One of the leading trends in collaboration commerce is to integrate multi-media forms into tighter communication platform solutions. The recent target acquisition of Cisco of WebEx demonstrates this continued evolution in business solutions to increase knowledge worker communication capability. As noted in Innosight’s Blog,Cisco recently announced that it is buying the company, the leading online meeting service provider, for $3.2 billion.

This is another example of disruptive innovation at work as Cisco continues to survey the global landscape and then very SMARTLY source high value acquisitions. According to the annual web conferencing industry report published by research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, the market share of web conferencing services provider WebEx Communications (NASDAQ: WEBX) has climbed to a new high of sixty seven percent more than four times greater than any other vendor. WebEx’s investment in its global MediaTone Network truly sets it apart from the rest of the pack.WebEx continues to be the driving force behind the successful web conferencing services market and its success proves WebEx’s corporate mantra, ‘web conferencing is a communications business’. These factors have all led to the attractiveness of Cisco acquiring WebEx.

This attractiveness is also reinforced by Subrah Iyar, CEO and Founder of WebEx in his recent blog posting:

“WebEx has played a key role in helping companies succeed in this new world. I am proud to note that eighty percent of the companies on Business Week magazine’s 2006 list of innovative companies are our customers. Similarly, ninety percent of Wired magazine’s 2006 most wired companies are WebEx customers.This merger combines WebEx’s SMB customer expertise with Cisco’s leadership in the global enterprise and means businesses of all sizes can leverage the full suite of unified communications products and services. Small businesses will benefit immensely from Cisco’s backing of WebEx’s services and enterprise customers will get the full benefit of a complete product and service suite for doing business over the web.”

What other disruptive growth plays will unfold as market leaders watch Cisco’s increasing strength of integrated collaboration solutions. How will Microsoft further respond as the war for all media types further embeds into communication solutions? Some viable future acquisition questions may be that either Microsoft buys RIM or Cisco buys RIM? This is one potential play that we anticipate will unfold - the question is who will be the buyer and simply when? Then again, Google is rapidly going after the collaboration market in their current and future developments… and their giant stature certainly makes life interesting for companies like Microsoft and many others.

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I met Dave Snowden about ten years ago on the Knowledge Management (KM) speaking circuit when he was with IBM working as a researcher with classic KM icons like Larry Prusack and others. Dave has always had a remarkable vision of alternative approaches to solving complex business problems. With his guiding wisdom, I began my personal learning journey to apply complexity science and narrative inquiry techniques to support our client’s innovation and growth practises.

To start our conversation in the right direction, below are some basic working definitions and other expert sources to help provide more context of this discussion - and in my next blog I will provide more concrete examples of innovation applications leveraging these approaches.

First, complexity evolves around the process of self-organization and a rejection of traditional notions of representation. From the earlier wisdom of John Holland we leaned how adaptation can be regarded as an engineering problem. His inventions started with the genetic algorithm and provided a systematic way to design and study complex adaptive systems with computer simulations. The research of the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Michigan’s Centre for the Study of Complex Systems have further clarified the working definitions so these models can be more readily understood by more practitioners.

First, in everyday conversation, we call a system “complex” if it has many components that interact in an interesting way. More formally, we consider a phenomenon in the social, life, physical or decision sciences a complex system if it has a significant number of the following characteristics:

1. Agent-based: The basic building blocks are the characteristics and activities of the individual agents in the environment under study.
2. Heterogeneous: These agents differ in important characteristics.
3. Dynamic: These characteristics that change over time, as the agents adapt to their environment, learn from their experiences, or experience natural selection in the regeneration process. The dynamics that describe how the system changes over time are usually nonlinear, sometimes even chaotic. The system is rarely in any long run equilibrium.
4. Feedback: These changes are often the result of feedback that the agents receive as a result of their activities.
5. Organization: Agents are organized into groups or hierarchies. These organizations are often rather structured, and these structures influence how the underlying system evolves over time.
6. Emergence: The overlying concerns in these models are the macro-level behaviours that emerge from the assumptions about the actions and interactions of the individual agents.

