The power of the crowd. A lot has been written on the ideas of Opensource, Crowdfunding, and Crowdsourcing. The old adage of “Two minds are better than one.” has proven to be true in today’s rapidly changing markets. Innovation Centers are built on the idea of many minds lightening the load.
In traditional organizations, the responsibility for new ideas comes from leadership. When a company fails it does so because the leadership didn’t listen to the market and respond, or didn’t become the leader in the market that they should have been. But in the new order, ideas come from the masses. Today markets have exploded with idea generators like Rocket Hub, Indiegogo, Mashable, AngelList, and others. A whole new genre of incubator ideas has grown over the past five years that I believe has been an outgrowth of the explosion of idea sharing based on internet transparency.
Today you can find out something about just about anything on the internet. You have to verify the sources, but this platform has given everyone in the world who can get a phone connection access to the rest of the world. That has never happened in the history of mankind. It unleashes a new kind of idea generation that has never been before. That kind of idea generation is contagious. If you are looking for new ideas you have no further to go than your phone or keyboard.
Innovation Centers that employ open and transparent idea generation are distinctly different in their focus than traditional top-down hierarchical management organizations. They challenge the old order. They upset the traditional power structures. They give power and authority to front-line workers. But this new paradigm appears to work in factories, laboratories, hospitals, and even offices.
If you are going to employ Innovation Centers as a part of your organization’s growth strategy, then it must play a central part. It can’t be a sideline distraction. Ideas are the currency of the new economy. Those who generate the best ideas which engage specific users will win more often than those who do not. So open up the doors, and let the ideas in!
Image By Testbirds GmbH (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
