Final Report Reference:
good practice & innovation
Exploiting the innovation division of labour – through social media Date 2010 07
Author(s):
Brian McCaul
Main Contact:
Brian McCaul
Department:
Commercialisation Services
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Final Report Reference:
Project Title:
good practice & innovation
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good practice & innovation
Contents CONTENTS ......................................................................................................................................3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................................4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................4 BACKGROUND ................................................................................................................................5 AIMS & OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................................................7 METHODOLOGY............................................................................................................................ 11 TECHNICAL ..........................................................................................................................................11 STRATEGIC ...........................................................................................................................................11 PROMOTIONAL.....................................................................................................................................11 ORGANISATION ....................................................................................................................................11 TECHNICAL SUPPORT .............................................................................................................................11 OUTPUTS ...................................................................................................................................... 12 SUSTAINABILITY............................................................................................................................ 15 OUTCOMES...................................................................................................................................16 LESSONS LEARNED ........................................................................................................................ 17 CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................................................. 18 IMPLICATIONS .............................................................................................................................. 19 RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................................... 20 APPENDIXES .................................................................................................................................21 PERFORMANCE V ACHIEVEMENT ..............................................................................................................21 DISSEMINATION SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................23
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Acknowledgements The ‘Exploiting the innovation division of labour – through social media’ trial project was funded by JISC under the ‘Facilitating Collaboration’1 stream of the BCE programme2 as part of the ‘Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE’ project3. JISC infoNet4 led the delivery of outputs with support from other JISC Advance Services5. The trial project team would like to thank the following for their hard work and contribution to this trial project as well as the wider BCE agenda: Graeme Hitchins, Mark Thompson, CS team, Clothworkers’ Company, Yorkshire Concept, Paul Ellwood with special thanks to Paul Grimshaw.
Executive Summary Project Impact According to the old IBM adage, "we often over-‐estimate the impact of a technology over the next two years, but under-‐estimate its impact over the next ten-‐years”. The same may apply to the use of various social media tools and their impact on business organisation. As can be seen from the summary of goals and objectives completed, this project has been a short-‐ term success in many ways. We hope, however, that the real impact of the project is still to come, and there are many hints to suggest this possibility. As is often also the case, experimentation often results in unforeseen outcomes. A few of those of this project have been: • • •
A more robust and demonstrable case-‐study for the impact of the KT2.0 approach in terms of return on investment, than might have been predicted. Greater influence on the practice of major KT professional bodies (such as AURIL) More thorough and well received promulgation of the case for a more open approach to KT via a range of networks.
On the other hand the many of the short-‐term, and apparently more controllable, objectives of the project have been hard-‐won and delayed. The rapid down-‐turn on the economy and its impact both on the capital markets and then the public purse, had a very direct, and disruptive, effect on the collaborative partnership. Though the economic affect of public sector cutbacks, and redundancies amongst collaborators, may have slowed some aspects of project programme in the short-‐term, it is evident that those same budget reductions are likely to reinforce the impact of the project in the longer-‐term. The very cuts in higher education resource for KT will dedicate the need to find more efficient ways of ‘achieving more with less’. We believe this explains the positive reception of the project and this case is re-‐ enforced by the initial evidence of increased ROI from implementing some of the project concepts at the lead partner (Leeds). Complexity of the Project – Pros and Cons The construction of the project, and more so its practice, has been complex. The project did not simply seek to demonstrate the use of online tools to supplement the development of a community of practice: rather it sought to develop a series of communities of practice; to find ways of spanning structural holes between these communities; it sought to grow a market for the engagement of 1
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/bce/stream2.aspx http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/bce.aspx 3 http://collaborativetools4bce.jiscinvolve.org/ 4 http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk 5 http://www.jiscadvance.ac.uk 2
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external entrepreneur-‐consultants in commercial KT activity, and to share pre-‐qualification information within partner institutions; and, finally, it sought to significantly re-‐engineer the model of commercial KT practice. This was not a trivial undertaking. This complexity has two implications. Firstly, it is not always easy to disaggregate the positive drivers from those that have little or no impact (that is: to what extent is it possible to indentify the extent to which successes were due to ‘process re-‐engineering’, versus, the extent to which they are simply a result of the use of online tools). Secondly, the complexity of the project means that it may be a bit early to determine which of those components will and will not work. More positively, this complexity is a reflection of the attempt to integrate ‘open’ and ‘online’ approaches into a genuinely complex and business-‐critical commercial KT. This has positive implications for the level of value placed on the project and for future adoption of the KT2.0 model. Cultural Resistance Perhaps the most surprising experiment from the project has been the cultural and behavioural resistance to the adoption of new online techniques within the University community. There has not been so much resistance to the re-‐engineering of the business processes or the externalisation of KT activity. This has largely been accepted at a strategic level. Rather, it has been intransigence at an organisational and individual level to the use of new online tools. This resistance has featured at many levels – from computing services staff to traditional marketing staff6. Consequently the team have reflected on this dynamic and this is addressed in the recommendations regarding the long-‐haul nature of such initiatives, particularly in relation to the behavioural resistance that stems from the incumbency of legacy IT system.
Background The project addresses a complex, commercially and socially valuable process: the effective transfer of technology and innovation from the University research base into real use by business – particularly for economic regeneration and social impact. This is an important agenda that has taxed government policy since the 1993 Government White Paper “Realising our Potential”, through to the Lambert, Sainsbury, and Sarga reports. It is particularly considered important at this specific juncture due to the combination for three factors: 1. The greater need for, and expectation of, economic and social return-‐on-‐investment from the public funding of research 2. The significant reduction in the funding of public sector research establishments, with budget cuts announced in the order of 25% 3. The availability of online tools and approaches that hold the promise of radically reducing the cost of knowledge transfer and helping to ‘square’ the public policy conundrum between the two objectives above -‐ allowing for a significant improvement in the efficiency and scale of impact for research that are now available. Unfortunately, the public sector research community and the knowledge transfer community in particular have some way to go in order to extract the maximum value from the promise that these tools and approach’s hold. Much of the KT sector still regards online tools as faddish and peripheral. This project aims to demonstrate that they are neither, but are in fact critical. The genesis of the project The project arose from three related historical drivers: 6
This organisational and cultural resistance in part stems from a lack of buy-‐in to the BCE agenda to opening digital assets to external parties. See prior report http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/themes/bce/pubfundinfra.pdf
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1
The Need for a New Open Model of Knowledge Transfer
Achieving the above goals is clearly not simply dependent on the widespread take-‐up of new online tools: otherwise this would have been easily adopted. The key to gaining efficiency within the research to innovation chain is to improve the dominant model of organisation in knowledge transfer offices. Prior to the start of the project, Open Innovation7 approaches to Research and Development in the corporate sector was starting to demonstrate the ability to achieving greater efficiency in R&D – and potential lessons for the public research sector. Consequently, some of the project partners undertook research into the application of the Open Innovation model to University research programmes8, with outcomes suggested that real changes in the progress of KT were possible. The concept of Open Innovation has frequently attracted interest within the University sector -‐ largely with Universities seen as potential components in the innovation division of labour: that is, with universities as providers of knowledge and IP to large corporates. However, as argued by Hossein et al8, the Open Innovation paradigm also offers lessons for a more effective approach to knowledge transfer for Universities. This envisages University commercialisation offices exploiting the innovation of labour -‐ rather than merely acting as participants in that division of labour. Specific to this project is the principle of using an ‘open innovation division of labour’ – that is to recognize that most domain, expertise, most market knowledge and connectivity, and more experienced functional expertise lie outside the organisation which is seeking to commercialise its research outputs. 2
The Need to Exploit Social Capital for Improved Knowledge Transfer
Innovation, today, is primarily a social activity, rather than an individual activity. Whilst this does not diminish the need for great individual innovators, collaboration is critical. A corollary of the growing complexity of society, science and technology is that: “Today’s complex problems solving requires multiple perspectives”. As Etienne Wenger put it: “the days of Leonardo da Vinci are over”. Hence for innovation to thrive requires the conscious development of propitious environments and social structures for encouraging innovation and its exploitation in the business, science and social domains. This requires the development of social connectivity (or social capital) required to ensure collaboration in creating solutions and the collaboration required to ensure broad adoption for such innovations. In conjunction with the influence of Open Innovation theory on the practice of knowledge transfer, a growing body of evidence exists to suggest that innovation and performance – both at an individual and organisational level – increases with increased individual connectivity, especially where this connectivity spans discrete innovation communities9. Certainly with regard to the decision to innovate or not within small firms there is strong evidence that diverse forms of social capital influence this decision and, more importantly, that marginal increases in social capital, especially in social capital taking the forms of participation assets and relational assets, contribute more than any other explanatory variable to increase the likelihood of 7
Chesbrough H.W.(2006), ‘Open innovation: Researching a New Paradigm’, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
8
Hossein Sharifi, Weisheng Liu, Brian McCaul and Dennis Kehoe, ‘Enhancing the Flow of Knowledge to Innovation’, in Creating Wealth from Knowledge, Edited J Bessan & Tim Venables (2008), Edward Elgar.
9
Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital (Oxford University Press, 2005). "Structural Holes and Good Ideas," American Journal of Sociology (2004). "Competition, contingency, and the external structure of markets," in Advances in Strategic Management (Elsevier, 2002). "Bandwidth and Echo: Trust, Information, and Gossip in Social Networks," in Networks and Markets (Russell Sage, 2001). With R. Hogarth and C. Michaud, "The Social Capital of French and American Managers," Organization Science (2000).
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innovation of firms9. Hence the partners sought to facilitate the expansion of social capital and connectivity of their key knowledge transfer staff. Social media and online collaborative tools provided the basis for a more scalable and open model for increasing social capital required to identify new routes to market. Notably this pre-‐dated the publication of a series of reports10 seeking to increase the efficiency of the KT sector by organisational merger of physical offices. 3 Emerging Technology, Web2 and Social Media The advantage, and take-‐up, of the approaches outlined in sections 2 and 3 above have the danger of being undermined by the cost associated with increasing and coordinating this increased connectivity and community. Institutional and corporate hierarchy arose precisely because of the need to manage and reduce transactions costs. For the first time Social media tools offer the opportunity to increase the scale and regularity of cross-‐disciplinary connections within, and between, research organisations, whilst reducing the cost of connectivity – often to zero. Crucially, the use of social media tools opens the prospect of knowledge transfer staff being better able to tap into, and connect, with the research and innovation base (as well as up-‐ scaling its capacity to assist in transferring its outputs for Business and Community benefit). Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester universities, were therefore keen to explore the use social capital, and open innovation principles to assist in development of more effective community of practice, focused on knowledge transfer and BCE. The use of social media and web2.0 techniques is ideally placed to facilitate this. Crucially the partners were/are at the centre of a series of existing online KT communities and working to develop new tools – without duplication or recreating new online initiatives so that the project could exploit the critical mass that has been achieved by communities such as: These legacy communities include: • The Knowledge Vine • The IP Net • The Global Innovation Network (GINNN) • The Association for University Research & Industry Links (AURIL) • The Institute of Knowledge Transfer (IKT) • UNICO
Aims & Objectives Objective 1 -‐Demonstrating the Exploitation of an Innovation Division of Labour Principle Proved The primary objective of proving the effectiveness of the adoption of a much more ‘open innovation’ approach to University enterprise and knowledge transfer activity has been successful and demonstrated clear, and measurable, advantages. This has been most effectively witnessed at the University of Leeds, where there is a wealth of evidence and 10 More latterly the Hauser, Wellings and Dysons reports have reflected on how greater efficiency might be gained from the process.
