In this week’s thought leadership roundup, we take a look at crowdsourcing as a form of bottom-up innovation, why your business is falling behind the curve, and the importance of not being right all the time.
Crowdsourcing as a Method of Bottom-Up Innovation
From Crowdsourcing.org:
“Crowdsourcing is often thought of as a way to get people outside an organization to contribute ideas, labor, or other resources in return for some kind of (tangible or intangible) reward.
Often, however, organizations are better off starting their crowdsourcing efforts internally. Big organizations, with strict hierarchies, are especially prone to not listening closely enough to their employees, who are often in a position to offer insights into the problems an organization is facing and come up with potential solutions to these problems.”
Why Read It: As we often point out, a company’s employee base is probably the most under-utilized innovation resource that exists (and it does so right in front of leadership’s collective nose). True, it’s an unwieldy and unpredictable resource, but that’s what makes it so great at producing new perspectives and ideas.
![Tweet: My no. 1 pick from this week's @Mindjet #ThoughtLeadership Roundup: Crowdsourcing as Bottom-Up Innovation [VIDEO] http://ctt.ec/Nsyea](http://clicktotweet.com/img/tweet-graphic-1.png)
Thought Leadership and Innovation: Why Your Business is Falling Behind
From Talk Business Magazine:
“It’s easy to say that you won’t rest on your laurels as a business but it’s much harder to actually do it in practice. There are two positive things that any business must look to do to keep up the pace, namely thought leadership and innovation.
Aiming to be thought leaders in your field is tough but brings big rewards. This is not about just saying that you don’t want to slip behind, but being positive and proactive and taking a clear lead.
Becoming a thought leader takes time. Firstly you need to be an active player in your industry. Start by reading and sharing the views of existing thought leaders and look at your business. What do you do really well? Bottle that, put it into words and spread it far and wide and encourage others to follow your lead.
It doesn’t matter if you have a niche or not – others in your field will want to hear your views and thoughts. So, if it’s industrial spray booths, waste management techniques, pioneering packaging solutions or digital marketing techniques – there’s a chance to stake a claim at the top of the tree.”
Why Read It: The truth is that, unless you’ve literally figured out something that no one else has, you’re still working out the kinks in your strategic approach to becoming a thought leader or driving company-wide innovation. And that’s completely okay — in fact, it’s better to embrace constant iteration, rather than imagine some achievable end-goal that will never need adjustment. This article digs into how you can keep that evolution going, and why it’s such a good idea.
Sometimes Being Wrong Can Be More Valuable Than Being Right
From Innovation Excellence:
“There has probably never been an idea that failed so spectacularly as Marx’s. Despite his own objections, his followers went on to subjugate a large proportion of the planet to oppression and poverty. Unfortunately, few can learn from Marx’s mistake because it’s so often been misportrayed.
The core of his idea was not equality, but that capitalism as it was stated at the time, suffered from an internal contradiction. Namely that if supply and demand are in balance, then profits cannot exist. Therefore, the only way to make money is to engage in rent seeking behavior by rigging the system.
That’s actually a very insightful point (Peter Thiel argued essentially the same thing recently). Managers do not and should not seek out competition, they are supposed to create advantage. That’s what made Marx’s ideas so dangerous, he pointed out a problem that nobody had a solution for.
Yet still, he had it wrong and in the 1950’s Joseph Schumpeter showed why. Entrepreneurs engaged in creative disruption keep the system humming along, so as long as we have innovation, there is no contradiction. We do have rent seeking, such as car dealers lobbying against Tesla, which is a problem, but not an insurmountable one.
In the process, we learned something important. It’s not business per se that creates value, but innovation.”
Why Read It: No matter how many times a leader talks about embracing failure or needing disruption, typically, they’re still wildly afraid of practicing what they preach. This blog from Innovation Excellence provides a handful of real-life examples that may inspire even the most timid of risk-takers to finally do what needs to be done in order to drive actual, positive change within their business.
The post Thursday Thought Leadership Roundup: Bottom-Up Crowdsourcing, Why You’re Falling Behind, and the Value of Being Wrong appeared first on via @Mindjet's Conspire #ideasquad.