Understanding these characteristics can help business executives understand the dynamics of innovation processes where diffusion is so critical for a new product or service to be commercialized successfully.

One of the most interesting perspectives that Dave Snowden and his research networks have contributed is their understandanding of how language and stories richly communicate meaning and how rapid feedback loops in emergent explorations can help us see what we often cannot see.

For example, a recent project we did with Dave was with a global pharmaceutical company where in a one day workshop we were able to collect from thirty patients over 200 stories and index them to help us identify new pathways for potentially altering the market ecosystem dynamics to yield more successful brand image outcomes for the pharm company. We were also able to identify 4 new patient segments that two other global research firms had not been able to identify and millions had been invested and these techniques were able to share patterns never seen before. A complex puzzle becomes simpler with these techniques.

With the war for winning and retaining market share - companies that learn the art of applying complexity science techniques in their innovation practises will have a competitive edge. I have come to the conclusion that the techniques that Dave Snowden and now firms like us training in these methods is we are helping our clients see what others cannot easily see.

For companies to be able to identify patterns which cannot be seen from traditional market research approaches to gain insights on new products, services or identify a disruptive innovation advantage cannot be valued enough. With the compressed window for competitive advantage or lack of sustaining innovation market influence — seeing what others cannot easily see should be top of mind for every CEO or CMO who is serious about innovation and having a window for market differentiation..

Three recommended books to help you get started in learning more about complexity science and innovation techniques are: Emergence by Steven Johnson, Harnessing Complexity by Robert Axelrod and Michael Cohen, and Complexity and Post-Modernism by Paul Cilliers. If you would like us to send more information on complexity science management and receive a copy of our whitepaper research in this area, please contact us at info@helixcommerce.com.

Technorati : Complexity Science, Innovation, Marketing

I recently spoke at the McMaster Intellectual Capital Conference. This conference is annually organized by Dr. Nick Bontis and Dr. Chis Bart, with tremendous leadership support by commerce and MBA students (one of the largest student led conferences in the world). Each year I speak at this conference and this year I left with some strong reflections on Canada’s national productivity challenges.

Canada currently has the lowest productivity of the G7, the lowest R&D Investment of the G7, with the exception of Italy. Today, we have fewer per capita researchers, and engineers, fewer per capita inventions and innovation and fewer per capita investment in Information Technology. We are also slower to bring new products to market.

These are all real and fundamental challenges to Canada’s economy.

The major challenges are (1) The Productivity Gap and the need to compete more efficiently and effectively, and (2) the People Gap as we need to attract and retain the best and the brightest and continuously learn new skills.

Canada trails the US in terms of productivity and the gap is widening. One of the major reasons is due to the lack of sustained investments in IT. Specifically, we need to accelerate our investment in creating, distributing and maximizing intellectual assets or knowledge assets. Yet when I ask CEOs, COO, CMOs, CFOs CIOs- they seldom can articulate a clear strategy on how they are effectively managing their knowledge assets. With over 80% of the capital markets tied up in knowledge generating assets (service companies, knowledge workers), etc. we have a fundamental opportunity to address to improve our competitive advantage.

Dr. Nick Bontis and I with many of our global partners, associates, or peers have been involved in helping to define, shape, and further support global organization’s ability to develop intellectual capital or Knowledge Management strategies. As much progress as we try to make in Canada in this area - there remains much more to accomplish.

Depending on the organization we partner with -they always take on a unique problem to solve. Problem sets can vary from creating a risk management strategy around knowledge assets, to helping clients select relevant technology platforms to collaborate and share and harvest knowledge more effectively - managing knowledge flows in creating customized New Product or Service Development solutions.

When we partnered with one of the top Canadian banks, it was to help them develop a use case to migrate from one portal environment to a longer term portal strategy. Other clients are seeking specialized functionality to support their portal requirements. For example, we recently visited a major Canadian hospital to discuss their eLearning requirements for a robust Learning Management Solution like MedWorxx that squarely focuses on a hospital’s unique learning requirements.

