ideas that work: extending the success of your innovation program

ideas that work | 1

Contents

What’s Next? Extending the Success of the Collaborative Innovation Team to the Larger Organization

How to Make an Ideas Community Work. Defining the Roles

Modeling the Resource Requirements for your Collaborative Innovation Program

Practicing Collaborative Innovation to Become a Learning Organization

Yes, Innovation is your Day Job

01

02

03

04

05

By Doug CollinsV.P. Innovation Architecture, Mindjet

Ideas that Work

A Quick Guide to Extending the Success of Your Innovation Program

ideas that work | 2

I love when a client and I reach the place where we can contemplate, “What’s next?

”Exploring “What’s next?” means the client has achieved a level of confidence and a measure of success from having run one or more innovation challenges. They identified the critical questions successfully. They defined the nature of the invitation they were seeking in a way that resonated with the prospective members of their innovation community. They worked hard to create the virtual and physical forums that helped the community members engage in authentic ways with one another. They helped people to explore and realize their leadership potential, thereby sowing the seeds of real transformation.

From here, “What’s next?” can mean a number of things. It can mean reflecting on and framing new critical questions that the organization’s leaders want to engage the community with. Success breeds

success. Let’s go again. “What’s next?” can mean pursuing further the possibilities of helping innovators who have already contributed to move their insights from idea to concept. Let’s honor our commitments to the community (I have explored a few of these possibilities in earlier columns).

Beyond refining and extending the program for collaborative innovation, the leaders of the activity may find that they have opportunities to disseminate their approach—specifically, their perspective for effecting authentic forms of community engagement—to other parts of the organization such as marketing, operations, human resources, and finance. Leaders might find that they have opportunities to disseminate their approach to other parts of the organization such as marketing, operations, human resources, and finance.

Now that it has experienced success the innovation team brings the gift of four insights to this conversation (Figure 1).

Understanding techniques to identify and pose the critical question, or inquiry in a way that resonates with community members. Likewise, understanding the importance of creating and blending the right forums, both in person and virtual, in which the community can explore the question fully through dialogue.

• Insight on the Engagement Model

Understanding approaches to engaging on the question of commitment What are we here to create together? What ownership of the process and the outcome does each party claim in engaging with one another? What reservations do community members have that keep them from participating?

• Insight on the Company

Figure 1 The gift of the four insights that the innovation program brings to the organization

Insight on the Engagement Model

Collaborative Innovation ProgramInsight on the Innovator

Insight on the CommunityInsight on the Idea

Companies that invest in developing strong innovation teams in their core product areas can extend that skill to other parts of the organization – Doug Collins looks at the skills your innovators are now developing and how they can be repurposed and extended.

What’s Next? Extending the Success of the Collaborative Innovation Team to the Larger Organization.

ideas that work | 3

Understanding approaches to supporting the community members who contribute their insights and build upon the insights offered by others. What opportunities does the initiative have in helping the individuals realize their leadership potential on this front? Another? What reservations do community members have that keep them from participating?

• Insight on the Innovator

Understanding approaches to framing and re framing community members’ input to derive meaning and set direction.

• Insight on the Idea

PUTTING THE SOCIAL IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Your colleagues down the hall in the marketing, public relations, and communications group have a new challenge. The organization expects them to build market awareness through traditional forms of promotion, as always. Of late, the organization expects them to engage the customer in conversation about the offer, the brand, or the organization at large, as well.

Today, the marketing charter is in a state of flux to the extent that the practice of marketing has become the practice of continual innovation in its own right. “What’s next?” can mean helping the people working in this domain more fully explore the possibilities that the social in social media represents in an inquiry-led way such that they in turn realize the leadership potential that their evolving charter represents.

This dual charter, along with adding to marketing’s voluminous “to do” list, creates conflict in how the group engages with the consumer. Their approach to social media marketing, for example, can by habit mimic traditional outbound communications. The reach-x-frequency mindset intrudes. The tweet becomes the world’s smallest broadcast studio.

Where might the collaborative innovation team start the dialogue with their peers who lead adjunct functions such as marketing? As always, by asking the critical question: What possibilities exist to more fully

explore the idea or the promise that the offer or the brand represents to the consumer? In this context, the offer, the brand, or the organization itself serves as the idea, reified. Greater openness and, ideally, intimacy with the consumer comes from engaging in authentic dialogue on the value that the organization delivers to the community.

From this inquiry the next set of questions flow in logical succession, each one touching on one or more of the gifts that the collaborative innovation team brings to the table…

What is the critical question facing the offer, brand, or organization?

