social technologies outside the corporate walls, individuals have learned to find like-minded people outside the usual channels.  They share ideas, pull information and insight from diverse groups, and create new partnerships as needed.

Individuals want to bring these characteristics into the workplace.  They want to self-select ideas and communities for collaboration within corporate walls.  Internal social platforms enable them to do so.  They help organizations become social businesses, from the inside out. 


Internal social technologies allow companies to decentralize innovation.  Social technologies facilitate innovation.  They drill holes in the silos.  They enable fresh conversations and exchanges of ideas.  And they are fluid.
 
IBM is at the forefront of using internal social technologies to drive innovation.  Conversations and ideas are sparked by over 17,000 internal blogs, 1 million daily page views of internal wikis and internal information storing websites, employee profiles on IBM Connections, and 15,000,000 downloads of employee-generated videos/podcasts.

50 IBM innovation jams have occurred over the past 10 years.  Back in 2006, IBM brought folks together in a jam to discuss more than 50 research projects in the company.  Projects voted into the top 10 became incubator businesses funded with $100M.

IBM Smarter Planet sprang from grass-roots, community discussions.

Smaller organizations with more limited technologies can benefit as well.  I worked with a medium-sized retail establishment that wanted to add social media to its marketing.  We started, however, by implementing a simple, free internal social platform and creating a cross-functional, cross-department core social media team.  Over the past 6 months, the cross-talk and new perspectives have dramatically accelerated innovation - from tactical improvements to the creation of an organization-wide "green" effort.

Internal social technology helps define innovation as a cultural norm and drive innovation into everyone's job. Employees behaving like individuals are the primary source of  innovation.  Let's not box them in.

Has internal social technology changed innovation for you?

Related posts of interest:
The Objective of Social Media is Lifestyle
Social Media and Innovation in IBM
IBM's Social Business Transformation

Internal Knowledge Sharing and ROI - It's Personal

Why would you give away your knowledge, not to a competitor, but to an internal colleague?  Team work is great, but in the end one person gets primary credit for the sale; one engineer is the lead developer; one customer service manager drives the highest customer satisfaction scores.  And that person gets the promotion, the biggest bonus, and the greatest ego boost. 

Yet organizations are adopting internal social networks with the hope of improving productivity and innovation through greater knowledge sharing.  Prescient Digital (www.prescientdigital.com) reported in their Intranet 2.0 Global Study 2010 that the main reasons that companies invest in intranet 2.0 tools are employee collaboration (76%) and knowledge management (71%).  Does knowledge sharing naturally follow?

Knowledge is far more than data; it includes the analysis and experiential wisdom that we bring to information.  Understanding when we need to share true knowledge and when we need to facilitate the transfer of information helps organizations build effective internal social media networks.  It is critical to driving the ROI of internal social media.

Knowledge versus Information Sharing

Two of the three factors that drive ROI for internal social media depend on knowledge sharing.  Only one factor is primarily data or information driven.  (see http://goo.gl/fb/pdpSI 3 Benefit Measures - The ROI of Internal Social Media Networks) Recognizing the distinction helps the change management process; employees can share at the level that benefits both themselves and the organization.  

v  Enhanced Employee Engagement depends on the give-and-take of knowledge sharing.  Numerous studies have linked higher levels of employee engagement to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, lower turnover and higher sales.  By facilitating greater sharing of both personal and professional knowledge, internal social media networks boost employee engagement.  Within about 3 weeks of launching its new social networking site, The Hub, SAS had almost 50% of its employees using the site and 425 groups established.  The Hub intentionally blurs the line between the professional and personal, creating stronger, more multi-faceted ties between employees and the company.  Becky Graebe, internal communications manager at SAS, describes the site as “kind of like a Facebook/LinkedIn behind the SAS firewall.” Sharing knowledge creates friendships and connections, across and up-and-down the organization, which drives employee engagement and positive ROI. (For more information, see http://www.ragan.com/InternalCommunications/Articles/SAS_internal_social_network_attracts_5000_users_in_42751.aspx)

v Better, faster innovation requires more structured knowledge sharing.  Success depends on governance structures that facilitate and reward cross-silo and cross-functional work - while continuing to recognize the primary sources of both inspiration and execution.  A key is bringing together individuals with complementary skills and reducing redundancy. Merely sharing data is insufficient for innovation; sharing must involve insight, analysis and creativity.  $21.8 billion pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly implemented an internal social networking solution to enable more efficient and cost-effective processes for new drug development.  R&D scientists and subject matter experts are now in touch throughout the product development process, across multiple divisions and around the globe.  Increased knowledge sharing has helped reduce costs and accelerate innovation.  Personal brands are enhanced not threatened.

v Streamlining operations depends on information sharing, not knowledge sharing.  Many tools enable employees to find data and experts more quickly, and allow executives to ensure that activities are focused on the key strategic initiatives.

