Why social innovation platforms are destined to fail within organisational boundaries?
Written on June 27, 2008 – 12:15 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Normally, I make an attempt to write articles in an optimistic and open way. (Okay, okay…with exception of my latest article about arranging a meeting in your next life.) However, in this article I would like to take up a rather gloomy position in order to foster the discussion about a new trend within the province of knowledge management.
I believe that social innovation platforms are doomed within organizational context. Why? The social aspect is still lacking and I’m quite sure about that. I noticed it in my daily operations and cases I’m involved in, and in my master thesis prior to my work as a consultant. In any case an organization wants to build a new platform that has to foster innovation, it seems that they continuously simply forget the social aspect of it. You cannot simply build an advanced technological platform and deploy it within you organization. Real innovation is fostered by people’s intrinsic values, organizational culture and rewarding mechanisms.
In most cases, the lack of use of an innovation platform is reproached to the effectiveness of internal marketing and promotion campaigns. But the real cause of the of the non-popularity goes far beyond that plain observation. An organization that want to foster innovation has to focus on the social issues, an technological platform should be given less priority.
Everybody entrepreneur
Three reasons why to focus on the social aspects and build a platform later on. First of all, is your organizational culture really that innovative? What kind of people do you recruit and employ? Are they open and willing to show entrepreneurship. Is entrepreneurship something that you call important, or is innovation something that is really deep-rooted in the whole corporate culture? Nedap is a good example of an organization that embeds innovation in the whole corporate culture. People in their company are really encouraged to show entrepreneurship. Nedap even does not use any grades for their employees and each employee is simply, yet clearly, called ‘entrepreneur’. Even the business cards don’t show any degree and just simply state the name and ‘entrepreneur’.
Start rewarding
Rewarding mechanisms are also still underexposed in most organizations. However, people simply won’t come up with new innovations if they know they probably don’t get any reward for it. They might do it for the first time, but certainly not for the second time. Unfortunately, most organization experience difficulties with redefining their embedded archaic metrics upon employees are rewarded. I do recommend a combination of short and long term metrics. Short term metrics focus on the added value on the short term, for instance in existing projects. Long term metrics focus on the result of innovation in the long run and measure the effect on business revenues. After all, only innovative organizations are able to increase business revenues year after year.
We really have to incorporate social issues in order to make social innovation work!
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By Chris J on Jun 27, 2008
It’s an interesting point you make. I used to work for a large mobile company, they didn’t have any fancy “social innovation platform”, but they did encourage and reward innovation. You simply emailed ideas to a mail box. Some new products and services started life this way and the people who came up with the ideas were rewarded, not just with cash, but also by being engaged in the process of seeing their idea come to life. This second reward was seen as being just as important - as many of the company’s employees were call centre agents the chance to do something very different was a huge appeal.
My final thought on this is to do with time. To foster a true spirit of innovation within an organisation, you have to prioritise it enough to give people time to think… think about stuff that isn’t going to necessarily move them closer to achieving their sales targets etc.
It’s a tough call for an organisation to make, but as you say, embracing innovation is the only way to make it work.
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By Jurjan Huisman on Jun 27, 2008
Hi Eric,
Interesting blogpost!
From my experience with innovation platforms I agree with your observation that a lot of organizations forget the social aspect and focus too much on the technological tools. However, I do not agree with your statement that organizations should focus on the social aspects first and build a platform later on. Because such a platform can be perfectly used in the first innovation stage as a portal to kickstart innovation. By use of such a portal, top management can communicate their commitment to innovation, communicate innovation goals and the first steps can be made on fostering innovation within the organization.
In the next steps of the innovation process, the social issues are definetly really important and should be given a lot more attention in most organizations. When using an online tool to boost innovation, it is critical to organize offline meetings for example. Next to that, we have seen with our clients that top management involvement and leader participation are really important drivers.
I’m not sure whether you only mean monetized rewards in your last paragraph, but from several studies it appears that a lot of social aspects are very important drivers in community participation as well. Think of the social identity theory, for example. People participate in the pursuit of power, fame or status. So it’s not all about the money.
[Reply]
By aditya on Jun 30, 2008
I doubt if you can have a standard set of rules to encourage innovation. Recently, there was a post on our blog (mahindrauniverse.com) on innovation being a result of disruptive thinking. That would mean innovation is something that has to be out of the ordinary which means you can’t plan it. What do you think?
[Reply]
By Eric Bun on Jul 2, 2008
@Chris J: Indeed, you emphasise the core message of my posts. It is certainly not only about being able to establish a fance innovation platform, but about employees within organization know that they’re heard. That the company actually listen to then, reward them and bring innovation to life accordingly. People within the organization have the closest link with the end consumer, so use them to boost innovation.
@Jurjan: You’re totally right and I think it is a fact of interpretation. Social innovation and the actual platform establishment should go hand in hand. But in the case people are not ready for social innovation, don’t focus on the fancy front-end but start engaging them first. I certainly not only mean financial rewards and am a strongly believer social identity theories. People have to know they’re heard. Some groups are sensible for financial rewards but for the majority community status is much more important. It’s all about kudos in online and physical communities. The fact that you’re heard and that activities are released upon your statements.
@Aditya, you certainly cannot plan disruptive innovation but you actually can create an environment which fosters innovation…but it will take another article to go over that issue….
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