By Jim Petrassi and Sharon A. Whitaker Information technology is changing its focus from systemization to strategic innovation. The traditional focus on systemizing repetitive processes has served business well by increasing scalability and efficiency. Today, however, innovation plays an increasingly critical role in the competitive global market.

Strategic innovation refers to the processes through which a company develops and introduces new ideas, goods, services, and practices. Accelerating the pace of strategic innovation has become a key business objective, and the use of advanced collaboration technologies has the potential to become a business “game changer.”

Many first-generation collaboration technology implementations yielded less-than-impressive results. While first-generation tools could support internal collaboration, they were challenged to accommodate working with external parties. A centrally-managed publishing model was used, rather than a highly distributed publishing model, creating bottlenecks. Users found it too hard to find information they wanted, and got too much information that was not useful. The good news is that the second generation of collaboration technology appears to address many of these issues.

New collaboration tools

Over the past few years, several new collaboration tools have emerged that were designed specifically to support innovation.

Blogging began as a tool to publish personal journals intended for general public consumption. Popular Internet blogs are viewed by thousands of people on a regular basis. While blogging focuses on publishing text, this phenomenon now includes new media types: podcasting distributes audio journals, while vlogging distributes video journals. 

Businesses are now starting to use blogs both internally and externally as an important communication channel. Some companies have internal blogs about everything from water cooler talk to product development notes and business strategies. Others are using external blogs to communicate information and engage their customers in dialogue. Venture capital firms are using blogs to educate entrepreneurs, providing insights into everything from how deals are structured and how to shop for a VC, to the finer points of term negotiations.  VCs have stated that making their thoughts available to the public improves deal flow.

Wikis allow innovators to collaborate in forming the content of a Web site. A wiki Web site operates on a principle of collaborative trust, rather than central control — any user can edit site content, including other users' contributions.

The wiki community polices itself using powerful versioning tools. If necessary, changes can be quickly backed out. Also, wiki software provides security controls to limit access to a small community. Wikis are simple to use. Anyone familiar with word processing (e.g., Microsoft Word) can create and update content. The combination of ease-of-use and strong version management make wikis an ideal tool to support team innovation.   

Some argue that RSS (Really Simple Syndication)* is the key ingredient needed to facilitate effective collaboration and avoid information overload. RSS is a syndication format that aggregates updates from blogs, vlogs, podcasts, wikis, team sites, and news/information Web sites.

RSS aggregators allow innovators to subscribe to specific topics of interest. An aggregator continually scans both internal and external RSS feeds to find information on those topics and push it to the user. This “opt in” approach allows users to see only the information that is relevant to them. Every day, users receive one e-mail containing a summary of information and links to more detailed content so they can quickly scan and get additional information by clicking on a link. Additionally, RSS feeds are searchable, providing easy access to a well-organized historical repository.

Innovators use social networks to collaborate with knowledgeable coworkers, and there are new tools to map the flow of information through an organization and to locate those knowledgeable coworkers. An organization chart usually does not reflect how knowledge actually flows through a company. Social network analysis provides new techniques and tools that help companies understand how knowledge flows through an organization, and thus improve upon this exchange. It provides a clear picture of the ways that far-flung employees and divisions are working together, and can help companies identify key experts in the organization — no matter where they reside. 

Many leading companies are using social networking tools, such as expert locator systems, to find experts on specific topics. Early systems often depended on individuals to register themselves and their experiences into an online directory. Next-generation applications will leverage social network analysis tools to extract expertise from internal communications such as e-mail, reducing the reliance on self-registration.

Prediction markets are another interesting application of social networking tools. This tool is based on the notion that a marketplace is a better predictor than individuals. One of the best-known markets is the Iowa Electronic Markets at the University of Iowa, which has been used since 1988 to predict the outcomes of US presidential elections — and has outperformed news organizations 75 percent of the time. Companies are beginning to use such markets to reduce business risk.

Use tools to target specific strategic innovation opportunities

The new collaboration technologies open up new innovation opportunities. However, few companies today have established a repeatable approach for applying these technologies. The companies that have been successful in applying them have done so to support innovation programs that are aligned with specific business objectives and strategies. They also understand that, like all business change initiatives, technology is only one element.

Most businesses are still struggling to get basic collaboration fundamentals in place. They are also focusing on overcoming the shortcomings of the first-generation technologies. According to researchers like Gartner, this focus on fundamentals will continue for the next two to four years.  Therefore, deploying collaboration technologies must be viewed as a journey. To get the most “bang for the buck,” businesses should deploy and upgrade their collaboration technologies based on specific strategic innovation opportunities. 

This article is an excerpt from a white paper that won an award from CSC’s Leading Edge Forum in the Management Consulting and Business Transformation category.

Jim Petrassi is a senior partner in CSC Consulting and practice director of Chicago Systems Integration. Sharon A. Whitaker is a principal in CSC Consulting.

*RSS is also referred to as "Rich Site Summary" and "RDF Site Summary.”