 Selected Excerpts from The Foreword
“When Satish and Mohan asked me to write the foreword to this book, I could hardly contain my enthusiasm. Not only was I already immersed in the subject matter by virtue of my job, but I saw an opportunity to summarize some four years of acute observation and learning on a topic that is driving a new level of global, socio-economic transformation. We are in the midst of one of those rare inflection points that will forever change the way work is conducted, the way new opportunity is created, and how value is extracted from our endeavors. Of course, we are talking about the uniquely 21st century phenomena of collaborative innovation." ........ "Early in 2004, I had the great privilege of participating in two major initiatives to study how and why the nature of innovation is changing and the impact on business, governments, and our global society. The first was the National Innovation Initiative (NII), a special study group sponsored by the Council on Competitiveness. The NII comprised some 200 CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders whose collective mission was to help restart America’s innovation engine. Around the same time, IBM launched a unique project called the Global Innovation Outlook (GIO)—a vastly different way of identifying and acting on emerging trends, policy matters, and market opportunities, driven by input from hundreds of big thinkers in a diverse range of disciplines around the world. We all learned a great deal from those exercises. It seems obvious now, but perhaps the most valuable finding was deep new insight into the sweeping shift in the way innovation is created, managed and delivered. So why has the nature of innovation changed so dramatically? There are many factors, including: the dynamics of a flattening world, the march of commoditization, the rapid and global adoption of new technologies, and particularly, the open movement." ........
This is particularly important for those companies, like IBM, who are addressing problems in business, government, health care, technology, and science that are very sophisticated in nature and pushing the limits of what is possible. We have learned that we cannot work on problems such as information-based medicine, integrated supply chains or advanced engineering design unless we have established a very close relationship with clients, business partners, and even other vendors who might very well be competitors." ........ "For collaborative innovation to become part of our collective DNA, we must accept the notion that the surest way to make progress and solve problems is to tap into the collective knowledge of the team. Networked enterprises are the future. No individual enterprise, no matter how large and talented, can afford to go it alone in today’s highly competitive, globally integrated marketplace. Success in tapping into such a global marketplace of innovators and experts—the “Global Brain” as Satish and Mohan call it—requires companies to first develop a sound understanding of the collaborative landscape and then decide on an approach that suits them the best. One size does not fit all in this regard. In this book, Satish and Mohan provide a rich description of the different models of networked innovation and offer a set of guidelines for companies to identify and prepare for the most promising collaborative innovation opportunities. As they emphasize, success also requires us to rethink the very nature of our relationships with innovation partners – what we need to control and what we need to let go. I think we will find that the sacrifices, and the benefits, are well worth the journey."
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