Where ideas come from - IBM Smarter Business 2011
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Presentation från IBM Smarter Business 2011. Spår: Underlätta för bättre samarbete. A recent CEO study found "creativity" was the most important leadership quality needed in the next 5 years. But are our companies prepared to address this "creativity crisis"? We'll look at ways social solutions are helping organizations develop and embrace a creative culture that results in tangible business benefits. Talare: Louis Richardson - Social Business Evangelist – IBM. Mer information och video på www.smarterbusiness.se
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Where ideas come from - IBM Smarter Business 2011
- 1. Where ideas come from Developing and leveraging a creative culture Louis Richardson IBM Social Business Evangelist
- 3. Creativity
- 4. So go make your company creative!
- 5. What words come to mind when you hear “creative”?
- 6. Do these words describe your organization? Should it?
- 7. Why is creativity so important? And maybe hard to find?
- 10. So how do you define and develop a “creative culture” in your organization?
- 17. So…who are the people in your organization that have these “hunches”?
- 19. So if you want their hunches… how do you enlist them?
- 23. Creating “Knowledge Incidents” Open up the conversation in the context of everyday work and then listen and learn develop a “creative” culture
- 24. 1) Open up the conversation
- 25. How do people in your organization communicate?
- 26. When you have a question and someone else gives you the answer…only the two of you benefit
- 28. So how can you create ‘virtual’ coffee houses?
- 38. This is the stuff knowledge accidents are made of
- 39. Social solutions are great for sharing, but you need to also consider the next part…
- 40. 2) in the context of everyday work
- 44. but this can create social silos around your business applications
- 45. Think back…we’ve actually gone this same route with content
- 46. Content had little impact until it was integrated in the context of our daily work
- 48. So how do you do that? Let’s look at some examples
- 49. Where do I start?
- 55. 3) and then listen and learn
- 56. Innovation and good ideas often doesn’t call attention to itself
- 57. Innovation and good ideas often doesn’t call attention to itself
- 58. You need insight
- 64. So if you want your organization to grow you’re going to need a creative culture
- 65. So if you want your organization to grow you’re going to need a creative culture
- 67. Anything less would be…just anti-social
Editor's Notes
- And in case you're wondering, your boss likely thinks that "Creativity" is an important quality to promote.
- this is the topic of a recently released book by Steven Johnson, titled "Where good ideas come from- The natural history of innovation". In his book, Johnson points out a couple of interesting observations that I'd like to start with.
- First, rarely do innovative ideas just pop out of nowhere. Most exceptional ideas begin life as a mere hunch...a half-baked thought that rattles around in our brain. Some of these keep us awake at night, NOTE: You can consider taking out this and the next 3 slides and replacing it with one that actually plays the YouTube video referenced. It’s very good and works well with audiences. If you need help embedding the video, let me know (Louis Richardson)
- while others plant themselves in our mind and then might even go dormant for some period.
- But what often happens is that your hunch is introduced to a hunch lurking about in someone else's head and
- that collision results in the breakthrough thought...something bigger than just the sum of their parts.
- So if these hunches are out there...who do they belong to?
- Now I will warn you not to rush to find your organization chart. Many companies have Research and Development departments which are the source of good ideas, but most executives realize that often, good ideas come from the people working on the plant floor, the new kid stocking the shelves, people on the fringe of the mainstream...as well as customers and those looking at you from the outside.
- But assuming the hunches are out there, how do you get these people to bring them out into the open? Picture in your head one of those people you know who has a history of inciteful and creative ideas.
- I'm going to guess that it's unlikely they are the kind of person that's going to fill out a structured survey form.
- Neither are they likely to respond to email distribution requests for their input. If these are the idea people, their email in-box is probably already overflowing with requests for help. So if you can't prescribe it, what do you do?
- You want these hunches to be out there and available to bounce off of others. You're looking for knowledge accidents. Now you can use focus groups and other means to try to orchestrate innovative moments, but on a day-by-day basis you really need to just create an environment that is designed to spark these collisions.
