Nov 17, 2009
Institutional Innovations (Hagel and Seely Brown, 2008)
Institutional Innovations (Hagel and Seely Brown, 2008)
Most talk about innovation is bound to the enterprise. Innovation across company boundaries – Institutional Innovation – may be what is really exciting.
Definition: “Institutional innovations—the changes companies make to redefine roles and relationships across independent entities to deliver more value to the marketplace and to society. Institutional innovation transcends what an individual inventor or even an innovative company can do.”
Innovation is social. There is a need to connect individuals, firms, etc wherever they are, and to foster learning, collaboration, sharing etc.
For Example:
Silicon Valley nonprofit Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF) created a distributed network of institutionally diverse researchers who work on defining research initiatives and then share the results.
This encourages
- Parallel, rather than sequential problem solving along the possible solution paths, and
- Rapid, iterative research and learning (through participant review).
MRF also has four top researchers who each run research teams. They maintain their institutional affiliation and also participate within the special MRF collaboration framework (joint reviews, conference calls, shared media/data platforms, archiving of patent data)
Royalty sharing agreements with participant institutions are also in place.
Potential financial gain is an incentive, BUT, researchers are more motivated by opportunities to
- Further their own areas of research interest,
- Interact with other top researchers, and
- Deepen their own understanding – “The researchers are coming together in this process network because they see an opportunity to make rapid progress in solving large, complex, real-world medical problems.”
THE TAKEAWAY
- Institutional innovation amplifies other forms of innovation.
- Customer co-creation will become even more profound and sustained.
- How can you find the passionate customers/users – those with a stake in development?
- Remember that everyone is a customer – how can you further upstream institutional innovation?
The boundaries between knowledge domains are significant edges for innovation.
How can you facilitate connections?
Innovation is not just about idea generation.
The real problem is testing, refining, developing, mobilising ideas.
Original Text:
Hagel, J. and Seely Brown, J. (2008). Institutional innovations. BusinessWeek, May 08, 2007.
downloaded from http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2008/id2008057_399178.htm