With whom within the market which segment— does this question resonate? What does the organization want to create together with the community of consumers that it can not create on its own, internally?

What reservations does the organization have about engaging the consumer community in authentic dialogue? And, what reservations do the consumers express?

What commitment does the organization make to support the community of consumers?Do opportunities—and expectations—for user or advisory groups emerge, for example?

What is the nature of the invitation by which the organization engages with the consumer community?

01

02

03

04

05

ideas that work | 4

Figure 2 The collaborative innovation team lends its gifts to marketing in helping the group engage in authentic dialogue with consumers around the offer and/or brand promise.

Internal Ideation

Status

External Ideation

Awareness

Social Media“Centrale”...and you could help build this capability...

Opportunity to shareperspective and explorethe possibilities of applyingexternal ideation as a form of engagement.

Operations

Development (R&D)

Marketing/BrandHuman Resources

Innovation

Fulltillment/ Support

Leadership Engagement

if you are here Then. . . you could go here.

Does it make sense for the innovation team to maintain a Chinese wall between the internal and external dialogue? Yes, most likely, not only for the commonsense reasons relating to protection of intellectual property, but also because the organization may discover it needs a way to assess, juxtapose, and make meaning of the two conversations.

In depicting “What’s next?” in this case, the figure that emerges may look something like a hub—a place where the organization explores, engages in, and makes meaning of enquiry-led dialogue supported in both virtual and physical communities they sponsor. Figure 2 designates the hub as the Italianate “social media central” and shows the path the team may take in expanding their scope from supporting innovation to helping the organization support more innovative forms of engagement with the community.

What’s next? The collaborative innovation team brings many gifts

to the table in terms of understanding the possibilities that exist in

engaging communities in authentic dialogue around ideas. In sharing

these insights with colleagues representing various functions within

the organization, they have the opportunity to explore new levels of

engagement and, by extension, transparency with the consumers the organization serves.

The collaborative innovation team brings many gifts to the table in terms of understanding the possibilities that exist in engaging communities in authentic dialogue around ideas.

Bringing gifts to the table secures your seat at the table. In helping the organization realize its leadership potential in innovation you can in turn help your peers engage authentically with the larger market. Marketing colleagues who engage business clients (B2B), for example, may especially value your perspective. The high revenue-to-client ratio one finds in B2B compels your colleagues working with these customers to help the organization not only build awareness with them, but also shed light on each customer’s intent—and how that intent aligns with the value your organization provides them.

What might you choose to do to help them? What possibilities open when you explore the overlap between external innovation and organization-wide engagement?

Article first appeared in Innovation Management magazine.

LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE

Forward-thinking members of the collaborative innovation team can see the larger end-game that opens up if they choose to pursue this scenario: the possibility of creating a virtuous circle in which the dialogue with the eternal community informs the nature of the internal innovation they support as part of their core charter.

ideas that work | 5

At some point in my engagement with clients the question of roles arises. Who does what to help realize the potential for transformation that collaborative innovation offers? What strengths does the person sitting to my left possess that makes them the right person for a given role? Do we assign people to positions or do they claim ownership of the work as we evolve the project, just as they claim ownership of the practice of innovation?

In turn, what does the innovation program commit to the people in each role by way of training, recognition, and an opportunity for them to realize their leadership potential? What does the program invite the people to create together that they could not do on their own?

Some roles seem straightforward: the role of sponsor, for example. Typically one individual—or a small cadre—convenes the community, inviting members to engage on one or more critical questions facing

Ideas communities are a hot topic but do you really know how to make them work effectively? Doug Collins brings his experience as a community manager to bear on the roles and resources needed to catalyze great ideas.

the group. The sponsor holds a position within the organization where they in turn can help the community effect change. That’s straightforward and unambiguous: convene and facilitate.

The moderator, who also plays a crucial role in the community, may by comparison seem to have a more nebulous charter. For example, does the moderator serve as the community equivalent of a referee: someone who runs up and down the field, enforcing fair play, but doing their best not to interfere with the game? Or, should they intervene? Can one moderator work effectively across multiple communities?

In this article, which serves as a deeper dive on the larger questions around resourcing that I covered in a previous column, I share perspective on the personalities and practices that lead to effective moderation.

THE MODERATOR AS CATALYST AND NEXUS

To start, every community benefits from the presence of a trained, designated moderator. Do not leave the role vacant. The moderator serves two critical functions that you, the leader of the collaborative innovation program, must support in order to meet your commitments: catalyst and nexus.

To start, every community benefits from the presence of a trained, designated moderator. Do not leave the role vacant.

