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07 October 2006 |
Did you miss the first edition of Collaborative Working Environments for Business and Industry, also dubbed CWE, earlier this year? Although the contribution of virtual communities and communities of practice was only a part of the larger conversation about the collaborative working environment, it's still interesting to check out the next edition which will take place in Sweden, on June 14th, 2007. The call for papers is still open (check their website). The conference has a very strong ICT focus (as an enabler, has to be said) because it derives from the FP programme of the EU.
Breakthrough innovation in business models with communities of practice (/interest) was discussed by Laso Ballosteros. It's both an opportunity and a threat, he claims, in his presentation. The role of these communities is going to be quite different in 15 years time than it is now. Also, some reference to Alistair Rogers in his keynote: "Communities learn together. They build skills, knowledge and ‘lore’. The big issue is how to teach individuals the value of teams and how to be effective on and with teams. Even harder is how to build those communities over distance. We have the ‘myth’ that we can build tools that can fix this. It’s not going to be easy!"
This happened at 3:58:55 PM or
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02 August 2005 |
Genrich S. Altshuller is te founding father of TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. I am stuying the facilitation of knowledge networks and communities of practice in the application of methods like TRIZ. One of the better reference pages about TRIZ can be found here; an interesting part for that facilitation is the part where is described how Altshuller noted that the source of the solution required broader knowledge and more solutions to consider before an ideal one could be found.
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Table 1. Levels of Inventiveness. |
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Level |
Degree of inventiveness |
% of solutions |
Source of knowledge |
Approximate # of solutions to consider |
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1 |
Apparent solution |
32% |
Personal knowledge |
10 |
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2 |
Minor improvement |
45% |
Knowledge within company |
100 |
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3 |
Major improvement |
18% |
Knowledge within the industry |
1000 |
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4 |
New concept |
4% |
Knowledge outside the industry |
100,000 |
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5 |
Discovery |
1% |
All that is knowable |
1,000,000 |
What Altshuller tabulated was that over 90% of the problems engineers faced had been solved somewhere before. If engineers could follow a path to an ideal solution, starting with the lowest level, their personal knowledge and experience, and working their way to higher levels, most of the solutions could be derived from knowledge already present in the company, industry, or in another industry.
This happened at 10:49:33 PM or
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18 May 2005 |
In her work about the construction of communities of practice for innovation [Management Learning.2002; 33: 477-496], Jacky Swan from the Warwick Business School puts down in a couple of paragraphs why communities are places where incremental innovation can foster yet radical innovation cannot (because of the boundaries). In 2003 I wrote about the community ecosystem and the need for boundary spanners which describes a similar thesis. It's been nearly fifteen years since Brown and Duguid linked the idea of communities of practice and organizational learning and innovation.
These characteristics of spontaneity and freedom from organizational constraints lead authors to link communities of practice positively to learning, knowledge flows and innovation. Evidence in support focuses on the ways innovation emerges incrementally from local adaptations of work practices within communities, in response to new problems.
However, it has also been noted that, whilst communities of practice may encourage the flow of knowledge and innovation within communities, they may limit the knowledge flows across communities and, therefore, can place constraints on innovation at the wider organizational level In particular, radical innovations often occur at the interstices across established groups and work activities – they are radical precisely because they disrupt or fundamentally alter current work practices. Established communities of practice may, then, pose problems for the development of radical innovations that cross such communities.
So, encouraging communities of practice than cross organizational boundaries such as business units or the corporation itself, can augment the individual and organizational capabilities to radical innovation. There's a problem though. The knowledge that each of the groups (organizations) in the emergent community have is tied to social relationships of the people that have created and maintained it. Radical innovation and subsequently creation of new knowledge requires new social relationships between the groups (organizations). The 'negotiation of meaning and identity' (like in Wenger) in the emergent community is highly conflictual, especially with the lack of institutionalized roles. A power struggle between the groups that form the emergent community is consequence.
The development of the power struggle is dependent on the commonalities in ethics, values and beliefs that the groups (organizations have). Yet each of them have two important organizational tools to support them:
Strategy (the determination of the long term goals, including resources to execute a course of action). Those who can shape or give meaning to the strategy (for instance, innovation strategy) will have more power in the community;
Structure (the framework and design of the formal organization that supports the groups, including lines of communication). It provides the groups with two important resources: information and authority. Groups that can control either will have more power. Changes in the (adaptive) community can highly influence the distribution of this power though.
