Using Social Collaboration in Product Innovation - Updated

Social Innova+on Benchmark Study II

Applica'on of Social Technologies to Product Development

TCGen, Inc. Menlo Park, CA

Tammy L. Madsen Kumar Sarangee

Jennifer L. Woolley

Leavey School of Business Santa Clara University

Santa Clara, CA

August 2012

John Carter Jeanne Bradford

Crowdsourcing and Internal Innova+on

Execu+ve Summary •  Innova+on does not have to be unbounded in +me. Social innova'on allows teams to innovate

quickly and repeatedly compared to the open ended tradi+onal research approach.

•  Social innova+on systems reduce the cost of innova'on by leveraging ideas and facilita+ng lean product development with small teams under five people and low six figure budgets.

•  The quan+ty of data from a community is not a subs+tute for quality. The selec+on of clearly defined, closed communi+es with screened par'cipants results in higher quality and more relevant input.

•  There is no need for investment in home-‐grown social media tools. Good commercial solu'ons are available, and many of these are cloud based applica+ons can be applied to product crea+on out of the box.

•  Social innova'on tools can provide most of the benefits of in-‐person Voice of the Customer without the expense of travel. This enables cost effec+ve entry into emerging markets.

•  User Generated Content (UGC) in the form of photographs from a well defined community of provided product designers with a visual image of the product environment .

•  There are five fundamental components that enable successful social innova'on – mastering them all will lead to “success in a box”. They include: Screening Members, Providing Rewards, Coordina+ng Corporate Leadership, Hiring Qualified Community Management, and Using Exis+ng Tools. These are “table stakes”.

•  The best results came from study par'cipants that mastered three elements: closed and +ghtly managed communi+es, +me bounded campaigns, and quality user generated content. These separate the “best from the rest”.

www.tcgen.com August 2012

Par+cipants

2

Amway

Autodesk

Cisco

Hewle[-‐Packard

IBM

NetApp

SAP

SolidWorks

Yellowpages.com

Dupont Farmers

DuPont

Social Innova+on Hub and Spoke Model Showing Causes and Effects

twiFer survey of followers received 225 responses in 1 day virtual innova'on center produced 60 innova'on projects per year

campaign generated 200-‐400 ideas in 2 weeks

77 hour event created 5 concepts that reshaped the industry 72 hours 100s of ideas can be generated

MORE IDEAS

implement a vendor’s tool out of the box in less than 1 quarter 12 new products in 6 months

live Jam dura'on is typically 1 week SHORTER TIME

150,000 people are members of the top 20 linked in innova'on groups very small organiza'ons (3-‐7) that provides addi'onal innova'on

a core of a 12 people support over 150

execu've leadership role (VP of Innova'on) leverage knowledge with hub and spoke model

teams as small as 3 that support 1000s

OPTIMUM ORGANIZATIONS

closed forum influences corporate strategy special purpose forums allow interac'on around a feature

80% of user driven priori'es are implemented reduce the cost of product defini'on

measurable impact, oZen using simple off the shelf tools

BETTER RESULTS

photographic input is much richer than a survey pla\orm has mechanisms of vo'ng and collabora'on

share data across business units was instrumental best communi'es do not allow anonymous par'cipa'on

develop the competency to screen par'cipants

BEST PRACTICES

Benefits Of

Social Innova'on

80% of priori'es implemented

3 that support 1000s

200-‐400 ideas in 2 weeks

12 new products in 6 months

0 anonymous par'cipa'on

Benchmark Study Background

•  The increasing applica+on of Social Networking plaborms outside of product development caused us to ask why. –  How are social networking plaborms are used in product development? –  Who is leading the charge and what have they learned?

•  Joined by Santa Clara University Professors (Madsen, Sarangee, Woolley) who shared our interest and passion, we performed this mul+-‐client benchmark study, and simultaneously launched research on this emerging topic.

–  Formulated hypotheses for our study, like does the use of social innova+on tools cause firms to be more innova+ve?