As a catalyst the moderator engages with the people who contribute and build ideas, challenging them to explore and extend their thinking by asking a series of probative questions that start with, “How might we…?” or “What if we…?”

The moderator helps the innovator, along with community members, to realize the full potential of their contribution, challenging them to consider the full implications of the vision behind their ideas while also exploring potential application areas.

Figure 1 depicts how, in serving as the catalyst, the moderator can help the innovator more fully develop the scope of their thinking about their idea by posing questions along the cognitive spectrum that goes from vision to reality.

Figure 1 The moderator, as catalyst, engages the innovator across the cognitive spectrum

Questions to explore the larger implications of the vision that the idea embodies.

• What possibilities do you see for this idea to help us realize our shared vision for this [challenge / area / . . . ]?

• What seeds for transformation does this idea carry with it?

• What commitment do you envision people making to realize the potential that this idea represents?

• What observations could we make in the early days that would give us insight into the promise the idea holds?

• What opportunities do you see to try this idea with [person / market / region / . . . ]?

• What is the primary advantage that this idea has over the current [state of arrairs / practice / scenario / . . . ]?

Questions to explore applications for the idea.

Scope of thought relativeto the idea in question

Vision

Reality Moderator Innovator

How to Make an Ideas Community Work: Defining the Roles

ideas that work | 6

The moderator, moreover, does not probe for why the idea may not work. (The innovator laments that too many of their colleagues embrace this role. No need to formally assign someone the job.) The moderator does not serve as a screen or gate. Catalysts initiate and accelerate reactions,not retard them. The probative nature of the moderator’s enquiry may help the innovator more clearly and more fully articulate the possibilities their idea offers in terms of addressing the critical questions facing the community (i.e., “How might the implications behind this idea relate to the challenge at hand?”). However, the moderator does not engage in this form of dialogue with the intent of culling ideas.

As the nexus, the moderator helps the innovator make connections within the community amongst people who share an interest in the topic and would have strong contributions to make in evolving the idea, if only they knew the idea had been submitted. The moderator helps create this awareness amongst the members. As the nexus, the moderator helps the innovator make connections within the community amongst people who share an interest in the topic and would have strong contributions to make.

In my dialogue with clients I ask them if they can think of a person in their organization who seems to know everything that happens in the building or the organization at large. If Marvin Gaye heard it through the grapevine then he likely got his intelligence from the contemporary of this individual at Motown Records. The client smiles. They know exactly who holds this position within the group. They always do. These people can serve as effective moderators based on their history of making connections.

The next questions that typically arise: Should the moderator have deep technical knowledge of the subject they’re moderating? Does the moderator need to have the most knowledge about the subject to effectively serve in the role?

No. In fact, people can handicap themselves as moderators when they enjoy a high level of expertise or experience with the question at hand. They can inadvertently begin to screen ideas and influence the direction of their evolution by the nature of their questions or with comments that reference past, unsuccessful forays into this domain. Nothing kills effective moderation more quickly and more resoundingly than the comment, “We tried this before (and it did not work).”

The moderator, as nexus, opens doors for the innovator by helping them make new connections. Figure 2 depicts the dual role of the moderator.

HOW MANY MODERATORS?

Once clients gain a perspective of the role the moderator plays, they next want to know how many moderators they should invite to participate in the community.

The answer varies by program and by community, of course. What I typically find is that nobody has the time to serve as a moderator full time. And, that’s a good thing. It’s the nature of the connections that people make and the insights they form in their daily work that enables them to serve effectively in this role.

To this end, the resource calculation becomes a function of balancing the number of ideas circulating in the community with the number of minutes per day the moderator can devote to the role. Figure 3 depicts the equation.

For example, let’s say that the community contributes ten (10) ideas per week, or two (2) ideas per day, Monday through Friday. Let’s say

that the ideas tend to be relatively complex, such that the moderator chooses to spend twenty (20) minutes per idea contemplating the concept, collecting their thoughts, posing the probative questions, and reaching out to members who may share an interest in the topic.

Figure 2 The moderator as catalyst and nexus

Vision Community

Reality

Innovator

(help expand connections to the idea / innovator)

(hel

p e

xpan

d th

inki

ng o

n th

e id

eas’

s im

plic

atio

ns a

nd a

pp

licat

ions

)

Moderator

Memberwith related interest X1



Moderator as nexus

Mod

erat

or a

s ca

taly

st

ideas that work | 7

Figure 4 Example resource calculation

50

60

ideas per day2 minuets per

idea per day20minuets per day60

activityfactor1.25

Let’s say, too, that the average level of activity on each idea is high, such that the moderator would want to keep up to date with the latest comments and reviews. Finally, let’s say that the moderators in the organization choose to spend on average one hour each morning, coffee in hand, engaging with the community. Plugging these parameters into the equation would suggest that one moderator, or 5/6 of one, could effectively engage this community. Figure 4 depicts this scenario.

