This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The IBM Innovation Jam was the largest-ever event to promote networked idea generation. More than 150,000 IBM employees, stakeholders and vendors participated in two three-day online events to foster innovation and help IBM bring products to market faster. Using Web sites, wikis, forums and other online tools, Jam participants generated literally hundreds of thousands of new business ideas. From those ideas, IBM focused on several major topics for the second part of the Jam and invited its employees to build on the ideas within those topics. As a result of this process, 10 distinct businesses were funded. However, it wasn't these successes that make the Jam interesting, argue the authors; it was the difficulties that IBM faced in implementing the Jam. Given unique access to the Jam, the authors discuss the complications inherent in collaborating with so many people. In particular, it was hard to sustain individual "conversations" in the collaborative process. Rather than building on each other's ideas, many participants -- because of excitement about their own ideas -- would "hijack" a thread or take it in an unintended direction. Some great ideas were left to wither on the vine. The authors discuss other attempts at large-scale collaboration, including some by Dell and Starbucks. These include the use of promotion tools to ensure that "good" ideas are seen and captured by as many eyes as possible. The pros and cons of these methods are discussed as well, and the authors provide a framework for thinking about how an organization can collaborate with its stakeholders.
Large, tradition-bound organizations can make space for radical, low-cost (and therefore low-risk) innovations. Just ask executives at the World Bank. The story of this best practice begins in 1998, when a young new-products group at the international funding agency proposed holding an Innovation Marketplace to capture novel ideas within the bank for alleviating poverty. The forum, which eventually was opened to external participants, let people informally present their antipoverty ideas to potential funding sources. Funders could move among hundreds of booths and evaluate proposals. The marketplace concept met with some skepticism at the beginning. However, the marketplace team believed an open process for allocating grants would produce more breakthrough ideas in the long run than a centralized one. In this article, the authors describe how the new-products team brainstormed to create a market for ideas, how it got senior management's support, and how it has expanded on the original concept for these innovation marketplaces.
An unconventional manager within IBM leads the creation of a business unit with multibillion-dollar potential, winning over customers and nudging the organization to make the changes needed to achieve dramatic growth. This case provides an example of how organizational design and leadership behavior shape performance. Also an example of ambidextrous organization design.