Beyond Creativity

Gatekeepers in the Innovation Process

In ECIS Galway in June 2008 Eoin Whelan and I will have a following session:

"Knowledge Diffusion in R&D Groups: The Impact of Internet Technologies"

Abstract:

Knowledge flows are the lifeblood of any R&D organisation. These firms are increasingly
discovering that the knowledge they require is often located beyond their boundaries. In this paper, we investigate how R&D groups acquire and diffuse external knowledge and the role Internet technologies play in this process.

The focus of our study is on the technological gatekeeper. Previous studies have found that gatekeepers are key nodes in the innovation process. These sporadic individuals have the skills to identify useful knowledge outside the firm and disseminate this among their local colleagues.

However, much of the seminal gatekeeper research has been conducted over two decades ago. In the time since, there have been huge advances in ICT and especially Internet technologies. These technologies have dramatically altered how knowledge workers source and share their information. Our objective is to advance the gatekeeper theory into an era where the knowledge worker is saturated with information. Using case study methods, we examine knowledge flows in the R&D group of an Irish medical devices firm.

Our results indicate that due to advances in Internet technology, the traditional gatekeeper no longer exists to any great extent. Instead, the modern R&D lab acquires and diffuses external knowledge through a combination of a ‘web gatekeeper’ and a
‘knowledge transformer.’

You are welcome to participate the session or comment the topic beforehand !

Open Innovation and Strategy - Focus on Communities

Remember Porter's Five Competitive Forces?

1. Rivalry
2. Buyer power
3. Supplier power
4. Substitutes
5. Barriers to entry

Nowadays, if a company only focuses on them and misses communities, it may be counter-productive.

In the latest CMR article Henry Chesbrough and Melissa Appleyard point out:

"All of the tradional views are based upon ownership and control as the key levers in achieving strategic success. All focus largely within the firm, or within the value chain in which the firm is embedded. Non take much notice of the potential value of external resources that are not owned by the firm in question, but may nonetheless create value for the firm"

To illustrate the difference between Open and Closed Innovation, they differentiate Value capture and Value Creation in a company and in a community:

"The lingering questions for the business strategist are: Who actually is capturing the value created by open invention and coordination? How are they doing it?"

Finally, Chesbrough and Appleyard introduce a new concept, Open strategy.

"Open strategy balances the powerful value creation forces that can be found in creative individuals, innovation communities, and collaborative initiatives with the need to capture value in order to sustain continued participation and support of those initiatives"

After all this, I welcome you to take also a look at Michael Porter's newest work, " The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy" from HBR, January 2008. A miss-match?!?

European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) - What is missing?

In Galway, Ireland, I participated an excellent innovation seminar by director Dr. Willie (William) Golden. Discussions with him made me think about innovation measurements in the global and European scale.

There is an index called the European Innovation Scoreboard.
This scoreboard is actually an evaluation paper prepared for the European Commission.

The following input- and output indicators are listed in the EIS Scoreboard (Please, click the image to enlarge it):

Decision makers will most likely consider this EIS paper as de facto in their work. Our economies and our work will be mostly measured by those indicators, at least in Europe.

This index is not complete. The missing elements are partly noted in following papers. Especially I liked the additions of Anthony Arundel and Hugo Hollanders from Merit (Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology).

What would still I add?

- The measurements of Open source activity in economies (see the writings of Rishab Aiyer Ghosh in First Monday).

- Innovation in Services and their measuring (Please, check the Service Blueprinting )

- Business model innovation (Please, check the Open Business Models by Henry Chesbrough)

One citation from the report: "Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Japan and Germany are the innovation leaders, with SII scores well above that of the EU25 and the other countries.".

Hmm, if service innovation and business model innovation could be measured in the EIS index, would these countries be innovation leaders any more?

Ethics of Innovation 2 - Recommendations for Sustainable Mobile Inventions

Previously I examined ethical problems and health risks related to mobile devices and wireless networks.

Now I will list some recommendations to make inventing and innovation more sustainable. (Updated, 27th December 2007 and 29th May 2008).

In the global level:

- Start talking about ethics and consequences of inventing within engineer communities. Why don't forums like Wimax Forum , UMTS Forum , Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) , Symbian and Open Handset Alliance have discussion about ethics (including radiation risks)? Why can't International Telecom Union (ITU) initiate this discussion?

