In a project recently finished for a large industrial minerals company, we have been looking at their innovation community and tried to find trends, changes in the way people collaborate and new ways to encourage innovation. Part of the job was doing a social network analysis to see patterns in relationships between the two main (geographical) groups inside the community - and the other part was mapping the amount of innovation that came out of the community to this SNA.
Some of the findings were interesting; for instance it became apparent that the role of the innovation coordinator, once prominent in the community, was steadily declining after time - while the rest of the community was increasing activity in the various ways measured. More than sixty percent of the participants in the innovation community was not linked to the innovation coordinator, quite an exceptional figure given the role of the coordinator in business terms.
Taking a step back in this particular case, the community used to be formed by innovation participants of only one geographical region. In this setup, the innovation coordinator (himself located in this region) was dominant in the activity and accounted for the largest degree centrality in the network. After a couple of months another group from a different geographical region was let into the community, and from this point onwards the presence of the coordinator in the community decreased - both in relative as well as absolute terms - just because the diversity of the two groups sparked such debate that people started to form links by themselves. The amount of innovation that came out of these new ties, increased strongly.
Linking this example out of the business back to the theory (23rd of April posting) it was very clear that the context and sharing elements had been present, but it did not lead to the desired debate and innovation. Why? Since there was a lack of diversity (all the participants were from the same background, same geographical location) there had been idea submissions but little innovation - just due to the fact that most of the innovation processes for these ideas had been distilled in other offline networks. The innovation community in the first stage perhaps was more a repository of ideas, innovated somewhere else. After the new group came in, the third element of diversity removed this obstacle to innovation inside the community and lead to a strong increase in debate, conversation and new visions and insights.
The combination of the social network analysis and the threads, put into context by the management with all the insights of the people in the networks, seconded this conclusion. Just right after that, a third geographical location was added to the innovation community and local coordinators were appointed to support the community model.
Diversity is a key element for innovation communities - otherwise the innovation may happen outside the community due to offline networks and not due to the community.
This apparently simple change to the community - increasing the diversity - recently also lead to an increase in participation (more 80% of the members are denoted 'active') most likely because the community is more interesting than before - when its value outcome was at par with other offline networks.
Diversity and innovation can drive the attractiveness of the community, increasing the visibility and opportunity for value creation.
It has to be said that diversity must be limited to the context and domain of the community itself though - an approach where gradual introduction of different groups and participants is taken typically works best since it allows participants to build trust and identity with the community. If not, the risk of a patchwork of community members, held together by context and coordinators, may be too brittle for the community to ever find its way to bringing innovation..
This happened at 7:26:21 PM or
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