The Promise (and Perils) of Open Collaboration

Strategy+Business (Gabor) - Companies like IBM and P&G have prospered by opening their borders, but there are cautionary lessons from the quality movement of the 1980s. The biggest obstacle presented by both approaches is that they require companies to make deep changes in the way knowledge is controlled and shared. Companies that implement these changes successfully will command an enormous and lasting edge over rivals that do not.

Perhaps if we can learn from history, we won’t be condemned to repeat it. Here are seven key strategies that the pioneers of open collaboration have used to succeed in facing these obstacles, along with relevant perspectives from the quality movement.

1. Craft a leadership message
2. Collaborate with your customers
3. Build a culture of trust and open communication
4. Cultivate continuous improvement
5. Build a flexible innovation infrastructure
6. Prepare your organization for the new skill setsAlign evaluations and rewards

Realizing the Potential
As these seven strategies suggest, open collaboration is a complex — indeed, all-embracing — process, requiring genuine commitment from corporate leaders, a willingness to abandon many venerable corporate customs, and an appetite for unleashing and managing disruptive change across the organization. Some companies, notably IBM and P&G, are likely to recognize this, to continue to develop their approach to open collaboration, and to reap the rewards. But the widespread adoption of open collaboration is not at all a foregone conclusion. Not since the quality movement of the 1980s has a management trend had such potential for widespread transformation of the way companies do business. The biggest obstacle to both movements is that they require deep changes in the way knowledge is controlled and shared — changes that have the potential to alter relationships both within a company and with its outside constituents. With open collaboration, as with the quality movement, an incremental approach is likely to lead to short-lived improvements and eventual failure. But if the experience of the quality movement is any guide, the companies that successfully master open collaboration will command an enormous and lasting edge over rivals that do not.