Making Innovation Flourish

The Innovation Manifesto

Suw Charman's recent exploration of the sources of innovation touches on a lot of the same themes as my earlier post and issues a warning about the current way in which people & businesses think about innovation. In reading through Suw's post, the key messages start to feel like tenets of an Innovation Manifesto (if such a thing existed*). Julia Styles summed these up nicely in her comment:

Innovation does not have a size...it can be a small change that helps solve a big problem.

Innovation is not in a vacuum, and anyone might have a solution, including young people and customers.

Innovation will succeed in business when the business accepts innovation as part of their corporate culture.

It's important to stay connected to technology and what's going on in the outside world and new media if we want to really be innovative.

And finally,
"Innovation is not a buzzword to be repeated in meetings, it's an action, a culture, a day-to-day activity."

While I agree for the most part, I'd adapt this one slightly: "Innovation will succeed in business when the business creates a corporate culture where innovation can thrive."

It's a small change, but important I think. Creating a climate that's conducive to innovation has to come first (only then will you be able to accept innovation as part of the culture). In my mind, the single biggest hindrance to innovation within a business is a culture that is closed, or overly hierarchical, or one where the pressure to perform means people can't see the forest for the trees.

I'd also add a few of my own tenets to the manifesto, namely:

• Innovation cannot be forced, and often not even planned.
• Innovation isn't always about creating something totally new. Adapting, combining and applying existing ideas in new ways can be just as innovative.

Do you have any other principles to add to the manifesto? What's your take?

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* Turns out a few others have already made a stab at their own Innovation Manifestos, including John Kao, who made his into a book (I'd be interested in your review of this if you've read it). Of those freely available online, my personal faves are this one (for its pure idealism) and Matthew May's Elegant Solutions (for its practical advice and applicability). It's also worth a look at Mind of the Innovator, another PDF from Matthew May on the eternally-inspiring site ChangeThis.

How do we build policy to support user-led innovation?

Last week, NESTA hosted Eric von Hippel, Karim Lakhani and a number of their associates for a series of events exploring user-led innovation. Two major points stayed with me:

Firstly, building specific policies to support user-led innovation is challenging.  That, however, is not the same as making sure that other policies do not harm it.  If Eric’s work is correct (and its methodology is excellent) then users are the real source of much innovation.  We must therefore be careful not to enact new IP laws or give free rein to new technologies (like DRM) that might restrict this freedom to innovate.

The challenging nature of building policies to support user-led innovation does not, however, let policymakers off the hook. There are several quick wins that could be achieved simply by making sure that user-led innovation is taken into account in existing initiatives.  If users are so innovative, why should they not feature prominently in Foresight-type programmes, Innovation Platforms and Knowledge Transfer Networks?

Secondly, Eric is often mischaracterised as being ‘anti-IP’ – placed alongside the West coast crusaders and their acolytes in campaigning for the overturning of the international IP system.  This isn’t the case.  Eric argues that user-led innovation needs IP but it needs more intelligent IP that allows more sharing of information and different types of rights. Broadly-speaking, however, any new extensions of existing rights would hurt user-innovators.  But Eric doesn’t make this case like a deranged zealot.  He simply points out that if users are often innovators, it’s good for all of us if the state doesn’t prevent them from doing more of this in the future.

From lightbulbs to 3D TV

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Last week I was fortunate to spend a day at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The site itself is very impressive and hosts around 5000 engineers working on new technologies with ‘Open Innovation’ as their motto. And yet as recently as 2003, the site used to host just one big company, Philips.

Philips made a very deliberate decision to open up the way they operate, and the way they innovate. A clear indication of how things hare changed in a short space of time is the fact that there are now hosts over 40 businesses academic research institute and network called MiPlaza where companies share equipment and services such as cleanrooms. As a symbolic move, in 2005 they even removed the Philips sign at the entrance to the site, despite the major historical connections with the site.

We were fortunate to hear their Chief Technology Officer talk about their approach to open innovation. They now realise that it is much easier to sell successful businesses than it is to sell new technologies, and so they active spin out companies or technologies in the same was as many Universities.

