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Social Networking
As innovators, we are often called on to watch for and synthesize trends, so we can help our clients predict the future and create new products and services. One new trend we've been watching for a while is the concept of innovation using social networking and wisdom of crowds. As you'd expect from this newsletter, we have strong opinions about these phenomena. Gathering ideas
A number of new software products and websites have sprung up recently to encourage the submission of ideas - online idea suggestion boxes, social networking sites, innovation forums and many others. The most well-known and well-publicized site is Dell's IdeaStorm site. These sites allow anyone, anywhere to submit ideas about topics of interest to them. While there are some advantages to this approach, there are some significant concerns to think about before taking this approach. In particular:
If something seems too easy
If it seems to be too easy to be true, then it's probably a new website. Innovation requires more than simply collecting a lot of ideas from a generally dispersed audience and allowing them to vote on the ideas they submitted. If you don't direct the idea generation into topics of interest to you, the suggestion box will be full of ideas of interest to the submitters but quite possibly at odds with your product or service strategy. Then you've collected ideas and set expectations about those ideas with your customers that you don't want to implement. Drowning in ideas
Just as your IT team is drowning in data from all the system that they manage, this approach can literally drown the innovation team in ideas. As mentioned, Dell's IdeaStorm has over 9000 ideas, and a well run, one or two week idea campaign can easily generate several hundred on one topic. Talk about finding a needle in a stack of needles! Then consider the time necessary to review and process those ideas. Assume for a second that each idea requires between five and ten minutes for a person to review and decide to move forward with, request more information or kill. 9000 ideas at 5 minutes each (an underestimate) is 45,000 minutes or 750 hours - almost a third of a man year just dedicated to a quick review of each idea. Then add in the fact that ideas from customers and partners need a legal review for IP ownership, and you'll see that more ideas is not always the best answer. Workflow
Many social networking sites and forums don't provide workflow or idea management beyond the capture of the idea and a simple voting or rating process. Idea capture is the easiest part of an innovation process, but the bottlenecks exist just downstream - effectively reviewing the ideas, evaluating them and transitioning them into new products or services or business models. Without an effective innovation process to manage the ideas after collection, innovation breaks down. Again, you've set the expectation that these ideas will be captured and reviewed. If not, the submitters will become frustrated and will refuse to submit ideas, and your innovation program and efforts will flounder. If you know it and I know it
A final concern with social networking and wisdom of crowds is that these programs primarily generate very incremental ideas, and since these approaches are very open, collaborative and web-based, they expose ideas to a large number of people. The larger the group, the more the thinking and ideas will revert to the mean. So you can't expect really insightful or disruptive ideas from this approach, nor can you expect that the ideas you generate from this approach are uniquely yours. Your competitors are listening to and engaging your customer base just as frequently as you are, so broadly distributed idea platforms will result in ideas that have been seen and reviewed by a number of firms. Part of a solution
So, just like brainstorming does not equal innovation, but is an important tool or component for innovation, many of these new trends around innovation and social networking are not complete solutions. In fact, they may become great distractions. Generating a huge number of ideas that are relatively incremental doesn't add much to a firm's ability to innovate or differentiate, and may become a huge distraction from real disruptive possibilities. Recognize that innovation is a complex function and that every tool - brainstorming, social networking, innovation processes, creativity and a whole list of others - all play into a robust innovation capability and model. No one solution provides all the answers. |
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Book Review
We at OVO are privileged to receive new books "hot off the press" on innovation to review. We recently received a copy of The Innovator's Guide to Growth and felt it deserved a review in our newsletter. The Innovator's Guide to Growth is a natural continuation of the Innovator's series by Clayton Christensen (Innovator's Dilemma, Innovator's Solution, etc), but is written by consultants from the firm that Christensen founded, Innosight. In The Innovator's Guide to Growth, the authors take a lot of the concepts Christensen created in his books and make them more applicable and practical for an innovator. This is the first book that moves from education and advocacy into practical advice for innovators. What we liked about the book
Scott Anthony and his co-authors have written a book that provides a detailed plan for innovation, breaking down the approach to innovation into stages - planning, identifying opportunities and building processes. Anthony and the other authors follow a lot of what Christensen said about disruptive innovation - especially identifying the underserved or those who aren't served by existing offerings - what they call nonconsumers. They leverage the "jobs to be done" model from Christensen as well, examining innovation from a customer's viewpoint rather than an inside-out viewpoint. There is a short but strong chapter on innovation metrics as well. The book focused less on success stories and analogies and more on practical advice, tools, techniques and templates. Where we felt the book could be
stronger
The Innovator's Guide to growth assumes most of the focus on innovation will be disruptive, so it has less interest and patience to consider incremental or breakthrough thinking. The book assumes most innovation will originate from developing offerings for nonconsumers, so it spends less time than expected in reviewing trends and unidentified opportunities. The book doesn't spend enough time on building out an innovation competency - rather it focuses on innovation projects, and doesn't address key cultural issues like rewards, recognition and culture. Our Take
This book belongs on the desk of any innovator who is leading an innovation program. It has a good focus on disruptive innovation and its early chapters on planning and strategy are well developed. We'd augment it with (shameless plug) Make us more Innovative, because we believe there's more definition necessary in the innovation processes, roles and responsibilities, and that the culture, communication and rewards that innovation requires are not well addressed. |
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PDMA International
The PDMA holds an international conference each year, and the focus of the event has a strong focus on innovation. This year's event is scheduled for September 13 - 15 in Orlando. OVO is chairing a track in this program on the skills and capabilities necessary for innovation. At this year's PDMA International conference, you'll have a chance to interact with leading innovation thinkers in the "Guru" studio and learn practical tools and processes for innovation. See more about the event here, and if you decide to attend, use this code SP08IC to get a 20% discount. I hope we'll see you in September in Orlando! Frost & Sullivan Growth and Innovation
Conference
I've had the opportunity to participate in this event. I'd highly recommend it, since there is a lot of opportunity for interaction and exchange, and many of the attendees are fairly senior in their roles and experience. Frost&Sullivan does a good job with this conference and encouraging interaction between the attendees. Business Innovation Factor Event
We've attended this event for several years and find it inspiring and encouraging for innovators. The Business Innovation Factory sponsors a story telling conference and brings in innovation practitioners from a wide array of companies to talk about their experiences. A small, intimate program focused on lessons learned and the experiences of starting or running innovation programs. |
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If you'd like to discuss how OVO can work
with you
to improve your innovation strategies, ideation
sessions, innovation processes or software,
contact us today at our website
or
(919) 844-5644 x789.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Phillips
OVO
email:
jphillips@ovoinnovation.com
phone:
919-844-5644 x789
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