Innovate:Collaborate

In an earlier posting, I discussed the use of TelePresence for some orchestral auditions for the Southbank Sinfonia in London, where instead of flying musicians in for 15 minute auditions - with the consequent effect on the organisation's carbon footprint - they appeared on the other side of the screen playing 'at home' in Glasgow, Madrid, Auckland and New York thanks to some collaboration with BT and Cisco.

Here is the video of some of the auditions, including Southbank Sinfonia's explanation for how they decided to do the collaborative project.

I heard from the CIO of a major UK organisation this week in preparation for a forthcoming collaboration event. Asked what sort of questions he had about collaboration, the CIO wanted to know:

How far is collaboration being exploited beyond some pilot implementations?

Who is taking the lead and in what areas?

What big collaboration successes are there? By whom? And how were the benefits realised?

Are companies really pushing this? Or are they just staying in touch to see how it fares?

In current market conditions, is there an RoI for a big investment?
 
I think the actual situation is that many companies and organisations are trying to understand collaboration and then do a "reality check" so  that they can decide their next steps. Smart companies have already done their short-term thinking and taken whatever steps were necessary to ensure survival. Now their CEOs and senior management - in concert with their CIOs - are thinking medium-term and how they can take advantage of an upturn, when it comes, and get ahead of the competition.

Perhaps this is where collaboration will gain significant momentum, where the mindset has truly switched from survival - and for some companies that is already the case - to using whatever tools are necessary to gain competitive advantage.
 
 

As part of this continued focus on collaboration, a podcast is now available, looking at the subject of moving collaboration forward to the next level within organisations. It considers issues such as getting budgetary support for collaboration projects, rationalising voice contracts, creating a collaborative culture and knowledge management through collaborative tools, and  it features interviews with Mike Davis from Ovum, Steve Masters from BT Global Services, and Gary Bellfield from Tayside Fire and Rescue.

There is an article about the podcast here

Or you can register for the podcast here

Of course, I'd be interested in your feedback on the collaboration issues discussed in the podcast.

Computer Weekly has just hosted a webinar on collaboration and innovation entitled "Beating a business downturn with collaborative technologies."

The event featured Gary Bellfield, ICT Manager at Tayside Fire and Rescue, which is using the concept of 'presence' to contact its staff in real-time through a BT-backed solution based on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, plus BT and research group Ovum.

The event attracted a series of excellent questions, answered by Steve Masters, BT's Global Head of Unified Communications and Mike Davis, senior analyst at Ovum, which will be covered here over the next few days and weeks.

You can view the webinar 'post-event' by clicking here

I came across a recent article in Computerworld in the US which discussed the role of the CIO as an 'innovation czar' based on an article in the Harvard Business Review. Actually, it's not so much something inherent in a change in the role of the CIO, but is more dependent on having 'broad-based individuals' as CIOs who have used their time in the role to demonstrate an ability to think and act systemically and in an integrative manner across the entire enterprise. Those that do are asked to take on additional responsibility, the main drivers of which are a desire to pursue growth and innovation initiatives alongside the focus on productivity, efficiency, and compliance.

The Computerworld article and Harvard Business Review piece discuss the setting up of two groups within the enterprise: the Distributed Innovation Group (DIG) and the Enterprise Integration Group (EIG).

DIG "acts as a centre of expertise for support of innovation and creativity, communicates and publicizes promising ideas, and provides initial funding and scarce specialized skills that may be required for the early evaluation/testing of the idea." As part of its contribution, IT provides  the tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, and monitoring.

EIG "is responsible for enterprisewide business process management and improvement, and manages the corporate portfolio of integration initiatives. It serves as a centre of excellence for skills required in process improvement and is responsible for new ideas on future-oriented enterprise architecture."

The Harvard Business Review piece says that "companies rely on IT as a catalyst, enabler, and component of the new products, services, channels, processes, and business models, as well as the way to encourage innovators to collaborate. And with its extensive experience working at the heart of major business-change initiatives of all kinds--implementing common infrastructures, shared databases, and cross-functional and enterprise systems--IT is often the corporation's de facto centre of expertise in business integration."

The other evening I went to see some orchestral auditions for the Southbank Sinfonia in London. There were would-be orchestral members from Glasgow, Madrid, New York and Auckland playing - and those cities were exactly where they were playing, because the auditions were held using TelePresence technology.

The 'picture' was just the same as you might expect if you were going into a TelePresence suite for a Board meeting - except on the other 'side' was a talented musician trumpeting some high class notes, to my barely trained ear, flawlessly and nervelessly.

The 'concert hall' was BT Centre in Central London, with the players dotted in their nearest TelePresence suite in their home country. The collaborative experience of playing 'at home' meant there was an egalitarian aspect to the auditions. As not everyone auditioning can afford to fly thousands of miles for a 15 minute performance, the use of the collaborative technology means no one is limited from applying to join the Sinfonia. And not flying those thousands of miles is good for the carbon footprint too.

It wouldn't work for the orchestra if the quality of the medium didn't match the expertise of the players. But in this case, the wideband spatial audio and ultra high definition video meant that the judges were able to clearly distinguish between the quality of the musical performances on show.

Simon Over, music director of Southbank Sinfonia put it like this, "As an organisation revolving around and driven by young people, we must reflect their values and aspirations. Cutting carbon emissions and becoming a more sustainable group is at the heart of everything we do, as is a commitment to being as open and egalitarian as possible. We are delighted to be able to use new technology in such a creative way to enhance the principles we all hold."

One of the areas that emerged from my conversation with BT's Jeff Patmore was the extent and appropriateness of the different types of collaboration within an organisation or group and how those snippets, chats, discussions, conversations are eventually acted on and ultimately formalised, whereupon a channel is finally adopted for that 'capture' of useful business information.

It could be a Facebook group, or another community within a social networking group, or a wiki which generates 'pre-formal ideas'. It could be that if the information is likely to be business critical, it will need to be 'discussed' through a more secure channel. As you get closer to the front end of business  - you could call it 'the business end of the discussion' - then there needs to be a more rigid, and less ad hoc way of communicating.

A long time ago I came across Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which says that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that certain lower needs  - physiological, safety, love, and esteem - need to be satisfied before higher needs can be satisfied.

I wonder if such a hierarchy of needs could apply to or be established for collaboration. 

I had a chat with the well-informed Jeff Patmore who's head of strategic university research at BT's Adastral Park research labs this week about some of the work BT was doing with MiT in Boston. One of the developments he discussed that MiT is excited about is the work that's well underway on developing a new programming tool called Scratch.

Scratch is aimed at the young and is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.

It's designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

It's not much of a stretch to see this being extended and adopted by organisations to generate business innovation perhaps not too far into the future.

Some education groups are already having some fun using it.

The social networking site Linked In has launched a series of business applications which could be useful in fostering collaboration with the enterprise.

Linked In says the initial roll out "features productivity applications that range from gathering information that professionals around you are generating to enhancing your abilities to collaborate and communicate more effectively. You'll be able to work much more closely with your contacts on LinkedIn with tools such as file sharing, project management, business trips and many more." (Business trips? That was presumably before business trips became a victim of the credit crench!)

You can find the applications here

It seems like Company Buzz is the most likely to capture the imagination. Company Buzz shows you the twitter activity associated with your company. You can view tweets, trends, customise topics and share buzz with colleagues.

You can see a review of Company Buzz here on SocialTNT 

Linked In's own video announcing the business applications: