IT Strategy

Essay in McKinsey Quarterly titled “Using knowledge brokering to improve business process” pose a challenging concept about the possibility of using of open-innovation principles to enhance not only the company’s products but also their core internal business processes.

The article defines Knowledge Brokering as “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” and states that smart companies have started to take advantage of it.  Open innovation is changing the face of product development as more and more organizations find clever ways to use Web-based technology to pair internal “seekers” with external “solvers.”  Same can be used for Business Process Improvement.

The essay says the companies can bet more out of open innovation if they use the following 4 steps

1. Analyze the ‘problem space’: If the problem is too high level or complex, few potential solvers will have the experience to address it.  The goal then is to ‘chop’ the problem into multiple manageable outcomes.
2. Evaluate brokering communities and choose experts: Cast an appropriately wide net. Teams should pay particular attention to companies or sectors that have experienced the problem recently or where all industry players must excel at addressing it.
3. Engage brokers to extract ideas: The most effective way to draw out this kind of information is a structured approach that follows a few simple guidelines. First, the whole project team should listen to a knowledge broker because the probability of a breakthrough increases with the number of listeners, each with unique experiences and viewpoints.
4. Incorporate the new ideas into a change plan: The final step is for the team to incorporate the ideas into an implementation plan for a new process, which doesn’t have to be flawless—just significantly better than the existing one.