Collective Intelligence Presentation – Imaginatik

Bad Case Study of Open Innovation: Brightidea Customer Feedback Portal

• Innovation is all about the process of doing new things that deliver value.
• Open innovation is about innovation with people outside the firm’s walls.
• Good Innovation processes are vital. Bad innovation processes – especially for Open Innovation – are deadly.

Let’s look at an example: Brightidea.

Before I get into the detail, I’d like to provide some context. Innovation management, and its related field of Idea Management is gaining market traction (e.g. Forrester Research & Gartner now following). It is all about people and leadership processes, focused on innovation and problem solving, supported by technology. This is in stark contrast with simply buying a ‘naked’ technology product and hoping that innovation miraculously happens. The area is relatively new – we ourselves at Imaginatik started working on the first “Idea Management” systems in 1998. As with many areas, the good practices on use are still emerging, as practitioners drive new learnings and experiences.

Open innovation is an even newer branch of innovation. For most organizations, open innovation is the systematic solicitation of external inputs (insights, problems, ideas, solutions, feedback) as part of an internal innovation process. Open innovation has many critical process issues that need to be addressed, from intellectual property rights, to managing types of users, and what users can see and do.

So, I find it distressing that a so-called ‘leader’ in innovation, Brightidea, has applied the tools for open innovation without any consideration to the basics of open innovation, let alone applying more advanced techniques. Let’s consider just three of the fundamental rules of an Open Innovation process:

1. Do NOT allow access to an Open Innovation system without appropriate legal conditions and security permissions
2. Do NOT expose your user community to the Internet, especially without their permission
3. Do NOT let your competitors get access to confidential internal information

All too often we share success stories, and only rarely do we share failures. The thing is that we can learn from failures – it is important to know what NOT TO DO, just as much as knowing what TO do.

I’m going to deliberately use the Brightidea Customer Feedback Portal as an example as  it illustrates poorly-thought through process work, with a clearly visible negative outcome (see our review of their content below).  Brightidea is an influential industry player, self-described as “the global leader in innovation management”. My company, Imaginatik plc, competes with Brightidea in this market space: we are a much larger firm, and a publicly traded company. Our unique advantage – the one that has us winning most business these days – is our strength and focus on consulting and process work. “A fool with a tool is still a fool” – and we do not want to let our customers be fools.

I expect Brightidea will close the loopholes in their public domain system shortly (this entry was written on 13 Oct 2009). As there are no waivers or restrictions around the content (it might as well be Google indexed for the world to see), I will post our conclusions around their activities below, and capture some screenshots with commentary so you can see what I mean by ‘process gaps’.

To compare their activities to our approach, at Imaginatik, we have a multiyear program in place for customer and partner engagement. The core system is called ‘Big Fluffy Wishlist’ (BFW), used extensively by our consulting and sales team using a technique called ‘Customer Echo’, developed on pioneering engagements at Grace Chemicals and Bayer. We have a separate system available to registered customers that links to the back-end system internally. The BFW system is actively managed as a workflow and tracking system, so we can see on a periodic basis the status of the submissions through our development process. We do NOT post this content to the internet, and we certainly do NOT allow our competitors to go in to take a look.

Perhaps, and yes, this is a bit cheeky, if Brightidea would like an Imaginatik consultant to come and conduct an audit and recommend improvements, we’d be happy to come up with a price.

Joking aside, this is an important issue for this emerging industry. I am deeply concerned when companies start following ‘leaders’ who do not have either the experience or knowhow to guide their clients. This is honestly a dreadful example of Open Innovation in practice. In my view, the cobbler’s children should have the best shoes on the block (they are walking advertisements), not the worst. I therefore hope my exposé will help companies and consultants focus on the vital issues of process in this key area of innovation.

Our Research Method

We discovered the web site by looking on the official social media sites in the public domain. The URL is (maybe soon ‘was’) http://ideas.brightidea.com.

We reviewed the web site for terms, conditions, waiver forms – and upon not finding any, proceeded to investigate. Later we did see there were ‘Terms & Conditions’. They were, precisely: “You agree to release intellectual capital rights to all ideas posted on this website”.

We went through the content to explore patterns, issues, concerns, and progress. We also reviewed the entire list of participants and learned that there were customers in the system, who also posted complaints and observations.