- The way you do that is...you open up the conversation...you do that in the context of the work that is already being done...and then you observe.
- What do I mean by open up the conversation?
- Think about how you and others in your company communicate with one another. If you are like most you use email, phone, text and face-to-face. Each of these are good communication methods, but they are often point-to-point.
- You have a question...you think you know someone with the answer...you send them an email with your inquiry...and they respond back with the answer...but if that's where it ends, only you and the person you asked gain any benefit from that exchange. And email blasts with large distribution list or conference calls are usually to targeted audiences.
- Johnson points out in his book that coffee houses in the age of enlightenment created a space where ideas could mingle and form and swap with one another and create new forms. The story is told that the beginning of our modern day GPS systems occured back in 1957, in a cafeteria at the cafeteria at the applied physics lab at John Hopkins. The first satelitte, Sputnik, was launched on a Friday and by Saturday it was the topic of everyone's conversation. The Soviets had designed Sputnik to emit a signal so everyone would know that it wasn't a hoax. So a couple of guys over lunch wondered "has anyone tried to listen?" So they did...and they noticed that from their listening positions they received variations in frequency based on whether it was approaching or overhead. And in 3 weeks they figured out the exact orbit. Someone overheard their conversation about their findings and asked, "So, you figured out an unknown location of a satellite orbiting the planet from a known location on the ground. Could you go the other way?" And they did. It turned out this person was trying to work out how to track missles for the military. Now it's advanced to where you have a pocket sized device that can easily find the nearest coffee house.
- Social solutions are great tools for sharing ideas and hunches. They are very popular and extremely easy to use. However, let's remember...we need to open the conversation, but we must do it
- in the context of our everyday. It has to fit in with YOUR business.
- One problem we have is that the emergence of a social awareness has resulted in a wide range of social tools...from a wide range of vendors. The majority of which are targeted at the consumer market space. There are some that do wikis, others that do only chat, still others that help in sharing media.
- While many of these are great individual tools, they might serve as a distraction if all tossed into your work environment. When I first meet many execs, their concept of social is built on these consumer tools and they see them as something very different from their work tools. And many would be. Work a while...Be social a while...work a while...be social. Not a formula for success.
- And some of our business application vendors are seeing that social needs to be integrated into their apps, so many are actually attempting to embed social features around their individual apps.
- The results of these efforts are just silos of social. Social has become the new "e" word. We used to have e-commerce, e-CRM...now we have social commerce and social CRM. It's not going to work...and what concerns me is that we've actually been down this route before.
- When electronic content first came on the scene we were excited about the possible implications it would have on our business. I'm old enough to remember the early days of word processing. For people whose business was creating and capturing text, this worked. But for the mainstream business user, storing and managing content was an extra step outside their work process...so it didn't really have an impact.
- It wasn't until content was integrated in the context of our work did we see the benefits. We could send and retrieve docs from our email systems. Document links became common in many business applications.
- Likewise, if we don't integrate social into the context of our everyday business, it's not going to result in the benefit we all expect.
- So how do you do that....well we've been doing this and helping others for many years now, so here are a couple of ways to make it happen.
- Many of us daily use collaboration and email clients. You need to be able to have your social network reach into these clients. From an email, you should have immediate access to the individuals involved. You should be able to see their current status, get to their files, see others in their network and even reach out with instant messaging. This shows that integration within a Notes client, but we know businesses need options so
- we're able to integrate social inside your Microsoft Outlook client as well. From here you can see the social actions and gain easy access to the people. Remember, the tools are good, but it's the people...the ones with the hunches, we're looking to connect.
- And these people, will create content. Content that may reside in your enterprise content management systems. This shows how within a social community, you can have direct access to your current enterprise repositories. So they are no longer that "corporate system" that is only used by special users with complex interfaces. These assets are now readily available and made easily consumable by mere mortals...without sacrificing the rich features and security of your enterprise content systems.