Common sense dictates that the above equation can serve only as a rough guide for resourcing the role. The complexity and activity factors remain wholly subjective, for example, and communities tend to ebb and flow, depending on the stage of the campaign. Your mileage will vary, but you now have a place to start.

In closing, the moderator serves a valuable, necessary role in the community. They help the innovators more fully explore and articulate their ideas, improving the quality of their contribution. They help connect members who share an interest in ideas, improving the diversity of thought and perspective that goes into each potential innovation.

As the program or challenge sponsor, you benefit from the gifts the moderator brings to the table when you identify people who, by their nature, find they can readily serve as catalyst and nexus, and when you support them in this capacity by helping them understand their charter. Recruit your moderators early in the planning stage for each community. Train them. Support them. The quality of their work and the extent to which they take ownership of the role heavily influences the success of the program.


Figure 3 Calculating the number of moderators per community

Number of minutes per day moderator can devote to the role

Function of complexity and maturity of idea

Number of ideas contributed per day [on average]

Average level of activity per idea per day

Time spent per idea per day

ideas that work | 8

Internal sponsors of innovation initiatives begin with envisioning the possibilities that open when they convene their community. What critical question does the organization face which the sponsor wants to invite the community to explore? What sort of engagement and level of commitment does the sponsor envision from the people she wants to attract? What does success look like? Can we measure it?

The rubber then meets the road. The vision that the sponsor has for the community meets the reality of bringing it to fruition in material

ways. Who needs to do what when and at what cost?

As the sponsor of your organization’s program, you will want

to have a way to think about allocating resources to the activity

that supports your goals for it. Estimating the resources needed

to support collaborative innovation so that the organization

realizes the full potential of the community can represent a green

field activity in its own right, however.

This article offers a place to start by identifying the variables you

will want to consider modeling as you calculate program costs.

The cost of doing innovation is a key factor in enterprise decision making but open innovation and collaborative innovation have a short history – so how do you go about modeling the cost of launching a collaborative or open innovation program? Doug Collins lays out the territory.

THE DEMAND SIDE OF THE RESOURCE EQUATION

Each new member of a community, along with serving as the next valuable contributor, represents a new support obligation. First, let’s look at the demand side of the equation: the factors that determine the level of support you need to provide in order to establish and grow your innovation communities to establish and grow your innovation communities.

The number of community members involved. Each new member of a community, along with serving as the next valuable contributor, represents a new support obligation. When you invite them to participate you commit to supporting their engagement with you. Engaging on community expectations takes time and effort, for example. Members’ questions range from the basic, “Can you help me access the community resources?” to requests to gain a deeper understanding of your view on the day in the life of an idea, now that they have contributed their insights. Don’t underestimate the support people need, particularly if you want to go deep into critical questions.

The number of ideation challenges. Some organizations run one grand challenge after another. Others host a plethora of smaller challenges that the community members themselves initiate. Still others run a mix of activities as they grow

•

••

more confident in their ability to manage the associated tasks in parallel. Each activity, big and small, has a life cycle associated with it: an introduction, the engagement period itself, and the resolution, in which the community explores the possibilities the challenge opens to them. Engaging in these conversations—helping the right people convene in the right room at the right time—takes work. For example, experience suggests that, as you scale, the resources you need to support that next incremental challenge do not in turn scale in linear fashion. Your group will have already tackled part of the learning curve associated with managing a collaborative innovation program. At the same time, the level of baseline resource you will need to provide does not fall below 50% of the amount you allocated to the first challenge.

The nature of the ideation challenges. Some challenges represent a relatively low maintenance burden for the program—for example, “blue sky” ideation challenges without a

Modeling the Resource Requirements for your Collaborative Innovation Program

ideas that work | 9

finite time limit, in which the community continually forms and evolves ideas, taking some portion of them offline to try in the real world. Other challenges may by contrast require more support: challenges with a definitive beginning, middle, and end. Challenges whose ideas must be further evolved and reformed by specialists who work the with the team who have committed to incubating the idea (e.g., financial analysts when the challenge has implications relative to capital budgets or market researchers when vetting the ideas would require more formal forms of traditional field research with the anticipated beneficiaries). Consider, too, the extent to which you plan to support the larger innovation lifecycle, including, for example, prototyping and trialing concepts that emerge from the community.

