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InnoTube : A video-based connection tool supporting collaborative innovation

Albert A. Angehrn, A. Marco Luccini, Katrina Maxwell

Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies (CALT)

INSEAD – The Business School for the World

Boulevard de Constance, F-77300 Fontainebleau, France

albert.angehrn@insead.edu

marco.luccini@insead.edu

katrina.maxwell@insead.edu

Abstract

Innovation is a key driver of organizational renewal and success. However, providing the right environment for innovative ideas to emerge and develop is not easy. This is further complicated by the fact that the professional environment is increasingly virtual as globally dispersed organizational and inter-organizational teams collaborate on innovative projects, making effective information and communication technologies indispensable. While many organizations have knowledge management (KM) systems, most of these have not been developed with the aim of supporting the innovation process, and many do not even succeed in their primary aim, i.e. supporting knowledge exchange, as they do not take into consideration the emotional, psychological and social needs of individuals. In order to address these issues, we have developed a video-based connection tool, InnoTube, which makes full use of social network ties and Web2.0 technologies to support collaborative innovation. InnoTube provides a showcase for innovation-related ideas and their inceptors, as well as proactively encourages the development of social connections and the brainstorming of cross functional globally dispersed teams. Results of a successful initial pilot study in the automobile industry are also presented.

Keywords: connection dynamics, connection games, folksonomies, innovation, intelligent social agents, knowledge management, learning networks, new product development, network visualization, open innovation, profiling, SLATES, tags, user-generated content, virtual communities, Web2.0.

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Introduction & Background Research Innovation is a key driver of organizational renewal and success (Damanpour and Evan, 1984; Damanpour, Szabat, and Evan, 1989; Dyer and Singh, 1998; Loof and Heshmati, 2006). Not only is the emergence of new products or services a pre-requisite for survival in a highly competitive global market and a source of future direct revenues and profits, but the introduction of new technologies and processes in the ‘traditional’ work pipeline can result in dramatic innovations and cost reduction. However, providing the right environment for innovative ideas to emerge and develop is not easy. This is further complicated by the fact that the professional environment is increasingly virtual as globally dispersed organizational and inter-organizational teams collaborate on innovative projects, making effective information and communication technologies indispensable. While diverse and dispersed teams make communication more complex, these teams are also beneficial for innovation. In fact, innovation often occurs through "knowledge fusion", that is, the social process of new knowledge creation through the combination, adaptation, and additional development of separate knowledge assets from diverse contexts (Fliaster, 2000, 2004; Fliaster and Spiess, 2008; Sawhney and Prandelli, 2000).

While many organizations have knowledge management (KM) systems, most of these have not been developed with the aim of supporting an organization’s innovation process, and many do not even succeed in their primary aim, i.e. supporting knowledge exchange, as they do not take into consideration the emotional, psychological and social needs of individuals (Angehrn and Maxwell, 2008). A further weak point of current organizational KM systems is the lack of incentives for individuals to spend their time with the system and contribute (McAfee, 2006). People will not share their ideas if they do not see any advantage for themselves. From the top management perspective current KM systems also do not provide a clear view of the organizational, or even cross-organisation, communities involved in innovation. This can lead to a lack of awareness of such processes and an underestimation of their potential beneficial impact on the organization. However, such awareness is a critical issue for the organization, since without it potential innovators may not feel motivated to share their ideas as they may believe there is no relevant audience. Therefore, IT support should address both the visualisation of ideas and of the communities that are discussing them. The main challenge in the design of an effective system to support an online collaborative innovation community is to (i) provide sustainable value to users, and at the same time (ii) stimulate users to contribute their knowledge, insights and experiences on a continuous basis, and (iii) give adequate recognition to the owners, communicators and developers of innovative ideas.

