The premise of this chapter is that Innovation Growth is tightly tied to the collaborative process of socializing knowledge. Case examples from leading companies leading the way in socializing knowledge leading practices will be profiled. These companies will be a mix of new stories from a mix of both profit and not for profit organizations, in a mix of industries. The leaders of these organizations recognize that the socialization process of knowledge is core key to innovation growth. This chapter tells the story of change agents that are helping to move from vision to execution successfully. You will hear of experiences where the full enablement of their programs are not fully funded, or necessarily aligned across all levels of management where the generational gaps between understanding community and value network networks vs those based on linear “one way flow” models continue to conflict with one another; The case studies all started off with a small project well scoped and defined, and organically evolved vs a big bang approach. Each of these cases is rooted in a clear business need either for employee engagement or customer engagement needs.
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Increasingly executives realize that innovation is rooted in the health of their corporate culture, and is evidenced in their business practices, cultural behaviors, and norms which either foster open collaboration and knowledge sharing or stifle these trust building and risk taking competencies.
Never before has collaboration and innovation been so important to an organization’s survival. As the war for talent intensifies, Generation X and Y’s will become increasingly sought after talent pools. They have more choices for employment than any other generation in the past due to the rapidly retiring Baby Boomers. They will join organizations that enable them to communicate and interact using social mediated and collaborative technologies to perform their job functions.
They will live by the “law of two feet” as their loyalty mantra in an organization is either “let me be empowered to collaborate using next generation collaboration solutions or I will leave to an organization that has these investments in place.” The millennials loyalty is based on being part of a cohesive and community generating culture that is stimulating and fun to work in provides a rich interactive learning environment, and balances business and social responsibilities.
What we know from our Helix Commerce International Inc. (www.helixcommerce.com) research is that for organization’s to successfully compete in the new Knowledge Economy that ease of access to collaborative social mediated technologies that improve knowledge worker productivity will be a key success factor to attract, develop and retain talent.
Currently, the majority of Fortune 500 organizations are just starting to recognize the importance of applying Web 2.0 and collaborative solutions to their business processes. Web 2.0 technologies such as: blogs, micro blogs, podcasting, social mediated technologies, virtual worlds and wikis are now being rapidly applied in innovative ways to improve business practices.