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performance data to support this11.Sheffield University was also keen to engage strongly in this aspect of the project, but due to cut backs in the University sector Graeme Hitchin’s post was made redundant and the University was unable to resource participation in the project. None the less, the thorough engagement of the University of Leeds at a corporate level has provided adequate demonstration of an Open Innovation approach. Specifically the identification and engagement of external professionals (not employed by the University) to inject business expertise from across a spectrum of domains, in which universities cannot hope to employ BDMs/specialists, has been demonstrably successful. This more ‘open’ approach has also been thoroughly disseminated via the KT professional bodies, and well received12. Obviously the efficiency of such an approach is attractive in the context of reduced resource. Generalising the Principle via Collaborative Relationships The loss of the Sheffield partnership – with its intended focus on a similar external focus on BDM support, deprived the project of the ability to formalise the sharing of ‘pre-‐qualification’ information regarding external entrepreneur-‐consultants, in the way anticipated. This aspect of formalising the sharing of PPQ information on external experts has therefore not yet been formalised via the use of share social media platforms between partner universities. None the less, this is something that Leeds is keen to pursue and is therefore in discussion with the University of York to see if this could be progress. Naturally, there is an advantage in progressing this aspect of the project within a sub-‐regional context. Moreover, many of the same principles are being implemented through the involvement of other regional networks of consultants, such as the mentors on the Yorkshire Enterprise Fellows networks, the Yorkshire Concept network, and the Connect Yorkshire programme. A number of entrepreneur-‐ consultants have been engaged in the Leeds activity via these routes. Leeds is working with the Design Council and others to extend the principles of this into national networks. And GInnN is yet to be used to more fully promulgate this approach13. Managing the External Resource In many senses the effectiveness of the above approach has generated its own issues: foremost being the management of large cohort of external entrepreneurs and consultants. This ability to ramp-‐up new business capacity has placed a strain on the slender project management resource at Leeds. This in turn has focused the team on the need to embed social media to manage this collaborative resource, and to handle the new opportunities. And it has led to some radical re-‐thinking of the project management process. The Leeds team is now: • •
•
Trialling, in parallel, Basecamp and ManyMoons as platforms to manage the virtual teams Developing and deploying template consultancy contracts that are designed to focus consultants upon clear definition of the milestones and the virtual team, early. These documents are being accessed via LIN and are being outsourced for initial completion by the external consultants; Revising its stage-‐gate management process, with an emphasis on online monitoring
11
+See Appendix
12
Feed back from the London Knowledge Network presentation of the project included “seriously impressive” and “thought leader”, the AURIL conference session received some of the best review of all break outs, and one delegate commented “is was like a light going on”. We are awaiting formal feedback from the UnicoPraxis workshop, but informal feedback at the time suggests an equally positive reaction.
13
The partners propose to distil the Lessons Learnt from the project for circulation as an interactive guide to the use of social media in KT, for dissemination around the GInnN network.
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and a refocusing of effort on the correct start-‐up of the project, with a view to minimising the resource required of the small team to manage increased numbers of projects. The KT2.0 Bible The above three principles and many others are now being codified in the Knowledge Transfer 2.0 Bible which is being developed in conjunction with the Design Council and others. This contains many of the lessons learnt in conduct of the project, and will be a very concrete outcome of the trial. Mitigating the ‘Down-‐sides’ of Openness Though largely exaggerated, concerns over the disclosure of IP are a common topic in the KT profession. Hence the project has worked with the Staff Development Unit at Leeds to investigate and promote the promulgation of IP management best practice via the online communities)14. Objective 2 -‐Creating Internal Trans-‐disciplinary, Academic Innovation Communities of Practice Stimulating Internal Innovation Communities of Practice The project sought to increase not only the external social capital of knowledge and technology transfer personnel, but also to increase the internal social capital of those academic staff interested in innovation and knowledge transfer. By and large the academic research community has well-‐established external and discipline-‐based connections. Indeed these are international in nature. Often, however these connections are not as strong within the institution with other disciplines that might be relevant to addressing technical and research problems. Nor is the connectivity strong with those internal staff dedicated to assisting with the protection and exploitation of the outcomes of such research. This objective has been partially tackled via the creation of two new internal University online communities of practice: • •
The Leeds Innovation Network [http://leedsuniversity.sossoon.net/index.aspx]; and The Ubriddge at The University of Manchester. (Ubriddge is a version of LIN with local Univeristy deployment of the same platform but with direct integration to Knowledge Vine. Ubriddge differs from LIN in that it is more internally focussed on multi-‐ disciplinary challenges than the external community)[http://ubridgetest.sossoon.net/]
The Leeds community is growing and demonstrating impact. Specifically at Leeds LIN has provided an effective communisation platform for the University’s commercialisation services to: • • •
Provide intelligence on new proof of concept funding Manage the new innovation of labour and Build a sense of a community of practice
At Leeds the project has had success at stimulating internal innovation communities of practice such as: • •
The BioEnterprise group (focused on the Faculty of Biological Studies) The Clothworkers’ Group (focused on the Dept of Colour Science, Textiles and Design)
14
Publishing versus patenting http://leedsuniversity.sossoon.net/blog.aspx?bid=7732 & Inventorship versus authorship http://leedsuniversity.sossoon.net/blog.aspx?bid=6588
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•
The Innovators’ group (focused on the Faculty of Engineering)
Many other sub groups are emerging and taking shape on LIN, many with their own moderator. [See section on Outputs]. But the project is continuing to stimulate and grow these sub communities and has engaged Toni Harrison (previously of UKBI to work with local representative to help animate these groups towards critical mass). The Clothworkers’ Group is a good example of the full uses of a social media platform (LIN) for comprehensive organization of the methodology outline, including the allocation of work to consultants, the maintenance of report feedback and communication of new opportunities. Engaging Broader Academic Engagement and encouraging the use of other social media The Project at Leeds is planning to boost the growth of LIN and encourage the use of other social media tools by academic researchers via a collaborative initiative with Ben Goldacre. Ben Goldacre is a thought leader in terms of calling for greater openness and understanding in Science (http://www.badscience.net). Ben has agreed to create a series of talking head videos accompanied by explanatory text which will be a how to guide for academics to make best use of social media to dis-‐intermediate the mainstream press, promoting their work, whilst avoiding misrepresentation. This will be promoted via LIN and GINNN.