–  Created an interview guide & iden+fied target companies –  Conducted face-‐to-‐face or telephone interviews ranging from 1-‐4 hours each with 2-‐3

researchers and company experts –  Summarized our interviews and had the companies review our conclusions

•  We supplemented benchmarking with best prac+ces from the literature review •  This report summarizes the results of two sets of interviews between 2010-‐2012.

www.tcgen.com August 2012 4


•  The live Jam dura'on is typically one week but can be as short as 72 hours. •  Real +me data analysis tools scan forum comments to iden+fy hot topics and emerging themes. •  Lack of anonymity ensures that feedback remains construc+ve, even if cri+cal.

Prac+ce: The IBM Jam accelerates innova+on & consensus by combining an op+mized process for innova+on with technology to help with communica+on, filtering, and idea enhancement

•  Transcend culture, genera+on, language, and geographic challenges to harness collec+ve brainpower for a given problem or challenge.

•  Use online, virtual collabora'on to drive increased real world collabora'on across the enterprise.

Goal: Increase the front end of the innova+on process by reaching out to relevant community voices -‐ and do it quickly

•  Within seventy two hours hundreds of ideas can be generated. •  Technology provided the ability to draw upon experts repeatedly because the responses are

traceable. •  The Jam process yielded priori+zed and manageable solu+ons with a direct line of sight from idea to

execu+on.

Result: Quickly harnessed innova+on on new problems with large, distributed organiza+ons

IBM Jams – Time Bounded Innova+on Community

Social Media isn’t limited to ongoing communi2es. Well defined sessions & qualified par2cipants can be leveraged effec2vely as a 2me bounded, high impact ini2a2ve

Project Ini'a'on Live Event Jam prepara'on: marke'ng,

training/recruitment, site prepara'on Post-‐Jam Analysis

and Implementa'on

Ac'on Report

For more informa+on see: h[ps://www.collabora+onjam.com/

Microcenter of Excellence


•  One par+cipant put in place an execu've leadership role (VP of Innova'on) to ensure that social technologies are leveraged by the organiza+on efficiently and in a common way.

•  Dedicated resources (either centralized or distributed) apply common tools and customizable frameworks that enable sharing of data from different sources. In cases where it is not centralized, community managers provide this func+on.

•  The VP of Innova+on guides these resources and works with key func+ons like Legal and Marke+ng to help the project teams be successful.

Prac+ce: Companies are understanding the importance of leveraging technology for innova+on. To do this effec+vely, they have small dedicated teams manage social technology-‐assisted innova+on

•  Develop & u+lize social media and innova+on experts within a company to provide focus and learning that can be re-‐created and shared and leverage knowledge with hub and spoke model.

•  Provide an economy of scale when adding new social media campaigns. This allows teams to easily customize and avoids “re-‐inven+ng the wheel”.

•  Increase social media “literacy” within the organiza+on to op+mize the value of customer feedback.

Goal: Develop an efficient methodology for implemen+ng several social media-‐based ini+a+ves widely and rapidly within a large organiza+on

•  Several par+cipants have teams as small as 3 that support thousands of employees. •  Dedicated execu+ve leadership legi+mized the process and ensured alignment with corporate objec+ves. •  Centers of excellence (distributed or centralized) resulted in faster implementa+on of social media

campaigns, avoided duplica+on of effort, and created a plaborm to share data from mul+ple sources.

Results: Centers of Excellence and/or dedicated resources provided high impact contribu+ons throughout the product development process

Developing core exper2se in the organiza2on allows for accelerated implementa2on and focus on best prac2ces


Op+mizing the Crowd: Managing the Talent Pool

•  The best communi'es do not allow anonymous par'cipa'on. Community members are qualified and invited to join based on a their ability to provide valuable contribu+ons

•  Tools allow communi+es to iden+fy subject ma[er experts –– both internal and external to the company. The simplicity of the tool (email based) drives faster decision making by providing a quick view of the idea and a key set of ques+ons to answer.

•  The more you use the tool, the more valuable it becomes to the community. By tapping previously recognized experts, you can generate credible ideas faster.