Whatever the productivity challenges are… one important opportunity to take advantage of is for organizations to leverage social media and collaborative solutions. Although Canada prides itself in being leaders in internet adoption and usage, our innovation in winning internet business models that globally dominate pales compared to our USA neighbor.

To take up the productivity challenge, Canadians and all nations need to use social network solutions like: Blogs, Wikis (like Atlassian) collaborative and intelligent workflow solutions (like Sharepoint), or community of practise solutions like Shared Insights, or web-collaboration solutions (like WebEx), etc - Each of these solutions are examples of how countries can help close their productivity gap challenges.

With knowledge flows coming from community ecosystems - our dependency on tapping into these new forms of collaborative interaction tools will be critical for competitive advantage.

In some respects, it is either Collaborate or Die!

The ability to leap frog has never been greater as rising powers continue to increase their muscle - new Tsunami waves are in the making - and I would prefer to see Canada reverse the tide sooner than later. The year over year productivity erosion should have all Canadian leaders seeking new ways of increasing their producitivty capabilities. The secret weapons will be found in using effectively collaborative business models, and collaborative toolkits , and leadership practices (such as storytelling) where knowledge can be effectively created and leveraged.

My next Blog will feature Innovation and Leadership using StoryTelling for Competitive Advantage.

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Sure the name “Wiki” sounds flaky. Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word wiki wiki which means quick, and its speed and collaboration capabilities are making a difference to companies globally. According to a recent survey by the Gilbane Report, most companies with revenues of less than $25M annually have a wiki. Ron Wilkinson of Black and McDonald, an executive with a Calgary, Alberta, Canada based construction and maintenance firm have found wikis to be an ideal way to communicate with their 3,000 staff.

Why change from using Microsoft’s Outlook and Public Folders?

Simply, Black and McDonald were were tired of sending bulky emails to staff and knowledge was structured in files that no one could easily find. They also had no global search feature to simplify office productivity. At Helix, we have also found in supporting our clients we use wikis to execute our project environments in and also all client deliverables are structured effectively for long-term use ensuring knowledge is not lost in the organization. So often consulting firms give reports electronically or in CD’s but they are not organized into an effective knowledge environment so companies can easily source this information….wikis can help change consulting firm’s customer value with their clients and improve knowledge sharing and harvesting capabilities.

A wiki is a type of website that allows readers to easily, add or edit content. Atlassian, a leading wiki software solution provider, has found that a wiki can accelerate project productivity from 25-30%. So with this major productivity advantage, why are Canadian companies so behind in using wikis and Web 2.0 tools like Blogs etc.

In our partnering discussions with IBM - we decided to do something about this gap. Together, Helix and IBM Canada are now offering the first integrated Web 2.0 Blog and Wiki training program to help close this knowledge and productivity gap.

Check out our NEW blog and wiki IBM training course. Dr. Bill Ives, leading KM Authority and a Helix Senior Associate will be the lead trainer on Blogs featuring his new book on Blogs . Bill will also be joined by Martin Cleaver, Helix Wiki Practice Manager, and Dr. Cindy Gordon, CEO Helix Commerce who will share results of her recent research on Web 2.0 to be issued in a new book on Software as a Service, called Why Buy the Cow, written with Subrah Iyar, CEO of WebEx.

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I am very proud to be a Canadian with our history for continuing to invest in innovation and R&D. Although we have lost our global positioning as one of the top 10 countries in terms of innovation and productivity based on the OECD and the World Economic Forum rankings, I am encouraged by the dialogue of Canadians in both business and not for profit organizations. The voice of the crowd is consistent that in order to position Canada for growth as a nation that we need to strengthen our commitment Innovation.

One of the executive community roles I am involved in is the Innovation Nation Platform for Canada organized by the Canadian Advanced Technology Association, (CATA) one of the significant community advocacy organizations promoting advanced technology and innovation capability development in Canada.

