Archive for November, 2009

Many innovations come from Lead Users

Screen shot 2009-11-24 at 3.32.00 PM While writing my previous post ‘Lead users, geeks, and freaks’ I started to realize that actually many innovations originate from what I defined as ‘lead users,’ people that solve a big problem for themselves. Here are a few:

The Internet became big after HTML was invented by Tim Berners-Lee because he needed another way to present his research.
The Camelbak was invented by a paramedic that found it too dangerous to reach for his drinking bottle while on his racing bike. He came up with the idea to sow an I.V. Bag into the back of his shirt.This evolved into a Camelbak.
The sports bra was invented in 1970 by a Victoria Woodrow who just started jogging and was severely annoyed by here bouncing breasts.
White-out liquid (Tipp-ex) was invented in the 1940’s by a secretary called Bette Nesmith Graham to fix her typing mistakes. She initially named the product “Mistake Out”

Of course there are other categories of innovation without the inventors having a problem. The most interesting being dreams and accidents. We would not have airplanes if nobody had dreamt of flying. If Sir Alexander Fleming had not accidentally left out one of the glass culture dishes in his lab, we would not have penicillin.

If you know of any interesting innovations from people solving their personal problem, feel free to add them in the comments section.

November 27th, 2009 by Jaap Linssen

Tags: Innovation, lead, lead users

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Lead users, Geeks, and Freaks

Lead users, geeks, and freaks

Two weeks ago I attended a masterclass on co-creation by Frank Piller. An important part of the day concerned lead user innovation. Piller made a distinction between what 95% of the people call lead users and ‘real lead users’. During the masterclass it didn’t take hold of me, but as time progressed it kept echoing in my head. I’ll share a few thoughts on it with you.

geek2 Piller stated that when most people say ‘lead user’ they are actually talking about very early adopters; geeks and freaks. The people that have the latest gadgets and tools are sometimes referred to as lead users. Understandable, because you could say they lead the masses into the adoption of the product. Very often some of these people also write reviews about their latest gadgets and become a subject matter expert (a leader). But they are not lead users.

Another group of people that are also often (wrongly) defined as lead users, are heavy users. It is true that they know your product inside out and they can probably help you improve the usability of your product, but they will not be very effective in finding novel innovations for you.

Lead users, according to Piller, have had a very big problem and have (partly) solved it. If you are able to find people that have (solved) big problems in you domain you can learn how you can design products that solve real problems for people. Furthermore, you can invite these lead users to come and join you to think about innovating your products. Since they have solved one or more problems in your domain before, they are bound to be creative problem solvers.

Here are two examples from the domain of hospital hygiene:
- A veterinarian with exceptional low percentages of infections after his surgery on (not very hygienic) animals.
- A surgeon from a poor hospital in Africa that has achieved exceptionally low infection rates.

So if you are looking to innovate, find yourself people with big problems, find people who have solved their problems, and maybe add some dreamers to the formula.

If you are looking to tweak your product, find heavy users and geeks and freaks.

November 25th, 2009 by Jaap Linssen

Tags: lead users, Open Innovation

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Successful implementation of communities 3

In two previous posts I described exercises that will improve the chances of success for your community. During the first exercise you describe in great detail what activities people will engage in and think about barriers the way it adds value to them. In the second exercise you check for what activities the community software tools actually lower barriers to collaboration.

During the third exercise you check the activities against 8 barriers that can hinder the community performing these activities. If the activities or the people involved in these activities are hindered by any of the barriers described below, it is best to find other activities that are less hindered. There are ways to deal with these barriers, but I will discuss these in a later post.

Freedom and time

In many cases engaging in online collaboration or knowledge sharing does not tie directly to peoples day to day work. This becomes more the case as the work people do is more standardized. The moment someone helps solve a colleagues problem in another part of the business, this will take up time without direct benefits to the helpers business. Of course on a larger scale this does add value to the company as a whole. However, we see many cases where management does not want to allow people time to engage in such activities because the results do not add directly to their bottom line. If people aren’t given enough freedom and time to engage you will be dependent on those that will engage in their own time. Ask yourself if that group is large enough to make your community vibrant.

Transparency

The use of enterprise 2.0 technology within your company will increase transparency in your organization. It will be more transparent who is competent in certain areas and who contributes. It will also be more transparent how decisions are made. There are many people within organizations that believe transparency will not benefit them. The resistance stems from the fact that people think they will be held accountable for certain actions or colleagues will think less of their competences than before. Because this barrier is so personal and threatening to people, you can expect them to put up a big fight against transparency.