Prac+ce: The best ideas come from the best people. Quality trumps quan+ty. The best systems start with qualified par+cipants and then track the par+cipa+on and quality of ideas

•  Develop the competency to screen par'cipants for true idea generators. •  Iden+fy subject ma[er experts to drive decision making, and establish a talent pool to tap subsequent innova+on

sessions (or to build on the current session) in an efficient and rapid manner.

Goal: Maximize the quality of data generated by a community to drive decision making & execu+on

•  OESA Jam: Original Equipment Supplier Associa+on (OESA) and auto industry thought leaders redefine supplier OEM rela+onships

•  First ever industry-‐wide Jam was driven by the economic pressures that required be[er collabora+on in the supply chain. This 77 hour event created 5 change concepts that reshaped how the industry approached collabora'on, focused on innova+on, and improved the value proposi+on for both suppliers & OEMs

•  2010 Global Security Jam: Re-‐thinking Modern Global Security •  European Union sponsored Jam included 4,000 thought leaders from 20 interna+onal agencies. This 5-‐day

brainstorming session resulted in 10 recommenda+ons that were both innova+ve and pragma+c

Results: Qualified par+cipants yield a much higher quality of data. Addi+onally, with the use of subject ma[er experts, learning curves for subsequent campaigns are shortened. Below are two examples from IBM

There is only wisdom of the crowd if there is a focus area and the par2cipants are qualified to contribute in this focus area

BrightIdea: Rapid Idea Genera+on & Dedicated Team


•  BrightIdea allowed this study par+cipant to quickly construct campaigns and helped them to gather ideas from employees.

•  The pla\orm has mechanisms of vo'ng and collabora'on, so par+cipants can put concepts out there and employees can contribute to them, and then re-‐vote on the enhanced ideas.

Prac+ce: Use out-‐of-‐box plaborms to quickly harness innova+on on new problems within large, distributed organiza+ons

•  This team is a central group that helps put tools in place, create templates, and guide the teams. •  An implementa+on strategy that allows the flexibility to customize the plaborm and to share data across

business units was instrumental to the success of this organiza+on.

Goal: There is an urgent need for larger companies to innovate, but their size oren makes it more difficult. This study par+cipant formed a small group to serve as an innova+on management team. They work with all the various sorware and solu+ons business units on their specific innova+on plans and objec+ves

•  Campaigns ramped up and were running in less than a week, and typical campaigns take 5-‐6 weeks to organize.

•  In one case, a campaign generated 200-‐400 ideas in 2 weeks. •  Response tracking within the plaborm gave teams the ability to draw upon experts repeatedly. •  These plaborms are easy to extend and reuse – did not require the central team to acquire detailed

technical exper+se. •  Features of the sorware includes aspects of filtering, vo+ng, priori+za+on and idea management. •  This plaborm is being used by divisions with upwards of several thousand people.

Results: The team, formed to drive innova+on, was widely tapped to help many of the opera+ng businesses achieve their innova+on goals

Typically innova2on programs require a long 2me to get up and running even if leveraged by technology – but there are rapid deployment solu2ons available

Voice of the Customer from Emerging Markets


•  Two organiza+ons did this with measurable impact, oZen using simple off the shelf blogging/forum sorware.

•  The scope of impact included iden+fying needs and valida+ng product requirements. This is especially important because the emerging markets want many of the core features, but can’t afford a fully featured product.

Prac+ce: Community driven product development for Emerging Markets. Two companies included in the survey demonstrated this best prac+ce. One of those served 158 countries

•  The primary goal is to segregate social media by region so discussions can be localized and focused on specific niche needs and regional cost constraints.

•  Social Media Research is not centralized, but the goal is to provide hub and spoke model to support best prac+ces within local market regions. A core of a 12 people support over 150 social media specialists.

Goal: Capture the voice of the customer without incurring extensive costs for travel or high touch market research. Give these markets cost reduced products from exis+ng markets, or unique products if indicated

•  One organiza+on is maturing from a “launch and leave” mentality to a “birth and nurture” approach to op+mize the posi+ve results seen so far.

•  The dialog with customers had lead to huge cultural shir. By leveraging social media for emerging markets, organiza+ons are able to interact with consumers directly (not through the channel) leading to greater in+macy.

