<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>New advances in collaborative technologies, often grouped under the umbrella term ‘web 2.0’, are changing the opportunity space for organisational collaboration and decision making. Research and development can now be outsourced to external self-organising communities of scientists, new business models rely wholly on content created by end users and customers are increasingly asked for input to the development of new products and services. The way in which many strategic and operational decisions are made, once the sole prevail of executive management, is being challenged by new forms of knowledge, expertise and opinion from non-management employees, and increasingly, from those outside the organisation such as customers, partners and suppliers. The widespread adoption of web 2.0 technologies and their increasing use in the business context, in other words, is creating an inevitable tension between traditional ‘top-down’ strategic decision-making principles and ‘bottom-up’, ad hoc and sometimes unstructured collaborative processes.</p>
<p>This paper examines recent changes to the innovation process and the advent of so-called <italic>fifth generation innovation</italic>, and discusses the way in which web 2.0 technologies are further evolving these models, highlighting that <italic>ideation technologies</italic> are an important part of the new breed of so-called innovation technologies. It then explores the particular example of <italic>jam events</italic>, which bring together a targeted group of participants on the web for a time-limited period to respond to a specific challenge, defined by decision-makers, with ideas, opinions and votes in a socially mediated process. The final section introduces the concept of <italic>co-created strategy</italic>, and discusses the factors required for an organisation to build the <italic>absorptive capacity</italic> needed to truly take advantage of the new knowledge created by ideation technologies.</p></abstract>

New advances in collaborative technologies, often grouped under the umbrella term ‘web 2.0’, are changing the opportunity space for organisational collaboration and decision making. Research and development can now be outsourced to external self-organising communities of scientists, new business models rely wholly on content created by end users and customers are increasingly asked for input to the development of new products and services. The way in which many strategic and operational decisions are made, once the sole prevail of executive management, is being challenged by new forms of knowledge, expertise and opinion from non-management employees, and increasingly, from those outside the organisation such as customers, partners and suppliers. The widespread adoption of web 2.0 technologies and their increasing use in the business context, in other words, is creating an inevitable tension between traditional ‘top-down’ strategic decision-making principles and ‘bottom-up’, ad hoc and sometimes unstructured collaborative processes.
This paper examines recent changes to the innovation process and the advent of so-called fifth generation innovation, and discusses the way in which web 2.0 technologies are further evolving these models, highlighting that ideation technologies are an important part of the new breed of so-called innovation technologies. It then explores the particular example of jam events, which bring together a targeted group of participants on the web for a time-limited period to respond to a specific challenge, defined by decision-makers, with ideas, opinions and votes in a socially mediated process. The final section introduces the concept of co-created strategy, and discusses the factors required for an organisation to build the absorptive capacity needed to truly take advantage of the new knowledge created by ideation technologies.

The implications of ‘jam’ and other ideation technologies for organisational decision making

Cultural Science Journal

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

New advances in collaborative technologies, often grouped under the umbrella term ‘web 2.0’, are changing the opportunity space for organisational...

Attribute of fifth generation innovation	Examples
Innovation technologies	Multi^‐agent simulations of new product uptake, visualisation and virtual world technologies, rapid prototyping
Business networks	Consortia and joint venture formation, social and professional networks, „co-opetition‟
Multiple sources of ideas/novelty	Increasing importance of lead users and beta testing, marketing focus on bidirectional dialogue, rise of consumer co^‐creation
Role of brokers	Innovation marketplaces e.g. yet2.com, nine sigma, innocentive and commercial value of brokering e.g. Innovation Xchange
Importance of flexible business models	Value realization through connecting assets and knowledge

Generation	Description
1st: Supply push	Science → Technology → Applications by firms to market
2nd: Market pull	Market demand → R&D → technology & manufacture → sales
3rd: Coupling model	Science and technology → interactions between R&D, design, operations, marketing, etc (all within the firm) → Markets
4th: Collaborative model	Science and technology → interactions between R&D, design, operations, marketing, etc (collaboration with customers, suppliers, research alliances) → Markets
5th: Strategic, integrated & open	Systematic interactions with all sources of knowledge

The implications of ‘jam’ and other ideation technologies for organisational decision making

Pubblicato online: 11 nov 2009

Pagine: -

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/csci.21

© 2009 Kate Morrison, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Key attributes of fifth generation innovationAdapted from Potts and Morrison (2009)

Five identified generations of the innovation process at the organisational levelAdapted from Dodgson et al (2008)