Recently Open Innovation (Chesbrough, 2003) has appeared as a new paradigm, fostering business models which exploit collaboration and co-creation activities. The Open Innovation approach overcomes the ‘traditional’ boundaries of the single organization by involving in the co-creation process not only suppliers, but also

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customers, and even competitors (Bughin et al, 2008; Manyika et al, 2007; O’Reilly, 2005; Pirolo and Presutti, 2007). This approach also stresses that connections among the innovation players cannot be sustained without recognition of idea ownership and mutual trust. Interestingly, sharing content has been found to increase trust in other people (Tung et al., 2001). In addition, some control tools are also needed so that the evolution of the organization’s innovation processes can be monitored (Bughin et al, 2008). One important factor that has fostered Open Innovation has been the advent of Web2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005) technologies and tools which have brought new life and a new “philosophy” to the Internet (Sigala, 2007). Web2.0 introduced the concept of participative publishing by the use of personal and social-oriented software. The use of wikis (e.g. Wikipedia), blogs (Kosonen, 2007), social bookmarking (e.g. del.icio.us, Technorati, digg.it), tagging and folksonomies, content sharing websites (e.g. YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare), information streaming patterns, such as RSS feeds and their evolution in Atoms, the dawn and increasing popularity of social networks (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Viadeo) have helped people to (1) discover and better connect with (personalised) content; for instance, by tagging, saving and sharing interesting bookmarks online via del.icio.us, videos via YouTube, pictures via Flickr and presentations via SlideShare; and by also automatically receiving only the desired content via Netvibes or other widgets, and (2) get in touch and better connect with other people by commenting shared bookmarks and videos, replying to posts in a blog, cooperating together in a wiki, searching for old or new contacts, browsing community groups, and sending/receiving invitations to connect. It thus appears that innovation is progressing to an open model as the latter is better able to face current challenges (e.g. repository and passivity syndromes) by better fulfilling community members’ social needs, and by stimulating the access, re-use and transformation of diverse knowledge assets by harnessing collective creativity thanks to new authoring tools which go beyond text-based communication.

Sustainability and organisation-wide adoption in daily activities are other pre-requisites of effective IT tools (Chatti et al, 2007; van der Spek and Carter, 2003). A simple but engaging IT tool devised for fostering the innovation process and which can become a pleasant, stimulating daily appointment rather than just a required activity is our ultimate goal. Gaming has been shown to be an effective way of engaging players and maintaining a high level of attention in several organisational contexts and processes, including innovation (Gee, 2003; Wideman et al., 2007). Moreover, as demonstrated by von Ahn (2005), it is possible to design effective “games with a purpose” so that most of the unproductive time “wasted” by playing (e.g. 9 billion hours in 2003 playing Solitaire) can be turned into entertaining and productive activities. Thus a game designed to engage employees in the innovation process can become a strategic asset. In addition, if the game can extend its audience outside the organisation, connecting employees to outsiders and providing a source of weak ties and “idea brokers” (Fliaster and Spiess, 2008; Kleinbaum and Tushman, 2008) this can bring further benefit to the organization. Finally, having fun is one of the most successful ways to increase self-motivation (Malone and Lepper, 1987; Sherry and Lucas, 2003; Nielsen Interactive Entertainment, 2005; Yee, 2006).

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This is particularly relevant in the domain of innovation where creativity should be stimulated.

Our hypothesis is that Web2.0 concepts and tools can have a positive impact on innovation in general, and in particular on new product development. In order to test this hypothesis we have developed a video-based connection tool, InnoTube, which is based on the latest web trends and which makes extensive use of video, profiling, game dynamics, agents and network visualizations in order to capture the attention and involvement of community members by generating three different types of value: connection value, actionable learning value, as well as entertainment and instant gratification value. An important key concept underlying the design of InnoTube is that it also generates data allowing researchers to assess platform usage and evaluate system benefits along the three user value dimensions, as well as allowing individual users, and the organization, to monitor the innovation process.

InnoTube consists of four coupled environments: a video exchange channel, a network visualization and navigation tool, a profiles space and a connection games space.

On the Video Exchange Channel members can very easily view, search, comment, discuss, rate and submit videos about innovation in general, their ideas and themselves.

A Network Visualization and Navigation Tool helps members visualize and browse through the links between people, between people and videos, and between videos.

The Profiles and Connection Games Spaces provide passive and proactive support for members interested in connecting to other members, and accessing relevant videos.