I always find it fascinated to see how organisations re-invent themselves but this was made blatantly clear when we saw how Philips has moved on from starting out in lighting, progressing into Consumer Electronics, and now with a major focus is on Healthcare. The best ‘I want one of those’ moments came when they showcased a pretty spectacular 3D TV – like 3D cinema but without the cardboard red and green specs.

I am struck by the desire and ambition of companies like Philips to engage with ‘the outside world’ in a proactive way, and the opportunities for smaller companies, universities or individuals are significant, though it’s not always easy. Therefore, the theme of corporate open innovation is one of the three core themes that we will investigate through NESTA Connect launching in 2 weeks tomorrow and we’ll post again on this subject over the coming months.

Trust, technology and transliteracy

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I attended an event on 'Transliteracy'€™ at the Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT) at De Montford University yesterday. As a simple soul, I normally like to shy away from words of more than 3 or so syllables and from difficult (to say) concepts such as ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘transliteracy’. Having said that, I was intrigued by the work Prof Sue Thomas and her colleagues are doing at the IOCT so decided to participate.

Transliteracy is fundamentally it is about communicating effectively in different ways and sometimes using different technologies, but has a much more detailed definition you can find here.

Effective communication and building trust gets a lot more difficult when technology is involved as you don’t have the usual body language and eye contact that we often take for granted in face to face interaction. Blogs, social networks or online environments like Second Life, all have their own cultures and etiquette, which are often not obvious to the uninitiated.

Also, it is often said that something like 95% of communication is non-verbal. If this true, then there are real challenges to communicate across distance using technology, which is usually text based. The style of communication also varies massively depending on the communication channel (e.g. irony is difficult in email as I frequently discover to my cost, small talk is the norm at the beginning of face-2-face meetings but not in some other forms of communication etc.).

In particular, when talking about stimulating innovation, I would argue that all innovation is fundamentally collaborative. With increasing specialisation in business and academia in recent years, this has led to an increasing need for organisations and individuals to develop wider, more open networks, partnerships and trusted communities to share ideas and to innovate. In particular, a powerful source of innovation is to collaborate across traditional boundaries, be they organisational, disciplinary or geographic.

Therefore, much of the discussion centred upon how can we communicate effectively and build trust across these disparate communities. Technology definitely has a major role to play in supporting these boundary-disrupting collaborations, but perhaps there is a need to further develop most peoples ‘transliteracy’ skills (idea for a future Nesta programme perhaps).

Another possibly interesting observation (to me at least) was that, through the use of technology, it may reduce the need for facilitators or super-connectors (which are critical in off-line collaborations) because more background information is typically available in a technology facilitated collaboration. For example, it can be easier to ‘scan the room’ for interesting people to talk to in an online environment where peoples profiles are there for everybody to see. If only most networking events or parties were so easy to navigate. And yet, if you are unfortunate enough to get stuck in the (virtual) corner talking to that boring bloke who just split up with his girlfriend and he wants you to talk through it’s last days of their relationship in real time, it is still far easier to ‘exit stage left’.

I’m pleased to say that the event was interesting and populated with a diverse and interesting bunch of people, who surprisingly were not technologists, but included sociologists, anthropologists, musicians, writers and a museum curator! We probably posed more questions than answered, but I guess that is par for the course at this stage. As de Bono argues in his book ‘Lateral Thinking’, it is important to suspend judgement and not kill off an idea too early until it is more fully formed. I think there is still a lot to do with this concept of transliteracy, but it certainly provided some food for thought.

PS. Being flippant for a moment, I am increasingly conscious of the trend to coin a phrase ‘xyz’ and then for ever more being referred to as the person who coined that phrase/term/meme. Transliteracy could be included in this category, as could crowdsourcing, web 2.0, the long tail, the wisdom of crowds and many more. I want to capture the zeitgeist by coining a new meta-phrase which encapsulates this phenomenon – how about ‘coinification’? As in “that’s just utter coinification”. :)

Collaboration and Competition in Balance

What is the right balance between collaboration and competition in enterprise? It strikes me that given the focus on improved productivity through increasing specialisation in corporations in the last 10-20+ years (out-sourcing, off-shoring etc), there is an increasing awareness of the need to redress the balance? The current trend towards open innovation appears to result in direct response to this recent history.