Our Output

Internally, our Development Team reviewed the inputs and the status updates within the system. We developed a list of ‘weaknesses’, which we share below. Now we do not know if these were or are real issues, we do not know if they have been fixed, etc. This is all from the public domain, badly-designed Open Innovation System for the Brightidea Customer Feedback Portal.

We also put together a PPT of screenshots and commentary on the system (Imaginatik Review – Brightidea Customer Feedback Portal 13Oct09), so that if / when it gets taken down, we can still have a corporate memory of how the system was implemented.

Imaginatik Feedback on Brightidea Customer Feedback Portal: Key Weaknesses

1.            They only properly support IE, which is a bad limitation for open innovation.

2.            They constantly update hosted environments (not clear whether it’s once a month or even more often). This is risky – how well can they have tested their changes? It is also difficult for Admins to stay on top of new features and make sure that they immediately configure new settings as appropriate. This can lead to embarrassing situations.

3.            They don’t take security concerns seriously. If you have forgotten your password, they mail it to you in the clear. Even if access to specific ideas is limited, the projects that get spawned from them are not restricted. They also don’t seem to think that having their issues open to the competition might be a problem (not exactly experts on open innovation).

4.            The Admin burden is placed on a single person per campaign. The setup work cannot be shared, and you can only have one moderator for pre-screening submissions in the Platform product (there is no embargo functionality in WebStorm). This does not meet most enterprise demands.

5.            Important Admin options are system-wide, e.g. the categories. They cannot accommodate different usage scenarios and processes that differ across divisions. They admit that the Admin area is ‘a mess’.

6.            Their workflow can generate email overload for end users and reviewers because it is not built for volume.

7.            Navigation is difficult and confusing. You cannot move seamlessly from one idea to the next. The tabs, the categories and the remit of the search are confusing because you don’t know which ideas are included in which case.

8.            They only have promote/demote functionality, no other public voting tool. That means that there is no granularity like with our 5 stars, and there is also no way of capturing comments at the same time like with our peer review.

9.            You cannot export comments together with the ideas. You get a separate file for comments that only contains the ideaID.

10.  Clients get locked in – if a customer wants to stop using Brightidea’s service, they cannot simply export their own content. They do not permit customers to access their data structures, providing less flexibility and issues when a customer wants to stop using them and migrate to a new platform.

Dev Group Opinion: There will be other issues that are not included in this source. This list should already disqualify them for enterprise usage, though.

Idea Management Market: New Branch of Competition

I came across a news alert on “idea management” today from a vendor I had not heard of before: Gensight Group. Their press release covered the release of its new Version 8 software for Project Portfolio Management, that included an idea management toolset.

I have not had the time nor the inclination to do a deep-deep dive on the company as we have never come across them before at Imaginatik in our ten years of working in the area of Collaborative Innovation. That being said, it did pique my interest as I have been expecting vendors of ‘larger’ platform products, around knowledge management and portfolio management, to add on simplistic Idea Management features to their toolset.

From one standpoint, it is easy to manage ideas. I mean, how hard can it be to have a form that collects ideas, a view that shares them, and a form that allows you to vote on the top ones. Well, we’ve answered that question before, and the answer in practice is: pretty damn hard.

So, my expectation of Gensight and any other firm approaching the area from a similar way is that:

- in the best case, they protect their existing revenue streams from their client base who might be looking at buying in this organizational capability

- they are unlikely to add new clients who start off looking for Idea Management, as the feature set is way too immature in Idea Management, and way too rich / complex in areas that the client does not (yet) appreciate

- their core business is quite far away from Idea Management, so that when push comes to shove, they reduce / drop support for the feature set (and wait for the next buzzword / toolset to add on)

So, it is good validation that the overall market is growing. And good to have a ‘plan’ as to how to address these new entrants. It’s nice to be in a popular market space

Comment on Brightidea post: annoying web site did not let me post properly

Don’t you get really annoyed when you have a great comment to make to an article… but the web site is bust and doesn’t accept comments. Well, once again this has happened to me, but instead of just getting upset, I’ll post a link to the article here, and my comment below. Great thoughts should not go to waste!

