Supporting the ideation processes by a collaborative online based toolset

218 Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 55, Nos. 3/4, 2011

Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Supporting the ideation processes by a collaborative online based toolset

A. Hesmer*, K.A. Hribernik, J.M. Baalsrud Hauge and K-D. Thoben BIBA – Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik GmbH, Hochschulring 20, 28359 Bremen, Germany E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author

Abstract: Successful innovations depend upon what input is given to the development process. That input is developed in the early stage of innovation in which neither problems nor goals are well-defined (Simon, 1973; Bayazit, 2004). The presented research focuses on how innovators’ requirements towards software tools supporting early-stage innovation can be met by suitable working environments. Allan (2007) describes early-stage innovation as a social process where individuals and groups work together in a collaborative way. This paper examines how such collaborative work can be encouraged by applying game dynamics to early-stage innovation processes. The game dynamics examined are implemented in an integrated software solution designed to support innovators with getting connected to the right people, producing ideas based on exploring knowledge and evaluating them to achieve the goal of developing successful innovations. The presented approach is based on the research carried out by the European Community funded Integrated Project Laboranova.

Keywords: collaborative working environments; collaboration; innovation; ideation; early-stage innovation; innovations fuzzy front end; routines.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Hesmer, A., Hribernik, K.A., Baalsrud Hauge, J.M. and Thoben, K-D. (2011) ‘Supporting the ideation processes by a collaborative online based toolset’, Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 55, Nos. 3/4, pp.218–225.

Biographical notes: Alexander Hesmer studied industrial engineering at the University of Bremen and finished in May 2006. Key aspects of his studies were product development, project and innovation management and marketing. In addition to his studies, he worked as a Development Engineer for Automation of Logistic Processes at the BIBA. During his internships at Siemens Mobile and within the BMW Group, he focused on strategic, technical and product marketing. Starting as a Research Scientist at BIBA, with the focus of innovation strategies, he became Project Manager of the European funded Integrated Project Laboranova in 2007.

Karl A. Hribernik studied computer science at the University of Bremen. He worked as a Software Developer at Productec Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH on e-logistics and e-commerce projects from 1997–2002. He joined BIBA as a Research Scientist in 2002. His research focused on item-level product

Supporting the ideation processes by a collaborative online based toolset 219

information management. He was involved in the EU Collaborative Working Environments ERA-Pilot BrainBridges and acted as a Scientific Manager in the IST CA CoreLabs. He was responsible for the Data Integration subproject in the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre 637 Autonomous Cooperating Logistics Processes and a member of the European Network of Living Labs Leadership Group.

Jannicke M. Baalsrud Hauge graduated as Physicist in the field of applied optics in 1995 at the University of Bergen and as Economist (main field: Logistics) in 2001. She is employed at BIBA (University of Bremen). She has been involved in several national and international research projects, mostly dealing with tools for improving collaboration in enterprise networks or in developing serious games for mediating the required skills for working in CWE. Furthermore, she gives lessons to industrial engineering and economics students at the University of Bremen. In her research, she concentrates on using games for logistics and risk management in production networks.

Klaus-Dieter Thoben studied mechanical engineering at the TU Braunschweig. He worked as a Researcher at the University of Bremen where he received his Doctor of Engineering in the field of CAD applications. In 2001, he received his Habilitation including a Venia Legendi on Production Systems/Productions Systematics. In 1989, he joined BIBA as Head of the Department of Computer Aided Design, Planning and Manufacturing. In 2002, he accepted a Professorship on ‘Application of Information and Communication Technologies in Manufacturing’ at the University of Bremen and became Head of the Department of IKAP at BIBA.

1 Introduction

Innovation is perceived to be Europe’s key to economic success in the current market environment in which strong competition from both the established and emerging Asian economies concern companies and politics. Whereas awareness of the importance of innovation has grown in the academia as well as in the industry, the first steps of the innovation process have not yet been considered in any real depth.

Figure 1 The innovation process (see online version for colours)

Stagegate processPotential in supporting the early stage innovation

Early stage of innovation

Idea Generation Development Prototype Manufacture Marketing&Sales

Source: Rothwell (1992)

220 A. Hesmer et al.

The early stage of innovation where ideas are generated and developed is mostly seen as a ‘black box’ in common stage-gate processes. The mechanisms within that innovation black box need to be exposed in order to create the capabilities to generate ideas which are quantitatively and qualitatively measurable. This can be seen as the starting point for economically viable innovation.

2 State-of-the-art in the early-stage innovation

Schumpeter (1952) defines innovation as the new combination of resources. Innovation is not solely concerned with the generation of new ideas but also with making an economical effort out of them. Innovation encompasses the entire process from the generation of an idea to the penetration of the market with a successful implementation of the idea.

Current literature presents a sociological perspective on innovation, highlighting the change from a linear process to a user centric approach where both technological and the sociological aspects are equally addressed. Additionally, strategic management and innovation are perceived as parallel developments. Innovation can be understood as a learning process within a community of practise.