Objective 3 -‐ Encourage Openness in Online Community Development Building on Existing Community From the outset the intention was not to create a new isolated institutional or regional network – but encourage maximum interoperability of BCE, KT and Innovation networks, and to demonstrate how this can be done. During the project the growth of many of the legacy KT communities has been notable: 1. GINNN 2. Re-‐launch of Knowledge Vine 3. Launch of IP NET – now adopted by Technology Strategy Board It is evident that there is sense of supporting existing networks, but also that there is much value still to be unlocked from stimulating interaction between them. This, we believe, adds more value than generating new fragmented developments. Following on from the presentation at UnicoPraxis the team are also preparing a publication design to encourage and assist KT practitioners in understanding the role and purpose of different online tools and communities in the KT space. This is a ‘bull’s-‐eye’ based framework (developed by Prof Andrew McAfee in Enterprise 2.0) for understanding how objectives and the strength of ties might dedicate when certain forms of social media are more appropriate in the context of the University setting. This will address many of the communities relevant to KT described herein, as well as many generic online tools and communities useful for managing projects and building social capital. We believe that there is more work required in this area to overcome the slow adoption of these approaches amongst the KT profession. Open -‐ Federated Access Hence the project has not yet reached the stage of examining the use of ‘open ID’ and ‘open profile’ initiatives and especially those being promoted by JISC. Nor have we focused on assisting with the legal issues related to the sharing of data and generally to encourage the up-‐ skilling for knowledge transfer professionals in the use of collaborative online tools – 10 of 24
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establishing their relevance to their practice. Nonetheless, the partners have integrated GINNN, Knowledge Vine, LIN and the web at Leeds (http://commercialisation.leeds.ac.uk). We are also now on the same platform as Manchester however the Sheffield non-‐deployment has delayed the integration of online communities. Also progress has been made with IP NET and Knowledge Vine (e.g. password sharing). The next step is to extend this between the LIN/GInnN platforms and Knowledge Vine and IP Net. A summary of performance and achievement against the original project objectives is set out in Appendix.
Methodology Technical The methodology as described in the original bid did not really change. The nature of this project meant that all development of standards and processes were outsourcing to third parties, but there was minimal technical work. The use of common systems based on the Mindcloud platform allow for a degree of interoperability between Gann and LIN, and Ubridge. Further basic integration was achieved via the Leeds commercialising site Standards: due to the focus on a common platform and technical supplier, issues of standards has not been a major issue for the project. It was anticipated that this would arise post deployment of the three initial communities (proving the business model) and then moving on to the issue of open and federate access. This is premature of the project at this stage.
Strategic The main aim of this initiative was to coordinate and embed the processes within the working practices of this University and others. The issues raised elsewhere in terms of loss of key players at third party Universities has led to a real challenge in trying to negotiate new partners and promote this throughout the network. On a more practical basis the project was largely run based on the original stakeholder document with weekly/monthly meetings between the project manager and steering group. Twitter and Skype were the main communication tools used within the project to (a) disseminate to a wider group (b) manage tasks associated with the project. Promotional The project team have sought to maximise the impact of the project via the promulgation of the premise and the results via existing KT networks. In addition to those communities listed in the section on objectives below, the partners have spoken at London Knowledge Network, JISC events. We have also used on line networks to promote the KT2.0 agenda e.g. Slideshare and GINNN. This has proven to be highly effective. Implementation Organisation The initial outlined project approach was dictated both by the nature of the project e.g. cross-‐ university, faculty and groups and also the amount of resource available to run it. The main activity route was between the steering group and the project manager. This was run formally by weekly meetings via SKYPE. Other tools were trailed such as Google docs for document update and creation and Google wave to look at managing actual project tasks. However, we found the most cost effective method of working was on-‐line meetings whereby work was undertaken during the discussions. There was a tension between maintaining a light touch management approach and achieving tangible goals. Technical Support The revamp of LIN and creation of the commercialisation pages 11 of 24
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[http://commercialisation.leeds.ac.uk] IPNet [http://www.theintellectualproperty.net/] & KVINE [http://www.theknowledgevine.net]were managed by the project team in conjunction with Mindcloud and the internal IT community. The difficulties arise whereby such projects do not have leverage in terms of organisational power and influence. Everything has to be done by persuasion which means that tasks take longer to complete and more creative methods need to be employed. An example is the need to ensure that the channels of communication are always on and that people can come back once they become more open or the ‘penny drops’. One method we have adopted to encourage this is by trying to encourage people to sign up to LIN as a start point. We then we know they are least get a monthly mailer. This shows the community is active and ensures they felt they can come to join later. This is important because the external pressures for taking part in such ventures are increasing. In our sector for example we are noticing research council now asking for a dissemination tool that includes building a sustainable network as a research outcome. We have also seen that the overhead of running separate community has been challenged by increasing time and resource pressures. Communication at different levels both within organisations and groups is also important, just speaking with one party leaves the project vulnerable and more open channels mean the message is more likely to get across. Building and supporting champions is a vital part of the approach. People need to feel they can get support if technical issues arise. Particularly in the early stages when explicit on-‐lien helps tools are not available. The project faced resistance from a number of areas. This included internal IT which is challenged by any non-‐centralised attempt at opening up the University towards outside partners which was a key function of this project. Success here requires the team to be adaptable, patient and resilient and to learn to when to go around resistance and when to face it head on. A number of successes in this respect have been achieved by using the steering group to present the big picture making people feel they have high level support for engaging. The narrative of KT2.0 is very powerful but people are often only partially exposed to this and being asked to use technology they may not immediately see the use for is not engaging enough. This cannot be overcome by social media means alone. People sometimes need to speak face to face. Academics in particular respond well to peers and the targeting of senior people has been used as a way to try and build the community. The higher the status of people the community can attract then this will help to engage others. Group functions are also replicated across the University, so targeting one group and then using this success to sell to similar groups across campus has also been attempted.
