The Future of Collective Intelligence: What's next in collaboration driven innovation technologies?
front end of innovation the last few years.
Electronic suggestion boxes have morphed into social networks dedicated
to innovation and ideas. But it appears
the software creation leaders in this space are focusing on making them better. A fine thing but hardly revolutionary. The question is: Where's the disruptive innovation required to
take this technology to the next level?
more shiny things. Studies show the use
of collaboration technologies improve time to market, enhance profitability,
and impact market share gains. The
competitive company of the future must have Web 2.0 tools to encourage
innovation and to compete effectively.
these baseline innovations incorporated.
(Tomorrow's innovations rapidly become today's minimum standards. )
* Well the biggest innovative addition is the inclusion of 'inspiration'
contributions into the shared process.
Users can contribute 'other' or non-idea content into the mix. This serves to inspire audience members to
come up with ideas. So for instance when
challenged a user may not have an idea but they may contribute links to
articles they've read, RSS feeds for publications the group might benefit by
following, videos, images, events the team may consider attending, documents,
white papers, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations. These are shared with the hope they inspire
ideas from others.
* Workflows can be
automated so promoted ideas are automatically put in front of expert teams and
eventually in front of project managers prior to deployment.
Parallel patent workflows can be incorporated into the
process to secure intellectual property.
This can be very important when the ideation process is exposed to so
many audience members as it inherently is in a collaborative environment.
* Downstream idea enrichment has enhanced the front end of
innovation, pushing idea collaboration further toward production ready states. The technology enables experts to perform
SWOT analysis and feasibility studies on the very best ideas to enrich them
prior to production. A quantitative component enables the comparison of the
best ideas before production.
* Automatic idea promotion empowers community managers so they
don't have to wade through overwhelming numbers of ideas when crowd sourcing
yields high volumes. Automatic idea promotion
fueled by social science algorithms provides reliable promotion suggestions.
* Semantics helps identify similar content so moderators can
more easily determine which ideas should be clustered or merged. It also serves to point out useful content to
ideators ('if you like this idea you might want to take a look at this similar
information'). Plus semantics can
monitor users' contributions and therefore identify subject matter experts
based on the topic at hand.
* Sidebar discussions allow non-idea (yet still required to be
productive) collaborative communication.
This holds true for Polls or Questions (and the crowd sourced answers
that ensue).
* Easily managed security is a baseline requirement. As collective intelligence scales, the
security of intellectual property remains important. With external contributors
and large numbers of internal users in the community, security vigilance is
mandatory. If it's cumbersome gridlock
follows. The administrators of the idea
social network must be able to easily designate who gets to see what exactly.
So what's next?
subject run rampant in the comments section below this blog entry. But here are some thoughts I have on what the
market might expect to enjoy.
Batch Vs. Interactive
'batch' by nature. User one inputs
something and presses 'submit' before everyone else can appreciate. With real time message boards, interactive real
time video and other 'real time' technologies, the speed of collaboration and
ideation becomes enhanced. And it
becomes part of an employee's normal work day productivity.
More visuals and real time video
communications and understanding. Right
now images and videos can be attached to content submissions (and even into 'comments'). One advance enables chemists to collaborate on
the design of a new molecule for pharma and chemical companies. Right now Skype, Webex and GoToMeeting are
separate applications. These types of collaborative visualizations integrated
into the idea social network will enhance the collaborative innovation
process.
Big data, advanced analytics
integrated into the collaborative space but 'big data' has other connotations
and requires different technologies to manage.
Plus it requires easy to use analytics bundled with visualization tools
to appreciate, use and incorporate into the ideation process.
Integration with the Real World
understanding how best to use idea social networks. The brainstorming session or other innovation
'events' are for the most part a parallel activity set. Hopefully the social network software and the
events will be dovetailed so they complement each other. Ideally with Innovation becoming a real time
activity, the social network will be personified in the form of a Situation
Room. Or even better the idea social
network will be part of the fabric of everyone's workspace.
decentralized competence centers into the collaborative space? How do we incorporate every business
competency? How do we globalize and
decentralize R&D? How do we merge
the charter of the Chief Innovation Officer with the Chief Technology Officer
and for that matter with the Chief Marketing Officer? How do we turn New Product Development on its
head so it becomes not based around the launch of a product but instead
supports continuous launches?
The Internet of Things and Integration with 3D printing
process is the moment when the first prototype is built. Designers, engineers and others need to see
the idea take form sometimes in order to move it forward. The future idea system needs to take
advantage of the Internet of Things so that production lines and 3D printing
become part of the process.
Customer sourced innovation and tapping into talent
networks include crowd sourcing as part of the process. We invite customers into the collaborative
space. Plus the trend toward outsourcing
has pushed talent outside of the building, not always available when
needed. The idea social network of the
future has to flexibly, swiftly and nimbly tap into customers and talent on the
fly'expanding and contracting the group size as required. The hurdles of who owns what intellectual property
needs to be resolved (not necessarily a technology issue).
Customer Experience Management and Voice of the Customer. How are you going to listen to these
people? How are you going to identify
their nature? How are you going to reach
out to them and with what message? How will
you engage; how will you cause a response to your call to action?
talent. You have to ask the same
questions about reaching them and communicating them. At its heart is the question of adoption and
engagement. There's more to it than 'build
it and they will come' to a collaborative system as we know. When you open up the collaborative space to
more players and more often these questions loom large and must be resolved.
Challenge: What does
the Innovation Management System of The Future Look Like?
the innovation process the above list of future technology advancement occurred
to me. What do you think is in the
innovation technology pipeline?
writes about enterprise technology focused on social media, innovation, voice
of the customer, marketing automation and enterprise feedback management.
You can learn more about Ron at his biography web site:www.shulkin.net.
You can follow him Twitter. You can follow his blogs at this Facebook group. You can connect with Ron on
LinkedIn.
Ron Shulkin is Vice President of the
Americas for CogniStreamer', an innovation ecosystem. CogniStreamer serves as a
Knowledge Management System, Idea Management System and Social Network for Innovation.
CogniStreamer has been rated as a 'Leader' in Forrester's recent Wave report on
Innovation Management Tools. You can learn more about CogniStreamer here http://bit.ly/ac3x60
. Ron also manages The Idea Management Group on LinkedIn (JoinHere).