Shared Secrets – Entry #8: Connecting the Gaps

This is the eighth in the series on managing collaborative innovation. Click here for the Beginning of the Series

The most important aspect of an intention (see previous post), beyond the champions themselves, is the set of gaps standing between what the champions can do and what they want to do. Gaps come in three flavors: technical, commercial, and organizational. A technical gap is the lack of tools, techniques and know-how that would make a plan feasible. This is where an invention connects with an intention to create an opportunity.

Where technical gaps are about the tools, commercial gaps are about the story. The champions must have a compelling story about how their intentions are feasible and how they will have a positive economic impact. This is where the business design is articulated. An intention’s commercial gap can be filled by the presence of another intention. For example, were it not for the intentions of new philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund hybrid not-for-profit operating companies, OneWorld Health’s intentions to focus on low-margin drugs might run into a significant commercial gap in their financial story.

Finally, organizational gaps define the social distance between the champions and people with the ability to fill technical and commercial gaps. Organizational gaps also include the problems created by many intentions bumping into each other within firms. In the Google case (entry #7), the organizational gap for the Clever team arose because the champions could not overcome a bureaucracy of higher-ranking decision-makers whose own intentions would have been harmed if they had moved forward.

It is tempting to add the notion of resource gaps to the list, because the first thing most champions will tell you is that they need more financial and human resources. But if a champion doesn’t have enough money or people, then something else is wrong. Either the commercial story is not convincing people with money to provide it, or something separates the champions from the people who would give them resources if they heard the story. The former case involves a commercial gap and the latter an organizational gap.

Champions, stakeholders, goals, and gaps: Shared understanding of this short list of concepts and how they interact can be remarkably powerful. Predicting action – and to some degree ultimate success – becomes a matter of weighing the dedication of the champions against the gaps they face. Finding a cure for cancer is a goal that lines up some of the most daunting technical gaps imaginable against a world of scientists and medical champions whose dedication to bridging those gaps is equal to the task. Given enough time, the smart money is on the champions. On the other hand, the negligible challenge of creating a search engine web site was too much for the biggest computer company in the world even though it had the technology and marketing muscle to trump Google’s entry with hardly more than a few months’ work. The Clever project champions’ desire to get their technology used was not equal to the task of overcoming IBM’s organizational gaps.

Click here for the Previous Entry.

[Click here for entry #9]

Advertisement