The core pillars of the CATA ” Innovation Nation as a Platform include:

• Developing a National Brand for Canada based on Regional Advantages;
• Creating an Industrial Strategy for Canada, linked to strategic approaches to government procurement, supply chains, outsourcing, exports, and increased international mandates;
• Responding to the Flat World of global competition with the removal of trade barriers, provision of support to equal the playing field for Canadian competitors and investment in the infrastructure needed to preserve and expand market strength;
• Maintaining the best practise aspects of Canada’s SR & ED tax incentive program;
• Attracting, retaining and training best talent;
• Fostering executive leadership for industry growth, including a commitment to lifetime learning;
• Developing the IT capacity of women and encouraging women to join the technology market and enrol in technology-related studies;
• Creating best practises for Public Safety and National Security with an eye to protecting privacy, including fostering the growth of the advanced security sector; and
• Advancing measures to speed ICT adoption by the public and private sectors, particularly for small to mid sized (SME) businesses.

There is a great deal to action and it clearly starts with a committed group of people. Canada has the raw materials (resources, talent, education, diversity, close to a strong neighbour etc) - what we need perhaps the most is to develop accelerated time to market and global mind sets to embrace change more rapidly.

Our Canadian history of conservatism and politeness need to be sharpened with increased agility, and innovation competencies. Fortunately our diverse acceptance of diversity in culture due to our multi-cultural mosaic enable us to take advantage of different skills rapidly. Unfortunately, like our US partner, rapidly promoting and embracing women into Information Technology (IT) or Bio Tech careers is an area where we are not flourishing as well. This is the area that I am leading as Canadian Co-Chair with a number of other equally committed senior women in the CATA Women In Technology Leadership pillar.

There is a great deal to do –and developing open community dialogues on innovation and continuing to embrace transparency in a global economy certainly will help us achieve our Innovation as a Nation Platform. If you have any ideas on how Canada can continue to improve, please let us know at info@helixcommerce.com or respond to our blog posting today.

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Last year I published with my two esteemed co-authors, Dr. Jose Claudio Terra CEO of Terra Forum and Heidi Collins, prior CKO for Air Product Chemicals, a new book on Winning at Collaboration Commerce: The Next Competitive Advantage. We wrote this book as it was very clear to us five years ago that the only advantage left in business was for organizations to develop sustaining collaboration capabilities. With the development of the web, the collapse of time and space has never been more apparent.

The recent research of the Society for Organizational Learning (SOL) has learned that successful collaboration embraces three types of work: conceptual, relational and action driven - and together these three forms build a healthy “learning ecology” for supporting systemic change. Some of SOL’s lessons we have also found in our research and in servicing our clients.

One of our collective key learnings is to build community through thinking together and sharing. ThOur thesis is that iterative process of collaborative dialogue increasesthe production of trust making attributes (listening, authenticity, transparency, etc) which increases humans willingness to share knowledge and as a result achieve higher levels of transparency. The SOL’s research has also concluded that when faced with handling difficult conceptual tasks - it is faster and easier to leave the work to a small group of experts or to outsource the problem solving to consultants or academics.

The second key learning is to achieve simplicity without reduction. Clarity must not come at the expense of oversimplification of the trivialization of complex issues.

In our work at Helix Commerce International Inc. we have also leaned that collaboration between organizations is rooted in the quality of the relationships and the iterative interactions that support cooperative problem solving, joint learning, and the development of mutual and respectful trust.

We have come to the end of the transactional leadership era. We believe that the only way to achieve scale now is to generate change that engages large communities of diverse stakeholders to co-create new possibilities. In our research on innovation in leading organizations, we have also concluded that for innovation to flourish collaborative sense making processes need to be mature. The art is in the quality of the conversations or the dialogue - perhaps as humans we are returning full circle to what it means to be truly human and that is having a genuine conversation to co-create new possibilities.