Outputs
Phase 1
Launch of Leeds and Sheffield Communities
Scope:
Create a demonstrator online community & market-‐place for specialist business development, and business management experts. Set up project management documents including on-‐line blog. (Work-‐ packages 1-‐4) The Leeds Innovation Network is now integral to the Leeds commercialisation team’s activities. This has been the result of building the online community and solving the associated technical and legal issues but also slowly building trust with the internal team that LIN is useable and worthwhile. The gradual resolution of technical issues and more recently a rebrand and stitching in more successfully to the main
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Leeds website has assisted this. The internal CoP of the project at Leeds is embryonic and at the ‘awkward’ 250 stage. None the less it has proved invaluable to the communication of the CS teams’ objectives. It has also been instrumental in communicating external resource within the University of Leeds. This approach combined with the coordination of a cohort of external entrepreneur consultants has contributed to staggering uplift in performance in respect of the attraction of external grant funding for POC. For example: A 60% uplift in licensing revenue and moving from 0 to 100% success rate in Yorkshire Concept proof of concept funding. The team is currently using the success of the market place activity to drive the growth of external consultants on LIN and is also increasing the animation of the internal CoP. Automation /scalability and scalability are the key issue for the Leeds team now. As success has generated more activity, the need to consistency use social media to reduce all transactions cost is becoming more evident. This has provide a driver to continue the project because the model is now part of our business process and this dictates that every bit of the process has to be right There are now 250 active members across 45 groups. Importantly the member mix comes from across the original stakeholder target areas. These include members from the external community in the form of consultants, NEDS, Venture Capitalists, KT Professionals and entrepreneurs. Some key groups are being developed
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•
Bio-‐enterprise – This is Leeds community that previously had its own network. Has realised the overhead of this is hard and that been part of a wider community may help them link more readily to the outside world.
•
C-‐TIE – Is an innovation research community of senior academics from Leeds Business community. They are trialling the site and have used the community to set up and organise events attracting members from outside the Leeds Research community.
•
Enterprise Fellows in faculties. Building on the highly successful Bioscience Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship scheme launched in 2004, Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowships (funded by Yorkshire Forward) deliver practical support to individuals to commercialise ideas and research findings from the region's Universities. The group supports the activities of the fellows.
•
Clothworkers – The Clothworkers Innovation Fund (CIF) can provide up to £25K in support for commercialisation of new
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technologies. This funding along with business and technical support is available to help academic staff in the Centre for Technical Textiles, the School of Design, and the Department of Colour Science to develop innovative ideas. The scheme is financed by the Clothworkers Company and supported by the University of Leeds. The on-‐line space provides a discussion forum for University of Leeds academics who are eligible to apply for Clothworkers' Innovation Fund funding, and their external partners •
The Faculty of Engineering has set up a Research & Innovation Communications Working Group to “test the capabilities of the Leeds Innovation Network (LIN) to help us to achieve our internal communications goals”. This is enabling the group to get to grips with Web 2.0 functionality and how it might supplement their communication strategy.
•
Yorkshire Concept have set up regional forum for all their members (Company Directors) ”to encourage -‐ exchange of good practice, possibility of collaborative proposals between HEIs, using the community to better raise awareness amongst partners, swap information about mentors and consultants” . They have mixed trialling monthly bloggers from within the community with mailers to expand and inform their target group.
For the reasons described above the project was unable to progress the Sheffield community, although we are still in discussion with other universities that have expressed an interest. In addition other HEI communities have been created which have extended the reach of the project and help prove the concept. Phase 2
Promulgation of Open Approach to Knowledge Transfer
Scope:
Demonstrate the effectiveness of more ‘Open Innovation’ models of KT (work packages 5-‐7) The Efficacy of this approach have been demonstrated at Leeds [see appendix] The Leeds Innovation Network is now integral to the commercialisation team. An example of this is the monthly posting of activity and points of interest via the LIN mailing facility. Promulgation The development of this project prompted a number of thought pieces that have helped to build and lead the KT2.0 debate across the sector. E.g. 6 Propositions –These pieces have prompted debate and feedback which have fed into a revamp of the KT process at Leeds, with LIN at its
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core. We have also worked with partners to obtain feedback about KT2.0 with the wider GINNN community. For example, see the blog and poll here: http://www.GInnN.com/blog.aspx?bid=5040& A number of screen casts have been created and these were posted to encourage others build on and comment. Such activity has encouraged the development of new skills between members of the implementation team. See http://leedsuniversity.sossoon.net/blog.aspx?bid=7518 Phase 3
Integration of Manchester ‘Bridge’ Community
Scope:
The Manchester Community has undergone more significant customisation than that at Leeds and has sought to improve the ability for academics to pose research halogens with a view to stimulating cross disciplinary activity None the less Manchester has utilised the Mind Cloud code providing opportunities for direct knowledge sharing between Leeds and Manchester. The Leeds Innovation Network has been stitched into and is now integral to the main commercialisation pages of the University of Leeds, GINNN and Knowledge Vine (http://commercialisation.leeds.ac.uk/). The project enabled a complete rebrand of the LIN platform. This was integral in both addressing the branding and technical issues raised by Leeds ISS and selling the project to Manchester
Sustainability Alignment with the Core Processes This project has generated an inherent level of sustainability due to its high-‐level of embeddedness within the lead partner, the University of Leeds, the relationship that Leeds has to many of the core KT professional bodies and networks. Because this is core to the commercialisation strategy of Leeds it has ensured a huge amount of match resource, ongoing effort and promulgation. Hence the project will continue because of the external funding environment and the proven success of the approach Importantly the building of the LIN platform has inspired the Commercialisation Service team to revamp its whole KT process. KT2.0 has now become the key theme in our future strategy. Two examples of this are A) a new project with the Design council was undertaken to redevelop the whole of the Commercialisation teams activities. This was done with the explicit need to embed the new process design into a KT2.0 model. This design led process will make KT2.0 (hence LIN) an integral part of the teams everyday activities. B) All Existing IT systems will now need to take account of KT2.0. Hence the planned live feed of the IP database (when it's updated to Inteum) -‐ so that it can feed the non-‐confidential opportunity descriptions directly into LIN. The sustainability is also illustrated by the behaviour of Leeds staff that are now taking videos and uploading posts as an everyday part of their jobs. 15 of 24
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Influence with Key KT Professional Networks In addition to the lasting impact at Leeds, we are also now starting to build a wider communication network that includes key practitioners in the field of social media. This can be demonstrated by the Ben Goldacre disintermediation. The aim is to encourage the academic community to see tools such as LIN as an extension of their everyday activities, not a time consuming addition. We can then use these academic profiles as a hook for external parties to engage with LIN. Most notable is the impact on the membership strategy of the largest KT professional organisation – AURIL. AURIL has moved to an open membership model: • • •
All staff within member HEI can now join for free if they are employed by a institutional member Moving to a post-‐subscription business model, looking to generate more linkages by freeing membership, and looking to generate alternative revenue models Has adopted the GInnN platform as its main communication platform through which to achieve this.
