Over the past decade, open innovation has begun transforming the way global companies develop new products, as executives increasingly recognize the benefits of exposing internal R&D to outside ideas. Now, some organizations are going even further by applying open-source thinking to improve a range of core business processes. Aided by rapidly changing technology, these leaders are looking outside the gates to develop faster and better solutions to a variety of strategic, operational, and organizational problems.
Such companies have resorted to a practice called knowledge brokering, a systematic approach to seeking external ideas from people in a variety of industries, disciplines, and contexts and then of combining the resulting lessons in new ways. Most of these people are happy to share their experiences free of charge. Like best-practice benchmarking, knowledge brokering aims to find—not invent—world-class answers to problems. But it goes beyond benchmarking and other traditional approaches of where and how companies search for information and how they use it. A closer look at the way forward-looking organizations use knowledge brokering to improve their business processes offers practical lessons for companies of all stripes and suggests how senior managers must adapt to thrive in a digital era characterized by increased collaboration.
Although fascinating may be a strong word I am still going to use it. This is fascinating! Remember when we had walls? Great big walls 'hiding' our organizations?
This whole concept of becoming 'open' and utilizing 'knowledge brokering' would have seemed a crazy idea 10 years ago. Today it is not a crazy idea ... if you don't open up, become more transparent and seek external opinions you may be left behind.
More and more it will be less and less about what is hidden from customers and the public. Instead, the winners will be those who act (and implement well) the knowledge that is gathered from all sources - both internal and external.
Fascinating!