Many internal social networks facilitate data sharing; doing the same things more efficiently yields a positive ROI.  Knowledge sharing multiplies the benefits that an organization receives.  Unlike data, however, knowledge is personal and reflects an individual’s value and builds his or her personal brand.  Internal social networks that enable true knowledge sharing must recognize the individual as well the organizational benefits.  The ROI of these networks rocket upward. 

Is Social Media Killing Innovation?

Would social media have helped Thomas Edison?  Or Alexander Graham Bell?  Or Henry Ford?  Or Steve Jobs?  Subjectively, it seems that most disruptive innovations spring from the mind of one individual, or at most from a two-person partnership.  Remember the commonly held and oft cited view regarding the output of committee work?  I think there is little question that social media, when effectively engaged, can and does have a positive impact on improvement.  Product improvement.  Business model improvement.  Service improvement.  Operational improvement.  Many of the by-now “classic” social media cases showcase these benefits.  Starbucks, Ideastorm, even Comcast’s foray into Twitter for customer service – they all use the power of customer engagement and the speed of social media response to uncover and drive improvement.   How do I do better what I already do? But does social media, the ultimate collaborative tool today, really help drive innovation? True innovation requires discontinuous or lateral thinking.   Innovation reframes or redefines the underlying issue.  It’s risky.  And it rarely has immediate mass appeal or acceptance.  Is social media, then, diminishing real innovation, driving business to the mass mediocre and to only incremental improvement? Maybe.  But I think that social media can also enhance the ability to innovate.  v One spark to innovation is the intermingling of previously unrelated ideas – Social media provides an unprecedented opportunity to acquire and mix new perspectives.   Customer views, vendor perspectives, and the ramblings of random people we otherwise wouldn’t encounter potentially create more seeds to cross fertilize.  Internal collaboration tools and social platforms bring together the thoughts and knowledge of colleagues in different locations and with different expertise.  Innovation is about putting ideas and facts together in new ways; the more ideas and facts, the greater the inputs to innovative thinking. v “Edison didn’t invent the light bulb by trying to improve the candle.”  Innovation usually springs from addressing a broad, underlying need, not a short-term complaint or usage issue.  Monitoring and listening can help to reveal fundamental opportunities that few people articulate before seeing the solution. v As the economist E. F. Schumacher said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex…It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” At their core, great innovations generally reflect simple ideas – the execution might be complex, but the motivating concept is typically elegantly well-defined.  Social media helps simplify and focus.  Express your idea in 140 characters.  Or blog until you know what you are blogging about. Does opening up the organization to social media and the vast array of unrelated, non-linear thoughts and ideas pay off?  I think so.  Consider the Cuisinart.  No focus group or market research ever identified the need for a Cuisinart.  Carl G. Sontheimer mixed his expertise in business, technology and cooking to develop the Cuisinart.  Almost everyone has heard of the Cuisinart today, but at its introduction in 1973 most people didn’t understand WHAT it was beyond a fancy toy or souped up blender.  It took two years for the home cook to begin to embrace the Cuisinart as a new, and now indispensible, kitchen appliance.  Not an improvement on a blender, but an innovative tool.  Innovation pays off.  Sontheimer sold the Cuisinart company in 1987 for $42 million. Sontheimer’s education, experience, and personal interests gave him insights and the ability to span knowledge silos.  Social media can help others grasp those seemingly unrelated bits that drive innovation… if companies encourage engineers and techies and marketing folks to engage in social media.  If companies acknowledge that wide-ranging ideas are NOT a waste of time, that listening and learning and sharing are the sources of the seeds of innovation.  If social media is integrated into the everyday of business.  How do you make social media part of the everyday at your organization?