Here is an excerpt from an excellent post by Dirk Riehle on open collaboration in enterprise:
In most companies, the innovation process is organized as follows: A research unit suggests to build a prototype of some innovative product or feature, a line-of-business sponsor signs off on the project, the research unit develops the prototype, a product unit receives it and turns it into a real product.
The critical point is the transfer from research to product unit. Here, many things can go wrong, for example:
- The prototype is incompatible with the current product technology;
- The innovation does not address the real problems of the product unit;
- The prototype and innovation are incomprehensible to the product unit;
- The prototype is late and the product unit is already developing its own solution.
The underlying problem is the organizational separation of research from product unit. In most companies, research is separated from product units to prevent immediate product needs from usurping research and innovation resources. For effective transfer, however, research units need to consult with product units during the development of the research prototype. Unfortunately, product units are typically too busy to worry about research projects. Hence, product engineers are rarely assigned to engage with research projects early, or if they are, they frequently are too busy to do it properly.
At SAP, we have been complementing the traditional top-down process of research-to-product unit transfer with a self-organizing bottom-up process that we call open collaboration [1]. Open collaboration is characterized by the following three core principles:
- Egalitarian: Everyone can participate; no borders to joining a project are erected.
- Meritocratic: Contributions are evaluated based on merit; seniority is less important.
- Self-organizing: The collaborators choose their own collaboration processes.
Open collaboration happens, when forward-looking engineers from product units engage with researchers on their own free will rather than as the result of a top-down assignment. We have found that letting engineers choose by themselves is critical to the success of the engagement.