Knowledge is power

There are people that hold their position because they have valuable knowledge. These people are often afraid to share because they believe it will make them obsolete. This barrier is also a fear barrier and hence very powerful.

Fear of stupidity or fear of being ignored

There is nothing worse than looking stupid or being ignored where everyone can see. This barrier has most impact in the initial stages of a community. If a community is not very vibrant yet, the barrier to engage with the community is larger than in situations with a lot of vibrancy. Have a close look at the people that are to engage in the activity to make sure the percentage of fearful people is not too large.

Negative marking of people

In many communities there is a small group of very active people. Especially in the early phases of a community you need to manage their activities a little bit. In the early stages the community often still has to prove its usefulness to the company. Skeptics and threatened people will be looking for ways to damage the initiative. An easy way to do so is to target enthusiastic people. In almost all communities I’ve seen, very active people are marked as “having nothing better to do.” Be prepared for this and subtly protect these people from themselves and the skeptics.

Confidentiality

The fact that confidential information could leak easier when using a community with so many people involved, is a valid concern but also an important weapon of the more skeptical people. It is the most heard reason for people not to engage.

Competition

Map out other community initiatives within the company and analyze if your community, when successful, will threaten them. Also talk to IT to establish if the platform you are likely to chose does not conflict with their plans. If so, plan to deal with it. There is nothing more deadly for a community than a change in technical platform for any reason other than an improvement for the community.

Management participation

As with everything you want to achieve within an enterprise, if management does not endorse the initiative, forget it.

If you are starting a community it is best to start the community with activities least hindered by the barriers described above. As the community becomes more vibrant and gains more trust you can start initiatives that have more barriers to overcome.

Of course there are strategies to deal with the barriers described here. I’ll write about these in the near future.

November 23rd, 2009 by Jaap Linssen

Tags: comm, Community, Community management, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, social networking

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Front End of Innovation

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November 18th, 2009

Successful implementation of communities 2

This post describes one of three key exercises you need to perform to improve your chances of having a vibrant (enterprise) community.

The key value gain for enterprises that engage with social platforms is that employees are enabled to solve more problems, improve their practice and test or enrich new ideas. All without raising the costs of doing so.

The knowledge and experience of thousands of colleagues can be easily accessed through a social platform. If you have an idea or a problem you can search the community for shared knowledge or discussions on that topic or find experienced colleagues by searching profiles or discussions they participated in.

Many enlightened enterprises have recognized these benefits, however most struggle to create and maintain vibrant communities on social platforms.

I recently wrote a post on the importance of addressing the “what’s in it for me?” question for potential users of an online community. If potential participants do not clearly see what they can get out of participation, they will not engage. We regularly run workshops with participants to identify how collaboration would add value for them, with who they would collaborate, and on what subject collaboration and sharing would add value.

If you have answered the “What’s in it for me?” question. There is another factor that has great influence on the potential success of an internal enterprise community. It is related to the fact that enterprise 2.0 technology, or social media, help overcome a number of important barriers.

Firstly, space and time. If you have people in several different locations it is difficult and costly to bring everyone together to collaborate. It also makes it difficult for employees on different continents to know what their colleagues are up to. By having rich personal profiles, listing your projects, and having technology for online collaboration, you can lower the barrier of space and time significantly.

A second barrier has to do with the fact that, without tools, people are only capable of effectively networking with about 150 people. This phenomenon is often referred to as Dunbars’ threshold. Online networked communities can help overcome Dunbars’ threshold by what is called ‘loose ties’. An on-line community with loose ties and search capability can let you access a multitude of other peoples skills and experience, beyond the scope of your physical network of 150.

Imagine you have a problem or an idea; you can enter a community and do a very focussed search on profiles within the community, quickly identifying relevant people to talk to. You can also ask the community an open question and the people with the relevant knowledge will reply. Finally, and Linked-In is a good example of this, you can have loose connections with a large number of people. The platform then updates you periodically of all the activities of the people in your network.

For the third barrier we go back to Dunbars’ threshold. It is the reason why small companies are able to have successful collaboration and large enterprises struggle. W.L. Gore is an example of a company that is very collaborative and innovative. To maintain this level of collaboration they cut up any business unit that grows over 150 people.