Results: Organiza+ons are successful in Emerging Markets with much lower overhead

Social solu2ons in Emerging Markets can actually enable entry into nascent markets when not possible before

Voice of the Customer

Driving Design through User Generated Content

•  This company used a closed community composed of the target market where they shared photographs and provided input on their biggest challenges with using the product.

•  Specifically, this rich input depicts various cosme+cs carried by moms, and the size and space where those items need to fit, and other items (non-‐cosme+c) that might be also be included in the product.

•  Photographic input is much richer than a survey, and is much more accurate because it does not rely on memory.

•  By sharing the photographs the moms can share experiences and provide a more meaningful context for probing and further explora+on.

Prac+ce: In designing a new cosme+c line, the company asked their target market (busy moms) to photograph and share their empty purses to help design the ideal “mobile” cosme+c solu+on

•  This organiza+on had a desire to increase revenue from new products. •  This technique was also able to reduce the cost of product defini'on since customer visita+on was

done via the internet, not in person.

Goal: Increase number of products simultaneously delivered and significantly accelerate +me-‐to-‐market

•  Twelve new products in six months, and with lower development costs. •  Inclusion of the photographs from the focused target market enhanced contextual product defini+on

and allowed the company to realize that many cosme+c product could be included in one package. •  The process ‘virtualizes’ customer visita+on, a best prac+ce for product defini+on.

Results: Set new standard for produc+on delivery


Capturing specific environments of use allows your customers to make the highest value contribu2ons

Social Innova+on – Success In A Box


•  Screen community members: Create strict criteria for who can join the community ensures the most qualified voices. •  Reward par'cipa'on: Most community member thrive on acknowledgement before monetary compensa+on (this should

be a criteria). Acknowledge a “Featured Member” on a weekly basis that models the highest value community contribu+on.

•  Use third party collabora'on tools: Far superior to building your own, or using tools that are not op+mized for collabora+on. These tools increase in value over +me, and can be customize for mul+ple communi+es across the organiza+on (Brigh+dea, Spigit are two good tools)

•  Invest in community management: Ensuring your community remains vibrant is a cri+cal factor for a successful community, and this is the primary role of a community manager. Its an emerging skillset, and one that will con+nue to increase in value over +me.

•  Create a Steering CommiFee: Gaining support from top management will bring focus to the ini+a+ve, accelerate decision making, and op+mize learning across the organiza+on.

Prac+ce: Implement 5 fundamental components to ensure the highest efficiency with lowest risk

•  The most important goal is to extract high value product ideas from the community •  Provide early tes'ng on implemented features by using virtual focus groups drawn from a subset of the ini+al community

Goal: Use a qualified group of customers to accelerate +me-‐to-‐market by genera+ng new product ideas faster and validate product features over the lifecycle

•  Time sensi+ve product launch was tested with the community – feedback resulted in improvements in content, design and recommenda+ons for missing high value features (which the team was able to implement before launch).

•  Development team behavior shiZed from a “pull” to a “push” of early features to the community for valida+on. •  Community input increased product usability (single sign on & sharing), increasing ease of use of other company products,

and sharing within their own social networks.

Results: This social solu+on created mul+ple opportuni+es for customers to contribute across the new product value stream

Execu2ng 5 key elements will drive successful social innova2ons

Lower Costs of Innova+on


•  Two studied companies were able to create very small organiza'ons (3-‐7) that provides addi'onal innova'on streams. •  Key for these organiza+on was to provide a knowledge brokering mechanism to access, consolidate, and ini+ate new product

ini+a+ves. •  Besides directed innova+on, one organiza+on had an Open Idea Forum to s+mulate blue sky idea+on.

Prac+ce: Use social innova+on systems (tools and organiza+ons) to supplement exis+ng R&D organiza+ons to capture and integrate ideas and inject them into product development teams. Two study par+cipants formed central innova+on organiza+ons leveraged by social technology, and were able to generate up to 20-‐60 new innova+on programs a year

•  The charter was to combine projects from different parts of the organiza+on (and academic organiza+ons) and launch them into the normal development process.

•  One organiza+on had a goal to implement a vendor’s tool out of the box in less than a quarter, and they achieved it in spite of demands for single sign on.