This is in contrast to efforts of other bodies to move towards closed networks and has major implications for the community of community network. Take-‐up of Tools by Major Funders The Technology Strategy Board is now adopting the IP Net Platform and will be promoting this as a tool via its KTN networks. Leeds is continuing to collaborate with Mark Thompson on this development with a view to providing even better integration of this network tool with University IP management systems. Potential of Recruitment of Other Universities Manchester and Leeds will continue to develop the Mind Cloud platform links and talks with potential third parties continue. It will have an increased impact on AURIL and other networks and other parties outside the original three – more fundamental impact but this will take place over a longer time period.
Outcomes 1. The ability to build open communities that can be owned by the host institution/organisation (e.g. HEIs or professional bodes) but which are interoperable with other online communities, was demonstrated. Establishing collaboration with partners has been a long and difficult process. This has been complicated by key contacts leaving during the course of the project. New targets take time to develop and this has undoubtedly proved to be the biggest challenge of the project. Some success has been achieved, notably the adoption of the Mind Cloud platform at Manchester has meant a key bridge towards building shared communities is now in place. The revamp of the commercialization website in line with this has meant we have now stitched in both the knowledge vine and GINN communities. This is now clear to any new business contacts that arrive by the Leeds website. 2. The project timulated the use of the best of existing online initiatives. Where possible the project will built on existing networks, communities and platforms. The shift from conventional email to KT2.0 technology has been one of the key successes within the commercialization team. There is now an understanding to use all of the network tools out there to inform the process at as earlier stage as possible. The choice of existing 16 of 24
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platforms was a pragmatic issue related to best resource use in terms of time and money. Building on a successful platform with a community of nearly 4000 people also gave us a head start with interoperability. The fact key partners have also chosen a similar platform will aid future integration and mean that migration of communities from a legacy system is less likely. Communities are notoriously difficult to migrate. 3. The project used the demonstrator to encourage wider collaboration involving communities already deeply embedded in HEI, professional bodies and collaborating partners. The project has brought the University much closer together with outside bodies and enabled the exploitation of intelligence much earlier in the process. The success with Yorkshire Concept fund and the ability of the team to interrogate a wider group of people to aggregate information on project development much earlier.
Lessons Learned Some of the key lessons from the implementation phase relate to the need to be adaptable in the face of resistance to the huge internal changes that such projects entail. For example, the legal and internal IT issues that were raised by the opening up the systems. Sometimes buy in, patience and resilience are best employed and sometimes it might be best to just go around and find another route. It is easy to underestimate how difficult the shift from email to more open systems can be perceived. Some lessons learned for growing the communities include; •
Attract big players first (peer network)
•
Take advantage of any existing networks (see the extensive list of exiting KT networks that the project leveraged)
•
Deliver relevant information that people wouldn’t usually receive
•
Use the power of 3, deals we have done, funding & opportunities,
•
Generate an initial “buzz” – followed by an internal buzz to help create a tipping point
•
Don’t try and do it all yourself (ask others to share their expertise)
•
Co-‐operate and collaborate (rather than compete)
•
Try and encourage a moderator to take responsibility for each group after initial support
•
Use commitment devices e.g. polls
•
Accept that you may need 2 or 3 attempts at marketing before an academic joins a group.
•
The end-‐user interface must be easy to use and navigate with some user-‐generated features.
However the major lesson learnt is the need to fully appreciate the cultural and behavioural resistance to the adoption of new online techniques within the University community. This has not so much been resistance to the re-‐engineering of the business processes or the externalisation of KT activity. This has largely been accepted at a strategic level. Rather, it has been intransigence at an organisational and individual level to the use of new online tools. This resistance has featured at 17 of 24
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many levels – from computing services staff to traditional marketing staff. Commonly this is caused by a reticence of professional IT staff to relax what they perceives a approaches that are designed to protect the integrity of University branding and university data rights – all of which are challenged by self generated content and integration with external networks over which they have no control. With marketing professionals again there is a reluctance to move away from traditional CRM and email/channel marketing and control of the content of messages. Much of this is again tested by the user generated experience and Consequently the team have reflected on this dynamic and this is addressed in the recommendations regarding the long-‐haul nature of such initiatives, particularly in relation to the behavioural resistance that stems from the incumbency of legacy IT system. The team has considered remedies to this and believe that these need to include: • • • •
Clarity over objectives – to determine clarify on appropriate tools Integration of social media tools with the KTO business model to drive core take-‐up Preparedness to switch off certain old methodologies’ where influence can be applied to the use of new and more effective systems. The need to demonstrate the return on investment to users – both in terms of economic return, greater efficiency and greater scalability. In particular the ability to obtain greater up-‐wards and down-‐wards scalability and the ability to remove significant employment costs are likely to reinforces the dynamic to adopt of the Leeds approach the long term: even if in the short term the redundancies’ have been disruptive to aspects of the project.
