by Patti Anklam
August 29, 2009 at 7:17 am · Filed under
Collaboration, innovation
Business Week’s current issue is focused on changes in R&D, by which the future of Innovation.
IBM, which has maintained its R&D spending at a steady rate despite the economic downturn, is now launching a global initiative to work with other companies and countries in what it calls collaboratories: partnerships aimed at generating more product ideas while establishing long-term relationships. Here’s what the article says:
The attraction for IBM is clear. The collaborative strategy snags more research with roughly the same amount of IBM money. Performing research with a variety of partners in many locations also exposes IBM to science challenges and ideas that it might not otherwise encounter.
There it is again: IBM is putting itself at risk of good ideas. It’s just sound business. In one example, IBM has established a nano-technology partnership with a ETH Zurich, a Swiss government funded university. The value to the countries is the potential to launch new industries while its universities can “attract the best faculty and students.”
IBM is literally covering the globe with the collaboratories. Each project meets a complex set of criteria, which I assume has a heavy dose of value network analysis (even if they don’t call it that).
The initiative is not without the issues that confront networks (intellectual property negotations can bring a project to a halt) and economies (why should IBM be focusing outside of the U.S. at a time of great economic need here?). But it is a network vision of amazing reach.
by Patti Anklam
August 24, 2009 at 2:59 pm · Filed under
KM, Web 2.0, innovation, social networks
There has been something lately that the more channels we have for information flow (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.) the more we might really be isolating ourselves within a social network of people who are using the same tools that we use, reading the same blogs, and following the same Tweeters all the while we think that the volume of information equates to diversity of information.
Two articles crept to my attention in the first week of August:
The first article suggests that we are losing the ability to learn new things serendipitously as our social networks tend to grow along the lines of people who are like us and we rely on these networks for links to new ideas. (I am reminded of a conversation on Chris Matthew’s program weekend August 22-23 about reading newspapers. The thing about reading a newspaper is that you never know what you might find when you turn the page.)
The second article newsbit points to a Science Magazine article by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of the Kennedy School, “Can We Reinvent the Internet?” Mayer-Schönberger addresses the issue primarily from the viewpoint of the open software movement that is currently driving changes to the Internet. He posits that this community is so connected that fresh ideas are assimilated so quickly they do not have time to develop. Cavalcanti quotes the article:
“An overabundance of connections over which information can travel too cheaply can reduce diversity, foster groupthink, and keep radical ideas from taking hold.”
I’ve long been talking about the importance of diversity in networks in my workshops and training, in both contexts of organizational networks and personal networks.
The most compelling research examples in the importance of diversity in networks comes from Ronald Burt, whose books Structural Holes and Brokerage and Closure look at the structure of networks and the positions of individuals in the network. A structural hole represents a person or group who enjoys a singular position between two or more other groups. This person can have competitive advantage by being able to broker information between the two groups. (For a nice explanation of these concepts, see “Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal it Outside Your Group”, NYT article by Michael Erard.)
The point is very simple when you think about it (and this is how I explain it, as simply as possible). If you have a “closed” network, where everyone pretty much knows or knows about each other. A good aspect of this connectivity is that the network can serve as a filter — multiple tweets or retweets about a topic link usually means it’s worth following — and its possible to generate a common language. However, it’s not likely that the richest source of creativity — two unlikely ideas coming together — will occur. You need (or the organization needs) to have connections outside the group. As Burt puts it (using one of my favorite phrases ever, the title of this blog), “People who live in the intersection of social worlds ‘are at higher risk of having good ideas.”
You may not need to steal the ideas, but to take a close look at your networks. Your professional networks may be more closed than you would like, but it’s possible that your many social networks — clubs, hobbies, sports — may put you at risk of meeting people from other fields, with other types of knowledge.
This is equally true and important in organizational networks. The structural holes need to think like brokers and move information around selflessly and intentionally. There need to be weavers (or more appropriately, “mixers”) who provide opportunities for groups to meet and hear what each other is thinking or doing. And there needs to be a good outside listener who can find speakers and experts from outside the domain of the organization’s knowledge, bring them in, and let people find connections and generate new ideas as they will.
Thought...
