Technology and Organizations

What’s the best support system for open, collaborative innovation? There are sites to help you find collaborators (e.g., Build It with Me) and there are sites focused on collaboration around specific areas of interest (e.g., DIY Drones, Local Motors, & AeroInnovate). Should you add collaboration to community of interest pages or should projects build their own collaboration spaces (perhaps with Google Sites, Huddle, or within the enterprise, Brainstorm)? These are the questions my Managing Technology & Innovation students will be addressing in their Spring term (focusing on Electric Aircraft collaborations). But first, I’m going to spend some posts following my own advice: doing an audit.

First audit question: Who are the participants? Ans: Companies, individuals, and teams.

Henry Chesbrough, David Teece, Eric von Hippel and others have drilled holes in the traditional innovation funnel. “With knowledge now widely distributed, companies cannot rely entirely on their own research, but should acquire inventions or intellectual property from other companies when it advances the business model.” Instead of companies having closed R&D processes where ideas are generated and developed within the walls of the company, we now see ideas coming from non-research focused employees, customers & users; collaborations across past competitors; alliances; and acquisitions as being the dynamics of R&D.

At the same time, individuals and teams are seeing the value of small batch entrepreneurship, hackerspaces, and the Do It Ourselves (DIO) economy. Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson presents this shift as “The Next Industrial Revolution:”

The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3-D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and a little expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door, and once it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and be in full production, making hundreds, thousands, or more. They can become a virtual micro-factory, able to design and sell goods without any infrastructure or even inventory; products can be assembled and drop-shipped by contractors who serve hundreds of such customers simultaneously.

In the case of electric aircraft the list of participants is long, and diverse: Enthusiast organizations, foundations, and government agencies (e.g., EAA, NASA, CAFE Foundation, FAA); companies like Boeing and Yuneec; and component firms and inventors (see the preliminary program for Cafe Foundation’s 2010 symposium for a flavor).

Next up: What activities does an open innovation infrastructure need to support? Hint: I’ll be building from Gibson & Gibb’s discussion around innovation teams. Thanks in advance for comments that suggest sources outlining the activities that companies, individuals, and teams need to be supported by an innovation infrastructure and/or tools that support these activities. Personal favorites or ones to avoid especially appreciated. For some background, check out Open Innovators and their list of platforms.

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The energy around innovation activities is keeping me sane as we get to the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere. Web 2.0 infrastructures and Enterprise 2.0 ideals are energizing innovation in a way not possible with just a few people in a garage. Recruiting, Knowledge, Evaluation, Tools, and Market seem to be five foundational ways Web 2.0 supports innovation.

Last week I ran across BuildItWith.Me:

Build It With Me is a tool that connects design & development entrepreneurs. It exists to make creating apps easier by connecting you with like-minded designers & developers with the same goal: create cool & useful apps. Getting funding for your app idea is hard and often unrealistic. Most of the time you may just need to connect with a partner who has a skill set you lack to finish off your app. This is where Build It With Me is comes in, connecting you to those people. Skip the funding. Build It With Me will help you bootstrap your ideas into actual apps.

Recruiting

Build It With Me supports innovation through both knowledge and labor. You may be able to find someone with a skill you don’t have, but need, for your innovation — or you may be able to find someone to just share the workload. Key is that you find them by skill/interest rather than location or ad hoc connections.

Knowledge

But not everyone who helps your with your innovation has to be a member of the team.

Communities of practice have always shared knowledge amongst their members. Knowledge sharing is one of their hallmarks. Web 2.0 versions of Communities of Practice increase the reach, speed, and ease of the process. For example, the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Home-Builders Corner was part of their 1953 newsletter (pdf). Through the wonders of the Internet I can find not only that 1953 information, but of course have access to the current 24/7 searchable discussion board version of Homebuilders Corner.

Evaluation

Not all ideas are good ones.

Many innovation support systems allow people to rate the idea, point to where aspects of the project might have already being done, etc. Cisco used a hybrid social networking approach in its I-Prize. The I-Prize was an open innovation prize competition, but the early stages were evaluated by the community. Intuit’s Brainstorm tool similarly provides a hybrid approach offering evaluation and more (recruiting, workflow support, etc.) across either an internal audience, or one that crosses organizational boundaries.

Tools

In this first example, when I say tools, I mean tools: lasers, saws, 3D printers:

TechShop is a 15,000 square-foot membership-based workshop that provides members with access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a creative and supportive community of like-minded people so you can build the things you have always wanted to make. You can think of TechShop as a health club but with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment.

Technically the tools themselves aren’t Web 2.0, but the Web 2.0 connection is there in that members collaborate and share knowledge via the TechShop Member Forum.

Other examples of Web2.0 tools are more straightforward (e.g., open source software), but not as likely to throw off sparks.

Market

One of the keys to user innovation (versus closed corporate innovation) is that it be able to compete (Von Hippel, p. 118, free pdf of book). Software/web innovation has it easy in that transportation costs are virtually nil, but all innovations can take advantage of social media to gain immense marketing reach for little to no money. (Perky video on Social Media ROI: Socialnomics.)

