Radio Show Interview: Collaborative Innovation at Scale

September 26, 2014 by Leave a comment

The area of collaborative innovation is a natural extension of the social business movement. It’s the extension of social into purposeful collaboration, a term Alan Lepofsky uses to describe the evolution of the social business market.

In the innovation-focused radio show, Women Who Innovate, host LeAnna Carey, innovation expert John Lewis and I talk about collaborative innovation at scale. In other words, what are the benefits of, issues with, and techniques for getting hundreds and thousands of people to share ideas and insights, toward a common goal. It’s a different task than getting small teams to collaborate. The recording of the show is below:

This event had a unique twist. It was run in conjunction with the weekly innovation conversation on Twitter, Innochat. In both the radio show on on Twitter, the following topics were covered:

  1. How important is it to get diverse people to contribute to innovation, vs. singular creatives to generate innovations?
    • Doesn’t Steve Jobs point to the primacy of singular genius?
    • What is the model for cognitive diversity to generate innovation outcomes?
  2. What differentiates sharing in large groups vs. small teams?
    • How much does familiarity mean trust?
    • How to handle different personalities that will intersect?
  3. In environments where employee skepticism reigns, how do you change attitudes to open up sharing?
    • What are the ways in which skepticism can creep in?
    • What is the #1 issue that must be addressed?
  4. What are motivations for employees to contribute to an innovation program?
    • How much does “what’s in it for me?” come into play?
    • What are the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations?
  5. What techniques help drive participation in crowdsourced innovation programs?
    • What influence do senior executives have?
    • What influence does peer participation have?
    • How can gamification drive greater participation?

It was a thorough, fast-paced discussion. If you’re considering crowdsourced innovation programs, it’s worth a listen.

I’m @bhc3 on Twitter and I’m a Senior Consultant with HYPE Innovation.

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Talk-n-Tweet | Collaborative Innovation at Scale

September 24, 2014 by 1 Comment

Previously, I’ve described Why Crowdsourcing Works. Crowdsourcing is a case where you get many people who don’t one another collaborating toward a defined outcome.Talk-n-Tweet Collaborative Innovation at ScaleTo reiterate the principle points about the value of crowdsourcing:

  • Diverse inputs drive superior solutions
  • Cognitive diversity requires spanning gaps in social networks

Simple enough, yet actually a rich field for work and analysis. To that end, I invite to two events happening simultaneously on Thursday 25 September 2014 (12 noon Eastern):

  • LeAnna Carey’s radio show (link)
  • Twitter Innochat (link)

I’ll be on the radio show talking with Lea Carey, Renee Hopkins and John Lewis. At the same time, the weekly #innochat will follow along with the radio program. It’s a unique chance to blend live conversation with online discussion. The main questions to be tackled will be:

  1. How important is it to get diverse people to contribute to innovation, vs. singular creatives to generate innovations?
    • Doesn’t Steve Jobs point to the primacy of singular genius?
    • What is the model for cognitive diversity to generate innovation outcomes?
  2. What differentiates sharing in large groups vs. small teams?
    • How much does familiarity mean trust?
    • How to handle different personalities that will intersect?
  3. In environments where employee skepticism reigns, how do you change attitudes to open up sharing?
    • What are the ways in which skepticism can creep in?
    • What is the #1 issue that must be addressed?
  4. What are motivations for employees to contribute to an innovation program?
    • How much does “what’s in it for me?” come into play?
    • What are the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations?
  5. What techniques help drive participation in crowdsourced innovation programs?
    • What influence do senior executives have?
    • What influence does peer participation have?
    • How can gamification drive greater participation?

As a reminder, the event time across time zones:

Thursday 25 September 2014
9 am Pacific
12 noon Eastern
6 pm Central European Time

I look forward to hearing your take on this issue.

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Sharing economy is still in early adopter phase

September 12, 2014 by Leave a comment

Airbnb. Lyft. Kickstarter. Quirky. Kiva. TaskRabbit.

The sharing economy is increasingly in the news. Those six companies are receiving a lot of chatter, as shown by Google News results for September 12, 2014:

Google news results for sharing economy firms 091214

Certainly, the sharing economy is a “thing”. But it’s not yet as mainstream as may come across in the media. For most of us, it’s still sort of a “toy” if you will. Cute that people would offer up their home for a weekend or give someone a ride in that empty passenger seat. But as YCombinator’s Paul Graham says:

Don’t be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that’s a good sign.

The sharing economy is in the early adopter phase. Which means it’s going to need some attributes to make the jump to mainstream adoption:

  • Offering a “whole product” experience, not just satisfying a narrow slide of all needs
  • A feature-quality-price blend that better satisfies existing jobs-to-be-done than do incumbents
  • Evidence of value and satisfaction from others they trust (friends, media)

But the upside is terrific when the sharing economy is adopted. That topic is explored more fully in my new post: Harvesting Abundance in the Sharing Economy. It starts with the premise visualized below, and builds on that:

Changing how we buy goods and services

Interested in how we can dramatically increase supply and long tail options? Check out the sharing economy post.

I’m @bhc3 on Twitter, and I’m a Senior Consultant with HYPE Innovation.

 

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