Conclusions Using Social Media to improve old problems -‐ not just to do new things For social media tools to gain real traction in the KT community – or any specific professional practice for that matter-‐ it will take more than the demonstration of improving marketing, of establish new ways of connecting communities of practice, or of gaining intelligence. Rather for social media – or Enterprise 2.0 -‐ to be seen as a genuinely useful, we need to demonstrate not only new ways doing new things, but also new ways of doing old things. This will apply to much of JISC’s programme, in that it will be essential to prove that it can be used to make core processes and tasks more efficient and effective, and that it will be fit for a context of reducing budgets. In this context the perception that social media programmes simply represent a series of new task and requirements will severely limit up-‐take. This highlights the need for those promoting the use of new media approached to fully understand the context of their deployment and therefore the potential for more radical transformation of business processes – beyond the more obvious prospect of creating online communities of the purpose of marketing or exchange of knowledge. If there’s one key lesson from this trial is it that though “these tools we now have allow for new behaviours -‐ … they don’t cause them”15. These new behaviours require serious application from those that understand their professional practice. Clarity of Objectives bring Clarity of Approach From this flows the observation that the spectrum of possibilities for social media strategies is extremely broad. From clarity of objectives comes clarity of approaches. It struck the team that rarely are people clear about their objectives and possibilities -‐ and even less clear about how various tools might map onto those objectives. The incumbency of legacy systems such as email not only slows the adoption of new social technologies, but fixation upon a known social media tool to the exclusion of much more appropriate tools can stunt possibilities and the adoption of these tools. 15
Clay Shirky, Interview with Decca Aitkenhead, Guardian 05.07.10
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Therefore, guidance in the form of ‘social media tools framework’ that would assist the selection of a varied and appropriate range of tools would be helpful for the KT sector. Otherwise confusion of the range of possibilities will remain a limiting factor. Achieving the benefits for Social Media requires a ‘Long Haul’ The experience of the project team bears out much of the behavioural economics16 and ‘endowment effect’ that points to the ‘irrational’ preference of excising tools and legacy systems over more effective but unfamiliar tools. This suggests that no serious programme to promote the adoption of new social media tools will work in the short-‐term, without serious effort. Any such programme will need to anticipate behavioural factors that will resist new approaches. This is compounded by a tendency within higher education to ‘lock-‐down’ digital assets. The JISC BCE agenda is therefore potentially stuck between a natural resistance of individual users, and the corporate suspicion of social media. This resistance will only be overcome through a combination of: • • •
Continued promotion of the openness agenda via Information Systems Services, Leeds’ computing services department Clear and compelling case studies as so the BCE application of social media – that touch of core business processes and the ability to reduce cost and effort A preparedness of key managers and opinion leaders within HEIs to force ‘digital switchover’ by mandating the use of new appropriate tools.
So there is plenty more impact to come. The project has achieved much of what was originally planned. Some of these are technical issues and relate to provision of new systems and some are around promotion and the building of communities. The unintended and indirect consequences have as ever been as important. For example, the culture change and embedding of new working practices within the commercialisation team. This embedding of LIN has also meant the University has taken a lead in the adoption of KT2.0. This is driven by real world experience of implementation. This experience has enabled us to have a much wider influence in the sector than we could have initially imagined. The Auril strategy being a key point. Importantly at Leeds, all new thinking must now take account of what this project has attempted to do. This is true both in terms of people and systems. An unassailable feature of the benefits of this project is that it points to how organisations must face up to the challenge of achieving better, accelerated outcomes with less effort.
Implications Some of the key implications of this project are: • • •
Adoption of open and online community tool is a ‘long haul’ process Adoption needs to be fully integral to critical business processes Change makers need to be prepared to exercise control to enforce the switch over.
The first of these implications leaves the team with some remaining task, but then with was not a standalone project. Major strides have been made at Leeds to build the LIN and other community tools into the core of the commercialisation process. This is demonstrated in the development with the Design Council of a KT2.0 ‘Bible’ This bible represents a streamlining and crystallisation of the commercialisation process into a series of pathways (to be available on-‐line via LIN) that will enable (a) staff members to more lightly manage the process (b) External interested parties to understand how the process 16
Thaler,R. (1980) Towards a Positive Theory of Consumer Choice, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1, no.1,pp 39-‐60
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works and what they can expect form engagement. As detailed in sustainability section above the longer-‐ haul of the project means that some tasks remain to be completed – but likely to continue because of the positive impact of the project at both an institution and a national level. Indeed a serious of project related tasks that we not originally envisaged are planned and will continue. One of the most concrete outputs from the Project is the development of a ‘KT2.0 Bible’. This is the codification of the Knowledge Transfer 2.0 approach into a hard copy and web-‐based manual setting out the thorough integration of the Leeds approach to using open innovation and online tools for increasing capacity. The University of Leeds in conjunction with the Design Council is developing this. Furthermore the project team is planning further promulgation activity. Two significant actions are: • • •
Framework for determining which online tools to use for KT Guidance for using online tools to promulgate science Follow-‐up new bid and proposal to integrate community of communities via a meet up of the moderators of KT communities across the TSB and University communities.
The lead partner is still in discussions to replace Sheffield with a third party to initiate on the more collaborative aspect and continue with integration.
Recommendations The Impact achieved and the lessons learnt lead naturally to the following recommendations: •
•
•
That JISC consider the investigating the added complexity that deployment of web2.0 tools and approaches have within a corporate – specifically HEI -‐ context. That is the understanding of the ‘enterprise’ bit of the Enterprise 2.0 paradigm and providing guidance for potential users, which opens up the use of these tools beyond marketing and Community of Practice development. It is notable that many of the most effective examples of the transformational power of online collaboration are in the voluntary/amateur space. The mixture of corporate goals with extrinsic and intrinsic motivations has a different and more complex dimension to it. Moreover corporate entities have varying value chains and the ability to connect Web2.0 to those propositions is critical. Without this understanding and guidance it is less likely that the use of social media will leap from the ‘amateur space’ or from discrete communities of practice within -‐ organisation as opposed to being use by institutions corporately. Examples of areas that could be explored beyond the COP domain are: • The use of social media to create predication engines for identifying market pull • The use of social media to automate and improve the publication non confidential IP into market places such as IP Net but also commercial market places such as Innvocentive and Ninesignma • The use of social media to connect That JISC investigate and work with professional bodies to prepare them for the long-‐haul nature of the transition – whilst promulgating the benefits. In particular the ability to increase scalability of the core team functions within the HEI commercialisation space is and to meet the efficiency needs KTOs looking meet cost cutting processes, is timely. Moreover JISC is well placed to contribute the debate initiated by the Wellings report and public policy imperatives around increased resource and service sharing. It the use of collaborative tools, social media and online communities all widen the opportunity and routes for greater efficiently beyond the physical concentration of KTO and offices. That JISC support the development of the ‘community of innovation communities’ via
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assisting with the clarification of the complementary role of different tools and approaches. To this effect it would be worthwhile contemplating creating a framework guide that allows KTOs to understand the relevance of different tools and how these might be connected to different objectives in KTOs.