- And for those who may have a proliferation of SharePoint sites, we let you easily integrate the SharePoint content right inside your social community...thereby surrounding a content centric system with a people-centric layer.
- We've deeply integrated our social solutions in many other business applications. This shows how we've integrated social aspects right inside the Cognos user experience. When dealing with Business Intelligence, it's known that most significant decisions are made...or at least largely influenced by...a group of people. Some of these groups are structured, but many are ad-hoc advisors and people with "hunches" that are involved in the project. As a Cognos user, you can easily reach into your social network as well as integrate your Cognos work as well as co-workers using social activities. The topic of Cognos and business intelligence actually brings us to our last point.
- We've opened the conversation, we've done that in the context of our everyday work, now it's time to listen and learn.
- Now don't expect for those with the hunches to just jump out and shout to get your attention. Most innovative ideas happen below our normal attention radar scan. I remember watching a kindergarten class performing on stage. They were all issued various rhythm instruments...sticks to hit together, small blocks with sandpaper sides to brush against one another...and of course...the triangle. At the end of the few "Rhythm" songs, they were to perform a few more songs without the instruments. So as the next song started up, each kid simply took their sticks, small blocks, etc. and stuffed them in their pants pockets....except the small young lad with the triangle. Even as his classmates sang along, he struggled with storing his triangle. He would stick on edge in his pocket only to find it was too big for the opening. He shifted it around to another edge in an effort to comply and move on...but was constantly disappointed. Eventually every eye in the audience was watching him work his problem. Then like a stroke....
- he simply put the clanger into his pocket, leaving just enough of it exposed on which to hang the triangle. He then looked up, unimpressed with himself, and joined the chorus. Of course, the entire audience almost applauded his success, which incidently caught the teacher/conductor by surprise, because she was focused on the whole performance to even see this small innovation play out. Innovations and good ideas are like that. They often happen on the fringe. Many are brilliant solutions, but may not even be fully appreciated by their inventor...because they may not see the full picture. And our managers, like the conductor, are often so focused on the specific performance that they fail to even see the innovative moments that occur.
- You need insight. You need the ability to look into your constituents conversation, to see what your competition is saying...to rapidly get feedback to enable you to respond quickly.
- IBM's Cognos Consumer Insight helps you to do just that. You simply point the tool at the areas of conversation...blogs, wikis, social sites, chat, etc. It then goes out listening in your behalf....then you ask it a question...like, "what were people saying about our electronics during the peak Christmas shopping week?" You are then shown the information in a rich and graphical way that allows you to drill down on specifics as well as see the view from well above the buzz. This gives you the ability to listen and learn...and react in a way that your competition might not be able to.
- And while were on the subject of business intelligence...think back to our valued employees who have a wealth of hunches...the ones that you aren't even aware of.
- We've always respected (and often protected) valued sales personnel because of the power of their Rolodex. A senior sales person was known and valued for the trusted relationships they had built. In a time where you might be deciding between one rep and another, the value of the Rolodex often came into play. I mean, how could you afford to lose all those contacts...because we know that if the rep went to a competitor, it's likely his trusted customers might go as well.
- Now sales reps aren't the only one building trusted relationships. Consider the customer support rep who spends hours a day, often in the trenches...working through issues with customers. Many have developed deep relationships. Now consider that this support rep might be reaching out beyond their normal phone conversations and has established themselves as a source of information, both inside and outside their organization through blog postings and informational tweets. How do you know to protect and leverage this person, if you don't know who they are and what social value they have? You need to be able to listen and learn.
- So the challenge for your company:
- Open the conversation...social tools allow you to do that, but you have to do it in the context of your everyday work...IBM's social solutions are designed to be integrated into your business applications...and lastly, be prepared to listen and learn....otherwise you won't fully benefit from the power of your social network.
- If you think this is something you'd like to pursue or know more about, please reach out to us. IBM has a long standing culture of open conversation, integrated into business and a rich heritage of listening and learning. And we are anxious to help you.
- After all...anything less would just be...well anti-social.