Multidisciplinary Innovation: It's Time to Throw the Shackles Off

Irving Wladawsky Berger has become my new favorite blogger. Yet another insightful post this week from the semi-retired VP of Innovation at IBM. This time around he's writing about multidisciplinary innovation.

How do you respond to the increasing requirements for collaboration across departments and disciplines that are necessary in order to address new market problems, asks Irving? From his post:

"In business and academia, these horizontal overlays cutting across the institution's formal organization are fraught with tensions if not properly managed. In a business, there will a natural competition for resources between the new units, and the existing lines of business. Human nature being what it is, managers in the existing businesses will often feel that they are working hard to bring in the revenue and profit of the company, only to see the fruits of their labors given to someone else to go explore some new, unproven area. If only the extra funds were given to them, they will think, not only could they grow their existing businesses, but they could also go after the new opportunities better than anyone else."

This reminds me of something I read earlier this year in Don Tapscott's book Wikinomics about mass collaboration and identity crisis. If doing business is becoming no more efficient inside a company versus doing the same things outside a company, or without a company at all, what happens to the original company? (Irving suggests that while it's all a matter of balance, the very notion of a hierarchic organization may become an outmoded concept.)

Really, the only practical way to accelerate collaborative and multidisciplinary innovation is to test new business models in a smaller, more manageable environment. Here at the Business Innovation Factory, we've established the state of Rhode Island as that experimental platform. It's not a lab - it's a real world test bed. Here, experimenters are leveraging our state's compact geography, economic and demographic diversity, and connectivity to test new models quickly with less risk. Forgive the marketing speak but we call this capability innovation@scale (think big, start small and scale fast.)

We've gained a lot of traction over the past 2 years because we help organizations focus on the ambitious end of innovation. We excel by convening stakeholders who each have a piece of the puzzle and in facilitating public-private partnerships. And because we're a non-profit, we offer a non-competitive, neutral platform for enabling collaborative innovation.

To Irving's point, this approach cuts away the tension and natural competition for scarce resources. It tames the elephant by allowing the current business model to continue while new, unproven and (potentially) significant different models are developed. I'm reading John Kao's book Innovation Nation. He talks a lot about the power of place. I believe Rhode Island has that desired level of insulation from the main stream that will allow people to explore new business models in an open, creative and ultimately, game-changing way. Time will tell - but here's hoping I'm right.

RELATED:

• Irving shared his story at our summit last month. His on stage interview with Walt Mossberg generated a lot of conversation and debate. You can watch it here.