One of the subjects that the team is most interested in following up on -‐ and which we feel would be of strategic importance for the knowledge transfer community-‐ is deployment of a demonstrator 'prediction engine' for the selection of early stage technologies for further support. Many other disciplines are experimenting in this area for aggregating widespread input for the identification of emerging trends and testing hypotheses. This approach would naturally lend itself to the testing of commercial propositions and to improving the level of market pull that University KT projects. Appendixes Performance v achievement Goals
Objectives
Create a demonstrator online community & market-‐place for specialist business development, and business management experts
• It will be a tool to help knowledge transfer staff within partner Universities to identify and contact external experts with specific technical/business development skill sets to support University Commercialisation projects. • ADDRESSED • It will allow partner Universities to manage a portfolio of external consultants and to reduce the transaction costs and administrative burden of organising such a portfolio of experts. • ADDRESSED • • It will facilitate the exchange of information between partner Universities regarding the performance of and skill sets of external consultants, so as to reduce the risks involved of engaging consultants that they have not previously engaged.
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• EXPLAINED but only partially ADDRESSED • It will utilise and links to existing online communities such as the Knowledge Vine and Global Innovation Network to leverage the growth of the above market place. • ADDRESSED • It will increase the external social capital of the partner University knowledge transfer offices to facilitate greater • ADDRESSED – but limited by the partner attrition -‐ Create and link • It will provide social media tools to allow knowledge transfer demonstrator internal and commercialisation staff to develop ‘Communities of innovation communities Practice’ of staff -‐ academic and not academic -‐ interested in within partner innovation, commercial applications and knowledge transfer. Universities Linking to existing tools to assist collaborative working e.g. on-‐ line development/editing of project/grant proposals. • ADDRESSED – especially at Leeds but also at Manchester. • This will facilitate a more effective identification of intellectual property and expertise required for successful knowledge transfer. • ADDRESSED – and proven • It will facilitate the promotion of other interventions (other than online activities) such as focused ‘real-‐life’ events and seminars, by allowing the gathering of data on academic interests, research problems and emerging research and commercial themes. • It will facilitate the creation of internal social capital within the research community and greater inter-‐disciplinary collaboration. • ADDRESSED – and demonstrated Demonstrate the effectiveness of more ‘Open Innovation’ models of KT
• The project will provide case studies of the impact of the approach taken and will provide a theoretical context of the impact in terms of current innovation theory. This will be disseminated via the professional networks listed. • ADDRESSED – For example -‐ • http://www.slideshare.net/jisc_bce/knowledge-‐transfer-‐20 • http://www.slideshare.net/aidanant/praxis-‐unico-‐presentation-‐ on-‐kt20b
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• http://brianmccaul.jiscinvolve.org/2009/08/21/%E2%80%98kno wledge-‐transfer-‐20%E2%80%99-‐6-‐ways-‐that-‐kt-‐has-‐to-‐change/ n.b. together these have had over 1000 views Improve the research of • Demonstrate that increased connectivity and the opening on CPD and best practice gateways does not lead to reduce IP protection and exploitation materials DONE – Patent agent video ACTION • Encourage the use of online guidance material • COMPLETE by SEPT 2010 Investigate ways to • It will investigate and encourage the integration of aspects of improve and ease the Knowledge Vine, IP Net and Global Innovation Networks interoperability (with the University based communities) to assist in the between common achievement of the above objectives. platforms being used by • It will encourage the sharing of data feeds between the relevant the KT community communities examine data protection issues and provide guidance. • It will provide examples of how best to gather and easily share individual profile data, which will help to match experience with IP and business problems. PARTIALLY addressed
Dissemination Summary The key achievement here is that LIN is now part of the standard communication tool for the University commercial team. With daily/weekly stories/events and news disseminated. Beyond this... On-‐line and Print promotion • • •
Monthly mailers to 250+ community on Lin and 3500+ community on GINNN. Article in the Leeds reporter (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/30293/reporter) Social Network Analysis conference attendance – Manchester (March, 09)
Brian McCaul Presentations • • • •
Blog on KT2.0 -‐ 6 Propositions Blog on JISC project -‐ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMUZLuBMfbo Presented to one day conference at London College of Communication alongside Etienne Wenger http://collaborativetools4bce.jiscinvolve.org/wp/ On-‐line presentation by Brian McCaul on KT2.0 -‐ http://www.slideshare.net/jisc_bce/knowledge-‐transfer-‐20 -‐ on-‐line Comment-‐ “Great presentation. I believe social media can create a step change in Knowledge Transfer”
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• • • • • • • • •
Team presented KT2.0 and Lin to the board -‐ CommericialiSE Team presented LIN to Yorkshire Connect group of company Directors – Now using Team presented LIN to C-‐TIE research group – Now using Team presented LIN to Faculty of Engineering – Now using Team presented LIN to Yorkshire Enterprise Fellows – Now using Team presented LIN and discussions with IT reps. to Faculty of Biological Sciences to take up LIN – Still pursuing Team presented LIN to PVAC -‐ Still pursuing Team presented Lin to Faculty of Medicine – Still pursuing Meetings with University Technology group -‐ Still pursuing
Work with Networks to increase collaboration and promote “community of communities” • The Knowledge Vine • The IP Net • The Global Innovation Network (GINNN) • The Association for University Research & Industry Links (AURIL) • The Institute of Knowledge Transfer (IKT) • UNICO 24 of 24
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