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:
- 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?
- What differentiates sharing in large groups vs. small teams?
- How much does familiarity mean trust?
- How to handle different personalities that will intersect?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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.