The traditional answer of most governments and enterprises to this issue has been hierarchies. With hierarchies Dunbars’ problem can also be solved. When it comes to collaboration and innovation hierarchies also have a number of significant downsides. The main reason hierarchies hold back collaboration is that communication needs to travel great distances, up and down the ranks, to reach it’s destination. Add to that the fact that there is a lot of internal competition, power play, politics and there is a big barrier to surmount if collaboration (and innovation) is to occur. Communities can help get around this barrier because the participants interact directly without having to work through the hierarchies. We call this the democracy of participation.

When companies plan to start a community, the barriers are often overlooked. Having defined the “What’s in it for me?” question and created a list of things people will do together on the platform, you need to test all of them to see if they actually lower one or more barriers. The more barriers are lowered, the better your chance of creating a vibrant community.

November 16th, 2009 by Jaap Linssen

Tags: Collaborate, Community, Community management, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, social network, social networking, social platform

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Sugerencias – or what (not) to do with your suggestion box

Recently my colleague Phil Kropp and I had to go to Madrid for delivering an Idea Champion Training to a group of Idea Challenge Experts at a multinational company. You will be hearing more about this project soon, but that’s not what this blog post is about.

I loved the fact that summer in Madrid apparently lasts till November. Clear sunny skies and 20ºC! But that’s besides the point as well.

What I would like to share with you is something that struck us while getting ready for the flight back from Barajas to Amsterdam. We decided to have a quick snack and we found a small airport restaurant (if you could call it a restaurant). Nothing fancy, but the nice thing was: they did have an old fashioned suggestion box! Or “sugerencias”, as this is the Spanish word for suggestions.

“That’s interesting!”

Naturally, this sparked our professional interest: Does such a small, no frills airport restaurant need a suggestion box? Apparently they think they do, and I think it’s a good thing they have it. I don’t imagine they get many ideas in (or maybe they do), but just having it there indicates that they at least give their customers the opportunity to voice their ideas.

However, when i got up to take a picture (using my iPhone, so it’s not really sharp), I noticed that the suggestion box was positioned next to the rubbish bin! This triggered a sense of: “I wonder what happens to my suggestions after I put them in the box…”

A simple tip…

…if you’re (still) using an old fashioned suggestion box: Don’t put your suggestion box next to the rubbish bin!

November 4th, 2009 by Ebbe Nieuweboer

Young Innovatives session on Business Model Innovation

young_innovatives After a half year of interesting coffee meet-ups where a lot of networking took place, the Young Innovatives took their initiative to the next level. On Wednesday 14 October the first session focused on a specific topic was organised. This time the theme of the session was Business Model Innovation and the session was organised at the Innovation Factory office in Amsterdam.

Patrick van der Pijl, founder of Business Models Inc., gave a very interesting insight on new ways to look at business models and ways to revise existing business models. This was exemplified by presenting the Business Model Canvas and specifically the development process of their book “Business Model Generation”.

CanvasBM

Tim de Roode, founder of Duraserve, told us about his experiences of setting up a virtual organisation by utilising IT to let vital company activities be performed in other parts of the world. He told about the resemblance with outsourcing, but also that a virtual organisation is one step further than ‘mere’ outsourcing.

Both speakers went into an in-depth discussion with the participants on all the input and questions they raised before the session. Because of this interactive approach and based upon the reactions of the participants, we can state that this first Young Innovatives session focussed on a specific topic was very successful and asks for continuation. This is exactly what we plan to do. So next to the monthly coffee meet-ups, every three months a session based upon an innovation theme will be organised. Keep an eye on the LinkedIn group for updates on these sessions.

November 3rd, 2009 by Jurjan Huisman

Tags: Business Model Innovation, Young Innovatives

Internal or External Idea Management

groene eenden Our intern Jan Martijn Everts mentioned a piece of interesting research to me that I would like to share with you.

Poetz and Schreir (2009) present “the first real world comparison of ideas actually generated by a firm’s professionals with those generated by users in the course of an idea generation contest.” Their findings are interesting:
1- Ideas created by professionals score significantly lower in terms of novelty than ideas created by users.
2- Professional ideas are attributed lower customer benefit compared to other ideas.
3- Ideas created by professionals tend to be easier to realize.

Kristensson, Gustafsson and Archer (2004, p. 11) provide the first laboratory-based insights that “professional developers elaborated with informational elements that were not as cognitively remote,“ whereas users seemed to have “access to informational elements that were further apart“. Users are thus able to come up with more novel solutions.

In short: If you want to come up with new and customer beneficial ideas it is good practice to involve diverse people with considerable distance to the company processes.

Get the paper.

November 2nd, 2009 by Jaap Linssen

Tags: idea, idea management, innovatio, Innovation, open, Open Innovation