I was writing an article on bottom up innovation and I decided to discuss the definition of bottom up innovation in a social media group on LinkedIn. One of the participants came back with a tip to take a look at a blog post of Seth Godin about guy #3. Seth’s blog post gave me an interesting insight I would like to share with you.

The post is about a film someone sent him.

Seth writes: “My favorite part happens just before the first minute mark. That’s when guy #3 joins the group. Before him, it was just a crazy dancing guy and then maybe one other crazy guy. But it’s guy #3 who made it a movement. Initiators are rare indeed, but it’s scary to be the leader. Guy #3 is rare too, but it’s a lot less scary and just as important. Guy #49 is irrelevant. No bravery points for being part of the mob. We need more guy #3s.”

One of the key strenghts our company has, is that we can get bottom up innovation and internal corporate communities to work. It has always been a bit of a struggle to describe precisely what we do. We have always called what we do ‘supplying perceived critical mass.’ Perceived critical mass is needed when a (innovation) community is not large enough to look vibrant and without intervention would look dull and die. Until the community gains enough critical mass to be vibrant itself, a supporting team generates all sorts activity to stir things up. Some people find this description too abstract though. Reading Seth’s blog made me see a big void in innovation management and how we create value for our clients.

When most companies set-up innovation an important aspect of that is looking for entrepreneurs (guy #1). Not much attention is given to make sure that when guy #1 starts dancing there are people standing by to join in. Many companies have hiring policies and training to make people behave more entrepreneurial. I have never seen a company hire or train with the aim for people to be the initial supporters of intrapreneurs. When asked many companies will agree there is a big gap between the entrepreneurs running ahead and the the rest of the organization. You can have all the entrepreneurs, processes and tools you like, if you do not fill the gap, you’ll be completely dependent on the chance of a guy #3 jumping in. We fill this void by giving hands on support to entrepreneurs, activating employees to help out entrepreneurs, or coach entrepreneurs to find guy #3′s.

Wouldn’t it be great if we would structurally fill the gap. There are large groups of employees that would qualify for the role of guy #3. Traditional staff functions are generally very knowledgeable however, in many companies they take on the role of firing squad, telling the intrapreneur why his or her idea will not work. If these employees could be trained as Guy #3s this would be very beneficial. So the value for companies is not in training controllers to think like entrepreneurs. The trick is to train controllers to dance with entrepreneurial people.

In internal communities a similar problem exists. Usually community managers fully focus on finding people that will post content and stop there. If people are actually asking colleagues for input or help, unanswered questions are a detrimental warning: “Don’t ask your question here because you’ll be ignored by your colleagues and look stupid.”Also questions without initial response often remain without response. In the communities we support, we find guy #1s but also find guys #2 and 3 to respond quickly to guy #1. After guy #3, the community will take over.