Jason Swenk

Most companies look at the past successes in order to determine the future next steps. There is a big problem with this thinking, since they are assuming nothing will change in the market. Collecting knowledge and experiences to the workforce is crucial to building innovation and reducing the uncertainty of future decisions.

Innovation is the lifeblood of any organization and at the heart of any innovation must be collaboration. But innovation is more than one person's vision; it is a combination of the company's knowledge, capabilities, and experiences.

Blockbuster is a great example of a company that made decisions from the past. They were the leader in renting movies but as the market changed; from users wanting to download movies to bi-passing the stores and renting from a kiosk. They lacked the innovation and vision.

Lets look at some things Blockbuster could have done to identify the market changes and reduce the uncertainty on their future decisions...

The former CEO of HP, once said, “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” Many organizations, like Hewlett-Packard, face challenges of managing information internally. Within an organization there are several information silos.

One solution is to create an internal protected community where users share and exchange knowledge. Communities within an organization are not a new concept but the strategy and approach needed is rather new. The basic principle is how to connect a knowledge seeker to a knowledge source and provide material or social incentives to encourage information sharing and growth.

One way to start is to implement a strategy that will breed contribution is seeding and subsidizing. Apple is one of the best at this. For example: Apple seeds the iPhone with most popular basic applications. But Apple figured out that they could build a platform that let the community rapidly supply features they did not think about and...

We live in a interesting time where the Internet and technology have allowed us to tear down borders despite distance, time and language challenges. Despite the business cultural shift of how businesses use the Internet, there are still challenges.

Businesses have traditionally managed their workforce by focusing on operational efficiencies, but they have not concentrated on creativity and flexibility to capitalize on the growth opportunities. Developing these capabilities will require businesses to focus on growing creative leaders, adapting to the environment, and capitalizing on shared intelligence.

1. Grow creative leaders - Companies needs to identify creative leaders who challenge the status quo and provide direction, motivate and drive results. They need creative leaders who can tear down borders through innovative strategies that develop a shared vision to motivate collaboration.

2. Adapting to the environment for speed and flexibility - Companies...

In the most recent blog post by Mark Fidelman, he talks about every company needing to be more like IBM and less like Apple. Mr. Fidelman brings up some great points. He talks about IBM being the thought police and Apple allowing employees minds to be free and think outside the box. This is not the case anymore where IBM appears to be wide open and encourages collaboration among the company through social business and Apple appear to be the big brother.

What I do like about the IBM model is that the genius grows with co-creation and collaboration verses the genius resting on one person. Remove one person in the IBM model and another steps up.

IBM’s Vice President, Sandy Carter’s says that IBM’s social culture is partially if not directly responsible for IBM’s success: “Our employees use social computing tools to foster collaboration, disseminate and consume news, develop networks, forge closer relationships, and build credibility. As a result, they’re better...