Point: Good communication skills drive open innovation and collaboration

Story: At the World Research Group’s 2010 Open Innovation Summit, many presenters stressed the role of communication for both innovation leaders and in promoting open innovation initiatives.  Top-notch communication skills with senior executives, peers, partners help drive open innovation success.

Stefan Lindegaard, author of the The Open Innovation Revolution, and Greg Fox, Senior Director & CMO – Strategic Alliances at Cisco, held an invitation-only Think Tank group at the Summit to identify and discuss the key qualities of leaders of open innovation.  The group ranked communications in the top three characteristics (vision and adaptability were also key).  The Think Tank group emphasized the importance of leaders using a deliberate communications strategy with holistic internal and external communication.  Good open innovation leaders have the confidence to share what they know but also maintain proper disclosure limits with open innovation partners.

Nona Minnifield Cheeks, Chief, Innovative Partnerships Program Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center noted that consistent messages and behavior (i.e., walking the talk) improve trust and outcomes. It’s vital to establish clear sense of why the organization is doing open innovation, set context, and create sense of urgency, Cheeks said.

In addition to Think Tank members, other presenters at the conference concurred about the crucial role of communications in innovation.  For example, Dr. Gail Martino, Principal Scientist in the Open Innovation Group at Unilever, described seven soft skills communicators need to persuade, inspire and garner support for open innovation efforts. Communication involves being a good listener, she said, to build trust and feel empathy for others’ situations. At Unilever, top-notch communication skills include a balance of being convincing but also being an advocate for the partner.  Balanced communications also include conveying both the rewards and risks of innovation, not just mindless cheerleading.

Moises Norena, Director of Global Innovation and PMR at Whirlpool Corporation, described how Whirlpool aligned innovation to strategy through Whirlpool Foundations, which communicated to all employees and helped transcend silos. Whirlpool develop training programs for all levels of employees, including a mandatory half-hour web course that taught all employees about Whirlpool’s innovation strategy and created common language for innovation at the appliance maker.  Cisco‘s Sharon Wong recommended that open innovation platform operators communicate simply and often to maintain excitement and interest in the open innovation effort.

Jeff Boehm, Chief Marketing Officer of Invention Machine, focused his presentation on the role of communications as driver for innovation, collaboration and revenue.  He explained why and how marketing or internal communications supports the use of a good innovation platform and satisfaction of top-management mandates.

Boehm suggested that three key elements are necessary — but not individually sufficient — for creating successful, ongoing innovation programs. First, offering a powerful platform for innovation helps but doesn’t guarantee that innovation occurs.  A “build-it-and-they-will come” approach doesn’t work because too many people are too busy to take the time to find and participate in even the most exciting innovation initiative.

Second, top-down mandates may be necessary for engaging busy people, but mandates alone aren’t sufficient to ensure innovation participation, either.  Employees typically assume that daily operational pressures trump innovation mandates, so it’s easy for them to short-change innovation or allow it to slip out of awareness over time.  That implies using a third element — marketing or internal communications — to reach users, communicate the value of the program, remind them of mandates, and convey the excitement and accomplishments of the effort. For example, putting an innovation icon onto employee badges creates a natural reminder and talking point about the effort.

Boehm, who has extensive experience leading these communication efforts, listed the following four actions as the critical steps for internal communications the drive participation in innovation initiatives:
Action:

1. Make innovation relevant. Ask different users (executives, peers, functional silos, external partners, etc.) about their struggles and challenges and show how the innovation initiative can help them.
2. Promote innovation. Create a roadmapped stream of communications that spans time and multiple channels (e.g., lunchroom posters, emails, newsletters, tent cards, tchotchkes, badges) to reach, inform, and encourage people to participate.
3. Provide easy calls to action for innovation.  Avoid obstacles such as convoluted registrations, approvals processes, and delays.
4. Sustain the momentum of innovation with ongoing communications.  Continuously relay successes, platform improvements, ongoing activities, training, and new information to avoid attenuation of attention to innovation.

Open Innovation Summit Think Tank Members:

• Greg Fox, Senior Director & CMO – Strategic Alliances, Cisco
• Dr. Andrew G. Gilicinski, Director, R&D – Innovation Networks, Clorox
• Jeff Boehm, Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, Invention Machine
• Dr. Jan M.K. Jaferian, VP Intellectual Property Manitowoc Foodservice
• Stefan Lindegaard, Founder & Chief Facilitator, 15inno.com
• Nona Minnifield Cheeks, MBA, Chief – Innovation Partnerships Program Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Andrea Meyer, MLIS, President, Working Knowledge

To join the 2nd Annual Open Innovation Summit LinkedIn group, click here.

Point: By picking where open innovation occurs and what it communicates to the rest of the organization, innovators can protect open innovation efforts from corporate antibodies

Story: All organizations, especially large ones, have an “immune system” in the form of an army of fine-tuned antibodies that root out risk and threats to the smooth-operating status quo.  These antibodies help drive efficiencies, attack waste, promote uniform performance, and prevent infection for foreign ideas.

That’s good for efficiency, but innovation requires taking risks and changing the status quo to create more value.  That makes innovation a prime target for the cleansing action of antibodies.  Open innovation is especially prone to antibody response because it involves foreign ideas.  At the December 2009 Open Innovation Summit, presenters from HP, CSC, Clorox, and Shell described how they avoided corporate antibodies at their companies.  The techniques addressed who participates in open innovation, where they operate, and what they communicate so that innovation succeeds and doesn’t get killed by antibodies.

For example, Russ Conser, Manager of EP GameChanger at Shell, offered a good metaphor for where to do open innovation.  He showed an image of a young girl building a castle in a sandbox under a large umbrella. The sandbox metaphor works on two levels.  It provides a protected place for innovation to do its value-creating experimental work.  The sandbox also is the container for the innovator’s gritty sand, protecting the larger organization from the risky rough ideas.

Phil McKinney, SVP and CTO at Hewlett Packard, concurred — HP put its OI in a quiet corner of the Personal System Group. The sandbox creates an antibody-free zone for innovation work and protects the larger organization from the early-stage risks of innovation.

When communicating about open innovation efforts, innovators’ communications can either attract attacking antibodies or help pacify them.  What innovators and their representatives say determines how antibodies react. For example, Lemuel Lasher, Chief Innovation Officer at CSC, cautioned that innovators shouldn’t be too quiet or too secretive, especially when the facts are on the side of the innovator.  Innovators should be provocative as long as they don’t provoke too strong an immune reaction.

Ed Rinker, Manager of the Technology Brokerage Group at Clorox, used hard-hitting facts to convince his organization to deviate from its brand strategy.  Consumer trends toward gentle green and natural products seemed antithetical to the Clorox brand of strong cleansers.  Rinker used facts like marketing tests that proved  consumers preferred GreenWorks with the Clorox name on the product to convince the antibody nay-sayers.

The most-cited communications recommendation, used at HP and Shell’s programs, is communicating what the innovators did and not what they are doing or planning to do.  This focuses the discussion on the new products, new customers, new revenues, and new profits generated by innovation, rather than on the potentially risky or disruptive projects underway by the innovators.  Shell’s Gamechanger Group continues to thrive after 12 years inside the billion-dollar giant because they show results.

Action:

• Find an ‘air-cover’ executive who provides the umbrella of protection for innovation
• Use a quiet corner or sandbox where innovators can generate results without interference or creating risk
• Describe the good projects you did, not the risky projects you’re doing or plan to do
• Live on the boundary between sufficiently provocative and excessively provoking

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