COMMUNICATION ACROSS BORDERS

POLICY:If companies want to be innovative in their field, not only do they need to rethink how they do business, but they also have to be willing to step out of their comfort zone

RESEARCHER AND author Andrew Jones believes he has discovered an important secret in the quest for innovation at work: find the right questions to ask. "In large, centralised organisations, whether in the EU, US or UK, we see chief executives quoted on the issue of innovation, we hear everyone talking about it but, in fact, less than two per cent of companies worldwide commit to innovation," he says, lining up his argument.

The key question, as Jones puts it, is not "how can we innovate?" Nor is it "do we know the benefits of innovation?"

The real question is: why do companies continue to commit to their traditional structures and conventional forms of behaviour even though they know that these habitual practices are a barrier to the innovation they crave?

It may be a simple question, but it turns our understanding of innovation on its head. Rather than rehashing increasingly familiar ideas about innovation and how companies can go about harnessing innovative, creative ideas, we really need to look closely at why companies avoid it.

"Many companies would rather be number two in the market or number 20 in the market than give up control," says Jones, whose academic training is in anthropology.

What he notes alongside this reticence is "an exodus of creative people from corporate America into collaborative and loose associations of peers". This exodus involves the very people corporations most need to nurture and exploit: strategists, designers and marketers, many of whom, Jones points out, now adopt design principles in the working practice.

Design, he argues, is becoming a new totem in corporate life, with these new freeform networks and the old corporations both claiming it as their own.

While there may well be an exodus of talent from big business, there are also companies that are embracing change in substantial ways. Jones' book, Innovation Acid Test (Triarchy Press, April 2008), was published in the week that the Bank of America announced a hook-up with the famous MIT Media Lab, in a project to redesign how banks function.

The fact that Bank of America has chosen to hook up with Media Lab is telling. One of the driving forces of change is the rapid evolution of social media such as online networks, wikis (collaborative knowledge projects) and easy-to-arrange, informal meetings and conferences (see panel, right).

Frank Moss, director of the Media Lab and holder of the Jerome Wiesner Professorship of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, believes the Center for Future Banking "represents a powerful new model by which academia and business will partner to invent the future of entire industries".

That suggests there are at least four new corporate innovation models at work: complete redesign by experts; the corporate innovation office as an engine of change within the organisation; the use of change consultants; and a bottom-up free networking model that Jones describes, and advocates, in his book.

"Companies that go for bottom-up approaches win in the marketplace," he says, returning to his point that many companies have less interest in winning than in staying comfortable.

Jones styles himself as a corporate cultural anthropologist whose unique study-population is the value system of the company. What he notes is that many of the people who flee large companies are now remixing work by setting up the flat co-operative organisations where innovation can flourish.

"These associations are perfect innovation engines," argues Jones. Aren't they also a physical manifestation of the online networks that millions of people now belong to? "Absolutely," says Jones. The members of these networks typically sell their services back into large companies.

The new networks are partly a product of the way the internet is evolving into a networking space. Online meetings and networking opportunities have accustomed a generation of workers to being able to connect with their peers. But in Jones' analysis, these networks are also the product of disenchantment with big corporation values.

"My work largely focuses around relationships in work and issues of trust and control," he says. "Big companies generally know what steps they have to take to be more innovative but they refuse to let go of control, so at some level what we are witnessing is a huge critique of big companies."

Online tools are being widely used now to create and support these real-world networks that Jones believes offer a model of work in the future. Networks such as BarCamp, Open Coffee, Co-Working and Jelly (see panel on page 50) are global phenomena.

Cork Open Coffee Club (OCC) organiser Conor O'Neill explains the attraction of easy networking opportunities.

"I was attracted to the OCC idea by what I saw as a lack of any real opportunities for all of us in the local start-up ecosystem to network regularly: entrepreneurs, techies, finance people. The 'regular' aspect was critical as was the free-form relaxed approach."

Open Coffee Clubs encourage entrepreneurs to meet regularly and share ideas not just for products but also for funding, staffing, technological innovations and ideas, and markets. This is a substantially different experience from the working world of top management.

"One interviewee told me recently: 'my boss started work before e-mail'," says Jones by way of illustrating the difference in work lives. Now some of today's youngest workers are increasingly turning to Facebook and mobile phone connections instead of email.

A number of big companies have noticed the trend, though, and are now encouraging key staff to get involved. "They give staff remote worker status so they can join these co-operatives and networks and bring back some of the spirit to the company."

At the core of this movement is the large-scale adoption of design principle and design work practices, again an area that a small but growing number of companies are trying to emulate. "The principles are all about industrial design," he argues. "Innovation consultancy in general uses design thinking as a methodology."

CREATING A LIBERAL WORKPLACE

THE MOVEMENT towards a more liberal and creative working environment in Ireland has yet to take off, but the signs are positive.

