The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive report on the IBM Innovation Jam. I would like to give a detailed account of my first-hand experience as a participant in the latest IBM Innovation Jam that took place recently. As its name suggests, IBM Innovation Jam is an innovation crowd sourcing event organized and managed by IBM. IBM, for those who do not know is the International Business Management. IBM is an Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and computer software and hardware manufacturing and supplying company. The New York-based company was established in 1911. Currently, the company operates worldwide and has a presence in at least 177 countries across the world. Its current workforce stands at 350,600. Apart from the production of its innovative services and goods, IBM has ventured in research. It, today, serves as the biggest research firm which has 12 laboratories located in six continents across the world. In order to strengthen its research activities, the multinational has been using the IBM innovation Jam to source for ideas from its workers, vendors, and other interested stakeholders.
IBM Innovation Jam is a terminology that refers to the IBM’s crowdsourcing efforts that are done online. The concept was conceived by the top company’s management in 2001 to denote a massive parallel online conference that the company would use to generate new ideas (Ringo 2007). The management came up with the idea because during that time, most of its workers were telecommuting. Meaning, they were not operating from the company premises, but from their respective homes. So, it was then challenging for the company’s employees to come together, share ideas, and engages in constructive discussions. So, through this platform, the company would manage to create a jam for everyone.
The creation of IBM Innovation Jam was thought to be a brilliant and feasible idea that would enable the company to source for innovative ideas from its workers and other stakeholders who would get an ample opportunity to brainstorm. The benefit of this crowdsourcing strategy is that it would give the company an opportunity to bring together a large number of stakeholders who would use their expertise knowledge to make the company more innovative than it had been. The platform would bring together these employees and give them an opportunity to bring and share new ideas whose implementation was intended to benefit the company a great deal (Dahlander &Gann 2010). This would be possible because all the interested experts would be linked through a centrally-managed intranet and web pages. If the platform was managed well, it would be possible for the management to sieve through the ideas and get to choose the best ones whose implementation would bring monetary benefits to the company.
Since the conception of the idea, the company has been organizing for Innovation Jams on several occasions. The first jam took place in 2001. During this event, the company set aside around 3 days to enable the employees, vendors and all the other interested stakeholders to participate. During this jam, a total of 52,000 participants took part in the competition (Bjelland & Wood 2008). Each of these participants came up with an idea that would help in addressing some of the most challenges that the company and the society at large had been facing at the time (Boudreau & Lakhani 2013). Some of the great ideas that carried the day responded to major queries like the use of C-Suit and operation in a mobile organization. Indeed, this jam was largely successful. That is why it grows as time goes by.
IBM has revolutionized the online crowd sourcing exercises. Since it launched its innovation jam, the company has benefited a great deal. The jam has been giving the company an opportunity to generate new ideas whose implementation has benefited it in many ways. The effectiveness of the jam has been proven by the fact that the number of participants has been increasing with time. For example, at the very beginning, there were 52,000 participants. However, if another jam was to be organized today, I have no doubt that the number would be more than 200,000.
The IBM innovation Jams have been successful because of the brilliant manner in which they have been managed. The management acknowledged that it would not be easy to manage the jam. So, it had to be innovative in its approach as well. The first strategy that has been in use is that the company offers incentives. Just like any other crowd sourcing exercise, IBM has been promising rewards to the best innovative ideas (Dodgson & Gann 2006). The promise of monetary reward and the implementation of ideas make the jam quite attractive to so many people. That justifies why the number of participants keep on increasing from time to time. The rewards lure people from all corners of the world to try their luck. The other strategy that the company has been using is that it has developed effective and efficient network solutions that can sustain as many users as possible (Chesbrough 2017). Moreover, the company is participative because it gives participants an opportunity to air their voices by commenting and voting for their preferred ideas (Howe 2008). Lastly, the company has been managing all the participants by using high-tech software as well as the categorization of participants into different groups. This enables the management to monitor, track, and rank the participants.
