…a case story of a hidden dream team!

LONG TAIL OF INNOVATION IN INTERNAL CROWDS

Frank Hatzack and Maria Carlsen@frankhatzack, @MaCarlsenInnovation Office, Novozymes R&D

WHAT IS THE ‘LONG TAIL’ OF INNOVATION?

Notion that creativity has a highly skewed distribution in inventor crowds. Breakthrough innovations are usually found in the ‘long tail’ section of the distribution curve, meaning they are rare but highly valuable.

BULLETS IN PLANES 2Animation: The plane in the back is fixed. Plane (Today green) in front is animated: Fade on click.

Use: To highlight information when discussing past and future situations.

SETTING THE SCENE FOR OUR CASE STUDY

In Novozymes R&D we use collaborative online idea campaigns on a regular basis…

…because they have delivered new ideas which turned into projects…

…as well as a few potential

breakthrough innovations.

Hence, we have started to investigatea couple of questions:

Who scores the most successful ideasin such online campaigns?

Are they our ‘usual inventors’?

What do high performance inventors have in common?

If they were basketball players, whatkind of breed would they be?

Growth Bets 2011 online idea campaign

THE CASE AT HAND

96 inventors

222 ideas25 top ideas 5 winner ideas

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MATURATION

Participants were scientists of the global R&D organization, selected by a tiered peer selection system. There were more participants than the 96 active inventors. Further details to be published. Due to the highly complex technologies in scope of this campaign the external crowd option was deselected at the time being.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDEA AND INVENTOR POPULATIONS IN THE CAMPAIGN:

197other ideas

top-categoryof 25 ideas 5 winning ideas

65

31 with a history of postingideas on the idea web

with no history of postingideas on the idea web

InventorsIdeas

?

idea web: internal idea collection established over several years. Comprising hundreds of ideas regarding new technologies and products.About 70 - 90 ideas are posted each year.

Does your history in idea posting make you a top performer in the campaign??

The findings presented here are of highly preliminary character:

As of now we only have compared inventive performance in one campaign with the inventive activity records of only one other source, namely the idea web

Clearly, one needs to take into account other records of inventiveness such as publications and IP to get a more granular picture (on-going)

Also, one has to investigate more than just one idea campaign dataset to confirm presented conclusions

The inventor population sample studied here is rather small and all our statements which go beyond strictly descriptive content have to be taken with a grain of salt…

LIMITATIONS & CAVEATS

THE FIRST THING WE DID WAS TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE INVENTORS WITH A HISTORY ON THE IDEA WEB

197other ideas

65

31 with a history of postingideas on the idea web

with no history of postingideas on the idea web

InventorsIdeas

?

WE FOUND THAT THE IDEA DISTRIBUTION CURVE OF THIS GROUP HAD AN ASSYMETRIC SHAPE WITH A LONG TAIL

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inventors

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eas 31 participants in the campaign had a historical record of posting a total of

149 ideas on the idea web over severall years (inventors A to AE)

idea web curve

A SUB-GROUP OF EIGHT HIGHLY ACTIVE INVENTORS STOOD OUT: THEY CONTRIBUTED 70% OF THE IDEAS

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A ‘High Activity Group’ of only 8 inventors (A – H) contributed 103 ideas to the idea web over the years. Thus, this sub-group accounted for 70% of the ideas.

idea web curve

LONG TAIL GROUP: THE REMAINING 23 INVENTORS HAD A RECORD OF POSTING OCCASIONALLY OR SELDOMLY ON THE IDEA WEB

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z AA AB AC AD AE0

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Long tail group: 23 inventors (I – AE) accounted for 46 (30%) of the idea-web ideas in question

idea web curve

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z AA AB AC AD AE0

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ON-LINE CAMPAIGN OBSERVATIONS:

inventors

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1 111

x Top category idea (x= no. of top category ideas posted)

1 Winning idea

idea web curve

campaign curve

‘THE BANG IS IN THE TAIL!’

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The ‘long tail group’ outperformed the ‘high activity group’ by producing more top-category ideas. Also, all 5 winner ideas were ‘from the tail’.

then ‘long tail’ inventors would be the kind of hidden talent players with dream team potential which you were almost unaware of.

In the present game they spectacularly outperformed the regulars by scoring more points with fewer shots per player

… and they did all the slam dunks!

    inventors with history on idea web   inventors with no history on the idea 

web

  basketball termsHigh actitivity group (A-H)

Long tail group     (I-AE)  

inventors players 8 23   64total ideas shots 49 68   73ideas/inventor shots pr player 6.1 3.0   1.1top ideas scored points 4 15   6winner ideas slam dunks 0 5   0hit rate shot accuracy 8% 22%   8%hit probability probability to score

in game50% 65%   9%

         

IF THIS WAS BASKETBALL…

Also, a number of players with no historic record showed up and scored 6 times!

Campaignstats

WHAT MOBILIZED THE HIDDEN DREAM TEAM?

Clarity on campaign

process & purpose

Trust in the established

screen team & process

Desire to impress peers

and top management

Monetary or material incentives were not promised and can therefore be

ruled out. Awards were symbolic tokens only.

Option to engage in the

maturation of winning ideas

We are not sure yet but a couple of reasons seem likely:

There are 5 good reasons to conduct internal online idea campaigns

1. Mobilize the great innovation potential of your less prominent and less outspoken inventors. Organizations tend to overlook their ‘hidden dream team’

2. Capture their great ideas and turn them into projects for new growth. Allow them to engage in this process

3. Save costs – online idea campaigns are substantially cheaper than face-to-face ones!

4. Boost an engaging innovation culture across your organization

5. Try out internal crowd sourcing first before you go external – you dodge the IP-challenge and you may be positively surprised

6. Leverage inventor diversity by engaging highly diverse crowds for optimal outcomes

CONCLUSION

And there is a sixth one, which is detailed in another slide deck: http://slidesha.re/165rt6w