In addition, InnoTube contains embedded connection agents which gather information about a member’s profile and system use, select the most appropriate ideas and members to connect with, and stimulate members to watch and submit videos. The goal of InnoTube is to provide a showcase for innovation-related ideas and their inceptors, as well as proactively encourage the development of social connections and the brainstorming of cross functional globally dispersed teams.

Specifically devised for supporting innovation, it has been recently deployed in an actual industrial (car manufacturing) environment where it was used in a new product development activity by a varied community of participants coming from diverse backgrounds, departments and holding different roles in the corporation. Despite minor flaws due its prototypal development stage and some technical problems due to the company’s firewall, the first results are extremely encouraging.

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The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. In the next section, we describe InnoTube from a Web2.0 perspective. We then discuss the implementation of InnoTube in a pilot study in the automobile industry, and conclude with ongoing and future research directions.

InnoTube from a Web2.0 perspective Collaboration, knowledge sharing and exchange, reciprocal trust, recognised ownership, reinforcing and enlarging innovation stakeholders’ networks, clear network visualisation, simple and reliable technology, and gaming. All these factors need to be taken into account in order to develop effective IT tools aimed at supporting and boosting innovation processes. The InnoTube Channel & Game Tool (InnoTube) we have developed addresses all of these critical dimensions whilst providing a showcase for innovation-related ideas and their inceptors, as well as a brainstorming arena which includes commenting, discussions, rating, network visualisation and navigation, and a game devised for increasing connections in the innovation community. Figure 1 shows the InnoTube Channel.

Figure 1: the InnoTube Channel.

InnoTube purpose InnoTube aims at fostering connection creation (1) among innovation community members and (2) between members and content, as well as (3) stimulating community members to participate, so that they will become proactive contributors to

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the innovation process and not just occasional passive lurkers. It accomplishes this by generating three different types of user value: connection value, actionable learning value, as well as entertainment and instant gratification value.

InnoTube, a connection dynamics tool that has been developed in the framework of the EC-funded LABORANOVA project, provides the proper environment for proposing and sharing ideas in a very innovative and user-friendly way by exploiting the Web2.0 paradigm of user-generated content and social networking. In particular, the three InnoTube Channel video categories offer users the possibility to upload, stream, rate, comment and discuss:

• Innovation Awareness Videos - these videos feature presentations related to innovation in general, e.g. a Google employee explaining how they innovate within their company, or a professors’ speech about what makes an organization really innovative.

• Ideas Videos - these videos feature one or more users presenting briefly an Idea – for a process improvement, for a new product, etc. – with the objective of documenting it, making it known, and attracting the attention/involvement of other users. These video can be seen as an extension and complement to “traditional” Idea Profiles.

• Innovators Videos - these videos feature individuals presenting themselves in terms of how they have contributed, contribute or could possibly contribute to innovation processes. These video can be seen as an extension and complement to “traditional” User Profiles.

Moreover, the InnoTube Network Visualisation & Navigation Tool (NVNT) permits effective navigation and exploration of the community network in a visual map. The elements of this network are community members, knowledge assets (i.e. videos), tags (describing the videos) and the related connections (i.e. among people, among videos, between people and videos, and between videos and tags). Noticeably, some Web2.0 tools also make use of network maps for visualising the connections among content assets (e.g. alternative views of the popular Digg social bookmarking website at http://labs.digg.com/) and even search engines are adopting map-driven search result representations (e.g. Kartoo search engines: http://www.kartoo.com/ and http://www.kvisu.com/). Even though extensive studies on Social Networks (SN) have addressed how to visualise the ties among community members and between individuals and knowledge assets for some years now (Freeman, 2000), research in this area is still ongoing (Bender-de-Moll and McFarland, 2006) and experimentations continue as the larger the communities the bigger the related scalability issues in terms of effective visualization.

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In the Profiles Space each member can edit their personal details, interests and competences and browse the profiles of all other members. Connection Agents use this profile information as well as members’ online behaviour in order to support team building activities. Last, but not the least, the InnoTube Game, thanks to a fun and enticing word matching game, provides two players with an interesting way of collaborative video annotation as well as an incentive to connect to each other. Figure 2 shows the InnoTube NVNT.

