Crowdsourcing and the Next Wave of Collaboration

By Dan Keldsen (@dankeldsen) Aug 9, 2010

6 comments

Crowdsourcing innovation is primarily about collaboration, and to better understand the drivers and practices behind it, Information Architected conducted a survey. Here are some of their findings.

In Q2 2010, Information Architected launched a short survey on Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation, as part of our ongoing research into awareness and execution of innovation management. Nearly 300 respondents provided their input (n=289).

In this research, we were not looking at the specific features/functions of innovation management solutions, whether bought as stand-alone, integrated into a "generic" platform such as SharePoint, or built in-house, but rather on the business drivers, goals, fears and experiences of Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation.

As experienced CMS practitioners know, without understanding the core activities and drivers of innovation, picking an "innovation tool" or a "collaboration tool" by itself is unlikely to get you to the end-result you're looking for.

Laying a Foundation - Definitions

Innovation needs focus, and that focus needs to come from the definition that you, your firm and your boss (or executive management) apply to it — all other definitions need not apply, they're irrelevant.

To frame our research, Crowdsourcing or Open Innovation is about taking innovation out of the hands of the few, typically in the R&D lab, marketing or new product development personnel, and actively engaging increasingly larger portions of your own firm/organization, and ultimately, with sufficient maturity and experience, out into partners, suppliers and customers (in that order).

While Crowdsourcing can also applied to accomplishing nearly any task, such as logo design, web development, microtasks such as address lookups or web page editorializing and more, our focus here is specifically on innovation — whether the front end of idea generation, vetting or ultimately in execution.

The Next Wave of Collaboration

Crowdsourcing Innovation, at its heart, is about collaboration — and collaboration is, frankly, not an activity that most adults have learned to do well.

Editor's Note: Also read: Collaboration – If it Were That Easy We Would all Do It – Well by Information Architected's Carl Frappaolo.

The Problems

In fact, a sampling of comments from respondents state the problems well:

"Domain experts say "Great idea, but that's not my priority right now, and oh by the way I can't let you move forward without me." — a combination of the Not Invented Here syndrome, and the Fiefdom syndrome.

"Domain experts who get a lot of suggestions from people who are not skilled in the domain see it as a burden to respond and educate the masses, so they soon lose interest and their participation drops which creates a 'suggestion box black hole.'" — an issue of focusing specialists and job responsibilities too narrowly to "make time to innovate" and the "not my job" syndrome.

"The major problem, as I see it, is the concept is foreign to the majority of likely participants (this is a very successful, but old and stodgy company) there is no way to move forward at more than a snail's pace." — the "we've always done it this way" syndrome — no sense of a "burning platform".