Collaboration Driving Innovation - Summary
We can not perceive of things of which we have no knowledge
… Much less can we have capability in things we do not know about in any depth. Every organisation is limited by its own internal paradigms which constrain its ability to think truly “out of the box”. External collaboration is therefore an essential part of any innovation process. It opens the path to seeing problems and concepts from completely different perspectives and makes us aware of previously unknown opportunities and solutions. It therefore enables organisations to break out of long held paradigms that were restricting their growth.
Given that it is the capabilities of the people in the organisation, managers and employees alike that are key to the development of new products and services, then unlocking the creative energy of employees in all areas of the company will present the organisation with new opportunities. Collaboration at the individual employee level broadens perspectives and allows for creative input outside of the organisations normal perspective. Through collaboration an organisation may become aware of new markets for its existing technology base or just as importantly new threats to its existing markets.
But as every manager knows the skill is in managing creativity effectively. It is so easy to go to extremes with valuable resource being expended on ideas which are simply never going to be strategic to the organisation. Or the opposite where creativity is so controlled that the only ideas that ever make progress are simply ones that provided incremental advances to an exiting product or service. Developing a management process for this early creativity and for investment in things that may not have an immediate market calls for a different approach to the process normally used for evaluating investment decisions. Investment has to be filtered, that is a commercial fact of life, but the key is to develop strategic thinking that embraces new potential scenarios that may emerge. These scenarios may involve accepting the possibility of new cost structures or margin levels that are unacceptable today. Recognising that entry into new markets may involve structural change in order to allow for future business development to take place.