Category: collaboration
This is the seventh of several ‘Innovation Perspectives’ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?’. Here is the next perspective in the series:by Vyoma KapurTypically, a corporation would hire a market research or a consulting firm to keep up-to-date with the latest consumer trends. Millward Brown, Iconoculture and Forrester are examples of firms which use sophisticated research techniques to advise their clients on how consumers are behaving today, and how they might behave tomorrow. Whether we are talking about changing media habits, evolving taste buds or the growing popularity of a certain sport, keeping tabs on consumer lifestyles does not happen automatically. Time, effort and capital need to be invested to stay ahead of rapidly changes and adapting business operations accordingly.However, trend-spotting does not … Continue reading
A Lesson from General Millsby Stefan LindegaardChanging organizational culture is one of the most difficult tasks when it comes to open innovation. What can you do? Well, General Mills gave a great example at the recent CoDev conference. By sending more than 20 people to the conference, they sent a strong signal – internally as well as externally – that they are committed to open innovation.I really liked this move and thus I did an interview with Mike Antinone, who is Sr. R&D Manager, Connected Innovation in General Mills Worldwide Innovation Network, in order to get a better understanding on this.What made you decide to send this delegation to CoDev?We had two main reasons for sending our GWIN team to CoDev this year. The first was really around team building. We have added several new team members as we expand our global innovation entrepreneur program and we wanted to have … Continue reading
I attended a KM conference recently where a speaker remarked on how difficult it was to find experts in his company. He suggested that HR create a database and every employee should declare that they are an expert in something. Then when a manager needs to find an expert for an innovation project, he or she could query the database.There’s more to this story, and I’ll share the details in two blog posts that I plan to publish about this conference. But I wanted to take an excursion and talk about expertise locators.The expert database idea is doomed to fail. It will never be accurate or updated. But the problem of finding experts in your company is real. One would think that there should be a way to organize a list of experts. Databases are the wrong solution (I’ll explain why). But what solution would work?I’m excited about the approach … Continue reading
Brian Solis spoke recently on what the future of social networks will be. Ideas, it turns out. As I wrote on another blog post:”Solis, leading thinker in the integration of social media and PR, recently spoke on an intriguing concept: ideas connect us more than relationships. The premise of his argument is that ideas are what elicit passion in people. They animate us, and if we find someone with a similar interest in a given idea, we connect.”Then there was this observation by Intel’s Enterprise 2.0 lead Laurie Buczek on the only quantifiable value they found in their Enterprise 2.0 efforts:”Where we did quickly find quantifiable business value during an ideation proof of concept. Ideas that are discovered and turned into action have produced dollarized return of business value.”Both Brian and Laurie are pointing to the unique nature of ideas. Brian talks of ideas as connectors. Laurie talks of ideas … Continue reading
Sustainable innovation requires structured methods. But it also requires collaboration and information sharing among colleagues. Innovation is a team sport – groups produce better results than the lone genius. So how do you create a more favorable context for collaboration and sharing in your business unit?Reputation is what matters. The degree to which a technical worker will share information with a colleague depends on that colleague’s reputation for returning the favor. The rule of reciprocity states that people give back to those in the form they have received from others. It is a social rule taught by every human society to its members – you give back to those who have given to you. But the key is: to make the first move. You have to be seen as someone who gives and shares information with others, and has a reputation for returning the favor when others give to …
A general observation of collaborative work is this:”The larger and more diverse are your personal network of contacts, the higher the quality of your ideas and project work.”In the enterprise market, the opportunity being seized by companies is to better connect employees. The sheer size of these firms makes it obvious that they are not optimizing collaborative activities. Social software plays an important role in helping that. SunGard’s CEO has a great take on this issue in the New York Times.But what about small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs)? Do they have issues with maintaining connections? We’ll tackle that issue in a second. First, however…The Challenge of Growth: Traditional Collaboration Modes Don’t ScaleWhen a small company starts out, it’s rather easy to stay on top of what colleagues are doing. There just aren’t too many of them. You easily banter, bounce ideas off one another and contribute your part to projects.It’s … Continue reading