Main article: The Hobson & Holtz Report -

FIR Interview: Matthew Greeley, Founder and CEO, BrightIdea

And my comment:

“Imagine an iceberg heading towards you… and you are a ship… That is a little bit what it’s like when companies try to follow in Dell or Starbucks’ footsteps and realize that collecting ‘ideas’ is only part of the problem. Innovation needs to be managed, and ideas, whilst important, are only part of the solution. Matt’s work at BI, together with the work we’ve done at Imaginatik (www.imaginatik.com) has really helped serious implementors achieve real business benefit (instead of keeping the HP and IBM PC teams awake at night reading every post coming into the Dell system – which is completely public domain, no IP protection, etc). So – for those implementing real systems, I recommend taking a look at Matt’s firm – and my own, of course

Mark Turrell

CEO, Imaginatik plc

www.imaginatik.com

My Take-Aways from Sway: Rationally Sharing my Insights

I really like the story-telling genre of books, typified by Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, Tipping Point, Outliers). Sway (Ori Brafman & Rom Brafman) is another book in the same category, and a good one. The stories are helpful to bring the insights to life, and the insights are powerful to bring life… to life.

I wanted to pull out some key points for myself, and then I thought I would share them and some of my additional insights. It’s rationale to share. So my key take-aways:

Behaviors and decision making are influenced by an array of irrational, psychological forces. And like streams, these various forces combine and become very powerful.

Key ‘hidden’ forces are:

-       Loss Aversion – tendancy to go to great lengths to avoid possible loss

• also has notion of commitment – once started down a path, one feels obligated to continue, despite evidence

-       Value Attribution – inclination to ascribe to a person or thing certain qualities based on initial perceived value, rather than objective data

• this can be helpful to us as a mental shortcut to determine what is worthy of attention, but in some cases, very misleading
• value attribution can be arbitrary, with no link to any actual value of any sort

-       Diagnosis Bias – propensity to label people, ideas or things based on our initial opinions, blindness to evidence that contradicts our initial assessment of a person or situation

-       concept of fairness in terms of irrationality is mostly driven by the process rather than the outcome

• cultural bias of fairness is interesting (Americans & Russians think differently!)

-       Money & compensation use a special part of the brain… that is the opposite of the altruistic brain

• The nucleus accumbens enjoys the thrill (first date, gambling), loves highs, and deals with the notion of gains and losses for money (the ‘pleasure center’
• The posterior superior temporal sulcus looks after social interactions, how we perceive and relate with others (the ‘altruistic center’)
• The key driver is the anticipation of reward in driving addictive behavior and surpressing altruism

-       Group dynamics form an important part of irrational behavior, particularly allowing and handling dissent

• Four types of person: initiator (starts things, excites people), blocker (questions things, critic), supporter (takes a side), and observer (neutral)

Some implications for Innovation and Idea Management:

1)    Danger of Financial Rewards & Likely Reasons for Practical Failures of Prediction Markets

As we know, financial rewards are very damaging to Idea Management and innovation initiatives. Most people contribute out of a desire to help and engage with others. As soon as you add a financial component to the process, people’s brains think differently.

Sometimes it is better to get nothing than something

This is especially the case in the emergent area of prediction markets, typified by Spigit and NewsFutures. Individuals are encouraged to spend their time helping others (the ‘…sulcus’ part of the brain) by reading through ideas and making judgments. The ‘market’ component of the Prediction Market then triggers the more powerful ‘pleasure center’ part of the brain, and then surpresses one’s desire to help others. This is made even more damaging when the company highlights the potential benefits in scoring or spending time doing evaluations. Why spend two hours’ worth of time for someone else’s benefit… and all I get is a lousy T-shirt?

2)    Personality Styles

The work on dissent matches closely to our work on the Orchid Model and the instrument we use to identify personality styles regarding handling new things. One can intuitively see the connection between:

-       initiator = creator

-       blocker = inquisitor

-       supporter = helper

-       observer = doer (stays out of the issue, just wants to know what to do)

I like the work on irrational behavior a lot – it makes a lot more sense than the hopeful expectation that people are mostly rational. I do believe that even this body of work is missing in a trick in not encompassing the work on complex systems, emergent behavior, and particularly the importance of feedback loops. For instance, the heuristic ‘rule’ of “follow what your peers are doing” would explain why one person could do an irrational thing, and then other people follow. It does not immediately imply that everyone is irrational, more than the feedback loop is taking hold.