Rhea (2005) describes the ideation process to be one of discovering ‘what’ to make, ‘for whom’, and understanding ‘why’ it should be made. This includes defining success criteria and developing insights for answering these strategic questions. Ideation understood as part of the overall innovation process is the ‘ability one has to conceive, or recognise through the act of insight, useful ideas’ (Vaghefi and Huellmantel, 1998). The externalisation of ideas from ‘divine inspiration’ (Weisberg, 1993) as well as the understanding of work processes for the generation of ideas are areas of study relevant to the field of ideation.

Looking at product ideation processes and their participants it occurs that design is a discipline strongly related to the early-stage of innovation. Charles Eames describes design as ‘a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose’ (Design Notes, 2006).

Jonas claims that current efforts are heading towards the development of planning practices and methodological approaches which disregard the pretence of planning everything completely (cf. Bauer, 2006). This is consistent with Akin’s theory that states that ‘no quantifiable model is complex enough to represent the real-life complexities of the design process’ (Cross, 1984).

Designers deal with the constant generation of new task goals, the redefinition of task constraints (Cross, 1984) and the steady generation of new knowledge changing the project (Klünder, 2006). However, current IT support of ideation processes does not take this practical experience into account. Schön proposes to search for an epistemology of practise implicit in the worker, intuitive proceedings (Cross, 2001). This leads to a user centric approach in tool development.

Current ideation support and future requirements

Early stage innovation processes are not linear but fuzzy without defined details or goals. Iterations of problem, solution and possibilities are characteristic of the workflows of


ideation processes and are due to the generation of new knowledge throughout the process (Simon, 1973).

Existing tools such as collaborative working environments (CWEs) (Hribernik et al., 2007a, 2007b) mainly focus on supporting the traditional working paradigms of linear workflows by providing IT-based platforms for planning, scheduling and carrying out tasks (NovaNet Konsortium, 2006). These tools represent individual methods related to idea generation or support innovation processes on a management level. The usage of such proprietary tools in economies practise is very seldom (NovaNet Konsortium, 2006).

In order to achieve continuous strategic innovation and thus to sustain competitive advantage, organisations need to increase their capacity for carrying out open-ended and non-linear problem solving involving the broad participation of people in knowledge-rich environments. This must be supported by tools dealing with the early-stage innovations, which require new paradigms for managing the knowledge transfer, the social dynamics and the decision processes involved.

The development of successful tools needs to focus on real requirements in distributed working environments of innovators in ideation processes.

3 Research in the early-stage innovation

Design theory provides approaches to research in the field of early-stage innovation. Investigating the ideation workflows of companies shows that they are based on a level or at least group dynamic level (cf. also Cross, 2001). The use of specific methods is restricted to brainstorming which may be supported by a proprietary IT tool. The ideation process is not understood to be part of daily work in most European companies. To create a successful software solution that will be adopted by and used in companies and networks of innovators, one needs to build upon the everyday requirements and workflows people are already used to. In relation to design theory, the research focuses on everyday routines of innovation workers (ideators) with their workflows and data organisation.

Methodologies used for information collection are observation and interviews with individual innovators and groups during their daily business. Focus is placed on their organisation of digital and physical information within the context of a current workflow and task of the monitoring and capturing activities. Additional data is gathered by interviewing innovative workers lead by a questionnaire.

Current solutions and studies are considered and evaluated in order to identify the IT tools supporting ideation.

The outcome

Working in the early stage of innovation is very much about the following iterative steps within routines:

• representing ideas

• sharing ideas

• gathering feedback


• communication about the representation.

Representations of ideas can, e.g., be sketches, renderings or maps. Work routines show that individual ideators represent their ideas in an ‘easy to access’ way, meaning that computer aided design or rendering software is used in a basic way. More often ideas are sketched or presented in Microsoft PowerPoint. The interviewees stated their rational for using MS PowerPoint is based on the one hand on its generic usage and on the other hand on the ease of exchange with others due to its status as a de facto standard. The representation is distributed to stakeholders by e-mail for getting feedback in general, comments, further ideas, and the development of the original idea.

Within ideation processes two perspectives can be distinguished – the individual and the group work routines. Examples for both are stated in the following paragraphs.

The initial moment – the occurrence of an idea by the individual – is not specified. Within one to eight hours the idea is represented as a sketch rendering or as text. Variations of the idea might be represented but not an entirely different concept. Pictures are copied into common media tools such as MS PowerPoint or MS Word.

The representation is shared by sending it out by e-mail to recipients with an interest in the idea. They are usually well known. Their reply by e-mail occurs within two days. The participants do not expect feedback after two days have passed. Alternatively, feedback is gathered by phone. Feedback is usually given in an unstructured way.

The feedback is extracted from the individual sources (text, comments to the pictures/text, phone calls) by the ideator and then summarised. After editing, the feedback it is used to transform the original idea.

