Collaborative Thinking

Talent Management: Create An Environment, Not An Edict

Worth visiting the site where there is a transcript, audio and video session available:

Ask any CEO or senior level executive what his or her biggest challenge is, and the answer is almost always finding and keeping good people. Yet most executives fail to manage their company's needs in a way that recognizes the unpredictability of the global marketplace. In a book titled, Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty, Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources, proposes a new approach to this issue based on applying the principles of supply chain management to people. He and Joyce Bradley -- senior vice president and general manager, Delaware Valley region, of Lee Hecht Harrison, a global human capital consulting firm headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, N.J. -- spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about talent management, including the challenges of managing employees in a recessionary economy. An edited transcript of the interview follows.

The Talent Hunt: Getting the People You Need, When You Need Them - Knowledge@Wharton

A glimpse inside Google's secret sauce

Worth reading... including the links to related articles.

Naveen Viswanatha, lead sales engineer for Google Enterprise, gave a presentation on Tuesday as part of a webinar entitled "Innovation @ Google: a Day in the Life" hosted by KMWorld.

Brian Ussery, a technologist at an interactive marketing agency who moderates a Google forum on SearchEngineWatch.com, wrote a recap of the talk on his blog and has made the presentation available in PDF form.

The gist of the presentation is that Google's flat management structure fosters innovation and good ideas get percolating faster with Web-based apps that allow engineers to find information and collaborate.

However, the real meat is in the screen shots. Marked "confidential" and "proprietary," they are so detailed I feel like I'm seeing something I shouldn't. (In a comment on Google Blogoscoped, which posted some screenshots and other information from the presentation, Ussery explains: "This isn't a leaked document, the webcast encouraged sharing and provided the pdf.")

A glimpse inside Google's secret sauce | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Organizational Effectiveness

Came across my feeds, several interesting points:

IBM CIO Interaction Channel

The new collaboration: Enabling innovation, changing the workplace

While companies see the value of innovation, they frequently fail to put the right tools in place to support those goals. The new collaboration will be built on technologies that enable easy knowledge sharing outside the firewall.

Achieving tangible business benefits with social computing

By collecting and sharing the knowledge scattered throughout departments, companies can better leverage this collective intelligence within the enterprise.

People and innovation: Getting ideas on the table

Many organizations find it difficult to engage their people in the innovation process. Where should they start?

IBM - CIO Interaction Channel - Organizational Effectiveness - Research and insights

Innovation Has Its Own Personality

An article well-worth reading (via Endless Innovation). While the article focus is on architectural design, there are several key points (see below) worth remember and translating into your own organizational context:

A firm’s culture, as succinctly characterized by Jean Valence, Hon. AIA, principal and director of strategic development at Symmes Maini & McKee Associates, Cambridge, Massachusetts, “encompasses its history and accomplishments, its leaders’ ambitions and goals, its definition of and criteria for excellence, its attitude about clients and staff, its traditions and lore, its mood and energy, and its balance between art and business.” In other words, a firm’s values describe its culture, and the subcultural components such as those promoting innovation, continuing education, communication, and so on, impart a distinct personality.

...

This is an extreme approach to fostering innovation in an otherwise relatively static office environment that was proposed by Robert I. Sutton. Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 2001, Sutton argued that fresh perspectives derive from mavericks with wildly diverse backgrounds and no preconceptions who challenge the status quo, champion their own ideas, and illuminate the metaphorical darkness.

...

The notion of a council of experts made up of senior members of a practice, as a resource that contributes to a learning environment through mentoring, supporting teams and individuals with new ideas, and sharing best practices, is a powerful cultural attribute.

...

Applying cross-disciplinary knowledge to help creatively solve architectural problems—and broaden perspectives—is a time-honored strategy.

...

Reorganizing staff can fuel new approaches to engaging everyday problems.

...

If you’re successful, you’re in jeopardy of becoming complacent. So get out of your corner office, fail often, argue respectfully with coworkers, adopt a learning culture, don’t accept anything at face value, and start to innovate.

Creating a firm culture that supports innovative design | Practice Matters | Architectural Record

Connectivity Scorecard

Innovation work commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks. The press release provides some background context (deficiencies in the use of communications technologies). You can download the PDF version of the reports by visiting the site (just click on the citation link below):

New measures provide more comprehensive results on ICT usage

Unlike other research available, the Connectivity Scorecard measures usage and skills such as literacy, the use of enterprise software and the accessibility of women to ICT. It also articulates the benefits of connectivity explicitly in terms of economic and social contributions taking into account varying needs in different countries.