Sway is a great book and I recommend you take a look, whether rationally (it’s good for you) or irrationally ( I ask you to .

Imaginatik’s Innovation Top 10 for the Downturn

How can you take ‘innovation’ – the process of doing new things that deliver value – and make use of it during a downturn. If your organization is defocusing on innovation, all is not lost. Here are Imaginatik’s Innovation Top 10 for the Downturn.

1. Use innovation and idea management tools and processes for cost reduction.
2. Take a proportion of realized cost savings and put them into innovation and doing new things that can immediately add value, or create new opportunities for the medium term.
3. Develop and populate an Innovation & Opportunity Inventory to capture and store opportunities for growth and improvement, so that you can fast track deployment when the business situation get better (and not reinvent the wheel).
4. Start – and scale-up – working with partners for co-creation, leveraging other people’s resources and insights, to help de-risk and accelerate new innovations.
5. Treat the reduction in money or resources as a beneficial ‘constraint’, work around the constraints, and become good at Constraint-driven Innovation.
6. Tap into enterprise crowdsourcing – harnessing the brainpower of hundreds and thousands using software and special engagement methods – to get scale, more input, more diverse input faster, cheaper and with better quality than many more old-fashioned methods.
7. Look for innovation opportunities outside the usual areas. If you always keep innovating around product, like the competition, will open up scope for quick wins in other business activities.
8. Become less demanding with bosses: ask for less budget and people and manage down expectations.
9. Use the time during the downturn as opportunity to think about and question core business assumptions (customer needs, etc) – thinking is cheap.
10. Develop a big vision for the future, hide it, keep working toward it… you might get chop otherwise.

ISPIM Presentation on Crowdsourcing & Complex Systems

ISPIM is the leading academic conference on innovation and product development, with over 200 PhD presentations from over 50 countries. Mark Turrell, CEO of Imaginatik plc (www.imaginatik.com), presented some of the underlying concepts behind collaboration at mass scale, the area of crowdsourcing. This presentation was mainly in pictures – so there is relatively little text explanation of the concepts.

View this document on Scribd

For the slides, the order is:

- complex systems

- simple patterns emerge from unimaginable complexity

- patterns emerge through heuristics or rules of thumb

- a live experiment of clapping demonstrated emergence

- these systems operate in a network – and a network of network

- the key to a network is the intersections - this is where innovation most frequently takes place

- there is a difference between systems driven by scarcity and those by abundance

- an abundance of intersections boosts the likelihood of creative outcomes (Starbucks comparison)

- there is tremendous brainpower in humans

- if we can only tap into it in a more effective way

- crowdsourcing provides such a means

- we predict crowdsourcing at enterprise – and global scale – will profoundly change organizations – and the path of the world in terms of beneficial social change

And to conclude – connect with Mark on twitter (@mark_turrell), FB & LinkedIn (mark_turrell@imaginatik.com)

Six-short cuts to innovation… or not…

I came across a recent article on the Six Short-Cuts to Innovation on the BNet UK site, an article written by Jo Owen. In the articlem the author proposes that one does not need fancy innovation tools, systems, but one can by-pass anything looking like hard work by following six simple rules:

1) Copy an idea

2) Solve a problem

3) Experiment

4) Get lucky

5) Act little, act often

6) Ask everyone

The conclusion is controversial, to say the least: “Successful innovation does not require genius, brainstorming workshops, taking risks or even technology. Listen to your customers and to your staff well and you may discover the next great innovation is on your doorstep.”

Here is my response, on their site and copied below:

Re” Six Short Cuts to Innovation

“Successful innovation does not require genius, brainstorming workshops, taking risks or even technology. Listen to your customers and to your staff well and you may discover the next great innovation is on your doorstep.”

This is a very broad statement to make based on a few scattered, and obviously successful examples. It also implies that the simple secrets exposed in this post are all you need. A few music industry mates and hey presto, an airline. Right.

There is a big difference between having an idea for a business, and developing the successful business itself. There is also a big difference between the creative ideation process, and the process of real innovation – turning ideas into value.

Being realistic, companies need to try all of the things suggested – and more. Innovation for many firms is the driver of growth and profit. Relying on simple methods creates way too much risk for medium to large sized corporations. Easy for a consultant to say… hard for a senior executive to stake their careers, and the employment of hundreds of people on.