- Raise awareness among device manufacturers and teleoperators (carriers). Why is it so difficult to discuss openly about these issues? Every company nowadays has their 'Values' and 'Code of Conduct' and 'Sustainability Policy', but these documents / web sites are are not talking about ethical risks of innovation. Can business risks be handled by denying ethical problems?

- Separate financial benefits from mobile device development. There is a long history of denying health risks, e.g. with tobacco, when money is at stake. Would there be needed an international treaty like with tobacco?  (Please, note: I am not suggesting here a total ban of mobile devices and networks, more like independent control and re-invention)

- Put more resources on longitudinal, medical studies of mobile phones and mobile networks use. Do doctors, engineers and researchers talk enough with each other?

- Reconsider the "burden" of landlines maintenance for carriers. Now carriers are trying to get rid of their landline subscribers, but at which cost? What if people using landlines (corded phones) are eventually more fortunate (healthier) than those who abandoned them? Why do parents give up landline and buy mobile phones to children as young as five years? Are there inequality questions involved in development countries where Wimax is the only possibility?

In the local community level:

- Start discussing about 3G + Wimax base stations and their locations. Why are there base stations just 50 meters from schools and hospitals? Why can not teleoperators (carriers) consult citizen organisations and healthcare professionals where these masts are installed and how their antennas  are equipped? (Now the 'formal' discussion is mostly about aesthetics ;-)

- Rethink the scale of those WiFi City Programs. Are these programs really sustainable with hundreds of antennas? Do people really become 'free', 'creative ' and 'innovative' through WLANs and ubiquitous computing? Are people are asked any permission when their offices and apartments are WiFied? How sustainable is FON in a longer run?

-  Reconsider WLAN use in schools and in homes. The state of Bavaria just recently recommended schools not to proceed with WiFi because of health risks. How do these kind of recommendations affect programs like OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) ? When will the mobile learning community discuss about these topics? Is 24/7 WLAN as risky as frequent GSM calls?

- Find out what can be done with materials that protect from radiation. How can spaces be built and designed in another way?

In the technological design level:

- Re-think the construction of masts, antennas and software. How optimised is for example W-CDMA from sustainability perspective? Which frequencies are the most harmful? The biggest risk seems to be that standards are based only on thermal effects, not biological ones. Please, check also the background info how ICNIRP guidelines were "democratically" set. OK, the views of Don Maisch may be harsh, but I am afraid there a seed of truth in his document. Who dares to change ICNIRP staff and guidelines?

- Focus more on sustainable hands-free design. Is Bluetooth really the answer with additional radiation? I would recommend air-tube or similar solutions.

- Redesign speaker-phone functionality in mobile phones. Now only expensive mobile phones enable you to have talk with the mobile phone on the table. When will somebody re-invent mobile phones with excellent conference phone functionality?

- Be prepared for the rebirth of corded phones and their design.

-  Enable more devices with off-line functionality. Make calendar, alarm clock, notepad etc work even when the connection (transceiver) is switched off. Would this be useful for time-management as well?

- Put more focus on client-software and it's functionality (Mobile Java + Symbian's newest release with enhanced DB + Lotus Notes ).  See also MIT Technology Review and awarded Offline Applications . Why do mobile portal software and mobile web servers require continuous connection to the network/server? Can this piece of software be designed to support timed, scheduled data transfer?

- Think about synchronisation and replication.  Where are those good practices gone with PDAs and their synchronisation / docking stations? Can replication be used between devices and base stations?

 

Prediction:

The first mobile device manufacturer and the first carrier opening the discussion about radiation risks and changing it's innovation and design policy will most likely be the biggest winners in the business in the future.

Why? That move would be advantageous for their brand and sustainability counts among consumers.

End note: According to philosopher John Mackie: "Within ethics there are no objective values. Morality can not be discovered, it must be made."

Question: Do you have a recommendation to share?

Highlights - Innovation in Services -conference

All the papers and presentations of 'Innovation in Services ' conference are now available at:

http://www.tekes.fi/berkeleyserviceinnovation/program.htm

My favourites:

- Rich Mironov: Issues in Shifting from a Product-Based Business Model to a Service-Based Model --> Software business is changing. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) infrastructure is emerging. Rich nicely illustrated those changes in marketing and innovation. I also found the  Toolset resource valuable.

- Mikko Välimäki,  Nina Helander, Marko Seppänen, Mikko Puhakka & Juha Laine: Building SaaS Business on Top of Open Source - Economic and Legal considerations. Since I have been working in the ASP (Application Service Provisioning) business before, this presentation was truly interesting. Who is responsible for those mash-ups and services that are like collections of services? Who is able to define the SLA (Service Level Agreement)? I liked their point: "None of the widely used OSS-licenses contains special ASP/SaaS-related clauses." Mikko Välimäki's work is also connected to our Parteco Social Media research project and the Community Created Content -book.