In practice, your resource load changes and lightens as your community takes increasing ownership of the process of innovation, so the ownership moment becomes critical to what you can do, cost effectively. To this end, the fourth factor, ownership, represents the most important, exponential factor in your calculations, not only from the perspective of estimating resources, but also from the perspective of transforming the organization.

Figure 1 depicts the demand side of the resource equation that expresses the potential for communities to scale as they grow within the organization.

Figure 2 charts one implication of the equation, depicting the extent to which the community takes the lead in owning the practice of innovation influences the way in which the program team engages with its members. The view that you create for your own initiative will profoundly shape your perspective on what it means to have the right people in place to support your communities.

Calculating the resource demand based on the above model represents a three-step, as follows:

1. Take into account the macro, quantitative factors of the number of members, the number of challenges per time period, and the general

The extent to which the community members take ownership of the process. Some innovation programs have the implicit goal of transforming the culture of an organization. With respect to resource, you will want to consider the extent to which the people supporting the innovation initiative can serve as coaches, helping the community more fully form their ideas, as opposed to taskmasters, politely pestering people to do the next thing on the whatever innovation to do list they have created? And, what possibilities for change emerge when the person who contributes an idea, along with their supporters in the community, pursue their own charter to realize that idea’s potential?

•

nature of the challenges themselves (e.g., blue-sky versus time bound or targeted versus transformative).

2. Factor in the sort of environment the program aspires to create in helping each member of the community achieve leadership in innovation. What does the world look like when the community becomes self-sustaining, requiring less programmatic support and more consultative engagement by way of coaching?

3. Anticipate when members of your community decide when challenges make sense and when the teams that form around challenges should splinter from the mainstream to pursue their idea to its fruition. In other words, consider fully the ways in which the creation of ideation communities can and should transform the organization and ways in which community members come to take ownership of the ideas they originate

Figure 1 Modeling the demand side of the resource equation

n

Level of ownership theidea owner and their collaborators take in realizing leadership in innovation

Number ofcommunity members

i = 1

i

iNumber ofchallenges

Complexity of each

challenge

123

Figure 2 The nature of the engagement changes as a function of the leadership the community

Coaching

Maturity of engagement practiced by innovation

program team

Engaging by milestones (day-n-life of program,

campaign, and idea)

Managing program and related tasks

Degree of leadership practiced by community members

Less Innovation “ideate and run” More Innovators claim ownership of realizing their ideas

Community members contribute ideas and wait for program / organization to respond. Program team turns hard to keep apace of its tasks and milestones.

The transformation curve − the extent to which we create a more innovative organization.

Community members convene to create the environment in whichthey pursue innovation. Program team supports the community byguiding them in create spaces for this dialogue to occur.

ideas that work | 10

THE SUPPLY SIDE OF THE RESOURCE EQUATION

You can now begin to model the supply side of the resource equation by estimating the head count one typically allocates to a collaborative innovation program, identifying people by the critical roles of sponsor, community manager, moderator, coach, reviewer, communications, and administrator.

You will want to explore two critical questions on the supply side, as depicted by Figure 3.

# ofChallenges

Activity-Dependent

Resource

BaselineResource

On-going, programmatic support

# of Community Members

Framing the Challenge Managing the Challenge Making the Challenge



Figure 3 Modeling the initiative to calculate the supply side of the equation

To what extent do the one of more innovation challenges that comprise your initiative run concurrently?

To what extent does the sponsor of each challenge take ownership (there’s that word again) of articulating the critical question on the front end and making meaning of the contributions on the back end of the process? Both activities require thoughtful, time-consuming work. In other words, where does your charter begin and end, relative to your peers?


•

•


The human resources department rarely leads in applying collaborative innovation. Yet, they face daunting challenges in helping their stakeholders become a learning organization: one that can thrive in a rapidly changing world. In this article Doug Collins argues that one of the best ways that human resources can give people space to practice the five disciplines that Peter Senge identifies as defining learning organizations is to embrace the practice of collaborative innovation.

MY DEEPEST SYMPATHIES

My reservoir of respect overflows for the people who manage the human resources departments of large organizations.

On the one hand, the organization looks to this group to fulfill its operational charter with crisp efficiency. Hire people. Fire people. Train them in between.

On the other hand, the organization at large looks, too, to this group to help everyone realize the larger aspirational goals that people equate with an operation that can thrive in the knowledge economy. One that encourages learning and growth. One that opens space where people can contribute their ideas and insights in helping to solve critical business problems facing the organization.