Enterprise-scale innovation requires a lot more. For example, it is not enough to just ‘ask everyone’ – you need to have structured methods to do so, manage intellectual property, handle reward & recognition, and so on and so on (I just made a blog post myself on this topic, breaking down the myth about ‘we need simple systems’ - http://bit.ly/NWeLL).

It is good to focus people on innovation in these troubled times. It does not always help to trivialize it though.

Mark Turrell
CEO, Imaginatik plc
www.imaginatik.com

Myth #4: We Need Simple Idea Management Systems

I am a great believer in simple systems. The ideal solution is one that is so elegant, that any complexity is hidden from end users so that they would never know it was there. As an owner of two iPhones (one for Europe, one for the US), I know this to be true at a deep, personal level.

And yet, I recall the first three hours of building Imaginatik’s Idea Central, the world’s first enterprise-scale Idea Management software. We built the basics of the system in an hour, and then started chatting about the system. The conversation went along the lines of:

“OK, what if I want to submit my idea, but I don’t want you to know it was me”

            “Fine, we can have anonymous ideas”

“Right, say I do not want anyone to know it is my idea, but the evaluation team think that it is good, and I’d like to claim ownership, and maybe even work on the project team”

            “Fine, you could submit your idea anonymously, and then control whether you reveal it or not, to whom, and when”

“And, say I did not want to reveal my name at all… but then the company needs to file a patent and they cannot file a patent on an anonymous idea”

            “Fine. We could have an auditor function that would permit anonymous idea entry, and only allow, perhaps on a time-limited basis, certain individuals to find anonymous authors on a case-by-case basis”

“And what if I am in a regulated industry, and want to share potentially illegal ideas, or swap ideas across a Chinese Wall of an investment bank, or I am a contractor, or, or…”

And this was the easy work we started in 1998.

Now the world has got even more complicated. At least 35% of our clients have already implemented some form of Open Innovation system, working in a variety of ways with non-employees. The problems are even more complex, a LOT MORE complex.

So, time to break Myth #4 of the Top 10 Myths of Idea Management. For novice buyers – and for a select type of experienced buyer – there is a desire and a belief that a firm only needs to have a simple system to start with, and perhaps for all time. The novice buyers usually have not spent any serious quality time understanding the business and human requirements, perhaps delegating responsibility to a business analyst in IT, and so they want as simple as possible. The experienced buyer may have used several systems in the past, and having witnessed them fail – usually for a variety of human reasons – they now feel that the only way they can move forward is by deeply simplifying the task and starting again.

OK, time to myth-bust!

Complexity is Necessary – companies are complex systems with complex requirements. Something like intellectual property (IP) is the font and protector of wealth for many firms, and yet fully open systems allow that IP to be wasted or even stolen. Systems that engage non-employees add even more complexity to internal systems. This complexity cannot be argued away – it just is.

Organizational requirements are Complex and Changing – successful companies change (and who cares about the other ones). They merge, open international offices, expand into new business areas, restructure, and so on. They may have regulated and non-regulated areas. They may have entirely different business models within the same company. One part of the firm may compete with another part. One part of the firm may be the biggest supplier and partner to a competitor of another part of the firm. Organizations are complex. And they change. A simple system cannot keep up, even for a second.

Volume changes everything – Idea Management programs designed to handle a few hundred ideas or suggestions a year get swamped with a few thousand contributions. The simple programs massively under-estimate the time and effort required to evaluate and process ideas when required to do so at scale. A simple program may propose one person to manage and evaluate the ideas. The complexity of real life may mean that tens of people, all geographically dispersed in various business functions, have to coordinate to effectively manage a program and yield decent business results.

Focused Ideation yields 30X Returns over Simple Unfocused Programs – most simple programs are little more than open suggestion schemes. There is a significant body of research that shows that narrowing down the scope of an ideation initiative, and creating time pressure for contributions and evaluations, generates 30 times more high quality, high impact ideas than an always-open, anything-goes scheme [See Imaginatik Research White Paper on Event-Based Idea Management]

Simple Idea Forms, More Work for Evaluators – if the content input form is too simple, the evaluators find they do not have enough content and insight to perform an effective evaluation. This creates frustration for the evaluators – and the contributors. An idea form needs a requisite simplicity – simple enough to capture the right information for the evaluators to form an opinion.