- Mary Jo Bitner, Amy Ostrom and Felicia Morgan: Service Blueprinting: A Practical Tool for Service Innovation --> I have not seen many good evaluation instruments for services. The Service Blueprinting tool has been developed and tested many years by researchers at the University of Arizona. Additionally, Mary Jo was a skillful chair in my session.

- Stephen Ezell: Customer perspective on Services innovation -->  Companies design experiences  from an operations-centric perspective.  BUT,   customers experience services through a different lens. Empathy -  Reliability - Responsiveness - Assurance - Tangibles.

My previous posting tells about our (Ahonen&Lietsala) innovation communities contribution ;-)

Did anyone of you participate the conference?  - - or - -  Do you have comments about the service innovation in overall?

Collective Creativity within Open Innovation : EURAM Paris

Our presentation with Maria (Antikainen)  and Marko (Mäkipää) is over in the EURAM European Academy of Management -conference in Paris. The presentation is called "Supporting Collective Creativity within Open Innovation,   Download euram_ahonen_et_al.pdf   (UPDATE: This link was broken, but it should work now ) .

We asked:

What motivates customers to collaborate in the innovation process and how this process can be enhanced by offering appropriate tools?

By mentioning "tools" we referred to toolkits (by Eric Hippel) and Marko illustrated a following picture: 

We focused  on those "toolkits for community collaboration" because there is not much research on that area. Which requirements came up with those toolkits? To provide an answer we presented a literature review on motivational factors to participate in on-line communities (an expertise area of Maria). Thereafter we focused on collective creativity / group creativity topics.

Coming back to Open Innovation: Interactive Value Creation is a term developed by Frank Piller. Interactive Value Creation means that customers are a strategic resource for manufacturers (companies) and closely integrated with them in the value creation network.

Additionally, Frank points out that those Open Innovation definitions do not  not consider users innovating by themselves. For that reason we inspected cases like innerTee, CrowdSpirit, Bookmooch and InnoCentive in our presentation.

We are happy to receive feedback of our paper and presentation. With Maria and Marko we will perhaps continue our work towards the Open Innovation Journal International Journal of Technology Management and DL in October 2007.

BTW, Paris is a lively city and the atmosphere at the EURAM conference was really nice. However, this conference itself was arranged 50 km from the city center . What the HECk, every day we spent 2 or 3 hours in sitting in warm buses commuting between the city and the rural campus ;-)  I was so glad when I one evening  managed to see Arc de Triomphe just before the sunset ;-)

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun - Improving your creativity

How to change your life? How to improve your creativity?

I have been counselling young adults who have had some obstacles in their life and in their creativity.  Occasionally, I have wished that I could show them something inspiring that makes them think about their lives from different perspective.

In that sense, I really like the video "The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun".

This video-animation looks psychedelic and simple, but it is based on results of creativity research!
If you want to know more about the personality of creative people: check my booklist below: books by Alane Starko and Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi. Additionally, look at the research done by Donald MacKinnon in the 60's and 70's.

Note: The Flash-movie starts immediately when you click the link.

(Acknowledgements: Thanks to Joyce Wycoff and her wonderful blog for great insights :-)

EURAM Paris + Service Innovation Berkeley - Conference papers

Following joint-venture papers got accepted:

Ahonen, M., Antikainen, M., & Mäkipää, M. (Forthcoming). Supporting Collective Creativity within Open Innovation. European Academy of Management (EURAM) conference. Open Innovation Track. Paris

Ahonen, M. & Lietsala, K. (Forthcoming). Managing Service Ideas and Suggestions – Information Systems in Innovation Brokering. Tekes- Haas Conference on Service Innovation. Berkeley, CA.

I am so glad :-)

So, I will be visiting Berkeley/CA, Davis/CA and Murray,KY in April and Paris in May.

If these papers interest you, please, let me know and I can send you a draft.

Creativity in Management - Review of Rooke & Torbert in HBR

How can managers and leaders develop themselves over time? What kind of learning process is needed? What does creativity mean in connection to management and leadership?

Rooke and Torbert (2005) wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review called "Seven Transformations of Leadership".

