The Dirty Maple Flooring Company Enters the Digital Age: Part 19
How might we measure our practice of collaborative innovation? What story do we tell by the factors we identify and the indicators we track? Does the plot interest our audience?
The Dirty Maple Flooring Company Enters the Digital Age: Part 14
Part fourteen of the series finds our leader Charlie Bangbang and his team resolving their first collaborative innovation challenge for the Idea Mill Program. How did it go? What did they do? And, is it to serve mett wurst for lunch, ahead of an afternoon collaboration session?
Placing Time on Your Side for Collaborative Innovation
Time represents the persistent, substantive constraint to being effective within an organization. Can you have a moment of a sponsor’s time to share the benefits of collaborative innovation? Does the sponsor and challenge team perceive you as respecting their time once you persuade them to pursue the practice with you?
The Dirty Maple Flooring Company Enters the Digital Age: Part 13
Part thirteen of the series finds our leader Charlie Bangbang at a crossroads. The Idea Mill Program for Collaborative Innovation has gone well. The Dirty Maple Flooring Company has already seen—or has perhaps felt—at this early date the effects of positive change, as people begin to express their potential for leadership in new and compelling ways. What possibilities are worth pursuing now?
The Dirty Maple Flooring Company Enters the Digital Age: Part 12
Part twelve of the series finds the Idea Mill Program for collaborative innovation bearing fruit in authentic, unexpected ways. Do we have the courage to nurture the right environment in the knowledge—the faith—that good outcomes will result? That people will see the chance to realize their potential for leadership, and take it? Lastly, is it wise, ever, to order the vegetarian special menu for lunch at the local watering hole that features scenes from the hunt on its walls?
Two Ingredients for Pursuing Externally Focused Innovation
Organizations increasingly seek new forms of innovation—and, for themselves, transformation—by engaging in co-creation with the suppliers, clients, and consumers that comprise their value streams. What insights might be gained from organizations that have begun to realize their potential for leadership by embracing openness as a core element of their charter? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins reflects on the progress that the Beijing Genomics Institute (B.G.I.) has made on this front. What lessons does B.G.I. have to teach organizations that decide to paddle with the Digital Age currents as opposed to against them?
The Dirty Maple Flooring Company Enters the Digital Age: Part 11
Part eleven of the series finds challenge participant Carlos Gutierrez embracing his role in the global economy. How might the practice of collaborative innovation help people find their way forward in the Digital Age? How might the practice give people a voice?
The Dirty Maple Flooring Company Enters the Digital Age: Part 02
Organizations big and small have started the journey of remaking themselves so they can survive and thrive in the Digital Age. What needs to change? What needs to go? How might the practice of collaborative innovation help them along their way?
How to Get the Most from your Innovation Software: Key Process Considerations
The first article in this series focusing on collaborative enterprise innovation explains how software can help engage your enterprise in innovation and shares experiences from clients as to the other key activities required to make a ‘software-enabled’ program successful over many years.
Thinking of Creating an Innovation Centre of Excellence? Think again.
Organizations create centers of excellence to distill and disseminate best practices on any number of topics. Using this approach to support collaborative innovation has certain drawbacks, however. In this article Doug Collins identifies the drawbacks and explores an alternative way to support collaborative innovation which respects the tenets of the practice by adopting principles from the Montessori Method.
Internal Communications, Meet Collaborative Innovation
Groups handling internal communications within their organizations experiment with engaging employees through virtual forums. These forums create space for collaboration. In time, meaningful collaboration foments a culture of innovation. How might internal communications advance this culture? How might they secure deeper engagement? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores how securing deeper commitment between organization and employee opens the door to deeper engagement.
Negotiating Win-Win Strategic Innovation Partnerships
Recognizing that every collaborative endeavor is unique and should be evaluated on its own merits, companies must do their homework before starting to work together. Successful innovation collaborations start with a clear understanding of how each company wants to benefit from the partnership, and how they will work toward a win-win outcome. This article highlights matters to be considered and memorialized in this formative stage of a partnership.
Linked Innovation: 5 Keys to Success in Open innovation Challenge Management
Open innovation crowd sourcing methods, when applied to the right problem, can effectively extend the solution provider search beyond the boundaries of an industry. This article presents the application of a targeted broadcast crowd sourcing method to identify unobvious solution providers for a German chain-drive industry consortium. The majority of solutions submitted through this method were previously unknown to the consortium. This evaluation demonstrates the power of open crowd sourcing to provide solutions from discontinuous industries and how effective crowd sourcing can be in open innovation.
Three Ways to Achieve Breakthrough Innovation
How might you foment authentic breakthroughs through collaborative innovation? The fuzzy front end, by name and nature, fails to lend itself to foregone conclusions. Yet, as the innovation practitioner, you can take certain steps that increase the likelihood of achieving breakthroughs. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores the most critical steps for people who see the practice as a means of transforming the organization.
Crossed Signals: Things that Keep Us from Effective Collaborative Innovation
Sometimes we plan to go from point A to point B, but wind up at point C. What happens when point C turns out to be a dead end? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores the crossed signals that can occur when organizations attempt to advance their practice of collaborative innovation, but find themselves someplace less promising.