Lazy, unengaged managers design Simple Systems – OK, I did not have to be that mean, but in my experience, a well-designed program that can really yield substantial business benefits requires time and input from a range of people. Focusing on a simplistic area of the system merely means that one is neglecting at least one core component, say reward and recognition, leading to rapid program demise. Most companies asking for Simple Systems are really highlighting the fact that the have not spent the time thinking about their business problem, and really just want to ‘tick Idea Management off the To Do List’.

Successful Simple Systems are Hide the Complexity – the iPod and iPhone are design classics. They take previously complicated devices and reduce them to simplicity. This is the same, albeit not to quite the same extent, for Idea Management systems. From an end user perspective the system should be highly accessible, easy to use, and require no training. From an evaluators perspective, it needs to have the right tools to do the job, but not be so intimidating that it dissuades evaluators from using the system. And from a program owner’s perspective, it needs to do the job required. Simplicity at the front-end belies a mountain of necessary complexity behind the scenes, and the best systems do both.

Going outside of Company Walls is Always Complex - as mentioned above, there are necessary complexities in the business world, and one ultra-strong one for Idea Management is the participation of non-employees in so-called Open Innovation Systems. If you thought the internal world had issues, these are nothing compared to Supply Chain systems, collecting ideas from the General Public, or fighting IP court cases with upset, vocal inventors. All systems that involve some form of open participation outside company walls become very, very complicated, and for excellent reasons.

Sadly for those who want the simple life, simple systems do not work. Whether they be simple ideas@company.com e-mail programs [see my white paper on 'The Perils of E-Mail Based Idea Management'] or classic suggestion schemes, as soon as a program starts getting successful, the requirements change dramatically, practically overnight. So, for those of you down the path of ’simple Idea Management’ systems, be aware that you are highly unlikely to invalidate ten years of multi-company experience, so stop and think before you sign off on a non-workable approach.

Introducing the Sense Gen

I have a swimming pool with a pump that keeps going wrong. Why do I have to go look at the pump to find out it is not working, after it has already failed. And do this while my friend in Berlin has attached the baby monitor for his toddler daughter to an SMS text alert service, so he can pop downstairs to the coffee shop for a meeting, and rush back as required.

I think it is time for Gen-X – the 26 – 46 year old generation – to break yet one more thing on our path to eventual senility and death. And this time, we want sensors.

For around us, we are bemused to find that we are living in a world without smarts. The objects we use, that we need to operate successfully in life, are as intelligent as the raw materials of which they are comprised. And yet, life does not have to be this way.

Gen-X propelled the Internet and before that, the long distance phone revolution. Why should you have to pay $3 a minute for a phone call across the States. Why shouldn’t I be able to have access to the entire Library of Congress, Prince’s Purple Rain, and an English translation of Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’ … at 3 o’clock in the morning, whatever time zone I am in??

The new trend, I believe, will be the increasing demand for smart, connected objects, using sensors to track what is going on, and management tools to control their activities remotely. Rapidly, as leading edge thinkers and opinion leaders start down this direction, we will start to look around us and ask the question: why not?

As we get onto this movement en masse, we will see many opportunities to put smarts into the objects and systems we use and see around us every day. One can imagine foolish things, like a sensor on clothing that tells if it is ‘too worn’. Or smart things like sensors that tell current electricity pricing, and automatically starts (or stops) charging our electric devices and cars based on price signals. In London recently I saw Tom Standage, Business Affairs Editor at The Economist, kick-off in this direction with his personal crusade around electricity pricing.

And we do not see any reason to be physically present to check these sensors. Why – we have wifi and Internet connections. Already I do not have to go to the store to see if a book is available. Why should I move myself to check on a sensor reading? Instead we will get intelligent alerts, to whatever device we choose. And we will have the management tools – and likely service companies to help us – manage the settings for optimal performance and experience.

Obviously there is more work to be done on this. I see this as part of a general trend of greater transparency, just of objects and their status in this case. I see this as a way of utilizing the power of the masses, as sensors and objects start to cooperate, perhaps to reduce electricity consumption in an entire neighborhood automatically. And fundamentally, this is yet another step along mankind’s use of tools and technology to make life a little bit easier, and hopefully, this time around, make our never-ending consumption habit a little less damaging to the world around us.