My personal and professional research in the Open Innovation space has led to discussions with IBM's Boston team, since they've been experimenting with crowdsourcing to make decisions internally, as well as to GE. GE is on my radar due to their Open Innovation partnership with Quirky.com for new product development.
This discussion is relevant to our class chat on 10/16 because these are examples of how these large companies are innovating from the bottom up (not just top down). My purpose in posting this is to get us thinking beyond the stack in regards to corporate open vs. closed strategies. How open is too open?
IBM:
They've looked at kickstarter.com for motivation to build an 'internal kickstarter' to prioritize and fund new projects. Essentially, they've built a home-grown platform where IBM employees can review, comment on, and literally fund new projects across business units within the firm. Real money was put into this, so employees have actually decided what teams will work on next. This is very helpful for IBM to:
- -prioritize innovations within the firm
- -allocate funding based on idea potential + fit with existing products/services
- -diversify away from 'top down' decision making
- -improve employee morale with Voice of the Employee (VoE) efforts
- -potentially develop an enterprise crowdfunding platform to sell to others
Here's the link to my Evernote post with more details on this project (from IBM)
See Team 6 shared folder if this link doesn't work
Here's a recent HBR article on the project
Question: What do you think about IBM's efforts?
GE:
GE has partnered with Quirky.com to allow inventors to take GE patents and build their own ideas around them. This is groundbreaking because GE (traditionally closed) is opening their doors to outsiders in a way not done before (by any large firm). They're using GE patents as platforms for new innovations. Check out more details here
Here's a Forbes editorial on the pitfalls of this model
Key question: What do you think about the future of Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation for huge firms like IBM and GE? Do you think crowdfunding is just a trend or fad, or is this a fundamental paradigm shift for how companies make some of their decisions?
-Chris Kluesener
I believe Enterprise crowdfunding could lead to a more engaged workforce and provide seed funding for new opportunities. However, can it really change a culture as large as IBM? That was one of the questions asked on the evernote document you posted. I think it is a fascinating question that can't be answered easily or in a short time frame. How will we measure its lasting impact? We can see if employees get promoted for their crowdfunded ideas, if the organization become flatter or if there was an increased amount of bottom-up innovations. However, we might also find that this was a quick morale boost activity that had a short lifespan. Great post Chris!
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