The human resources department, for its part, has made more headway in fulfilling the former part of their charter than the latter. Perhaps the markings that define the path to the former appear more visible. The ever-present need to hire people, for example, leads to

well-articulated, repeatable processes for recruiting the right person for the right job. The new hire appears Monday morning: a tangible result that all can see. Regulatory strictures, developed over time, codify the steps.

What of the latter part of the charter? What possibilities exist for human resources to help the people in their organization realize their leadership potential?

The need exists. Kaplan and Norton, writing in Strategy Maps, observe that “intangible assets are the ultimate source of sustainable value creation” (2003, p. 7). By “intangible assets” they mean you: the knowledge that your colleagues and you bring to the table enables the organization to accomplish that which the organization down the street struggles to imitate. A few pages later they lament that “two-thirds of organizations do not create strong alignment between their strategies and their HR and IT programs.”

Figure 1 The challenges and opportunities faced by human resources relative to their larger charter

Perceptual Opportunity

Insight into the challenges and opportunitiesfacing the organization; insight into the potential of the people who

Perceptual Challenge

Expectation that the group serves as a transactional business partner to hire and fire employees−and train them in between.

Lack of persistent, open “practice space” to explore the learning

organization charter.

Pressure to help the organization realize the anticipated benefits

of becoming a learning

Operational Challenge

Operational Opportunity

“Human Resources”(at the center of the learning and growth layer / stakeholder

in developing the organization’s intangible assets)

Practicing Collaborative Innovation to Become a Learning Organization


Figure 2 The practice of collaborative innovation mapped to the principles of the learning organization

Discipline Learning Organization Principles Collaborative Innovation Practices

Claiming ownership of visualizing thebigger picture.Perceiving the whole to the point where you canframe the critical questions worth asking.

The career as vocation. Humility is pursuingopportunities to learn, while building substantialcompetencies.

Engaging the community to reflect on and pursueideas and insights around the critical question.

Confronting biases and limitations in one’s thinkingby exploring assumptions and implications.

Recasting and reframing the critical question as afunction of perceiving the whole.

Moving from compliance to genuine commitmentto a future created in collaboration.

Recasting and reframing the critical question as function of perceiving the whole.

System thinking

Personal Mastery

Mental Models

Building Shared Vision

Team Learning Engaging in meaningful, reflective dialogue onwhat’s important.

Taking advantage of the larger intelligence available to the community to address the critical questions byreflecting on shared ideas and insights.

For their part, the walking, talking intangible assets who choose to

work for the organization increasingly expect to participate in creating

the organization’s strategy map, as opposed to docilely accepting

their space on the firm’s balanced scorecard like knowledge

economy chattel. Opportunities for people to express and realize their

aspirations for the organization continue to grow in turn, aided by

the proliferation of social media and by the expectations each new generation brings with them to the labor market.

What, then, is a human resources person to do to fulfill their charter of creating an environment where the people in the organization can derive greater meaning from, and make more meaningful contributions to, their work (figure 1)?

PRACTICE CLEARS THE PATH TO PRINCIPLE

Today, the people who practice collaborative innovation tend to be the ones that—naturally—hold the larger innovation charter within their organization: brand managers in the consumer packaged goods industry; business unit leaders in industrial firms; and, research and development leaders in the life sciences space, for example. Yet, if we embrace the mind-set of systems thinking upon which Peter Senge bases The Fifth Discipline, we can see links between the principles that define the learning organization and the practices that define collaborative innovation (figure 2).

The practice of collaborative innovation can serve as a powerful means for human resources to realize its larger charter in the way that it can enable a brand manager to identify opportunities to achieve sustainable competitive advantage by engaging the community of colleagues and consumers on the promise that the idea behind the product represents to them. In the case of human resources, collaborative innovation occurs around each of the five disciplines as opposed to around the brand promise.

Moreover, if you believe that an organization’s intangible assets are the greatest source of value creation, then you can argue that human resource’s practice of collaborative innovation holds the potential for the greatest return. Please, take your seat at the table.

WAXING ON, WAXING OFF

Okay. Where to start? Senge covers a lot of ground.

Begin by going for the jugular. Create a space for collaborative innovation where the community can contribute their insights to the two critical questions that human resources, as the group chartered with helping the organization become a learning organization, must ask again and again and again…

What goals does the organization commit to that resonate with you?

What opportunities for personal mastery—for pursuing your career as vocation and not as a series of randomly assigned jobs within the organization—resonate with you?

