marketing plan, milestones and a benchmarking of
customer needs against competitors’ products. An
information system supports this process, allowing
for distributed data preparation and entry, consolidation of information and summarization at the
appropriate levels for decision making. As project-level information filters through the business,
regional managers and “molecule” managers make
recommendations regarding the continuation of
ongoing projects and the funding of new ones. A
Portfolio Management Forum — consisting of
global business leaders for each line of business, individual business leaders for each molecule and
pertinent biotechnology experts — then follows up
on the recommendations. 2
2. Collaboration. This capability allows innovators with the requisite knowledge and expertise
to connect with one another synchronously or
asynchronously, across large distances and multiple time zones, regardless of whether they are
employees of the company involved. Importantly,
this capability enables participants to stimulate
one another’s creative efforts by sharing knowledge,
information and ideas. It relies on communication
tools such as networks, e-mail, virtual meetings,
webcams, instant messaging and blogs, and on
more relation-oriented tools such as file-synchro-nization software, multiuser editors, blogs, wikis,
tagging and social networking.
IBM Corp. has demonstrated this capability with
its Innovation Jams — online brainstorming sessions where participants interact and collaborate to
generate ideas — which the company has been running since 2001. The 2006 session involved
approximately 150,000 IBM employees, business
partners, clients and university researchers in 104
countries over two three-day phases. The payoff:
IBM invested $100 million in 10 new businesses that
evolved from ideas generated during that session. 3
The Boeing Co. provides another example of
successful collaboration. Boeing developed and deployed its Boeing 777 aircraft in record time because
of its ability to manage the collaboration of some
240 design/build teams. By sharing and coordinating information, these teams were able to proceed
with their respective subprojects concurrently. 4
3. Knowledge and Information Management.
The authors used a variety of techniques to collect data for this study. Initially,
we administered a questionnaire to members of the Industrial Research Institute (IRI), a trade organization of research and development executives, and to
members of the Babson College Innovation & Corporate Entrepreneurship Research Center. The questions aimed to identify the IT tools that these companies
have used for innovation activities, their degrees of success with the tools and
how the companies’ IT departments have contributed to the success of innovation. We also ran a nominal group technique exercise with 70 members of the
IRI to brainstorm on how IT can best contribute to company innovation projects.
Simultaneously, we hosted a series of six three-hour focus groups with
self-selected members of the IRI to seek their perspective on this issue and
their input on the parameters of our study. Attended by some 53 individuals
from 36 organizations — ranging from global multi-industry companies such as
E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. to industry leaders (e.g., The Boeing Co.) to
government entities such as the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration — the focus groups provided especially rich data on the diversity
among organizations in their IT capability and its role in innovation.
Finally, we used a multisite case study approach at 12 companies, some in
the service industries, to explore in greater depth some of the compelling examples that were discussed in the focus groups.
edge intensive. Innovators might start with an idea
and a personal base of knowledge, but to transform
the idea into a new product, service or process, they
typically need to access the knowledge of others
and integrate it with their own. History clearly
shows that individuals and companies generate
more innovations — and innovations of higher
value — when they draw from a conceptually and
geographically diverse pool of knowledge. Thus the
capability of knowledge and information management is crucial for connecting these isolated “pockets
of innovation.” This capability can be enhanced by
expert systems, data mining software (for knowledge creation and abstraction), database systems
(for storage and retrieval), portals (for knowledge
dissemination), decision support systems (for
knowledge application) and knowledge repositories
(for locating needed types of expertise).
4. Business-IT Linkage. The objective of this
capability is to make IT departments more like
partners with innovation centers, thereby fostering productive interactions between them. Toward
that end, it is important that innovators have a
basic knowledge of IT and that IT professionals
appreciate the elements of innovation. Without a
business-IT linkage capability, innovators would
likely be reluctant to ask the IT department for assistance because they would expect IT specialists
to lack creativity and favor standardization. The
result of such stereotyping is that the innovators
