Most innovation stems from conversations between people with different ideas. Web 2.0 has made it so easy for people to have their say that today people everywhere are not just consuming information but producing it, and getting together to create! We see software (Linux), games (World of Warcraft), worlds (Second Life), knowledge (Wikipedia), products and services (School of Everything - who presented at the last Disruptors session). Charles Leadbeater’s research on this subject, culminating in his book ‘We Think‘ published a few months back, and distilled in this little animation here, eloquently describes the 21st century as one of mass innovation by communities having conversations. We used to be what we own, now we are what we share. But, as he says, there is a still lot to work out. For starters:

- How do we protect what is private?
- Are we always safe sharing?
- What if Wikipedia is crap?
- How do we earn a living when everyone is freely sharing their ideas?

To learn more from Charles, I’ll be co-hosting a breakfast session on mass innovation next week: Mon 19th May, 8.30am, The Hub London. Charles will tell us about his current research that focuses on how mass, user-driven innovation is reshaping organisations, after which members will be invited to join an informal conversation about the future of mass innovation for the world. Hub members free, Non-Members £10. Let me know if you’re coming!

More evidence presented Al-Gore style. We have serious work to do. I’m watching this from a hotel room in Geneva - a symbol of civilised society - and truly saddened by what we’re doing, or rather not doing. I’m here for the next two days exploring a Jewish-Muslim dialogue programme, and what it would look like to bring together social entrepreneurs from both cultures to work together on sustainable ventures. If there’s anything in the world right now that warrants our putting aside our differences and working together, surely it’s the climate crisis.

Every social innovation project I have been involved in has, at some point, managed to make me feel like I might just be crazy to think that this new product/service I believe in could truly work. It’s tough to do things differently. So a few months back I got together with Nick Jankel-Elliott of Elemental to set up ‘The Disruptors’, a group exploring how to create and maintain systemic social change - what we hope will become the place for the biggest ideas and bravest people, creating a community of empathy and inspiration.

To get started, we decided to organise a monthly knowledge and networking session at The Hub on the first Tuesday of every month. We put our heads together to map different social, environmental or consumer system, look at existing and potential disruption points within it, and hear from disruptors who are doing it. We will also begin to share state-of-the-art disruption and innovation tools from some of the most pioneering thinkers on the planet.

So far we’ve explored retail packaging and distribution channels with Cath of Unpackaged and the film world with Pawel of ‘What the Bleep do we Know?!‘. We looked at how rule-breaking can be done systematically to overcome barriers. Next in line is the education system with Mary and Paul of School for Everything, and the energy grid with Joe of Dynamic Demand.

Our aim is to collate and publish the systems, their social disruptions and the disruption tools and techniques - for everyone to benefit, on and off line. In the meantime, the best way to get involved is to join our rapidly growing Facebook group, and come along to our next episode which (breaking from our First Tuesday rule) will be held at Shine on Saturday 10th May.

A lot can be done with the simple mechanics of a bike! Interactive cinemas, bread making machines, and ’spin art’ can all be powered by users. The most impressive concept I’ve come across recently is the winner of the Innovate or Die (a new contest for earth-cooling pedal powered inventions), The Aquaduct, a simple solution for transporting and filtering water for a whole family.

Consumers expect a lot (well, relative to before that is) of corporates these days, and philanthropy is still a big part of the corporate response. McKinsey has published a Global Survey on The state of corporate philanthropy, which tells us that a small group of respondents say their companies are reaching beyond traditional corporate goals for philanthropy programs to pursue more concrete business goals, such as gaining information on potential markets. Based on this survey, here is my breakdown of expectations corporates’ have from their philanthropy programmes:

- 100% expect to meet social impact and stakeholder expectations
- 90% expect to deliver corporate reputation and brand benefits
- 80% expect to find new business opportunities
- 30% expect to build knowledge about potential new markets

Given my usual frustration with corporate philanthropy - that it doesn’t relate enough to core business activities - this is good news! It does seems like things are moving in the right direction. In January I was checking out the Economist CSR Special Report which mentioned a few savvy examples:

1. TNT has an emergency response programme called ‘Moving the World’ which is part of a five-year old partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN agency that fights hunger. The TNT teams are able to respond more quickly to emergencies like the Asian tsunami, as well as helping improve food supply-chains in places. What’s great is that this is what they know best: hunger is in part a logistical problem!

2. Coca-Cola has identified water conservation as critical to its future as the world’s largest drinks company. Last year it announced an ambitious collaboration with a heavy-weight environmental NGO, WWF, to conserve seven major fresh-water river basins.

3. Standard Chartered Bank is working with the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) on microfinance and with other NGOs on a campaign to help 10 million blind people.

