Innovation Is A Team Sport

Walter Isaac’s recent book “The Innovators” delivers fascinating insight into technological breakthroughs of the digital era.

“Most of the great innovations of the digital age sprang from an interplay of creative individuals with teams that knew how to implement their ideas.”

Whether the development of the first computer, subroutines, video games, graphical user interface, the Internet, google search or iPhones - his findings show that great ideas were just the first step, and that team collaboration (fostering incremental improvements over time) is the key to successful innovation.

“The sparks come from ideas rubbing against each other, rather than bolts from the blue”

For these reasons, smart organisations are investing heavily in cloud based collaboration tools to stimulate innovation at all levels within their business.

However, we see many organisations approach the implementation of collaboration tools as just another Technology Upgrade. Their goal being to minimise user impact or disruption to the business and establish normal BAU operation.

Not surprisingly, we find that many organisations who take this approach find their business experience very little benefit. In fact about as much business benefit as the previous three MS Office upgrades they’ve been through!

The reason for this failure is that team collaboration requires a change in individuals thinking, behaviours and work patterns, and this requires business change management.

“Don't miss the single biggest opportunity this decade to accelerate innovation within your business”

In other words, if you take a Technology Upgrade approach to Cloud Based Collaboration Tools, you'll probably miss the single biggest opportunity this decade to accelerate innovation within your business.  

If you want teams of individuals to innovate by creating and updating documents in real-time, resulting in shorter meetings and faster results -  Just giving them a version upgrade in MS Office is not going to inspire organisational change.

It is best to broaden the scope of your Implementation Plan to include people, process, partners as well as technology and more importantly to plan and lead this as a business change project.

If you want to get your business into the innovation game, take a close look at the changes in staff behaviours that you want to see occur. Don't be afraid of disrupting users with a new toolset, as just presenting them with more of the same will unlikely result in collaboration or innovation. 

About the author: Having worked in the IT industry for over 25 years in technical, leadership and transformation roles, I'm passionate about how technology can be used to improve our world.

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