Crowdsourcing - A Future Beyond Innovation

Innovation Seeks to be Free, so states Principle #4 in my recently published book, Living in the Innovation Age.

And as I further elaborate in my book, “crowdsourcing,” is an example of one such innovation trend that exhibits the three requisite characteristics of being free – Openness, Participatory, and Collaborative. Crowdsourcing refers to the outsourcing of tasks that are typical performed inside an organization by employees or contractors to an unspecified, large group i.e. the crowd. I cite several examples of successful crowdsourcing projects in my book including former Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s “Apps for Democracy” and DARPA’s next-generation combat support vehicle (XC2V) prototype contests.

Now it appears that the concept of crowdsourcing is really catching on beyond what one normally might consider the realm of innovation. Just yesterday Rita McGrath blogged on HBR about how employers are using the concept of crowdsourcing to acquire skills to get even traditional jobs done. As an example, she cites an article in the Wall Street Journal that described how AOL has been doing just that. Although this appears strikingly similar to traditional outsourcing, it’s actually not since the employer doesn't need to make any commitments at all – not even to a temporary project team, much less to permanent employees.

So, why the sudden interest in crowdsourcing? The bottom line is that in today’s roller coaster economy access to assets trumps ownership of assets. As it turns out, crowdsourcing makes gaining cost competitive and flexible  access to critical assets easier than ever before.

Innovation is in the Air... Ummm, I mean State of the Union

As many of you probably did, I also listened to President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address to our nation with great interest Tuesday night. As I mentioned in my recent book, Living in the Innovation Age, President Obama in his 2011 State of the Union address challenged the United States to win the future by "out-innovating" the rest of the world. I was glad to see that innovation is still at the top of President Obama's mind in 2012. In fact, innovation was very prominently mentioned SIX times in his address to the nation.

Here are the relevant excerpts:

1. Innovation is what America has always been about. 
2. Innovation also demands basic research. 
3. Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy.
4. Innovation led to the computer chip and the Internet; to new American jobs and new American industries. 
5. We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. 
6. There’s no reason why Congress shouldn't at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation.

By the way,  a major recurring theme in his speech was "built to last," which was mentioned FIVE times. It seems that someone has been reading Jim Collins! :)

Innovation Killer - Confusing Stability with "Maintaining the Status Quo"

I just read an article in the latest (January/February 2012) issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) that I found to be well-written, interesting, and very relevant to what many of us are facing as the global economy tries to recover from one devastating blow after another. The article is titled “How the Growth Outliers Do It” by Rita Gunther McGrath.

Rita starts with the premise (based on her research) that only a tiny percentage of large companies reliably grow the bottom line year after year. Those that do share certain characteristics. On the one hand, she states that they’re built for innovation. They enter new markets before competitors do; they’re good at experimentation; they hold everyone accountable for new ideas; and they can move on a dime. On the other hand, her research indicates that they’re extremely stable. Senior leadership have come up through the company; strategy and organizational structure stay consistent for long stretches; client retention is unusually high; and the corporate culture is strong and unchanging.

My Net Takeaways

Ultimately, I found her most significant conclusion to be that although stability and innovation may seem contradictory, it turns out that stability appears to be what makes innovation—and steady growth—possible.

As I think about the article in the context of the book that I just wrote (Living in the Innovation Age) and my statement in Chapter 1 “Status quo is the enemy of innovation”, I realize that many leaders confuse status quo with stability. This confusion, in my opinion, is the beginning of a deadly slippery slope of suboptimal growth, lowered morale, and a destiny of mediocrity.

Will Social Media lead to Management Topsy Turvy?

Today's question on the ebizQ Web 2.0 forum was about whether "social" would lead to the demise of top-down management.

I'll be honest... I just don't understand the premise for this question, even after reading the blog that it was referring to.

• Did the post office end top-down management?  
• Did telephony end top-down management?  
• Did email end top-down management?  
• Did instant messaging end top-down management?

Then, why would social end it?

Social media is just another channel that facilitates the same communication that had been happening before with the post office, telephones, email, and IM. Now, will management be impacted by social media? Absolutely, just like it was impacted by other previous advancements in communication styles and technologies.

* Originally posted in the ebizQ Web 2.0 forum on July 27, 2011.

Does Facebook's loss of users signal a shift in Social Media?

An interesting question came up on the ebizQ Web 2.0 forum today. As everyone must know by now, Facebook lost more than 5% of its user in the U.S. last month, and if you haven't heard, here's an article at Computerworld. The question is whether this signals an underlying shift in social media?

Most answers came down to something along the lines of "Social Media is a fad and all fads fade away eventually..."

But, is the fad Social Media or is the fad really facebook, twitter, etc.?

Social media is a broad category of media that enables social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques, and by leveraging web-based and mobile technologies to turn one-way communication into a two-way interactive dialogue. Facebook and Twitter are just tools. For technology geeks like myself the distinction is akin to that between SOA and Web Services.

A couple of reasons can help explain what's going on:

1. Facebook fatigue as users get tired and/or bored with facebook.
2. More exciting or relevant options become available. The Social Media landscape is lush with tools of which facebook is just one option.  My gut tells me that if we added up all the new users across the many different Social Media sites they would more than make up for the 5% loss that facebook had. Also, more than likely these 5% users that defected facebook went to one of the other options thus having no impact on Social Media usage overall. 

So, I agree facebook usage might go down as the fad loses intensity but Social Media on the whole is here to stay.

* Originally posted on the ebizQ Web 2.0 forum on June 15, 2011.