With this developed idea as the objective, the routine starts again. The overall time frame for the described routine is about three to four days in total. At the core of this routine is the representation thereof and its exchange with others. The interviewed person states that he stops thinking about how to develop the idea when he is not interacting with others.

Figure 2 Example of an idea development routine (see online version for colours)

Representing the Idea

Email out

Feedback

Extract Feedback

Gather Feedback

1. Idea2. Transform the Idea

PowerpointWord

EmailActive phone feedback

The groups need to find a common understanding of the discussion topic, so a visualisation on a white board or flipchart is used. Based on the representation the group starts a discussion to achieve a common understanding.


For idea generation, a brainstorming session is initiated which is supported by using adhesive labels. The labels are randomly placed on the representation plane. Ideas are affected by previous thoughts and the participants’ experience.

The ideas are grouped into clusters according to similarities. The participants discuss the ideas in order to find similarities between the ideas. During the discussion the ideas are usually evaluated on a best guess basis. It is possible to edit the representation by cluster-clouds, labelling clusters or connection lines on a whiteboard.

Consequently, the representation is captured by taking a photograph.

Figure 3 Example of an idea generation routine by a group (see online version for colours)

Topic is represented

Topic is discussed

BrainstormingStructure Ideas

Topic

Capture

Evaluate

Whiteboard/Flipchart

Verbal

Post-ItsDiscussion

Photo

Discussion

4 Supporting the early-stage innovation

Common issues reported by the interviewed individuals and groups are their need for externalising ideas achieved by representations. Based upon an initial representation (e.g., sketch, text diagram) feedback from stakeholders is gathered and the idea is developed based the new information. For representation, common generic IT tools are used (e.g., MS PowerPoint).

The research has identified loops in the workflows between externalising ideas, communicating about them and developing them further. Future innovation CWE needs to provide a convenient solution for dealing with representations of ideas and to possess an interface to generate or upload these objects of knowledge.

One of the major challenges in CWE is how to motivate people involved in processes to participate in generating, evaluating and developing ideas. One approach to involving stakeholders in processes identified in this work is by using game dynamics for tasks identified within the research. The notion ‘game’ is an ambiguous term – for some it signals energy, entertainment and creativity, while for others it signals a lack of seriousness and value. This implies that the diffusion and implementation of innovation games should focus on the productive side of the process. Despite being a game the process is still work and should be taken seriously as well as being seen as a productive element. The games under development will focus on specific work routines.

Knowledge developed during the game should be documented and presented to the participants. Competences developed should be followed up with action plans for further development, implementation and integration into ordinary practices. If the game is supposed to create input to decision processes in the organisation, feedback to the participants about how the feedback should be communicated needs to be part of the


game’s results. The evaluation of ideas is based on the ‘intelligence of many’ which will be used by implementing a prediction market into the innovation environment.

As ideation is concerned with the intrinsic knowledge of individuals, new connection mechanisms need to be developed and implemented to bring the right people together who share a specific interest. As much as participating in the idea generation process the motivation of individuals is key to success. This can also be achieved by game mechanisms. An initial first contact can be supported by providing simple games for finding people with similar interests or knowledge backgrounds within the user group of the innovation environment.

This will be integrated in a browser application that fulfils the users’ needs for convenient access; easy usability and non local storage (cf. NovaNet Konsortium, 2006). The innovation environment will contain a database with rated ideas and concepts, be the platform for experts as much in an open innovation environment as in the enclosed system of a company. Within this environment the communication will be attached directly to the related object to track the interchange of information back and understand the development phases of the idea. The integration of communication and object representation enhances the data consistency without changing the users’ behaviours.

5 Conclusions

The support of non-linear work processes is crucial to the success of IT tools in early stage innovation. The theory of design – the discipline dealing with the early stage of innovation – promotes that research in this field of the innovation process need to focus on the real work requirements of ideators. Work in the early-stage innovation is constituted by going back and forward between generating knowledge and applying new knowledge to an idea.

The innovation environment is going to support the habits and routines of innovation workers instead of changing them. It will provide tools and methods to them which augment the efficiency of their way of working. It can be seen in the work routines examples that idea development is based on the representation of the idea, exchange of its representations and gathering feedback and input to further develop the idea. This will be assisted by using game dynamics in the field of knowledge sharing, idea generation and evaluation and connecting people.

An IT based innovation environment with rated ideas on several development levels will support innovation workers with presenting and communicating their ideas to stakeholders, further developing their ideas, finding related ideas and people and will be the backbone to enhance companies ability to generate successful innovations. To assure the participation of ideators within the early-stage innovation and enhance the efficiency of idea generation game dynamics can be used. Postulate to the introduction and usage of a game for idea generation is the productive and efficient usage within a work process.

The overall goal is to provide an innovation environment which can be used easily; where innovators see the advantage of usage and by using it enhance the environment in its quality.


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Supporting the ideation processes by a collaborative online based toolset