Figure 2: the InnoTube Network Visualisation & Navigation Tool (NVNT).

Table 1 shows the link between each value type and the corresponding InnoTube components.

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Table 1: Relationship between user value, InnoTube component and visit context

Value Type InnoTube Element Context

Connection NVNT, Profiles Space, Connection Agents

Discover and engage with relevant people.

Get inspiration from others experiences, contribute to developing ideas, and discover projects in which to collaborate.

Discover relationships between people (e.g. separation degrees) and content.

Actionable Learning

Video Channel, discussions and chat spaces

Get feedback.

Get and contribute to new ideas.

Exchange with others.

Collaborate in projects.

Entertainment & Instant Gratification

Connection Game, Video Channel

Have fun.

Discover new videos or people.

Drop in for quick visit (see new videos or play a quick game).

InnoTube’s features in terms of McAfee’s SLATES par adigm McAfee (McAfee, 2006) introduced the concept of Web2.0 tools in the enterprise context and analysed the benefits knowledge workers could gain by using such technologies instead of traditional communication “channels” and “platforms” (e.g. email, instant messaging, intranet, corporate websites, information portals). In order to describe the characteristics of Web2.0 and its corporate counterpart Enterprise2.0, McAfee introduced the SLATES (i.e. Search, Links, Authorship, Tags, Extensions and Signals) paradigm. In this section we describe InnoTube’s features in terms of SLATES.

SEARCH: Effective searching is a key issue for knowledge workers. A number of surveys have found that a predominant dissatisfaction in retrieving the proper information within “orderly” maintained intranets is accompanied by a high rate of success in keyword-based searches over the “uncoordinated” Internet (Fallows, 2005; Morris, 2005). InnoTube provides several ways for performing searches.

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In the InnoTube Channel, searches for videos can be performed by keyword over titles and tags.

Another interesting search dimension is the Network Visualisation and Navigation Tool (NVNT), which can be used not only for browsing and navigating network map’s branches and nodes, but also for performing selective and combined visualisation filtering through the “Search Panel” which allows the visualization of specific information such as “who watched videos about BMW”.

Moreover, less refined filters allow the visualization of all single relations, that is (a) all the connections among all people in the community (“knows” relation), (b) all the ties between people and videos (“has submitted” and “has seen” relations), (c) all connections among videos (“is a new version of” and “is inspired by” relations), and (d) all ties between videos and tags (“is related to”).

Finally, InnoTube’s “Time Machine” feature allows users to visualize the network evolution over time, manually (by selecting the time travel pace in terms of hours, days or months) or automatically (from the starting point to the current time).

LINKS: According to McAfee, the effectiveness of Google (www.google.com) is due to the “dense link structure that changes over time and reflects the opinion of many people”. Likewise, the effectiveness of InnoTube is based in considerable part on the community network structure and on its visual representation in the NVNT. Table 2 shows all links/relationships which can be visualized.

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Table 2: Relationships between connected objects

Relationship Objects connected

Comment

knows person to person

A person knows another person (5 different intensity levels)

has_seen person to video

A person has seen a video

is_related_to tag to video Tags the video submitter has given indicating the subjects the

video covers

has_submitted person to video

A person has submitted a video

is_a_new_version_of video to video

A person has provided a new version of a previously

submitted video

is_inspired_by video to video

A person has indicated that the video she uploaded was inspired

by another video

Noticeably the three SLATES categories Search, Authorship and Tags can either be visualized (Authorship and Tags) or benefit (Search) from the NVNT. It is apparent from Table 2 that it is easy to discover what interests people have (from the videos they watch), what competences and know-how they have (from the videos they have submitted), and who is in their social relations (from connections to other people). People nodes are also linked with their profiles. Videos and their relations to one another can be easily seen. Moreover, in the InnoTube Channel, it is possible to link URLs and/or additional files and links to a video.