Have organisations, professional communities, industries lost the skills and ability to collaborate which can also lead to prosperty or value through different means? In attending a workshop co-hosted by Cambridge Uni and Unilever last week, it was clear that many businesses are now grappling with trying to identify those missing collaborative skills and how can we regain them?

Corporate Open Innovation - Hype or Reality?

I attended and spoke at a very well run City-Zone networking event on Corporate Open Innovation on Wednesday which had a lively debate around this theme. The room seemed to be split as to whether 'open innovation' was truly a new phenomenon or just the latest management fad. Proctor and Gamble and Oracle presented how they are actively engaging their supply chain, small companies, or customers to innovate. I added to these examples and talked about how IBM in particular are taking a very enlightened approach to innovation as described in their Global Innovation Outlook report.

My own view is that there is undoubtedly hype and spin around the theme of 'open innovation' at the moment, and the reality of innovating and managing IP is a particular problem that needs resolving. Having said that, I believe the evidence that open networking and partnering leads to better, and more innovation, and is increasingly the way innovation is happening and will happen in the future. I find the work of Lakhani and Burt compelling in this area. Corporates have strong brands and the infrastructure to take a product or service to market. But the enthusiasm, ideas and ability to execute often lies outside of the business. Therefore, I believe we are seeing a new way of working and innovating emerging but there is still a long way to go.

Uploading...Innovation

I'm really excited about today's Uploading...Innovation event at NESTA. We have a great group of people coming from all kinds of different backgrounds, the commonality being that they are all building innovation communities on the web. To get things moving we have invited a number of people to deliver short sharp provocations and host the conversations that flow from them – maximum three minutes long – and the following people have accepted this challenge:

• Charles Leadbeater on the ideas behind his new book We Think
• Mark Earls on our herding instincts 
• Molly Webb on the insights emerging from the DEMOS project The Atlas of Ideas
• Dan McQuillan from Amnesty on using social media in campaigning
• Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff will invite you to come together to co-create
• Mark Vanderbeeken from Experientia on a distinctive European approach to user centred innovation
• Jeremy Ettinghausen from Penguin on the crowdsourcing novel www.amillionpenguins.com

Otherwise, the event is open and democratic and anybody can suggest a topic of conversation, but with the group of people we have coming I don't think we'll be short of opinions. I'll post again during or after the event with an update, otherwise keep an eye on the event site here for pictures, posts and video clips.

Innovation as a contact sport

There is a lot of talk at present regarding the importance of collaboration/open innovation and networking, and I would argue that innovation almost always happens through collaboration, rather than in isolation. However, the essence of successful collaboration is often dominated by anecdote and opinion, and hard facts or data are limited to the best of my knowledge. As with any meeting of individuals or organisations, it is critical that participants can find a common language, so that they can communicate and collaborate, and build trust.

Therefore we are in the process of developing a new programme, called NESTA Connect, that will focus upon finding and supporting unexpected, novel or extreme collaborations that disrupt the boundaries between different disciplines, organisations and places. The intention being to examine and explore the essence of successful collaboration and then showcase the best of the best models and collaborators.

We know that we cannot begin such an endeavour without tapping into and harnessing the extraordinary network effects of the Web to connect people to one another, to promote co-creation and harness collective intelligence. Therefore I am delighted that NESTA are hosting 150 of the leading online collaboratives at an event next Tuesday called Uploading Innovation (NB this event is full).

I am particularly interested to share experiences of the ways in which people engage online rather than focussing upon the technology side of things, and are also keen to understand the impact that online communities having on communities centred on physical locations or places? I'll post again after the event to feedback the key findings from the day, but any thoughts or comments on any of the above would be of interest.