Different economies have different needs

Economic growth of innovation driven economies depends on new ways of using connectivity, whereas for efficiency and resource driven economies social development plays an important role in getting the most from connectivity investments.

The study shows that even the world’s best connected countries such as the Unites States and Sweden are not exploiting communications technologies to their fullest potential. Given the room for improvement on multiple measures of connectivity, there is every reason to believe that the worldwide gain from improving connectivity could be significantly higher.

Connectivity Scorecard

Framing Contests: Putting Decisions In Context

Read the full article for additional insight:

Kaplan's analysis of the "Last Mile" initiative reinforces some specific conclusions about framing practices:

• People have a number of frames to draw upon, built up through past experiences across multiple contexts. These frames shape how they see a situation and what strategies they think a company should pursue.

• Just as actors have a repertoire of frames, they have "multiple, sometimes conflicting, interests, only some of which [in the CommCorp example] were relevant in a particular decision context. Some interests were tangible, such as getting a promotion or preserving one's job. Other interests were intangible, such as being seen as an expert, gaining peer recognition or working on 'cool projects.' Other interests had a collective aspect, such as a chance to contribute to the project team or support one's own functional group," Kaplan writes.

• Where frames about a decision don't align within the organization, actors engage in framing practices to increase the resonance of their own frames and mobilize action in a desired direction. Those actors who most skillfully engage in these practices will shape the frame which prevails. Therefore, frames shape strategic choices -- not in a deterministic fashion but rather in one mediated by organizational framing contests.

• When framing activities are successful, interests can shift, and new coalitions can form. "Coalitions are built around powerful frames (ones which resonate broadly), and powerful coalitions can shape policy," Kaplan notes.

'Framing Contests': When Companies Face Uncertainty, Internal Wrangling Can Lead the Way - Knowledge@Wharton

Making Innovation Strategy Succeed

The topic of innovation continues to garner much attention on all fronts. Some key quotes from the interview:

"...we set out to perform a robust test of the relationship between R&D spending and corporate success and found no statistically significant connection"

"Innovation and new technology are not the same thing. New technology may be a technical advance, but it’s not a real business innovation unless it drives significant new revenue streams."

"...the more tightly aligned innovation strategy is with business, the higher the performance in terms of operating income growth, shareholder return, and so forth."

"...the more companies depend on directly generated customer insight to design their innovation efforts, the higher the level of financial success."

"...every company should have a robust portfolio management process and a process for gathering customer insight."

Here's the interview and a link to the report (which might require registration):

Making Innovation Strategy Succeed
by Amy Bernstein
1/08/08
Booz Allen Hamilton Vice President Barry Jaruzelski discusses the process and findings of the annual Global Innovation 1000 study.

Innovation is a perennial hot topic in business, widely viewed as the key to corporate success. But how closely connected is R&D spending to performance? That is the question behind the Booz Allen Hamilton Global Innovation 1000, a yearly examination of the relationship between R&D investment and corporate success at the world’s 1,000 largest R&D spenders. Since the study’s inception in early 2005, Barry Jaruzelski, a vice president with Booz Allen in New York, has taken a lead role in it. He sat down with strategy+business in December 2007 to discuss his view of the research, including which findings most surprised him.

Making Innovation Strategy Succeed

The Viral Classroom

No, it's not about the flu, it's about the network effects that are occurring around Apple's iTunes U. The article below from the LA Times is worth reading (Per Peter):

Apple began working with Duke University in late 2004 to broadcast classes from its website using iTunes software and has expanded the service to other schools. Separately, some universities started putting lectures on the iTunes store in the form of podcasts, which are free video or audio recordings that anyone can download to their computer or iPod. The downloads have surged since May, when Apple began featuring lessons on the iTunes home page under the heading iTunes U. For example, the 86 courses UC Berkeley offers are now being downloaded 50,000 times a week, up from 15,000 before Apple's promotion.

Analysts say Apple foots the bill for storing and cataloging the recordings to create goodwill with universities, which are big buyers of its Macintosh computers. It has another motive: Podcasts drive demand for iPods.
For their part, universities are experimenting to see what works. Mogulof said UC Berkeley had no plans to charge for the podcasts but acknowledged that the benefits were unclear.