I must count myself privileged for getting an ample opportunity to participate in recent IBM Innovation Jam. Although I never took part as an innovator, I must say that it was, actually, a life-changing experience. One thing that leased me is that I got a chance to interact with over 150,000 brilliant brains drawn from all corners of the world (Bjelland & Wood 2008). My role as an observer, voter, and commenter, indeed, challenged me. It gave me morale to, one day, innovate a new idea and bring it along. I might succeed. Having said that, I would like to point out that during my time at the jam, I made some observations regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the whole jam.
The first strength that I would like to highlight is that the jam is accommodative and inclusive. It brought together a total of 150,000 participants. This is a very big number that enabled me to learn a lot of new ideas that I had never known before. Each person had his or her ideas that they thought would change the world if put into practice. The other strength that I noticed is that the jam is well-organized (Lichtenthaler 2011). Although there were so many participants, no one complained of the system-related errors. The platform was friendly because it could support any participant to bring an idea, place a comment, and vote without any inconvenience. The system was integrated using a centrally-managed intranet, and linked to the online tools lie forums, wiki, and such like websites in which the participants would get to interact with one another in a well-secure environment (Boudreau & Lakhani 2009). These platforms were friendly because they are easy to use. That is why no participant found it easy to view all the ideas, comments, and views on each of them whenever one logged into the system.
However despite these strengths, I realized that the jam also had some weaknesses that the management of IBM should address. First and foremost, the system did not favor individual participation. Although the company welcomes everyone to bring their ideas, it is practically impossible for the system as it was, to accommodate and support everyone’s ideas. That is why the participants were classified into groups. I think, this is something that must be rectified (Kobayashi & Yung 2008). The other weakness that I observed is that there are some participants who were not interested in the forum because their main intension was to get the promised prize. Meaning, such participants were motivated by the monetary rewards alone and nothing else. Lastly, I noticed that many participants were not serious about the whole exercise (West & Lakhani 2008). There are some who replicated other’s ideas. There are also other participants who never gave constructive comments as per the stipulated guidelines. Such comments were not useful and would serve no purpose at all.
Conclusion
IBM Innovation is a brilliant idea that generates brilliant ideas. Since its inception in 2001, the jam has been gaining popularity. The initial 2001 jam was later followed by other jams that later took place in 2006, 2009, until 2018. Based on y research, the past jams have been successful. They have been bringing many participants each time. For example, in 2018, the number of participants rose to 150,000. This clearly indicates the jam is becoming “jammy” and popular as time progresses. During my participation, I got an opportunity to experience what the jam has to offer. However, despite the numerical, organization, and management strength of the jam, the company must look for the best ways to address all the challenges illustrated in this report. A permanent solution to these challenges will make the jam to achieve its ultimate goals.
Bjelland, O.M. & Wood, R.C., 2008. An inside view of IBM’s’ Innovation Jam’. MIT Sloan management review, 50(1), p.32.
Boudreau KJ &Lakhani KR., 2009, How to Manage Outside Innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review 50(4): 69-76.
Boudreau, K. J., & Lakhani, K. R., 2013, Using the Crowd as an Innovation Partner. Harvard Business Review, 91(4): 60-69.
Chesbrough, H., 2017, The Future of Open Innovation. Research-Technology Management, 60(6): 29-35.
Dahlander, L., & Gann, D.M., 2010, How open is innovation? Research Policy, 39(6), 699-709.
Dodgson, M. & Gann, D., 2006, The role of technology in the shift towards open innovation: the case of Procter & Gamble. R&D Management 36(3): 333-346.
Howe, J., 2008, Crowdsourcing: How the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. London: Random House.
Kobayashi, M. & Yung, R., 2008, May. Tracking topic evolution in on-line postings: 2006 IBM innovation Jam data. In Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (pp. 616-625). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Lichtenthaler, U., 2011, Open innovation: Past research, current debates, and future directions. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 25(1): 75-93.
Ringo, T., 2007. IBM explores new frontiers in collaborative innovation. Research Technology Management, 50(5), p.6.
West, J. & Lakhani, K.R., 2008, Getting clear about communities in open innovation. Industry and Innovation, 15(2): 223-231.
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