Innovation is something most organizations are trying to do better, and collaboration offers some alluring methods of doing so.  Whether it’s in the ideation phase or the execution phase, working collaboratively with your internal and external stakeholders can greatly improve your chances of implementing those great ideas.

That’s the topic of my latest whitepaper for BCSocial.  It looks at how collaboration impacts upon innovation during both of the key phases.  It explores the latest trends in crowdsourcing ideas from across the organization, before touching on the various managerial challenges that go into implementing those ideas.

As implementation is arguably the most difficult aspect of innovation, this area receives particular focus, with the paper looking at some of the obstacles that often trip up innovation efforts, including:

• Ensuring you are organized for innovation, and in particular the crucial issue of priorities.  Are you structured to make your existing operations as smooth and lean as possible, or are you actively on the hunt for disruptive innovation?  Honesty is crucial.
• Dealing with the politics of innovation continues this theme, especially if the disruptive innovation is likely to affect a part of the business that has a lot of political clout internally.
• Ensuring resources are fairly distributed feeds on from this, and it’s crucial that any innovation project is given both the human, political and financial resources to succeed.
• The role of middle managers changes during an innovation project and becomes critical in ensuring that all of the above is delivered.  Far from being the unseen and anonymous core of the business, they become the hub through which everything flows.

You can download the whitepaper in full (for free) here.