Goal: To provide new ways to uncover and catalyze new product ideas by leveraging small central organiza+ons that leverage social technology

•  New internal products and efficiency changes were generated in the first year – on the order of 10-‐20% savings in key business process that involves 7,000 employees. This was achieved by connec+ng mul+ple ideas and puwng them into play.

•  The ideas tended to be incremental, but large number of them 15-‐20 were worth puwng into prac+ce. •  An other company had a virtual innova'on center that produced 60 innova'on projects per year. •  This organiza+on also offered an innova+on exchange so developers can exchange code with corpora+on, resolving some

problems in under 15 minutes. •  Both organiza+ons found increased employee engagement from those who par+cipate in the programs.

Results: The teams, formed to drive innova+on, was widely tapped to help many of the opera+ng businesses achieve their innova+on goals

Very low cost innova2on centers can supplement exis2ng systems, leverage ideas already present in the collec2ve mind

Customers Driven Strategy & Tac+cs


•  The ‘Brainstorm’ site has ranked development priori+es (Top 10), with the list published at the annual user conference.

•  Feedback and acknowledgement is given to those who have submi[ed sugges+ons that were adopted.

•  This closed community creates a forum for peer review & discussion of ideas which this closed forum influences corporate strategy.

•  Not only can par+cipants indicate how strongly they support a priority, but they can indicate that a priority should not be on the list.

Prac+ce: Community driven corporate product strategy – with 80% of the priori+es aligned with external input

•  Besides the strategic example above, users can interact within the customer portal to contribute cuwng edge designs at a more tac+cal level.

•  For example, special purpose forums allow interac'on around a feature being considered by a newly formed team, and many teams have this ability at their disposal.

•  Users have also contributed in design contests to submit best examples of designs that highlight the use of the sorware.

Goal: Allow users to influence development direc+on at many levels – strategic and tac+cal

•  Up to 80% of user driven priori'es are implemented •  The company emphasizes a “closed loop” communica+on, reinforcing that the customers’ voice was

heard. •  This closed loop approach is used in other areas of social innova+on.

Results: The external input that help influence corporate priori+es are very influencial

Allowing customers to set development direc2on, priori2es, and feature defini2ons via electronic means demonstrates how voice of the customer can be obtained at many levels efficiently

Repurposing Social Networks:

Twi[er and LinkedIn in Corporate Sewngs


•  Using LinkedIn to answer ques'ons posed around sorware scripts to solve a technical design problem is popular.

•  LinkedIn has over 200 discussion groups related to innova+on that can be tapped when ques+ons arise. •  Twi[er is being used to generate product ideas.

Prac+ce: Use of exis+ng social plaborms for business purposes to perform quick studies. Because this can be implemented on the web, there requires no IT involvement, and oren no legal involvement

•  More than 150,000 people are members of the Top 20 Innova'on Groups in LinkedIn.

Goal: Obtain answers to ques+ons from sample popula+ons in days without formal studies, formal approvals, or big budgets

•  LinkedIn is commonly used to answer ques+ons posed around technical development sorware scripts, recommenda+ons for cloud services, etc.

•  TwiFer survey of followers received 225 responses in 1 day for simple queries say of “random numbers” •  A case study of Twi[er based innova+on: “Open Innova+on: a View from the Top” and the Bri+sh organizer

company, Psion, par+cipated with three top execu+ves including its CEO. •  You can search using the Twi[er keyword “#psion“ to see the discussion thread results. The chat took place on

Sept. 2. This gave the Psion staff lots of inspira+on on what you can actually do with Twi[er to promote your innova+on capabili+es and interact with current and future stakeholders in your ecosystems

Results: Using tools that were thought to be more personal/family/friend oriented are quickly migra+ng to business applica+ons and in par+cular, product crea+on

Use of exis2ng social plaOorms – LinkedIn, Facebook, and TwiSer can have immediate impact and generate insight for product development.

Using Social Collaboration in Product Innovation - Updated

Technology

operang businesses

user driven

idenfy subject

social networking

product development

business units

spoke model

er experts