The iPod lecture circuit - Los Angeles Times

Innovation Networks

Interesting article (coincidentally, I was just briefed by Brightidea on the topic of innovation management - this dovetails on that thread nicely. You need a process but you also need a network aspect (read the article below) and you also need to address the "fuzzy front end" of innovation (perhaps leveraging tools such as blogs, wikis, tagging, etc). And, you need to have a sensory network while the concept moves through the more structures innovation management process.

I really enjoyed this point from Larry Huston, managing partner of consulting firm 4INNO:

"So, the very first step is to get very clear about why you're doing it, and what your strategic intent is. And then begin to really design the network around the strategic intent. Do you need just incremental problem solving? Do I need to build idea nets? Do I need to build solution nets? Do I need cost innovation networks? Am I looking for disruptive innovation? Do I need to reach from one domain into another domain of knowledge outside of my industry where I might find more disruptive innovation?"

Not all networks are the same, or used in the same manner. The same is true when we think of social networks BTW. I also thought this point was great:

"The other way to go with networks is to think about a relationship based model -- [that is,] to identify small, medium, large companies that have strategic technologies where I would develop relationships -- top-to-top relationships between my firm and those firms. We basically co-invent, or collaborate together to create the inventions.

The reality is, you can't support a lot of those because those are time intensive. It takes a couple of years to get them off and going. They need to understand you. You need to build trust in them back and forth.
So what you're really doing is, you're building a portfolio of relationships with the outside world. Some of them will be transactions where you just send things out and look for things to come back. Others will be a portfolio of relationships that you very carefully have thought about and you leverage your networks in that way."

There are organizational networks (think entities, companies) not just social networks as they pertain to people (although they are intertwined).

Other key points brought up include: the downside of networks re: loss of intellectual property, and absorption capacity re: being inundated with requests.

Full article:

According to Larry Huston, managing partner of consulting firm 4INNO, future competitive advantage will depend on "innovation networks" -- individuals and organizations outside a company that can help it solve problems and find new ideas for creating growth. A senior fellow at Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation, Huston was vice president of knowledge and innovation for many years at Procter & Gamble, where he was the architect of its Connect + Develop program, an approach that helped extend the company's innovation process to include 1.5 million people outside of P&G. Huston spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about how innovation networks function, the ways they can be nurtured, their potential downsides and the impact they will have on how firms bring products to market. (In a previous podcast, Huston spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about innovation and its role in the global economy.) An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Innovation Networks: Looking for Ideas Outside the Company - Knowledge@Wharton

Innovation: Managing, Creating, Disrupting & Open Sourcing

All the articles in this latest post from HBS are worth reading. Some excerpts below and some "open thinking" that ran through my mind as I read through the stories (more random thoughts, reactions and ideas): 

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Innovation — HBS Working Knowledge

Sharpening Your Skills dives into the HBS Working Knowledge archives to bring together articles on ways to improve your business skills.

Questions to be answered:

• Can innovation and creativity be managed?
• Where do creative ideas come from?
• Can I take advantage of disruption?
• Where can I find innovative solutions?

Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Innovation — HBS Working Knowledge

High Note: Managing the Medici String Quartet

I've always equated "great collaboration" as the result of the "great choreography" that occurs when a team finds its rhythm - high performing teams have a myriad of social contracts between themselves where actions and behaviors are undertaken without reliance on "command and control" mechanisms. As I read through this article, I was linking these concepts to some of the organization issues associated with Enterprise 2.0 and the importance of fostering emergence vs. stewards who may try to reign things in...

During the course, we put together a panel called Stewards versus Creators. Managers often have steward mentalities. They try to be responsible in their expenditure of funds, trying not to invest a dollar if it won't earn more than a dollar back. ... Managing a golden goose individual is an increasingly common issue. Industrial Revolution thinking tries to get around it by trying to extract expertise from individuals and systematize it; the golden goose doesn't exist because everybody is viewed as just a cog in a machine. But when we talk about innovative performance, we can't talk about systematization in the traditional sense because systematization implies producing consistent outcome. I prefer to believe that innovation is about producing inconsistency of outcome, and valuable inconsistency at that. ... As HBS professor Richard Nolan and I wrote earlier this year in the MIT Sloan Management Review, if the steward mentality is obsessed with a breakeven point, a point of diminishing returns, the creator types don't know where that point is and don't care. The idea of "good enough" isn't something they're terribly interested in. As a business, you can't run flat out all the time, but it's important for innovative businesses to have some of that energy inside.