Recruiting, Knowledge, Evaluation, Tools, and Market. Web 2.0 provides us with collaborative avenues toward innovation. What have I left out? How about incentive? Are we more likely to participate in innovation activities when we can interact with many more like-minded collaborators – even if we never get to meet? Are we more more or less likely to participate when our actions can perhaps been seen on a global stage? I’m hoping to write a follow-up post on Generating and Maintaining Energy for Open Innovation Platforms and would be happy to collaborate….

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For more on Open Innovation – with a review of some of Carliss Baldwin & Eric von Hippel’s recent work, please see More proof that sharing is good, von Hippel style.

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Some organizations get it, and some just don’t. ASTM International (previously known as American Society for Testing and Materials) is among the organizations that practice TOP Management as part of their DNA. ASTM supports the development and archiving of high-quality, market-relevant standards — beginning with a standard for railway steel in 1901. They understand how technology fits into both what they do (for example, the creation of new standards around new technologies) – and how they do it. You may recall that Earl Lawrence of EAA mentioned that the process of how Light Sport Aircraft standards came into being seemed to him to be an example of TOP Management. ASTM’s Dan Schultz was the staff manager for the LSA standards development process. I had the opportunity to talk with Dan a couple of weeks ago and I came a way with a new understanding of how TOP Management can be as much a part of the organization as is it a part of its peoples’ skills.

What does ASTM do? You know those standards you see quoted on airplane parts, Federal regulations, and baby strollers? Things like “meets ASTM standard….” I now have a better understanding of where standards come from and how they are used by industry and government. Key is that standards are not handed down from on high. Not at all. Standards, at least those developed via ASTM’s process, are a community effort created explicitly via a “balanced” process where all stakeholders are heard and decisions are made by a fair and transparent ballot process. In the case of the Light Sport Aircraft process, ASTM facilitated the creation of 30 standards in 30 months.

That statistic, 30 standards, 30 months (recall this is a voluntary process) and the resulting creation of an industry around this new form of recreational aircraft lead me to stamp the process with the TOP Management sticker of approval. The task itself focused on technical issues of aircraft design and manufacturing, organizational issues of certification, and the realities of the people involved in terms of weight and risk assessment. The process also involved TOP Management: on-line support of pre-meeting work, identification of stakeholders, and balloting; the ASTM organizational process of consensus and balance; and the ability to draw out perspectives from all stakeholders. Dan’s management of this process (and all the varied committees he supports) suggested a high level of personal systems savvy.

I asked Dan how he came to see the need for technology, organization, and people dimensions to be combined as part of his facilitation process. His background was engineering, yet given the quick overview he gave me of standards facilitation it was clear he has the people skills you’d expect from a psychologist.

His answer took me a bit by surprise. Systems savvy: That’s what ASTM is all about. He put the heavy lifting on the organization.

Walking into the mid-90s [growth of the Internet] with 90 years of experience, the organization knew exactly what it had to do…. In order to maintain commercial advantage, the standards development of tomorrow has to develop the most technically competent standard in shortest amount of time or industry won’t select you.

He said ASTM formally sketched out the digital path – cradle to grave standards development given new technologies. They made sure that their products, standards, could be created quickly and in a form that the customer wanted, and easily accessible. They made sure that their process was improved by use of electronic collaboration – they haven’t replaced face-to-face collaboration, but rather steamlined those face-to-face meetings by their new pre and post-meeting processes.

I generally talk about TOP Management being practiced by a person — and clearly Dan Schultz is a TOP Manager (managing technology, organizations, and people in an integrated way) — but the ASTM example highlights the value of embedding TOP Management into the organization itself. My colleagues and I have also talked about embedded TOP Management strategies into technologies, but I’ll save that discussion for another time.

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What do electric planes, home brewed beer, automobiles, and personal computers have in common? They are all innovations with enthusiast organizations to thank for their development.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about “public” innovation labs like Google Labs, PARC Living Laboratory, and IDEO Labs. At the end, I asked:

Each of the above public examples have an organization taking the lead and gaining its own benefit. What if the users took the lead? We see this with the free and open source software collaborations. What about more physical innovations, or cases where the it’s not a joint project, but many people still contribute?

An excerpt of Huggy Rao’s 2008 book Market Rebels and Radical Innovation gave me some great history and insights (video of Prof. Rao talking about book). He points out that automobiles, personal computers, and home brewed beer each had a “hot cause” to arouse emotion and create a community of members, and “cool mobilization” — think jazz “cool” — to signal the identity of members and to sustain their commitment:

• Automobiles had enthusiast organizations with with hot cause goals of shielding owners from legal harassment and solving problems of transportation (this was the late 1800s). The cool mobilization strategies were reliability contests (though some of them seem to have gotten pretty “hot” – women screaming, men stomping on hats…)
• Personal computers had “the tyranny of the central computer” as their hot cause and hobbyist clubs (most famously, the Home Brew Computer Club where the Apple I and many others made their debut) as their cool mobilization.
• Microbrewing and its American Homebrewers Association had the democratization of the production of beer — with the downfall of “industrial beer” (”thin and overcarbonated”) as their hot cause, and home brewing, frequenting brewpubs, and beer festivals as mechanisms for cool mobilization.