Coworking.ie, founded by Dublin-based web designer Jason Roe, has about 150 members, 15 of them actively blogging on the coworking.ie site.

"I was freelancing and had a requirement for more than just working alone or working through the web," says Roe. "I needed a social aspect but didn't want to spend a lot of money leasing an office.

"How is it different from renting shared office space? The idea is you can do the same work that you might in a large corporation but you do it in a community. And you have a common goal or community goal. It's not that everyone has just that goal. But apart from your own business goals you have ones in common with the people around you."

Coworking.ie has locations in Dublin city centre and Dublin 7 as well as Waterford, and to date it has grown by word of mouth. "The way it's been described," says Roe, "is BarCamp, but every day."

BarCamp are the informal conferences that take place around the world, now typically between people who work in Web 2.0 technologies and services.

Open Coffee, a global movement towards informal discussions amongst start-ups, funders, and experienced entrepreneurs, now take place on a weekly basis around Ireland.

"If nothing else, my own professional and personal networks have been hugely improved through OCC and I think the same is true for all the regulars," says Cork OCC organiser Conor O'Neill.

That includes mechanisms and a willingness to generate and share ideas, rapid prototyping, and iteration between prototype and planning, and interaction with key customer groups.

An August 2007 article in US magazine BusinessWeek reported on the ascent of designers to vice-president level in some US companies, a further sign of companies trying to integrate the current passion for a more free-form way of work, noting also that Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Johnson & Johnson have all appointed vice-presidents of design in the past number of years.

The impetus is clearly with design but many of this new generation of vice-presidents have no business training.

As design and innovation grow in importance and organisations respond, they're finding that the core capabilities they need are not in place, a factor that business schools are quickly trying to adapt to.

Five years ago, Harvard University set up a Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders course and the London Business School recently founded its Centre for Creative Business to teach management skills to creative entrepreneurs.

The Domus Academy in Milan, Italy has set up a Master of Business Design - an equivalent of the MBA. The Domus prospectus says it "represents a new area where designers, experts in enterprise and corporate organisation, in information technology, communication, marketing, managers and entrepreneurs contribute to the creation of a new strategic language".

That strategic language, however, is already spoken in the informal networks that Jones is now studying.

New and old companies see advantages in being part of those networks - evidence that the search for innovation is not confined to the grad school or to start-ups.

In mid-2007 rapid-growth website Facebook announced a $10 million support fund for companies developing applications for its platform. In February of this year, News International-owned MySpace announced a $15 million (€9.5 million) fund, also targeting the freewheeling Web 2.0 community.

So how do companies score on their willingness to innovate?

Jones believes a company's commitment to innovation can be measured roughly by their recruitment policy, how they develop people and whether or not they give them freedom. What has he discovered about these three factors?

Recruitment into big companies now includes special attention on design graduates or graduates who have a design-business background.

"These are now the hot recruitment spots," says Jones. "Big companies want to recruit capable design people."

But do they develop them and their skills base?

"They tend to be absorbed quickly into the existing cultures," he argues, pointing out that there are some companies that become alert to this danger, such as personal care product specialist Kimberley Clark and FMCG major Proctor and Gamble, who have created independent units for their designers.

And do they give their employees the freedom they need to innovate? "No," he asserts and adds: "Top leaders need to let go." According to Jones, it's time they dialled into what the new technology is doing to their workforce.

WORKING FROM THE BOTTOM UP

BOTTOM-UP INNOVATION is taking place around the world in cafes, front rooms and casually-shared office spaces.

The unofficial objective, according to Andrew Jones, is to innovate outside the corporation. These initiatives are given momentum by their participants' rejection of big corporation work-life values.

BarCamp

BarCamp is a concept for conferences that does not involve traditional schedules or presentations.

The idea of a BarCamp is that you turn up and, if you want to speak, you check your name on the board next to a time and a room. There are regular BarCamps in all the main cities in Ireland.

Jelly

Jelly is casual co-working. The movement was founded by entrepreneurs and software writers Amit Gupta and Luke Crawford, who, while living in New York, decided they wanted to work from home - but missed the brainstorming and interaction of the office.

"We invite people to work from our home for the day. We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off off."

There are now Jellies in Austin, Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco and many more US cities, as well as London, Dublin, Tel Aviv and more.

Co-working

Co-working is a movement to create a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents. This has led to some groups designating special days when a particular type of work is being done, so that co-workers can guarantee meeting people working on similar projects.

Social Media Cafe

Social media cafe is a London-based group that was founded through the auspices of social networking website Facebook. It currently brings together over 350 professionals who offer social media services (blogs, networks etc) to companies.

As with all these informal network initiatives it is beginning to expand to other cities.

Creative Coffee Club/Open Coffee Club

Creative Coffee Club is a meeting and networking event that provides a place for business people, academics, teachers, public sector workers and managers to network, exchange ideas and discuss how to foster creativity and innovation in the workplace.