Why high involvement innovation matters more than ever — and how to make it happen
Autumn. Season of mists, mellow fruitfulness — and conferences. That seems to be the pattern right now, take a few days at the end of the summer holidays to wake up brain cells lulled into slumber by the lapping of lakeside/seaside water and soft sunny days. Immerse yourself in a quick dip into new thinking around old and new problems, sharpen up the mental faculties ready for the forthcoming challenges. Which was pretty much the motivation driving me to Hamburg and to a conference entitled ‘Organizing for collaborative innovation’ hosted at the Technical University and convened by the Continuous Innovation Network (CINET).
This year's event was a little special, representing the 25th anniversary of the conference, and it carried on doing what it has always done, drawing together people from all over the world bound by a common interest in innovation. The innovation question never changes, it is what it always was; how to create value from ideas? But what changes, of course, is the context. New technologies, new markets, changes in the shape and expectations of existing ones, new competitors, new regulations — there’s plenty to keep researchers and practitioners awake and wondering all night long and well into the next day.
This year was no exception. Hot topics ranged from entrepreneurial ecosystems, through collaborative workspaces to novel forms of financing corporate venturing. With, of course, the huge elephant which was not sitting quietly in the corner but stomping its footprints over everything — AI.
It was particularly significant for me since I remember the first (much smaller) gathering of researchers, practitioners and policy-makers in a small hotel room near Gatwick airport in the UK. The hot topic which had drawn us together then was the challenge of mobilising employee involvement in innovation.
We’ve always known that employees could be a source of ideas, especially in terms of improving the processes in which they work. Suggestion schemes have been around in some form or other back in the mists of time. Elements of the approach can be found in the medieval guild system where it was used to help develop and improve craft skills and practices. It was an idea which the eighth shogun of Japan, Yoshimuni Tokugawa tried out in 1721 with his ‘Meyasubako’, a box placed at the entrance of the Edo Castle for written suggestions from his subjects. And the British navy pioneered a similar scheme in 1770, asking its sailors and marines for their ideas — significantly reassuring them that such suggestions would not carry the risk of punishment!
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