The successes so far show that the IBM Jam process has helped IBM to innovate. It is not the only way to manage a massive online conversation, and it may not turn out to be the best for every large group. But no matter what kind of large organization or network you want to get innovating, an understanding of the Innovation Jam is essential; the Jam experience demonstrates the tremendous complexity of a large online conversation and shows one way to deal with that complexity successfully.
The IBM Jam system takes every comment seriously and is capable of aggregating many not-so-big ideas to create businesses large enough to matter at a $99 billion-a-year corporation. However, there are trade-offs. Where online conversations and live brainstorming sessions can be exhilarating, a Jam is fundamentally a piling up of ideas that will later be evaluated slowly. People enjoy it, but it rarely generates the rapid answers and thrill that some online experiences can produce. If IBM’s goal had been rapid innovation, rather than the careful assembly of businesses that could make a difference in its portfolio over the long term, it might have benefited from a different approach.
Compare the IBM Jam with smaller online innovation discussions created at other companies. Other systems typically lack the capability to do justice to vast collections of ideas, but they create more excitement and quicker results. And some of the reasons for the contrast illuminate the nature of the problems that huge, innovative processes entail.
In 2007, Salesforce.com Inc., the leading producer of sales lead management systems, introduced Salesforce Ideas, a system for managing suggestions from customers, employees and others. The system is used by Salesforce itself and by Dell (for professional customers) and Starbucks (for everybody). (The Starbucks conversation, open to everyone, is accessible at http://mystarbucksidea.com.)
The Salesforce, Dell and Starbucks systems have one striking feature that distinguishes them dramatically from IBM Jams. Borrowing from such Web sites as Digg.com, where visitors vote on what news items are most important and leading vote getters are immediately displayed at the top of the site, systems based on Salesforce Ideas allow visitors to vote interesting new postings to immediate prominence on its pages. Site visitors are encouraged to comment on the proposals at the top of the page, and discussions sometimes evolve quickly about how proposed ideas can be put into practice. Salesforce, Dell and Starbucks have implemented significant numbers of ideas discussed on the sites. (One example is the creation of Dell’s first server with Linux preinstalled.)
A Salesforce executive said in an interview that its system can be expanded indefinitely. Thus, a large group of linked Web pages like that created for the IBM Jam could be created using Salesforce Ideas. However, it’s important to note what Salesforce’s approach gives up. The posting that gets the most “promote” votes may not be what’s best in any scientific or business sense. The top vote-getting news items on Digg.com are often sensational trivia. If two posts appear at the same time and one is a bit better written, it may get so many more votes that it is immediately promoted to the top of the site while the other is ignored — the next people to sign on are channeled into reading and perhaps replying to the post that got the most votes, and the Web site may never get anyone’s views on questions that may be of greater long-run significance.
This danger suggests that no one organizing a big online conversation can escape trade-offs. For IBM and some others, the broad, time-consuming Jam approach seems best. Paul Horn, now retired from IBM and serving as a scientist in residence at New York University, summarizes:
Jamming is a form of brainstorming. And the first thing you have to learn in brainstorming is: Take in all the ideas. Even if the ideas are crazy, take ’em all in. That means you’re going to get a lot of garbage. But it forces you to think out of the box. You do it on this scale, you come out, and you’re just completely saturated with stuff and you have to come up with some way to winnow those things down.
The process seems to work not only for IBM but also for others: In 2007, IBM launched a service that runs Jams for other organizations. The first was an Automotive Supplier Jam, which brought together auto component makers and their auto manufacturer customers under the auspices of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association.