Looking for More Distractions?

Google Plus

I am fairly agnostic when it comes to social media. I have tried a good number of them and found most of them wanting in one way or another. Typically, small things that imposes a time tax which, after some good-intention'd efforts, my usage starts to drift.

Hoopla over its growth and its demise (how time flies in the social media scale), aside. I like Google Plus for its open environment instead of being a walled garden. I also like the Twitter like capabilities.

Prometheus Reconsidered on G+

Prometheus Reconsidered now has an open curated stream on G+. It is updated almost daily but features articles that are related to technology, innovation, and business.

Please join the fun: Prometheus Reconsidered on Google Plus.

Internal ecosystems and connections

Tapping internal resources

An often overlooked area where innovative ideas reside is the rank and file of the company. These are the people with a stake in the success of the company and have the deepest knowledge on the top customer concerns and how to get things done. Furthermore, by involving your own employees in innovation, they just might take more ownership of the work and be more productive.

Tools and policies

The most famous example is Google's Innovation Time Off where engineers are encourage to spend up to 20% of their time on a project that they feel passionate about. According to Marissa Mayer of Google, half of their new products in 2005, such as Gmail, can be traced the 20% time off.

Taking a different tact, Intuit, a finance/accounting software company, has built a product called Brainstorm as a way to foster, track, and guide employee innovation across the globe. I have talked with the team leader who built the product. Interestingly, part of its genesis came out of the desire to support and collaborate amongst team members for their own innovation ideas.

Three examples of connecting people

Connecting people

The most important thing in building and sustaining any community is that it brings value so that participants would come back for more. In the three examples below, beyond the formal conversations, it also fosters personal connections.

VPofEngineering/CTO Community of Practice

As the name implies, it is a technical cohort. Some of the recent discussion included lessons in re-architecting one of the US-wide content distribution network into cloud. The stated objective of this group is to solve problems, share business experience, and create opportunities.

Silicon Valley Innovation Executives

A group of executives and strategists chartered to bring external innovation into their companies. Recent conversations included what kind of ecosystem is needed to support intelligent vehicles and the best way for Silicon Valley based innovation outposts to communicate with company headquarters in Europe and Asia.

Stanford Product Realization Lab

A joint Engineering and Business school program at the Stanford University where students and alumni present their projects and venture ideas to a group of mentors from different industries and functional background for feedback and consultation.

Making connections

How does it work in the tranches

A question that I often get is "all these ecosystems sound good, but how does it work in practice?" In other words, being a CTO, a VP of Innovation, a Head of (New) Business Development, or a founder is not unique to Silicon Valley; why is that people seem to play openly, nicely, and productively.

The give

As compelling as the the BMW + Google connection may be, not all ideas are winners. Therefore, before the next good idea strikes, everyone is looking for practical insights ready for immediate application.

Benchmarks are always nice, i.e. we allocate X% to support our innovation efforts. Best practices are usually poplar, i.e. this is how we ensure smooth transition to a BU that owns the distribution. Business model often brings on spirited discussion, i.e. after trying X, Y, Z, this is what works for us.

The Take

Beyond sharing, the same forum can provide a safe environment to ask questions. Quetions on organizational changes, i.e. we are moving to a new organizational structure, what is the likely to impact my work? Questions on new ideas, i.e. I want to propose an initiative, what are good ways to get buy-in? Questions about an industry/application, i.e. we are exploring ways to offer excess capacity to this industry, what do you think?

The specifics may differ, but your cohort understands your issues and has your back. And, through this process of give and take, you know who to call when a flash of brilliance hits.

Connections

To paraphrase what Ron Burt of the Structural Holes fame argued in his recent book Neighbor Networks, being a node in the network, i.e. a stack of the bsueinss cards from the formal ecosystems, is nice but what you bring to the network, i.e. the give and take to help each other, is what makes your connections robust.

One last point worth noting is that this willingness to share is in part driven by the only certainty in Silicon Valley which is that future cannot be known a priori. It was not obvoous that Google should beat out Yahoo. It was not clear that e-reader will take off with Kindle. Today, with Facebook replacing Friendster in a handful of years, who is to say what social buying will be like in another handful of years.