AUTHORSHIP: McAfee reports the example of the great success of wikis and in particular the self regulative, highly qualitative and convergent collaborative authorship in Wikipedia. It thus appears that the participative value of Web2.0 tools could contribute to curing the passivity and the repository syndromes of current KM systems. Like YouTube (www.youtube.com), InnoTube overcomes the text-dominant syndrome by providing community members with a Video Channel as a privileged repository for their user-generated content. Operating as a closed, innovation-focussed and subscription-based environment, InnoTube does not offer its members the ability to create Channels; however, it does allow them to freely update three pre-defined video categories, Innovation, Ideas and Innovators, adding videos about new topics, new versions of videos (reflected in the NVNT by the “is a new version of”

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relation) and subject-variation videos (reflected in the NVNT by the “is inspired by” relation). Video uploading can be done by (1) using URL links from the three most popular video streaming providers (i.e. YouTube, Dailymotion, Google Video), (2) uploading previously made videos, and (3) recording live with a webcam. Videos are also described by profiles. Tags can be selected from a list or freely added, and connections with other videos (in terms of versioning or inspiration) are set as well as a direct link with the author. InnoTube also supports other more “traditional“ forms of Authorship as it provides commenting and discussion threads around videos.

TAGS: Tags address the content categorisation issue. Based on the folksonomy concept, they allow users to freely describe information content as they perceive it. Despite its flat structure, i.e. not multilevel, tags are user-friendly and very helpful in supporting searches. Successful examples in Web2.0 are given by popular online content repositories such as Flickr (www.flickr.com), Technorati (technorati.com) and del.icio.us (del.icio.us) which use tags for categorising pictures, blogs and (social) bookmarks, respectively. InnoTube tags are important objects as they describe a video’s content/subject and provide data not only for successful video searches in the InnoTube Channel and the NVNT, but also for recommendation agents as explained in the following EXTENSIONS section. In particular, the connection value can be easily appreciated by filtering content by tags as, for instance, people who use a tag will be shown together with the related submitted or watched videos. Therefore, not only do “patterns and processes in knowledge work become more visible” (McAfee, 2006), but also potentially new interesting people and videos are displayed. Noticeably, tags also play an important role in InnoTube Game which we describe in the “Additional Web2.0 features” section.

EXTENSIONS: McAfee describes Extensions as the delivery of additional content related to the search request, for example, recommendations to read other related books in the Amazon (www.amazon.com) website. While not presented in the search results, InnoTube anticipates user needs by making extensive use of recommendations to suggest connections to other community members and content. The “Connect To” pop-up window recommends to each user the most relevant community member profiles and videos to view once he/she has completed the registration phase and each time he/she logs in thereafter. These recommendations are made by an agent using data from the user’s profile and online behaviour. In the InnoTube Channel additional recommendation agents help users discover similar community members and the most highly rated videos.

SIGNALS: One of the most serious drawbacks of emails is its misuse. Davenport showed that more than half of knowledge workers consider them a burden and some even an obstacle to their performance (Davenport, 2005). Content updates on traditional “platforms” and over the Internet are so frequent that one cannot keep users informed via email. Therefore, emergent Web2.0 technologies such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and their evolution, namely Atoms, together with content

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aggregating applications or services allow information streaming in a very friendly way, giving users control over what kind and how much information they see, as well as its update frequency. While InnoTube does not provide RSS technology, users logging in receive updates on what has happened in the InnoTube community since their last visit. Information on the number of new members registered, of new videos submitted, of new tags and competences entered, of new comments submitted and discussions started, as well as how many members watched the user’s submitted videos provide each community member with a quick and effective first-sight overview on InnoTube community activities and contributions.

Additional WEB2.0 features Two emerging Web2.0 features which are not covered by the SLATES paradigm, but which are very important in InnoTube are profiling and gaming.

PROFILING: Profiles are a key feature in all (emergent) Social Networks; for example, LinkedIn and Facebook. In Innotube, each community member’s profile can be accessed not only in the Profile Space, but also from the people nodes in the community network map. Placing the mouse on a people node gives a short preview of his/her profile. Clicking on a people node redirects the user to the desired member’s profile page for more details.