One result of corporates looking to integrate philanthropy with their growth strategy is that straightforward ‘cash donations’ have become less important. For example, at IBM (one of the top ‘givers’) cash has gone down from making up 95% of total ‘philanthropic giving’ to now only about 35%. And according to BusinessWeek in Nov 2007, one technological innovation that IBM initially developed to use in its philanthropy program brought in more than $100 million in 2006 revenue, after it was offered to paying customers. Actual revenues from philanthropy?!

Its a mix of shocking/delightful/weird, when our basic assumptions are challenged. In this case, a group of 207 people play with our assumptions about what normal people should do in a station. And the reactions are fascinating to watch! Makes me wonder: what subtle move would evoke a similar response in my work, what is it that people simply don’t expect from me or from my organisation? In other worlds, how can we use the psychological inertia (that’s PI in innovation speak!) of our customers - ‘our audience’ - to our advantage?

Reminds me of the time I went to a Fun Fed event at the Old Truman Brewery where we were playing “New York style street games”, and at the end of it we each got a white envelope and instructions to open it once we got outside. It was a £10 note!! I still don’t ‘get it’, but a bunch of us did go buy each other drinks afterwards, and I’m actually now good friends with one of them…

Early signals (aka ‘weak signals’ or ‘future signals’ in futures research - raw informational material that acts as advanced indicator of a trend or system) can be difficult to detect, particularly in a world in which we are so overwhelmed by information! But these signals can be vital warnings or indicators – both of threats and opportunities. Most of us are pretty lazy about this, we wait for information to come to us. It’s only when we are really curious, really driven by a specific question or problem do we focus our attention on the early signals, eager to get some sense of what the future might hold. We then do our competitor intelligence, market research, and technology forecasting, and focus groups. But still, it can be difficult to look beyond the usual places in which we ask the usual people the usual questions - chances are, the competitors are probably looking in all the same places.

How do we find new insights, new points of inspiration? One approach is to listen much harder to the customers, and a number of user-centred methodologies have been developed for doing so – ranging from story-telling to spending a day in the life of a customer. Another approach is to listen much harder to our competitors, particularly those that not normally considered competitors. By this I mean two things (1) activity that is in a different market as traditionally defined, and (2) activity that isn’t blipping on your radar yet because it’s small, niche, non-threatening. I’ll try to explain both of these in more detail:

(1) Look sideways. For a time General Electric’s maxim used to be that each of their businesses needed to be number one or two in its respective ‘industry’. The result was that each business gave its respective market a very narrow definition, in which it was leading with a dominant market share. Naturally this meant they only ever had to innovate incrementally to maintain an edge, tending not to look creatively at new markets and opportunities beyond their current focus. So instead, the story goes, the company asked its businesses to reframe their markets in a way that gave them only 10% of marketshare, and suddenly 90% of their focus was outside their existing business focus, at different organisations, with different customers, models, regions, channels, and approaches. Suddenly they might have been comparing themselves with Cadbury’s or Pepsi, and the learning curve was very steep again. Who would you look at if you defined your market in a way that only gave you 10% of the market share?

(2) Look down. Organisations are set up to support their existing business models. Because implementing a simpler, less expensive, more accessible product or service could sabotage their current offering, it is almost impossible for incumbents to disrupt themselves, Clayton Christensen has written much about identifying and creating disruptive businesses, which are likely to come from outside the ranks of established players (2002). These new entrants are ignored, disparaged, and sometimes even encouraged by existing players for whom the business model is unprofitable or otherwise unattractive and who therefore avoid or retreat from that market segment – focusing instead on their more profitable high-end customers. For example, last year I met the CEO of KickStart which produces manual pumps for Kenyan farmers. These pumps are highly labour-intensive and low capacity, but they provide a ‘good enough’ solution for the farmers at a fraction of the price of conventional motorized pumps. It quickly became a highly competitive solution, outselling all other pumps, and (together with other low-cost equipment) generating $66million in new profits and wages for the farmers. What are the ‘harmless’ new initiatives in your market?

There is much more to learn about this from the likes of George Day, and Paul Schoemaker, co-authors of “Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that can Make or Break Your Company” (2006). The point, for me, is that a laser-like focus on existing competitors converges organisations on the same choice of value propositions and offerings. When everyone starts to look and compete alike, we don’t see much breakthough innovation. The challenge is to see what’s possible sooner, by focusing on the players that are doing things differently.

Thank you to all of you emailing / facebook-ing me to resume blogging! I’ve been offline and distracted - most recently in South Africa for an innovation workshop on sustainable tourism. On the one hand I was picking up lots of great stories to share here, on the other hand I guess I lost the discipline needed to write stuff down! Let’s see if I can get it back. In the meantime, here is a little Blue Man production alerting us that Planet Earth has no emergency exits!