The applications of wikis and blogs also help to accelerate communication processes and support new pathways to achieve stronger collaboration ties. If you are interested in learning more about how wikis and blogs can accelerate collaboration capabilities, check out this NEW program we are co-delivering with IBM.

For more information on views expressed on this blog on collaborating, please see the MIT Sloan Review Winter 2007 for Peter Senge’s et al paper: Collaborating for Systemic Change. If you would like to continue this dialogue please email Dr. Cindy Gordon at cindy@helixcommerce.com or post a response to this blog.

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Five years ago, I was a Venture Capital (VC) partner in a tier one VC firm called XDL Intervest with serial entreprenuers Dennis Bennie, founder of Delrina WinFax, Michael Bregman, Founder of Second Cup, and Tony Van Marken, CEO and Founder of Architel. When I left Accenture to join with these three talented opeators - it felt so great to have the wind at my back leaving a firm where creativity and innovation capacity were often stiffled due to the cultural reality to execute to scale and a preference and comfort level more in conformity vs diversity.

The Dot Com period in late 2002 was like riding a wild roller coaster - except the rails came off the track when the market collapsed as the meaning of profit and loss and balance sheet returning to meaning something. So the business world almost over night - returned to the business reality of back to business basics.

Although five years have passed, it still remains difficult for early stage entrepreneurs to source venture capital in Canada. To put in context, of over 1.5 million companies seeking financing - only 500 received venture financing in 2005. That’s one in 2,000 - about the same odds of a PGA Tour recording a hole in one.

I was so concerned about this trend that continues to persist, I founded the CEO Fusion Center, with Bob Wilson, Founder of Clicking Capital. Bob has had a successful history in supporting early stage companies and our collective vision for the CEO Fusion center was to set it up as a not for profit organization that would help CEO’s improve their leadership capabilities and enable them to work with peers to increase their capabilities to attract venture financing. After a successful year plus getting this organization off the ground as Chairman and Founder, the organization has now a more focused governing operating model and continues to improve its offering year over year under the guidance of Dr. Steve Gedeon and Bryan Watson. One of the hardest lessons any enterpreneur that is a founder has to go through is to learn how to let go when it is time to move on - I am now a better coach to the CEO’s I work with from this growth experience.

In our work with Helix Commerce International Inc. a global firm which focuses on helping develop innovation, growth and transformation capabilities we have partnered with companies like: Stratage and Innosight that have successfully pioneered new approaches to solving these type of growth needs. What Innosight and Helix have both found in their global research is that developing innovation capacity requires leaders to think and act more like venture capitalists. The razor sharp focus of a VC has the skill to identify new opportunities that will create market value and offer a healthy return to investors. VC’s unique ability to smell out the winners and kill the losers is an entrepreneurial skill that we need more of in public companies that are striving to turbo-charge their innovation capacity in the war for growth.

My earlier experiences as a venture capitalist and now supporting over fifteen early stage companies either as a Board Director, Board Advisor and investor has helped me appreciate that one of the most difficult innovation roles is to have early stage CEO’s develop and take to market successfully a new business model. The courage this takes - the incredible resilence, tenacity and ability to attract, develop and retain top talent is one of the toughest jobs anyone can take in business. The odds are clearly against sourcing venture capital - which is one reason why so many great Canadian companies secure financing from the US market. Having smart venture capital with smart networks to help accelerate growth is paramount in an early stage company - and many of the Canadian VC’s lack the operating experience of successfully managing a P&L in either a start-up or medium or large company capacity.

Smart CEO’s that are rapidly trying to innovate surround themselves with smart board advisors and know that the odds are against them from the get go and hence more talent around the company in its early stages is critical to achieve growth success. If you have any perspectives to share on innovation and venture capital in the Canadian market, please email me at cindy@helixcommerce.com. The question we are currently researching is Does humor in the office environment increase risk taking and hence accelerating innovation capacity? If you know of any prior research in this area let us know - stay tuned for a new blog entry on why humor pumps up office energy to innovate.

