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Leveraging External Talent To Energize Internal Processes
Posted by M.S. Krishnan on Dec 4, 2008 11:54 AM
Companies today must constantly search for new ways to co-create experiences with individual customers. A recent Wall Street Journal article about Google and Procter & Gamble swapping workers to gain fresh perspectives brings out the essence of how the companies' "invisible dominant logic" can hinder such innovative efforts.
In our recent book, "The New Age of Innovation,” we discussed the importance of social architecture within organizations to enable this transformation to the new age of innovation. By definition, the model for this book, N=1;R=G, means that firms will must be relentless in finding new ways to weave customers into every facet of co-creating experiences that those customers value.
This transformation requires a "fresh look" at the current practices within the firm, and a deeper look at the worker-exchange between Google and P&G, which was not just about allowing Google to bring a high-tech culture to P&G. Rather, it was about the need for each firm to confront and overcome its own "invisible dominant logic" by bringing in outsiders who look at the world in very different ways.
Both P&G and Google are well-known for innovative practices within their respective domains, yet each, in spite of its unquestionable success, has built up some types of narrow thinking and blind spots that make up the dominant logic that pervades companies of all types.
For example, as stated in the article, introspection by the Google team as it examined P&G's processes around organizing a major marketing event for its Pampers diaper brand led to the finding that P&G had failed to include in this event the top "Mom Bloggers" on customer experience using diapers. These bloggers, whose work falls outside the traditional scope of marketing events, have become very important in influencing customers in nontraditional ways.
Without the unbiased view of the Google team, whose thinking wasn't limited or constricted by P&G's invisible dominant logic, the P&G marketing event would not have included those untraditional but very important "Mom Bloggers." In the same way, the Google team is expecting to learn from the P&G team about the importance of disciplined processes and consumer insights -- approaches that Google's invisible dominant logic generally screens out. The key point is that no matter how successful businesses are, the new age of innovation calls for constant re-evaluation and revalidation of existing practices.
In another recent article, InformationWeek reported that General Electric and other companies have used IT to create an internal platform to support real markets for ideas.
The article describes how companies are beginning to use prediction markets and other techniques to leverage their internal talent. But these approaches can challenge the traditional way decisions were made within the organization -- once again, confronting that invisible but powerful dominant logic.
CIOs and other managers need to be prepared for new and often jarring levels of transparency and agility in these novel approaches, because as both these examples point out, it's no longer enough to simply revalidate existing practices. Rather, firms need to recalibrate their organizational mind-sets to be able to leverage the talent both inside and outside their boundaries, as depicted in the examples of P&G, GE, and Google.
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