Comments on: Why I believe in Open Innovation

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:09:19 +0000

Stephen - thanks so much for this contribution and for the Goldcorp link (http://tinyurl.com/2ks588). I am right with you on the incentives and rewards. Any system or process, online or offline, that doesn’t consider personal motivations to share and collaborate is doomed to fail. As you say, rewards can range from financial to emotional, but some sort of reward needs to be there for an individual to commit their time, let alone their ideas to a collaborative effort . . . I’ve marked your blog at http://www.dubstudios.com/ as one to keep an eye on!
Simon

By: stephen cribbett

stephen cribbett — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:42:52 +0000

Simon,
What your comment failed to mention, and that which is essential to successful open-innovation and collaboration, are the incentives and rewards the community receives when sharing their wisdom. By nature, people will happily collaborate given both social and emotional reward. For example, Lego-isters joined forces with Lego to raise their social standing amongst the Lego community and to be viewed as authorities. Similarly, employees will participate because it gives them, amongst other things, a voice. The more ‘valuable’ the reward, the greater and more relevant the effort and subsequent offering. Insecurities around ’sharing’ information are commonplace, but as you say, the rewards are far greater. Another great case study is Goldcorp which you can access here http://tinyurl.com/2ks588
Stephen

By: Robin Hamman

Robin Hamman — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:37:51 +0000

Sun Microsystems takes a pretty enlightened approach to their staff blogging:

http://www.cybersoc.com/2007/06/staff_blogs_at_.html

By: David Wilcox

David Wilcox — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:52:18 +0000

Excellent stuff, now mentioned over here http://tinyurl.com/2op332. I think you should form a club for naked CEOs:-)

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:13:30 +0000

Even Microsoft are at it - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-21ExpandInteroperabilityPR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases the faint sound of hell freezing over is getting a little louder…

By: Alberto Nardelli

Alberto Nardelli — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:30:12 +0000

This is a great post! The paradox is that GM is one of the worst examples of innovation, and this is clearly reflected in its numbers: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:GM .

Lego story is such a fantastic example of crowdsourcing