NESTA Connect

(Fr)Agile Organisations

There is no particular theme to this post  other than the ever present wonder at the pace of change and how we really need to re-invent organisations to enable them to become massively more agile. Anyway, this was prompted by a great chat with the ferociously smart Jon Watts of MTM this morning who recounted 2 stories as follow.

Welcome to Manchester

Firstly - and it pains me to recount this as a Man Utd fan (sorry - but I grew there honest!) - do you remember the recent advertising campaign when Carlos Tevez moved from Man Utd to Man City?

Apparently, it was just one billboard in the city centre for one week! It cost peanuts and yet it got huge amounts of media attention and Jon tells me somebody estimated it was in the region of £30m media value primarily through viral means and of course by the mainstream press picking up on it too. I know advertising business models are undergoing massive change but this really brings it home.

Black-swan proofing

I read Taleb's Black Swan last year but missed a follow up article in the FT in April called 10 principals for a Black Swan-proof world. Most of the 10 refer directly to the financial crisis but three jump out at me as relevant whatever field you are in.

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.
2. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.
3. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.

(Fr)Agile Organisations

Wise words indeed. We talk a lot about agile or innovative organisations but no amount of tweaks to the existing approach is going to be able to respond the change we are facing. The banks and the media might be feeling the pains now but I can't really see a hiding place for any sector or industry. It requires nothing less than a reimagining and recreating of what we think of as organiations in an ever increasingly networked world. I for one am in awe of the challenge but hugely excited by the opportunity.

Orange kicks off new open innovation competition

Today saw the launch of our latest open innovation project with Orange called OSCR. And judging by the question and the buzz in the room after the presentations I think it's fair to say there was a huge amount of interest and excitement in the brief and the opportunity to work with Orange on new web, mobile or TV services.

In a nutshell, innovators have until Friday Nov 6th to submit their ideas on a really simple online application form available here. Then up to 10 projects will be selected to go forward to receive funding from a total available fund of £100,000 together with advice and support from our Trusted Agent team led by Livework and supported by Wireless Innovation.

The process is super quick as we find that one of the biggest hurdles to innovation is lack of momentum.

All the videos of the presentations today are already available on our vimeo site here and the powerpoint presentations will be up by next Monday. If you weren't able to make the event today then I suggest you watching Mark and/or Anita's presentations and the short Q&A session - all below - about what Orange is looking for from this process. (Apologies the sound quality isn't great as it was recorded on a small flip mino camera but hopefully is still audible.)

We'll report back on this blog on how it's progressing and what the outcome is both in terms of the innovations supported. But we are also keen to understand how well the process works for you so please also feedback to us on that.

Anyway, please do get your ideas in before next Friday - and the very best of luck!

Trusted Agents

I've just finished the book Trust Agents by Chris Brogan which is definitely worth a read if you want a practical tips on building your own social capital and networks. I'm not going to go into the content in detail here but it did have one lovely quote which prompted this post:

"It's not who you know, it's who knows you."

I've been struggling for a while to articulate why I think the shift towards networked organisations represents a fundamentally shift in doing business. The move towards openness is clearly a part of it - data, systems, decisions, spaces - there's nowhere to hide any more, and nor should you even try (most of the time). But what this quote unlocked for me was the true reciprocal natural of relationships. This is obviously the fundamental promise of web 2.0 which captures the transition from 1-way to 2-way communication, which is clearly also one of the big drivers of open innovation. In other words, as the age old cliché says, you get out what you put in but nowhere is this more true than in open innovation.

The challenge that many large organisations find themselves in is that "Everyone knows of you, but no one really knows you". Just sucking in great ideas from outside is a sure fire way to shoot yourself in the foot. And yet this is what unfortunately many corporate open innovation strategies are, almost inspite of themselves. Sharing information, and building other organisations capacity, is essential for successful open innovation. Companies like IBM are doing some interesting things in this space, such as with their Smarter planet programme, which I attended yesterday in Dublin.

Network experts not expert networks

All of the above prompted me to think about Trusted Agencies (i.e. organisations), as the logical next step on from Trusted Agents (i.e. people). In recent years and months we've seen a flourishing of what you might call innovation intermediaries or consultancies however by an large I would say most of them are locked into a traditional single client, fee for service, business model.

What I think of as real Trust Agencies are genuine brokers between organisations and institutions representing and promoting the needs on all sides - companies, customers, clients etc. And their business model is based more upon having a stake in the opportunities they generate or in co-developing them with others. The image above image is of 2 of 6 diagramatic representations of new open/co-creation business models developed by Sense Worldwide that I think capture the strategic challenge rather elegantly (all 6 + a white paper is available here).

I know this idea isn't necessarily new per se. I just think the need is growing exponentially. Over the past few years we've done projects now with Proctor and Gamble, Shop Direct (who own Littlewoods), and are also just about to launch a project with Orange where we are testing our Trusted Agent model of corporate open innovation. Have a look at this little video which shows the process rather nicely. 

As we move to a more fluid and distributed model of business, innovative organisations need to give as much as receive for the networked business models to thrive. And so I below the need for genuine honest brokers will be become more important. And they will live or die by their reputations - simple as that.

*Please note - we are in the process of setting up a company called 100% Open which will offer consultancy, training, and networks based upon our models of open innovation. More on that soon.

Open Innovation Needs Network

I believe that the best innovation starts with an unmet need. In other words innovation works best when it is demand driven, not supply driven. And yet too much innovation effort is focussed at developing the supply of ideas or innovations in a vacuum without clarity around the route to market or unmet need it is addressing. By unmet need we mean something like the following:

"A problem or opportunity for which there is no known satisfactory solution which if met would deliver new value."

We are working with Innovation Scout to create an Open Innovation Needs Network and/or Directory where people or organisations can 'start at the end'. In other words they can post unmet needs or offer solutions to them. We are aware of lots of innovation broker sites out there but they tend to be focussed around particular technology or sector niches. What we are seeking to achieve is a tool that will genuinely help find solutions to problems that arise from adjacent or completely unrelated fields.

We are populating the database at present with our immediate network through a low tech method (asking people to fill out cards as in the pic). However to help us in our quest we'd be really pleased if you can you assist by answering these 2 questions:

1. An unmet need means for me...?
2. Please give us an example of a real unmet need you have now e.g. What is the need? Why does it matter? The type of opportunity (license, joint venture etc.)? Value of meeting this need (to you, partners, end-users etc)?

We will report back on this soon with a view to making it available as soon as we can. Thanks!