Their introduction:

“Different leaders exhibit different kinds of action logic – ways in which they interpret their surroundings and react when their power or safety is challenged. In our research of thousands of leaders, we observed seven types of action logics. At least effective for organizational leadership are Opportunist and Diplomat; the most effective, the Strategist and Alchemist. Knowing your own action logic can be the first step toward developing a more effective leadership style."

Then they present the following table with various leadership styles: 

                                                               

Action Logic	Characteristics	Strengths
Opportunist	Wins any way possible. Self-oriented; manipulative; “might makes right.”	Good in emergencies and in sales opportunities.
Diplomat	Avoids overt conflict. Wants   to belong; obeys group norms; rarely rocks the boat.	Good as supportive glue within an office; helps bring people together.
Expert	Rules by logic and expertise. Seeks rational efficiency.	Good as an individual contributor.
Achiever	Meets strategic goals. Effectively achieves   goals through teams; juggles managerial duties and   market demands.	Well suited to managerial roles; action and goal oriented.
Individualist	Interweaves competing personal and company action logics. Creates unique structures to resolve gaps   between strategy and performance.	Effective in venture and consulting roles.
Strategist	Generates   organizational and persona transformations. Exercises the power of mutual inquiry,   vigilance, and vulnerability for both the short and long term.	Effective as a   transformational leader.
Alchemist	Generates social   transformations. Integrates material, spiritual, and societal transformation.	Good at leading society-wide transformations

Interestingly, these styles are also like psychological developmental phases of children, Opportunist style being the worst one ;-)

The categorisation of Rooke and Torbert could perhaps integrate also personal styles (like shown by MBTI) and could allow utilisation of different styles in different situations?

Csikszentmihalyi (1997) sees highly creative people complex, able to change their way of action according to situation. He further lists following complexities aka counterparts:

1. Energetic vs. relaxed

2. Smart vs. naïve

3. Playful vs. disciplined

4. Imagination vs. rooted sense of reality

5. Extrovert vs. introvert

6. Ambitious vs. selfless

7. Masculine vs. feminine

8. Traditional vs. rebellious

9. Passionate vs. extremely objective

10. Sensitivity vs. unsensitivity

(Csikszentmihalyi, 137, 1997)

When we are talking about a managerial board, should this board consist of multiple manager
archetypes? Can a skilful manager (or leader) change his leadership style based on current situation?

Furthermore, what are those correlations between design thinking maturity and leadership maturity? Please, take a look at the Thinking and Making blog.

Finally, the leaders and managers have also been studied based on biographies. This kind of historiometric studies have revealed following leaders: charismatic, ideological and pragmatic. Each of these leader types has different behaviours in problem-solving, leader-follower interactions, communication and politics. (Mumford, 2006 <-- I recommed Mumford's latest book).

Any comments on these leadership styles?

Open Media Business - John Buckman in Tampere

John Buckman is a serial entrepreneur, a musician, an Open Media evangelist, a marketeer, a CEO and a great personality. It was to great to meet!

First, Herkko (Hietanen) and Katri Lietsala had arranged a meeting with John here at the Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere.

With John, Herkko, Katri, Tere (Vaden), Jarmo (Viteli) and Heljä (Franssila) we discussed about the future of Open Source. Additionally, we discussed about Web 2.0 business models and research we do in the Parteco Social Media Research Project by Tekes. I had a chance to ask some questions about open innovation. It takes too many lines to describe, so I just say: Open Innovation topics we discussed were related to openness, transparency, reputation and (social) responsibility. I and Heljä were especially interested how a company can open up it's R&D processes and how to motivate both it's employees and customers in this new innovation environment.

Secondly, John was the speaker at the OpenMind conference on Wednesday 25th October. His presentation covered open source and open innovation topics both in BookMooch and in Magnatune. Magnatune is an example of of utilising Creative Commons licences, integrating various web services to create mash-ups and empowering users/artists. UPDATE: Check, how Magnatune cleverly utilises Creative Commons licences and what is has to do with the business model.  Bookmooch is an example how to make a community transparent and self-organising. I am sure Amazon and all those big record companies are carefully watching John's actions ;-)

Are you interested in other opinions in the OpenMind conference? Head to the OpenMind social networking area.

Thirdly, on Wednesday evening, 25th October, we had a Open Media Business Roundtable at Telakka restaurant, arranged by Katri. With venture capitalists, StarWreck people and music business people people discussing what social media means. Social Media by John Buckman = Culture can be re-used and this re-use is non-prohibiting.

I and my colleagues here in Tampere wish you John best of luck in your projects :-)