“Good things happen when we seize the opportunity to contribute our ideas, our passion and our creativity. The question is whether the world is ready to truly embrace the social and economic innovations that this collaboration could unleash.”

He provides fresh examples of innovation based on five elements required to “reboot” successfully: Collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity/honesty and inter-dependence.

Karim begins by looking at research by Meyer on the airplane’s hidden collaborative history: It didn’t spring whole cloth from the brow of the Wright brothers. E.g., Chanute served as a hub for pre-Wright research and innovation. The Wright brothers actively corresponded with him. Once the Wright brothers patented their inventions, innovation moved to Europe (which is why so many of our aviation terms are French … l’fusilage, anyone?).

Ned talks about the contest MathLab (where he works) runs every six months– sixteen times so far — designed to encourage the free flow of ideas. It’s a week-long open collaborative competition for MATLAB programmers. Entries are displayed, scored, and ranked immediately. Anyone can modify anyone else’s code and resubmit it as their own. The leader is determined objectively by putting it through some hidden tests that judge its efficiency. [...]

Q: In the commercial realm, what happens when an early innovator patents it?
You don’t get collaborative innovation.

In the same spirit also check out Collaborative Architectures for Innovation by Gary P. Pisano and Roberto Verganti. Here’s the abstract:

Collaborative innovation has become a hot topic in innovation today. Scholars, consultants, and the business press all urge companies seeking to boost innovative performance to become more “collaborative.” Too often, however, companies fail to distinguish among the various choices they face with respect to alternative modes of collaboration. Collaborative innovation can take a wide variety of forms, each with profound implications for innovative performance and the value a firm can capture from innovation. Building on a number of case studies, this paper presents a simple framework for categorizing different collaborative modes. The framework is based on the notion that there are two critical dimensions along which collaborative efforts can be characterized. The first dimension relates to the degree to which the collaborative network is “open” verses “closed.” The second dimension relates to the degree to which the governance structure for collaboration is “hierarchical” verses “flat.” While discussions of collaborative innovation often take the position that “open” networks are superior to “closed” networks, and that “flat” governance structures are superior to “hierarchical” structures, our framework provides a more nuanced view of the trade-offs. The choice among alternative collaborative modes should be driven by a number of factors including characteristics of the technology, the capabilities of the firm, and the distribution of competences in the environment. We develop a set of guidelines for helping firms choose among collaborative models and discuss critical enabling conditions required for each to work in practice. In the final section of the paper, we discuss how firms can “mix and match” multiple modes of collaboration into coherent “architectures” that lie at the heart of innovation strategy.

And there’s another article in The McKinsey Quarterly on open innovation (abstract here, free registration required to get it all), covering open innovation, distributed co-creation & product development 2.0. Yes, blogged about this before too, but it’s always a good thing to see McKinsey adding credibility and buzz (even when I am growing wary of the Second Life examples):

“Distributed cocreation is too new for us to draw definitive conclusions about whether and how companies should implement it. But our research into these online communities and our work with a number of open-innovation pioneers show that it isn’t too soon for senior executives to start seriously examining the possibilities for distributed cocreation or to identify the challenges, such as the ownership of intellectual property and increased operational risk, they face in adopting it.”

Well, most interesting pieces are the examples and discussion of the B2B opportunities that arise, like e.g. SugarCRM’s CRM (customer relationship management) software, which can be customized by clients, and the list of how-tos and do’s and don’ts (clear rules and roles, pay attention to the processes etc.).

[...] how old-school companies like IBM can create value by embracing open-source models

A new breed of 21st-century enterprise is emerging—one that opens its doors to the world; co-innovates with everyone, especially customers; shares resources that were previously closely guarded; harnesses the power of mass collaboration; and behaves not as a multi-national, but as something new: a truly global business. These new modus operandi revolve around four powerful new ideas: openness, “peering,” sharing, and acting globally.

Anscheinend soll eine kleine Serie daraus werden, ich bin gespannt welche Beispiele Don Tapscott und Anthony D. Williams, die Autoren von Wikinomics anführen, und werde sicher hier noch darauf zurückkommen.

Notice the business model implications:

fab tools could produce new economic models for creators. Suppose a hobbyist made a cool plastic exterior for an MP3 player. Suppose she put the design online, and 700 people downloaded the file and had it printed at eMachineShop. “At what point,” he asks, “would a manufacturer say, Hey, there’s a market here – and offer to buy the design from her?”

Well, this may offer business model innovation opportunities as well … e.g. third-party recommendation and selection services and sheds a light on user-generated content as well

Read more

A new form of film-making mashes traditional storytelling with video game animation.
[...]
[used] by artists, film-makers and scriptwriters [and geeks as well].

Even small studios have emerged and the movie industry employs video game engines to pre-visualize their big-budget blockbusters.

Well, this is offering (business model) threats and chances to media. User-generated content is booming as posted before, using video engines to shoot your own flicks is further blurring the lines between consumer and producer, er, yes, we’re talking of prosumers.

Notice also that

PC and home console games increasingly include software development kits and modding tools for players to develop new levels and personalise characters.

fueling this development …

more on machinima …

A U.K. court has convicted a UK resident, sending a message to gamers to quit tinkering with Microsoft’s console.

The man sold Xbox consoles fitted with a 200 GB hard drive and 80 pre-installed games on his web site for ₤380 [...]

The coming Xbox360 is eagerly awaited by modders galore, …

[...] Microsoft can’t afford to ignore the actions of the hard-core gaming set. [...] “modders” are eager to get the specs on Xbox 360, to be released at the end of this year.
Because the costs for games and hardware for the 360 are significantly higher, Microsoft has that much more to lose to pirates and hackers. The machines will also be more sophisticated and higher powered

more at Red Herring …

[Microsoft] attributed the success of Xbox Live to the growing number of titles for the console that now allow for some type of online interactivity, as well as the option to download content to enhance certain games.

with the coming xbox 360 some

Changes will also be made to the service, including two levels of membership, a messaging center that gamers can message each other even when not playing a game, and something called the “Gamerzone,” where members can find others with similar gaming preferences.

building up and feeding the community is a smart move, no doubt … unfortunately modded xboxes are excluded, even though they are the most heavy players …

read more at BetaNews