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Companies that consistently emphasize “delivering value” over creativity are significantly more effective at innovating, according to a survey conducted by Futurethink, a leading innovation research firm. 

The recent findings of the 2007 Futurethink Innovation Tracker reinforce a trend first identified in the 2006 annual study. Innovation may no longer be viewed as strictly a creative endeavour. It has become a recognized and effective business strategy. Innovation is about harnessing new ideas, and then translating them into business opportunities and successfully executing them to lead an industry trend. The theme of execution is key as many organizations invent promising capabilities but fail to execute or stay the course. 

In the research study conducted by FutureThink - Not a surprise but Apple Inc. was dubbed as the top innovator for 2007. Apple led by CEO Steve Jobs heads the Tracker’s Who’s Who of Innovators. Job’s commitment to realize innovations like the iPod, iTunes, and Mac OSX comes from his hands-on leader ship as evidenced by Apple’s strong stock performance over the last nine years as compared to its performance during Jobs’ 12-year absence. Jobs has innovation DNA in his soul. 

Google was in second position in the results of this study. Successful innovators like Google require employees to spend 20 percent of their time on side projects, called “Googlettes”, which are not related to their daily work. Google News, social networking site “orkut”, and Google AdSense are side projects that have become successful Google products. Other top innovating companies included: Toyota,YouTube, Microsoft, Starbucks, Motorola, Samsung, Nike and Sony . 

In 2006, Ford Motor Company launched a multi-channel media campaign touting its abilities as a leading innovator committed to innovation. However, few innovative products rolled off its production line. Conversely, Toyota’s popularity, and its leap into the number four spot on this year’s list, surged on the strength of fuel-efficient vehicles including its hybrid Prius. 

Results from the Tracker also identified the top three hurdles to innovation: lack of leadership, lack of time to work on innovation, and organizational aversion to risk. Innovation is hard work - and often employees lack the proper time to dedicate to innovation. Innovation entails a certain element of risk, yet many organizations have an innate aversion to risk. Developing organizational cultures that support risk taking and encourage value orientation balanced with creativity are more apt to develop innovation solutions. With the war to grow market share, and tough competitive markets in play — innovation capacity will be a core focus for companies for years to come. This is one of the factors that clearly separate the good from truly the great! 

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Like in every industry - innovation is the competitive differentiator. For years ATM (automated teller machines) in the banking industry have had a consistent function to play. Retrieve Cash - Execute Payments, or Make Deposits. Simple and easy to use. This has been the promise and it is true!

Today over 80% of North American customer retail banking transactions are conducted over ATMs or internet services. Nine out of Ten withdrawals are from a bank machine as well. Remember the sceptics saying these would never be adopted - how wrong again we were.

So despite over 30 years of living with current ATM basic functions - what is the next innovation killer application? Two USA banks that are always innovative are Wells Fargo and Citicorp. In San Francisco, Well Fargo customers are piloting new ATM functionality which allow them to make donations in participating charities, while also topping up their cell phone minutes via an ATM as well. Other banks are looking into technology that will allow customers to easily scan their cheques via an ATM - doing away with envelopes and also reducing check clearance manual processing.

Other functions expected to be added in time include cheque book reordering, credit card applications filled out on-line at the ATM, and other special service requests. Soon, we will be able to view stock quotes, purchase gift certificates or interact in new ways we have not even thought of.

The only question I have as a consumer who simply wants to rapidly get cash is how long will the ATM line ups be with all this new service functionality? Perhaps some of these services will be best serviced via on-line web solutions vs the ATM. What ever the final ATM value experience is — what must be top of mind is the the customer experience. Otherwise for a simple cash withdrawal I may be best to just get in the teller line (if they are still there). Once we have a true cashless society and I have electronic debit and smart wallets- I will no longer have to worry about this will I. Pray tell I won’t be 100 when we get there - what an incredible world the next generation will live in. Let’s hope the planet is still safe environmentally.

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