Massive Multiplayer Online Innovation

Last week I got the opportunity via Ehsan Ehsani (@eehsani) to interview Dr. Robert Chapman Wood, a professor of strategy at San Jose State University who had studied IBM's first Innovation Jam in 2006 (a second one was held in 2008). It's a great case study to read about - the original article was published in the MIT Sloan Management Review. A couple of things that really stood out for me were:

• The scale - 150,000 individuals, 104 countries, & 46,000 ideas
• The involvement of customers and partners - 67 companies were involved
• The openness of IBM to share its internal innovation process so publicly

One of the more interesting challenges that I discussed with Dr. Wood in the podcast was the issue of brainstorming vs. consensus. Turns out that wrangling 150,000 people online is quite a challenge - you don't have some of the same facilitation tools (voice, tone, physical signals, a whiteboard 'parking lot' at the ready, etc.). Brainstorming and consensus/decision-making are also two very different processes and play different roles in the innovation process - and different online tools are optimized for each of those processes.

Here's the whole podcast (warning: it is about 45 minutes long and available on iTunes - search E-Novation or Ehsani - if you want if for your drive):

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Comments

[Jenny Ambrozek]

Thanks for sharing. There's also a Harvard Business Review interview with Sam Palmisano that gives great insight into IBM's efforts to engage employees widely through JAMS you might find interesting. http://snurl.com/f59u7 and for a recent article I talked to 2 people at IBM about their co-creation efforts including IBM's external reach to experts to rethink their patent strategy http://snurl.com/esn28 (p3)

I regret missing you at BOCN but wish you every success with your new endeavour. I look forward to learning more.