I’ve added electric planes to give us thoughts for the future. Electric plane enthusiasts have EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association), the CAFE Foundation, and NASA behind them. While there might not be women screaming and men stomping on hats, there is a $1.5 Million prize “for aircraft that can average at least 100 mph on a 200-mile flight while achieving greater than 200 passenger miles per gallon” – and electric power is likely to play a role. Clearly “green” is hot — and NASA is cool.

But such collaboration isn’t natural or easy. In Steve Gillmor’s recent interview with Ray Ozzie (Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect and creator of Lotus Notes and Groove), Ozzie says about collaboration:

“… people don’t like to work on things that are joint objectives; they like to work on things that are their key — that satisfy their KPIs [key performance indicators], their objectives, not necessarily the joint ones.”

Rao’s “hot” and “cool” (and his deeper analytic links between radical innovation and insurgency) may be the explanation for our examples of collaborative efforts related to these innovations: the causes were so motivating and the social movements so strong that they did (do) help people meet their own objectives.

Photo by rmhermen

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Wednesday I had the great pleasure of interviewing Earl Lawrence, VP of Industry & Regulatory Affairs for EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association).  I’d contacted Mr. Lawrence as part of an on-going project to create a measure of Systems Savvy. His background in government regulations, volunteer organization, aircraft construction, and piloting suggested the ability to weave together the technology, organizations, and people dimensions I focus on in this blog and in my formal research.

We had a wonderful discussion and I took away two key points:

• The design/decision process can play a strong role in the application of systems savvy
• Learning from a broad set of life experiences helps to give you the vision to see all of technology, organization, and people dimensions of a situation

The opening question of the interview was “It would help if you could tell me a story or relate to me an experience you have had in which you learned an important lesson about technology, organizations, and people.”  Earl mentioned that the discussion was bringing a smile to his face:

The smile that came to my face is that individuals somehow piece all that together. It wasn’t that I knew that I was doing that…. I grew up as a technology person, but recognized the need for relationships and the ability to deal with all different kinds of people and a process to bring those together.

LSA [the creation of the light sport aircraft regulations] is a great example.  We had a whole series of things — we had a vision — but you need to put all three mechanisms together in a way that we can get the technology and the soft[er side] people together.

Background: New aircraft regulation and pilot licensing is not a simple project. Besides the legal aspect, manufacturers have to design new models to meet the regulations, new training/testing must be prepared, and a new market created.  From the EAA site:

In 2004, the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] created sport pilot/light-sport aircraft (SP/LSA) regulations. The most significant change in FAA regulations in 50 years, it allows easier and lower-cost access for those wishing to participate in the joy of flight. For the past half century, EAA has been a leader in providing people with more opportunities to take to the sky, and for the past 10 years has worked with the FAA on the development of SP/LSA.

He noted that he didn’t set up the process on his own, but instead approached ASTM International (originally known as the American Society for Testing and Materials). He had observed that ASTM had a world class process for community decision making — consensus decision making that brings together key stakeholders (e.g., manufacturers, consumers, regulators, consumer membership organizations).  Earl gave great credit to the ASTM director who facilitated the process — this person seems to have a healthy serving of Systems Savvy (I’ll be trying to catch up with him for a future post).

Earl offered that the decision making process they used made sure that technology, organization, and people realities were each in play.  The manufacturers had clear perspectives on what was technically possible, the regulators brought the realities of safety standards, the consumers (pilots and operators) understood the performance characteristics and price points that would make sense, and Earl and the ASTM facilitator could help the group grow and and weave together the perspectives and needs.  Thus, the interweaving requires the right perspectives to be on the table and a process to bring them together.

But how do people obtain this weaving skill?  I asked Earl where he got his savvy.  Another great story.  Earl’s mom had a catering business that supported several wedding parties every weekend.  Earl worked these weekends starting at age 8 and continuing through college.  Interestingly, he didn’t appreciate this background to his engineering skills until much later when he was an aerospace manufacturing engineer.  Then the lightbulb went off.  At that point,

“I’m not fully the tech guy… not the guy running the machine… I’d go nuts designing a bracket all day long.  My job was to produce the product, keep everybody happy, and I had to work with a whole bunch of people.  Brought cookies.”  Looked out for them.  Kept their interests in mind.

It was then that he realized the perspective he gained from all those weekends with the crying brides [my description, not his].

Many of us have the capability to be savvy along one or two dimensions.  We can take the next step and manage technology, organization, and people dimensions — all three at the same time –  if we can find a process for keeping all three on the table and if we look to our broader experiences to help us see how the pieces might fit together. 

Comments appreciated on your own “broadening” experiences. 

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