The biggest obstacle that organizations face today in becoming a learning organization is overcoming the fear and ignorance that arise


PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT The people in human resources who aspire to help the people realize their potential as a learning organization can explore the possibilities of adopting collaborative innovation as their practice to realize their larger charter. The act and the discipline of framing and reframing the questions that members of the organization perceive as critical to realizing greater meaning in their work can serve as the foundation by which the organization attains the five disciplines Senge identified as present in learning organizations: system thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning.

Years ago you developed recruitment and on-boarding practices to fulfill your obligation to hire the people the organization needs. Again, wax on and wax off: adopt and apply the practice of collaborative innovation to help the organization evolve into a learning organization. In doing so, claim your charter and take your rightful, strategic place at the table.


Figure 3 Linking the scorecard with human resources’ use of collaborative innovation

Learning & Growth Strategy

Operational Strategy

Scorecard

Customer Strategy

Examples of Critical Questions to Explore Through Collaborative Innovation

Financial Objectives Identifying opportunities for greater profitability / turnover / leverage...

Capturing greater share of wallet / Fending off competitive threats / Identifying new segments

Achieving greater levels of quality / efficiency / sustainability

Identifying opportunities to gain personal mastery that align with organizational intent /seeing the whole to participate in its evolution

when the opportunity appears to ask the question about the question: essentially, “What’s important to us?” and “What’s important to me?”

The introduction of collaborative innovation, as enabled now by technology, gives the strategically minded human resources person the opportunity to engage the larger organization on the critical question through the thoughtful application of social media and foundation of virtual communities that leaven periods of person-to-person reflection.

By extension, this approach allows organizations that have embraced the balanced scorecard approach to strategy to enliven the discussion around alignment by asking the critical question of what’s worth scoring.

Many organizations have struggled to implement the balanced scorecard. They turn a simple, visual concept into a complex dash-board cum data warehouse. Organizations fumble the scorecard in part because becoming a learning organization requires the people to run the strategy map upside down. If a firm’s intangible assets represent its ultimate source of value creation, then the learning and growth perspective—Senge’s starting point—must drive the financial perspective. Anyone who has spent meaningful periods of time in large organizations instinctively knows that it determines it. The organization’s learning and growth potential determines that organization’s capacity to change (figure 3).


Your plate is full. Someone graciously offers you a spoonful of collaborative innovation. Should you accept? In this article Doug Collins

makes the case for why you should say “yes,” then go back for seconds, embracing collaborative innovation as your day job in order to

enjoy a career in a world that values people who know how to put their insights to work.

Organizations feel their way through the rubble of the economic collapse like basement-dwelling refugees walking their belongings out of a fire-bombed city. The way forward—the most promising path to reclamation if not salvation to the promised land of the way things used to be—is “innovation.”

Leaders of the world’s organizations small, medium, large, and country-sized pin their hopes of future prosperity on becoming more innovative: by injecting a good dose of innovation into the resident culture. Makes for good copy. A rounded tablespoon of innovation for the organization works like a weekend at the spa for the body. Who can argue against the promise its curative powers hold for one and all alike?

Meanwhile, back at the reality ranch, I find a different dynamic at work. With utmost confidence and utter dismay I report that the word from on high has not made its way into the departmental nooks and crannies where organizational culture takes root.

At the places where the rubber meets the road—where the people who prescribe direction meet the folks who carry the load—the question the latter whispers in my ear remains, “How do I make time for this (fill in the blank for the name of the group’s branded innovation program and add mild profanity to taste)? Is innovation now partof my day job?”

How do I make time for this? Is innovation now part of my day job?

They would seem to rationally ask a reasonable question. Most gainfully employed people today juggle more jobs than a Jamaican cab driver working to put their youngest and most studious child through her last year of medical school. Do we need to add “be innovative” to the pile?

The only reasonable answer I can offer in kind? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes, make time to innovate.

Yes, follow the ideas you contribute and collaborate on to their logical or wonderfully illogical conclusion.

Yes, take ownership of and master the practice of innovation within your organization. And, if you find that your organization’s practice is, in practice, malpractice, take ownership of improving it.

Further, while we remain on the subject, yes, buy five (5) new Moleskins to carry in purse or pocket so you can capture your thoughts as you make your way through life. Thoreau kept a commonplace book. So should you.

You reflect for a moment. You observe to me that ten years ago, the word on the street was that people were the organization’s most valuable asset. Then, the hammer fell. Inconceivably, many of the valuable assets were shown the door. The rest put their heads down and have not looked up since.

What’s changed? What’s different now? Is the call for innovation new wine in a musty old cask reeking of the stale fumes of knowledge management?

