Collaborative Innovation Networks

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A Collaborative Innovation Network, or CoIN, is a social construct used to describe innovative teams. It has been defined by the originator of the term, Peter Gloor (a Research Scientist at MIT Sloan's Center for Collective Intelligence) as "a cyberteam of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by the Web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work."

COINs feature internal transparency and direct communication. Members of a COIN collaborate and share knowledge directly with each other, rather than through hierarchies. They come together with a shared vision because they are intrinsically motivated to do so and seek to collaborate in some way to advance an idea.

The five essential elements of collaborative innovation networks (what Gloor calls their "genetic code") are that they evolve from learning networks, feature sound ethical principles, are based on trust and self-organization, make knowledge accessible to everyone, and operate in internal honesty and transparency. COINs rely on modern technology such as the Internet, e-mail, and other communications vehicles for information sharing. Creativity, collaboration, and communication are their hallmarks.

COINs existed well before modern communication technology enabled their creation and development. Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper, in their book, describe Benjamin Franklin's "Junto" organization in Philadelphia as a COIN paradigm. Franklin brought together people with diverse backgrounds, from varying occupations, but of like mind to share knowledge and promulgate innovation.

Similar is the concept of the "Self-Organizing Innovation Network" which have been described by one author, Robert Rycroft of the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University as follows: "The most valuable and complex technologies are increasingly innovated by networks that self-organize. Networks are those linked organizations (e.g., firms, universities, government agencies) that create, acquire, and integrate diverse knowledge and skills required to innovate complex technologies (e.g., aircraft, telecommunications equipment). In other words, innovation networks are organized around constant learning.Self-organization refers to the capacity these networks have for combining and recombining these learned capabilities without centralized, detailed managerial guidance. The proliferation of self-organizing innovation networks may be linked to many factors, but a key one seems to be increasing globalization. Indeed, globalization and self-organizing networks may be coevolving. Changes in the organization of the innovation process appear to have facilitated the broadening geographical linkages of products, processes, and markets. At the same time, globalization seems to induce cooperation among innovative organizations."

An example of the COIN idea at work may be SpineConnect, a community of spine surgeons interacting in a variety of ways, ultimately with the goal of producing innovation. It cannot be stated with certainty that the group had its genesis as a COIN, but it does illustrate some of the concepts. Starting out as a knowledge sharing community, enabling surgeons from around the world to share difficult and unusual cases, it quickly emerged as a community to produce innovation collaboratively. Since its launch in October 2005, the surgeons have used SpineConnect to produce original research and take their ideas and create patents. As the community matures, more ambitious goals are being pursued, such as creating a better classification system of disease for spine.

[edit] References

Peter Gloor (2005) Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage Through Collaborative Innovation Networks. ISBN 0195304128
Peter Gloor and Scott Cooper (2007) Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing. ISBN 0814473865