High Note: Managing the Medici String Quartet — HBS Working Knowledge

How Kayak Users Built a New Industry

I love the concept of "dominant design" - are we reaching that with collaborative workspaces - discussion forums, group calendar, document library, et. al. So is SharePoint a reflection of  that dominant design? And it so, is that why the dominant design is having problems incorporating new social capabilities - are vendors delivering dominant designs based on collaboration requirements circa 2000-2003 struggling to protect revenue streams and perhaps stifle innovation from smaller vendors? Or being very careful/pragmatic about which innovative vendors that elect to partner with to add capabilities missing in the dominant design? Intriguing... what does this mean for internal IT groups - are they preserving an existing dominant design and therefore much more hesitant to look at different computing models or smaller vendors that while innovative, threaten existing assumptions - going with the dominant design is just more politically correct than chancing a career limiting move by going against the grain and adopting new architectures from emerging vendors... no clear right or wrong but identifying the transitions onto and off of dominant designs - we tend not to handle these inflection points well...

A dominant design is a standard architecture for a product system that almost all firms in an industry adhere to. For example, the dominant design in automobiles today has a gasoline engine, four wheels with rubber tires, a steering wheel, a closed body, and automatic transmission. Designers may change the attributes of automobiles, but it's considered very radical to depart from these standards. ... Bill Abernathy of HBS and Jim Utterback of MIT defined dominant designs back in the 1970s. They went on to theorize that the nature of innovation and competition changes after a dominant design emerges. Specifically, they said, before a dominant design emerges, there will be lots of product innovation carried out by many small firms. Once the dominant design is established, however, the focus of innovative effort will switch to cost reduction and process improvements. Cost-reducing process innovations benefit large firms most; hence the emergence of a dominant design will trigger an industry shakeout and consolidation.

How Kayak Users Built a New Industry — HBS Working Knowledge

Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage

Similar thoughts to the above story. Are emerging Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 companies trying to disrupt the status quo by building social media platforms that compete with established vendors whose existing "dominant designs" are not as adaptable to newer collaboration, community and social networking patterns? If corporate IT groups lack change management disciplines and processes to address echnology disruption - then does that partially explain the reluctance to "look outside the tunnel" at consumer market trends and emerging social computing technologies?

But established companies often approach innovation and disruption much differently. Having worked hard to align strategy and organization to support the current business, they develop tunnel vision, encouraging employees, customers, suppliers, and partners to work together to deliver today's business results. Even when disruptive opportunities are identified, tightly aligned organizations, business models, and industry relationships make it tough to respond quickly and effectively. As a result, executives in established firms often frame disruption as a threat. When they see changes happening, they work to defend their existing business model and ask, "How can I insulate against these disruptive threats and preserve my current business model?"

Jumpstarting Innovation: Using Disruption to Your Advantage — HBS Working Knowledge

Open Source Science: A New Model for Innovation

How many walled gardens (the ones that wrongly exist) do we need to break down in order to achieve greater levels of transparency within organizations to gain some of the benefits alluded to in this article... so many breakthroughs are the result of catalyzing cultural dynamics more so than technology...

Innovations happen at the intersection of disciplines. People have talked about that a lot and I think we're providing some systematic evidence now with this study. ... We see this in many different places. The insight is that what you want to do is open up your problem to other people—not just to serendipity, but in some systematic way. ... What we don't know is whether some firms may be large enough by themselves to already have the requisite variety and heterogeneity inside the firm. Could they first start by broadcasting problems inside? ... There are always issues around managerial incentives, silos, and so forth, but certainly by the way we see open source communities and InnoCentive work, in fact, by broadcasting a problem you can actually attract a lot of people. And what's also important to note is that the problem solving being done is not "We'll spend five years coming up with a solution." Most people take knowledge and information from their back pockets and transfer it to the problem at hand. In our study the average time spent by successful solvers was two weeks, so that's fairly little in the scheme of things.

Open Source Science: A New Model for Innovation — HBS Working Knowledge