GAMING: InnoTube gives users entertainment and instant gratification value by providing a pleasant, funny and productive activity which successfully tackles the passivity syndrome. The InnoTube Game aims at proactively encouraging members to access videos and connects members to each other in a playful way (compared with recommendation agents). Users play (for just 5 minutes or for much longer) a conceptually very simple but actually very effective two-player matching/guessing game. During each game, two anonymous players view the same video in parallel and try to describe it (using words they insert realtime). Players can type as many words as they want while they watch the video. At the end of the game, the two players are asked if they wish to reveal their identity. If they both agree, they are connected to the profile and network of the other player. Figure 3 shows the InnoTube Game environment.

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Figure 3: the InnoTube Game environment.

The logic of the Connection Game embedded in InnoTube is similar to the one of the ESP game (von Ahn and Dabbish, 2004) and the ProfilAMat game (Angehrn et al, 2008), with the exception that the object the users play with is not a picture but one of the videos included in the InnoTube Channel. Players get points for each matching word in their lists. At the end of each round/video, points are attributed using an approximately U-shaped scoring function dependent on time (i.e., video duration). In addition, points are subtracted if no match is made during a round. Players are then taken to the overall scoreboard page that lists the top scores and asked if they wish to continue playing. If they both agree, they are proposed a new video. A key design principle underlying this game which makes it not only entertaining, but also effective, is the selection of the relevant videos and the matching of the users. In fact, in each game, the video displayed and the pair of players are “selected” by a connection agent trying to maximize the potential connection value involved. In addition to the entertainment and the connection value generated, this game dynamic, when used extensively, can generate accurate descriptions of the videos (matching words becoming gradually “taboo” words) which can be used to improve the tagging mechanism as well as to provide feedback to the video’s author.

Other additional features InnoTube provides both Discussion threads and Instant Messaging as a means for communication among community members. According to (Hrastinski, 2007) synchronous communication activities like chatting complement well asynchronous ones such blogging and discussion boards. In fact, community members tend to prefer and use just one of the two communication options. Therefore, in order to

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encourage and increase the probability of user input, InnoTube offers both options to its members.

InnoTube deployment in the car industry We recently had the opportunity to deploy InnoTube and test our hypothesis in a car manufacturing innovation context. The car manufacturer was eager to try out a new methodology for new product development (NPD) which required the proactive participation of a varied community of representatives from four different departments: marketing, engineering & design, style and quality. Previously in this company, new product development proceeded in discrete stages and no deep collaboration existed. Each department worked isolated from the others and interacted by receiving/providing each other with formal inputs and outputs. The company thought that a tool like InnoTube could greatly assist them in (1) raising awareness of the innovation subject, (2) creating an innovation community, (3) reinforcing and creating new connections, (4) fruitfully exchanging innovative ideas, and (5) reaching agreement on new product attributes.

The actual experiment lasted over a month, involved 32 people, was monitored by HR department representatives, and involved personnel in a combination of online and field activities. The company used InnoTube in the online activities to collect new product key features and related ideas in order to foster the identification and definition of the final new product profile. To this end, we developed a tailored version of InnoTube to address the company needs which was identical to the tool described in this paper except for the three channel categories. In InnoTubeTV (Tailored Version) the three Video Channel subjects were: (1) Innovation in general, (2) Innovation related to cars, and (3) the NPD project. Before project kick-off, we found and linked to 46 relevant publicly available videos in order to populate the first two channels and provide stimulus. Innovation Team members were then asked to:

• watch videos and read attached material

• comment videos

• discuss videos

• rate videos

• upload interesting videos

• submit their own videos and related supporting material

• complete their own profile

• link themselves to other team/community members.

Data mining of InnoTube logs showed that community members spent 70% of their online time on the InnoTube Channel. Social networking also played prominent role.

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It was observed that community members spent 27% of their time on InnoTube exploring team member profiles as well as the related connections in the NVNT (e.g. among people and between people and videos). A really encouraging participation of community members in video provision was also observed. 35 videos were submitted by project participants despite some difficulties with Internet barriers due to the company’s proxy and firewall, as well as other minor prototype weaknesses (i.e. format limitations of supporting material). Of these 35 videos, four were “home-made” (i.e. created by the participants themselves), and 26 were project specific videos for the third channel.

