tapping communities to accelerate corporate innovation
DESCRIPTION
Presentation given on May 13, 2009 for the Forrester-Spigit webinar: Tapping Communities to Accelerate Corporate Innovation. Focuses on the strategic value of innovation, the value communities bring to identifying and refining the best ideas, how to leverage members with different expertise and why innovation efforts should be measured. Learn more at http://www.spigit.com/TRANSCRIPT
May 2009May 2009
Tapping Communities to Accelerate Corporate Innovation
2
What We’re Going to Talk About
spigit Strategic value of innovationless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
spigit Email ≠ communitiesless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
spigit Corporate innovation is more than a popularity contestless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
spigit If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage itless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
spigit Wrap upless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
3
Strategic Value of Innovation
Leading innovators generate 430 basis points more in shareholder return than do average companies.
Put another way, if an average company were to return 7.7% on your investment, leading innovators would return 12.0%. As an investor, that’s pretty attractive.
“Best-in-class innovators hit product revenue targets and launch dates 46% more often than industry peers.
The best-in-class companies are 30% more likely to systematically capture and track ideas, and 40% more likely to tap external communities for new ideas and feedback.”
4
Our Innovation Leader Examples Really Don’t Offer Guidance
#1 AppleCreator-in-Chief
#2 GoogleAd Market Dominance Fuels 97% Revenues
5
Create Sustainable, Ongoing Innovation
Adi Alon and Daniel D. Chow
How to Get the Most From Your Best Ideas
“If senior executives expect to achieve repeatable and ongoing improvements in business performance, the innovation discipline needs to be supported by tools, capabilities and resources that are accessible across the organization”
The vast majority of innovation is incremental and built from one’s everyday experiences.
Provide communities a way to share their ideas, and to identify those with the most merit.
6
Spigit: Enterprise Idea Management Platform
employees
customers partners
Collaboration tools
Idea stages
User reputation scores
Analytics
Idea trading
Prediction markets
Role-based workflow
7
Email ≠ community
photo: flickr.com/photos/ajagendorf25/3033960008/
8
Is This Any Way to Manage Innovation?
email suggestion boxcustomer service
databasepost-it notes
Ad hoc, siloed approaches to managing ideas fail to foster innovation on three counts:
1.Cross enterprise visibility2.Inadequate collaboration3.Innovation share of mind
9
Community-Driven Idea Management
R&D
customer feedback
field ops
market researchproject
mgt
Source idea
Post idea
Idea
Description
Category
Media
Select and implement
Refine and build out
Community feedback
reviews
viewswikis
votes
forums
10
Communities Span the Structural Holes
Source: Professor Ronald Burt, Structural Holes and Good Ideas
Chicago professor Ronald Burt analyzed the structural holes between groups of employees.
Specifically, he evaluated employees who broker across holes, and those who are network constrained.
Being connected across groups provides a significant benefit to employees in terms of accessing alternative, non-redundant information.
11
Diverse Knowledge and Perspectives Significantly Increase Idea Quality
Source: Professor Ronald Burt, Structural Holes and Good Ideas
Employees of a supply chain group for a major electronics firm were asked for one idea to improve company operations.
Their ideas were then rated by two senior executives.
Ideas generated from employees with exposure to more diverse viewpoints and non-redundant knowledge were consistently rated higher.
12
Community Innovation Cycle
Sustainable, ongoing innovation
13
Corporate innovation is more than a popularity contest
photo: flickr.com/photos/lcrward/2665896822/
14
Sometimes Popularity Is Enough
Basic consumer products
When does simple popularity (e.g. number of votes) work well for identifying the best ideas?
1.End buyer requests2.Lower complexity features3.No concentration of buying power
Think of it this way: Each vote represents the purchase of a product.
15
Sometimes Authority Is Required
What determines authority?1.Acknowledged expertise2.Peer-reviewed contributions3.Significant customer or partner
Wilson Haddow, Microsoft Corp.
“There are times when the collective wisdom is what we need. But what about those times when we need to make a strategic decision and only a few in the crowd have the necessary background and insight to help? How do we separate the knowledge from the noise? How do we know to whom to listen? How do we find them?”
Many ideas will be strategic, more complex, niche-oriented or affect multiple operations. Stronger filters than simple popularity are required.
The best idea management philosophy:
Equality of opportunity for every idea, but different levels of authority for every person.
16
Community Reputation Systems
Bryce GlassCurrent Yahoo
Randy FarmerFormer Yahoo
Four considerations for reputation systems:
1.Scale - manage and present an overwhelming inflow of user contributions2.Quality - filter good stuff from bad3.Engagement - reward contributors4.Moderation - stamp out worst stuff quickly
Building on Randy and Bryce’s work, user reputation systems need:
1.Two ways to establish authority: earned and assigned2.Associate content feedback to its creator3.Decay older feedback4.Use reputation as a weight in managing user contributions
17
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it
photo: flickr.com/photos/melancon/3051916304/
18
Measuring and Managing Emergence
Emergent, incomplete idea
Structured, managed initiative
Other enterprise platforms
Idea management platform
D. Lynn KelleyMeasurement Made Accessible
“Measurement is assessing the degree to which a variable is present.
Notice that there is no reference to counting or quantifying the variable in the definition.”
19
What Can Be Measured?
The process of community-driven innovation generates valuable data that can be used to improve the innovation management process.
Reward community participation by taking a positive accountability approach to measurement.
20
Innovation Measurement’s Benefits
Identify areas where innovation is excelling, understand how that applies across communities
Create an environment where individuals are recognized for their good work and can impact company direction. Provide transparency into the innovation process.
21
Wrap-Up
22
Communities Will Drive Innovation
spigit Innovation is a critical driver of corporate performanceless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
spigit Most ideas are incremental, ideal for sustainable, ongoing innovationless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
spigit Can you see the new ideas that employees, customers and partners continually generate?less than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
spigit Exposing ideas to diverse perspectives significantly increases their qualityless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
spigit Apply user authority when appropriate, and monitor and improve your innovation process through measurementless than 5 seconds ago from PowerPoint
23
Contact Us
Website: http://spigit.com
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (925) 297-2600
Over 1 million employees at Fortune 500 companies use Spigit