Here’s what you need to know. Every day when you come to work or go to wherever you go to do whatever you do to occupy your time, you learn something. If you serve a client, you know more about that client than anyone else in the organization. If you operate a machine you know more about that machine than anyone else in

the organization.

What does that knowledge get you today? Very little, likely. You do little to put yourself in a position where people can value the worth of what you know.

You achieve new levels of customer intimacy with a remote client.

Yes, Innovation is Your Day Job


The boss sees you on the phone and wonders if you’re reconnecting with a sorority sister.

You learn everything you can about a new piece of machinery. The boss sees you driving around the shop floor and wonders if robotic assembly would reduce variability.

See the difference? The breadth of your insights exceeds the limits of your current job. You spent a productive hour on the phone with the

client which kept them in the fold when the customers who worked with the competitor down the street bolted to greener pastures when the going got tough. You have perspective on what one needs to do to retain a client. How much is that knowledge worth in today’s hyper competitive world. A lot. A whole lot.

Are you being recognized and rewarded for having and applying this knowledge? Possibly not. Probably not to the extent you should be if the organization focused on what matters to its future. Do not wait for the organization to awake. Awake first, then alert others.

In short: get out there. When given the chance to engage in collaborative innovation, take it. If nobody gives you the opportunity, then make your own.

When given the chance to engage in collaborative innovation, take it.

What if you work for the organization that proclaims its people as its most valuable asset, but has no interest in connecting the dots that lead back to a reasonable return on invested human capital?

Oh, snap. If you hold the only chair in the innovation orchestra at your place—if you contribute and take ownership of your own

practice, but can find no kindred spirits, then you need to leave. Find the organization that has embraced innovation in an authentic way. Or, start your own entity. It’s a free world and becoming increasingly more so with each passing day. Just ask the Tunisians.

Your current organization will not survive. Further, its demise, short or long in coming, will be painful for all involved. Get out now. Or, prepare to explain to the next person who might want to hire you why you spent the last three years circling the drain.

A number of years ago Tom Peters wrote the seminal piece of the modern, digital age, “The Brand Called You.” Please Google it and read it. Many—too many—interpreted his call to action as an invitation to shameless self-promotion. They spend their days re-tweeting pabulum and friending distant relatives.

Wrong.

“The Brand Called You” calls our attention to the fact that we have an increasing number of opportunities to translate what we do into what we know and to in turn translate what we know into ideas that become innovations that can benefit our organizations, our communities, and ourselves.

Every day when you come to work or go to wherever you go to do whatever you do to occupy your time, you learn something. If you serve a client, you know more about that client than anyone else in the organization. If you operate a machine you know more about that machine than anyone else in the organization.

“

“


Our brand reflects our ability to achieve and to articulate our achievements in a way that resonates with our communities at work and home. Can we be of use? Can we do something of value for someone else? Leave the virtual sandwich boards at home. Contributing and pursuing an idea that can help someone—a client, a friend, or a neighbor—represents one of the highest forms of achievement.

Make the effort, if for no other reason than to acknowledge that the economic potential of what you know—your intellectual capital—far, far outstrips your economic potential of what you do. Deferring the practice of innovation to the person down the hall no longer serves as a viable option. Today, the definition of a dead-end job is one that does not include an innovation component. Today, the definition of an organization on life support and fading fast is one that chooses not to realize its potential for leadership in innovation.


Figure 1 Linking the scorecard with human resources’ use of collaborative innovation

What you do.

Collaborative innovation as your lever

What you know

Your brand: choices you make to convert what you know into value

You

MINDJET | 1160 Battery St. 4th Floor | San Francisco, CA 94111, USA | mindjet.com | [email protected] | (US) 1-877-MINDJET

Mindjet, MindManager, and the Mindjet logo are registered trademarks of Mindjet, in the U.S. and other countries. Spigit and SpigitEngage are registered trademarks of Spigit, Inc. Fortune 100 is a registered trademark of the FORTUNE magazine division of Time Inc.

Mindjet provides the leading SaaS platform to drive repeatable business innovation. Our innovation management suite, including SpigitEngage and MindManager, are used by the world’s most innovative brands and over 85% of the Fortune 500. Our technology platform incorporates social dynamics, purposeful collaboration, visual mind mapping, crowd science, and analytics. Our software capabilities help leading brands surface and develop the best ideas from their employees, partners and customers to drive product and process innovation and create an engaged organization with a culture of innovation. Mindjet is headquartered in San Francisco with offices throughout the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia.

ideas that work: extending the success of your innovation program

Business

innovation community

innovation architecture

innovation programideas

innovation challenges

community members

collaborative innovation

ideas community work

success breeds success