Moreover, we observed from the outset a very great involvement and interest from participants in this new methodology for addressing new product design management. This perception was confirmed in five video interviews made during the final workshop. All interviewed participants confirmed their enthusiastic engagement and pointed out the usefulness of their experience in terms of:

• gaining better knowledge of team members, including their relations to other community members (i.e. connection value)

• accessing the know-how and ideas of other team members (i.e. actionable learning value)

• enjoying the process of finding relevant videos on the internet, and in preparing and submitting “home-made” videos and other supporting material (i.e. entertainment and instant gratification value).

All participants expressed their concern that difficulties related to their corporate intranet prevented them from participating more actively; particularly in discussion boards, comments and chatting. The firewall problems also prevented the community members from playing the game. However, all of them were also fully aware that InnoTubeTV is a cutting edge prototype tool (by addressing scalability and reliability issues). For these reasons, some community members instead of complaining tried to circumvent these problems by logging in InnoTubeTV from home after work. Last, but not the least, all participants expressed their genuine hope that this compelling experience would carry on until the natural end of the new product design and development process and would be replicated in other new product innovation contexts.

We found that InnoTubeTV’s Web2.0-mediated approach was appreciated and quickly adopted, and it appears that InnoTubeTV contributed to team building by supporting the reciprocal exchange of peoples’ profiles and social network data, as well as their video preferences. Based on this first experience, we are now working with the car manufacturer in order to overcome the technical problems due to company security policy issues implemented in firewalls and proxies that prevented

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video streaming. The devised solution relies on porting InnoTubeTV within the corporate intranet walls in order to prevent unauthorised access to sensible content, making InnoTubeTV a corporate-oriented tool, owned and managed by the company, which can be nicely integrated into the day-to-day activities of knowledge workers involved in new product creation and innovation.

Conclusions Innovation is a key driver of organizational renewal and success. However, providing the right environment for innovative ideas to emerge and develop is not easy. This is further complicated by the fact that the professional environment is becoming increasingly virtual. When globally dispersed organizational and inter-organizational teams collaborate on innovative projects, effective information and communication technologies are indispensable. While many organizations have knowledge management (KM) systems, most of these have not been developed with the aim of supporting the innovation process, and many do not even succeed in their primary aim, i.e. supporting knowledge exchange, as they do not take into consideration the emotional, psychological and social needs of individuals. Recently Web2.0 technologies have given new life to the internet and along with Open Innovation are fostering business models which exploit collaboration and co-creation activities. Our hypothesis is that Web2.0 concepts and tools can have a positive impact on innovation in general, and in particular on the design of effective systems supporting new product developments. In order to test this hypothesis we developed a video-based connection tool, InnoTube, which is based on the latest web trends and which makes extensive use of video, profiling, game dynamics, agents and network visualizations in order to capture the attention and involvement of community members by generating three different types of value: connection value, actionable learning value, as well as entertainment and instant gratification value.

Specifically devised for supporting innovation, it was recently deployed in an actual industrial (car manufacturing) environment where it was used in a new product development activity by a varied community of participants coming from diverse backgrounds, departments and holding different roles in the corporation. Despite minor flaws due its prototypal development stage and some technical problems due to the company’s firewall, the first results were extremely encouraging. Not only was the tool used effectively, it also appears to have generated user value as its deployment in new similar future projects has been explicitly requested by the vast majority of community members.

Further research plans include studying InnoTube’s novelty effect, as well as using InnoTube to better involve actual customers in the innovation process (Bughin et al., 2008; Manyika et al., 2007). In fact, customers already provide feedback which indirectly supports innovation via traditional channels such as call centres and other CRM services, and which directly supports innovation via focus groups (Bughin et al.,

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2008). However, involving customers via InnoTube could be very fruitful because its strong Web2.0 approach which includes asynchronous material contributions and discussions, as well as synchronous activities such as gaming and chatting, should foster their proactive participation at their leisure.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the CALT Team for their valuable software development and research assistance. This work has been sponsored by the Laboranova Integrated Project funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme.

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