Hutch Carpenter outlines three different ways of collaborating for innovation:
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/three-types-of-collaboration-that-drive-innovation-008292.php
Peas in a pod. This is collaboration with the regulars. It is human nature to gravitate to the familiar faces we know and built up established relationships. But there is reason to believe that the people we like the most and spend more time with may also minimise our potential for learning.
Partners in crime. Here we turn to others outside our immediate circle of familiarity to collaborate with those with different perspectives and knowledge to challenge the existing status quo. This is collaboration to focus on ideas around a purpose rather than relationships. And it accesses a broader range of information inputs.
Challengers. This is collaboration by disagreement to work with those who don’t see the virtue of our ideas or are quick to point out the flaws. Here the potential for conflict is high but the process of contention forces robust thinking and competition drives more innovation outputs.
Alex Vaynshteyn suggests how to optimise creativity within your work group:
http://savdesign.com/2010/10/10-ways-to-boost-your-team%E2%80%99s-creativity/
1. Don’t use carrots (or sticks)
If we think that greater compensation will yield higher levels of creativity we might be disappointed. Indeed higher rewards can have a detrimental effect on creative performance.
2. Vanquish fear
Punishment or the fear it focuses and narrows the mind. When individuals don’t have to worry about criticism or ridicule they might get more creative.
3. Provide good feedback
This is not the thank you for a job well done; this is structured feedback that encourages the recipient to think more about the problem and look at different angles to arrive at other solutions.
4. Foster mastery
We get creative when we’re motivated, and we’re motivated when we want to get better at what we do. In managing a work group it helps if we give team members the opportunities to stretch and grow and push their own boundaries of what is possible.
5. Encourage autonomy
Team members can’t display creativity if we tell them exactly what to do and how to do it.
6. Expand the creative space
Keep as much open space as you can in the work area. Physically and mentally let the team breathe.
7. Use good furniture
Comfort and aesthetics matter.
8. Light the way
Remove the fluorescent lights and get access to natural light.
9. Play!
Incorporate activities that allow physical activity.
10. Provide a purpose.
What is providing inspiration for creative effort? Do team members connect to a bigger purpose they identify as important?
Drew Boyd explains why an idea has a better chance of surviving if it is not attributed to the individual who conceived it:
http://www.innovationinpractice.com/innovation_in_practice/2010/10/tainted-innovation-tempting-innovation.html
Tanya Menon at the University of Chicago describes a paradox of innovation: an external idea is viewed as "tempting", whilst the same idea, coming from an internal source is "tainted". Why? She argues that internal innovation becomes caught up in peer rivalry. Our colleague’s brilliant idea can only undermine our own status and career prospects. But to incorporate ideas from outside is seen as an alertness to innovative practice and poses no threat to our own personal competence of organisational status.
If this is valid, then we should be careful in how we manage group creativity within the organisation. And here it may be better to give employees credit for participation in innovation rather than look to reward individuals for specific ideas.
In this strategy, break up the overall innovation team into smaller groups of two to three and have the sub teams share their ideas with the larger group enterprise without pinpointing the individual behind the idea. Encourage social networking and on line collaboration tools to encourage ideas to be entered in real time without identifying personal contributors. And have the ideas evaluated by a completed separate work unit to ensure objectivity in testing the innovation.
Paul Thagard suggests six themes for greater creativity:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hot-thought/201005/how-be-creative
1. Make new connections
Here breadth (the books we read, the contacts we make, and types of information we attend to) enhance our creativity
2. Expect the unexpected
When things don’t work out as we planned and we are open to learning from failure or we are curious about anomalies, new insights emerge.
3. Be persistent
This is creativity about discipline and concentration.
4. Get excited
Are we enjoying the challenge and willing to have fun and play?
5. Be sociable
Get to know smart people, share information and ideas and find ways to cooperate and collaborate.
6. Use the world
We aren’t alone and creativity is rarely an exercise in personal brilliance of heroics. Draw on the resources from the environment around us.
Doug Collins applies design thinking to collaborative innovation:
http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2012/01/24/applying-collaborative-innovation-to-design-thinking/
It starts with an empathy for the customer to work backwards and ask: how can we best solve their problem for them in the form of a profitable enterprise? And the process then asks:
When we see innovation as a collaborative effort involving more people and think backwards from the customer we get more productive.
What are smart organisations doing to respond proactively to a world of increasing connectivity and information sharing?
http://www.100open.com/2010/03/3-principles-of-innovative-organisations/
1. Default to open
There was a time when information and ideas were shared with partners on a need to know basis. Now the opposite is true. Innovative organisations are asking: is there any good reason why we don’t open up?
2. Focus on 'who?’ as much as 'what?’
Innovation is less about spotting emerging ideas and deciding which to back and fund, and more about exploring relationships to identify how best to collaborate with customers and other stakeholders.
3. Engineer serendipity
This is the realisation that the best ideas and biggest innovation opportunities will emerge not from the brilliance of the internal R & D team, but from the most unexpected of places.
"Smart organisations know that innovation never arrives on your desk fully formed - rather needs iteration, socialisation and combination - and they open up, focus on building networks not ideas, and actively seek to spot new opportunities outside of their core business."