This happened at 9:31:26 PM or
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27 May 2004 |
Coming back from Madrid was reading this month's edition of Fortune Magazine and found myself surprised to see that there is a major article in it devoted to innovation and communities of practice. In the section "innovation special: P&G teaching and old dog new tricks" there is a five-page article on how diversity and cross-BU collaboration using communities (and they are actually called communities of practice in the article) has turned around the innovation process and 'made P&G into a brand-builder and model growth company again'. This emergence is remarkable because P&G is known for it's notoriously rule-bound culture.
They describe in brief how their 7,500 R&D scientists acoss nine countries work in communities and how it has been delivering results using innovation reviews. P&G CEO Lafley says that one of the things is that people (in the CoPs) are credited both for giving as well as taking, underlining the P&G uncommon viewpoint for the dominant role of the social dimension.
This happened at 9:25:05 AM or
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20 April 2004 |
What does all this mean for today's company looking to jump-start its innovation programs and processes, and today's individual looking to participate in making his or her own, or his or her employer's, enterprise more innovative?
Dave Pollard has continued his great work on networked organizations and innovation paper.
Hierarchy and Autocracy are the Enemies of Innovation: There is a strong creative tension between individuals and the communities they elect to or are asked to be part of, caused by divergent needs, drivers, and behaviours. Each individual and each community needs its own space. Flat, small, responsive, democratic organizations are inherently more innovative.
Innovation Needs an Urgent Problem: True innovation only occurs where there is consensus that there is an important problem to solve and a sense of urgency to solve it.
Cooperation is Replacing Competition: Competition is now dysfunctional, a vestige of earlier times of resource scarcity, and cooperation is now essential to effective innovation.
The Customer Rules: The customer is now king and needs only better decision making tools to become the sole driver of economic activity, rendering obsolete the need for marketing, branding, and other producer-driven mechanisms of influencing customer actions.
Female Organizational Style is More Innovative Than Male: As shown in the table below, organizational structures, processes and behaviours more commonly associated with businesses run by women are gaining traction in the New Economy, and that bodes well for innovation.
The Emerging New Economy Will Accelerate Innovation: Despite the current waves of globalization, corporatism and increased concentration of wealth and power, the Internet and other new technologies will inexorably break the strangle-hold of riak-averse oligopolies and unleash a new age of astonishing innovation.
What are you still reading here ??? - go and check the whole story out in his blog.
This happened at 11:57:15 PM or
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13 April 2004 |
Tonight was the first event of the "Dutch Connection" group that is starting to emerge from a group of people that have formally or informally met in Ecademy over the last weeks. Lead by Colby Stuart it has been both refreshing and inspiring (time well spent). Once again it becomes apparent that the potential of co-creation and social / business innovation happens at the boundaries of networks. Bringing these people together (and they are revolutionists) will spark many creative conversations and ideas.
One of the themes that was spent talking about was the value of identity in social network platforms by properly using the personal profile. A profile is much more than a banner to lure business opportunties in, it is a reflection of all the facets of your ambition and the context in which that has been creation. Ambition says something about what your personal objectives, the tools and inspiration.
A small group exercise I proposed to the group may help bring out such group identity - but the emergence of such identity can only be attained if we convey our personal one.And that this is not always about business, was reflected in the list of attributes that was co-created in the group.
It recalled what Prusak / Cohen said in "In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work" about the Xerox teams as well..
This happened at 11:31:45 PM or
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06 April 2004 |
MonkeyMagic reported on Ton Zijlstra's and Lilia's Blogwalk (sorry, circumstances lead me that I could not be there); a perception of direction, trust and creativity
Creativity In lots of ways I think Ton makes good sense. Certainly in terms of picking out those diamond signals from the noise. Ton suggests that
"Knowledge workers ... need to be exposed to as much background noise as possible, to open up as much opportunities to respond as possible."
... and it rings true. It certainly seems to be true in the creative sphere. Amateurs, for example, can and do make great leaps of intuition. (Perhaps because their filters are less restrictive, they get more signals?). Equally artists have a long and fruitful history of opening their doors of perception.
I think that the 'exposure to noise' translates back to the multi-community membership properties that creative people and innovators have; they tend to have access to many networks and know how to translate noise to signals, depending on the direction and purpose of the network. Some other starting point was on the CoP theme on KB last year (with contributions from Dr. Patricia Wolf).
Social Network Analysis (see here for more information on that) is a must when it comes to supporting the conversation with revolutionist. In the article above there are many references to that, but Rob Cross has a nice sample for this application as well (pointer by Patti).
This happened at 12:49:17 AM or
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©
Copyright 2006 Erik van Bekkum.
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