Simon's Blog (the personal one)

Why I believe in Open Innovation

Another week goes by and I've been asked at least twice about Open Innovation. Enquiries fall into two categories. Some are from people who are really interested in the process and others are very challenging. Here is an anonymised example of the latter:

Simon
I understand your objective here, but not why you are once again telling your competitors what we are up to on an open information exchange?
What other business develops new products in such an open way? When General Motors are developing a new car, employees are sworn to secrecy in case Ford find out and get to the market first.
A N Other

Receiving this email was like turning up for an exam to find that the exam paper contained all the questions you'd revised for.

Here are some of the points I made in my response:

The judgement you make when deciding to develop an idea, proposal or project in the open is that you will gain far more than you might lose because:

• exposing your ideas, proposals etc enables others to challenge them and improve them which leads to improved ideas and proposals
• it further enhances your reputation as a truly open and collaborative organisation/person
• it raises awareness of the fact that you are about to do something. So it's a form of pre-marketing

In addition, the 'value' of what you do is not in the 'ideas' (I have 3 of these everyday before breakfast!) it's in their realisation.

This is an interesting quote:

"Share your rough notes, meeting minutes and preliminary results as soon as you can. Sure, there's always the risk that someone else might come along and nick your ideas but, unless you're publishing plans for a nuclear reprocessing plant, it's a lot more likely some helpful soul will pitch in with a helpful comment, pass you a link or contact, or tell you you've got it just plain wrong before you spend too much time and effort on the idea."
Source: Robin Hamman (Senior Broadcast Journalist/Producer at the BBC)

General Motors may keep their ideas to themselves and so did Lego. Lego don't any longer. The story goes that a few years ago Lego released a long awaited product that enabled their users to build computer-controlled robotic models. This product took them years to develop in-house and in secret and then bring to the market. Within weeks of the release, the product had been completely reverse engineered by their user community and brought back together in the form of a highly superior product. Lego now do things more openly and have a mechanism for involving (and rewarding) users in all new product development. See this recent presentation by Prof Eric von Hippel, MIT at the launch of NESTA Connect.  (You need to be patient - this video takes a while to start - if the video is too slow you can click the audio tab and just listen to that). Thanks to David Wilcox for bringing this to my attention.

Wikipedia has a good definition of open innovation in the private sector. Someone needs to do one for the not-for-profit sector . . . . may be we could do it between us here . . . A NFP definition would not talk about patents but of Creative Commons Licensing but there are many parallels.

The Wikipedia definition makes the point that Open innovation needs a different mindset and company culture to traditional or closed innovation. It also includes the following table which I think is really enlightening. Again a NFP version of this would be useful.

Closed innovation Principles	Open innovation Principles
The smart people in our field work for us.	Not all the smart people work for us. We need to work with smart people inside and outside our company.
To profit from R&D, we must discover it, develop it and ship it ourselves.	External R&D can create significant value; internal R&D is needed to claim some portion of that value.
If we discover it ourselves, we will get it to market first.	We don't have to originate the research to profit from it.
The company that gets an innovation to market first will win.	Building a better business model is better than getting to market first.
If we create the most and the best ideas in the industry, we will win.	If we make the best use of internal and external ideas, we will win.
We should control our innovation process, so that our competitors don't profit from our ideas.	We should profit from others' use of our innovation project, and we should buy others' IP whenever it advances our own business model.

PS: The image at the top of this post is of the front cover of the proposal to run the Innovation Exchange that we developed in the open here. Click on the image to enlarge it and count the number of authors!

PPS: We are using the same open process to co-design the next version of our ruralnet|online service here. Please feel free to join in or just browse.

Land's End to John o' Groats on the National Cycle Network – the challenge

This article was written for 'The Ranger', the Sustrans Volunteer Rangers Newsletter, and an edited version was published in the Autumn 2007 edition.

I first cycled from Land's End to John o' Groats in May/June 2006. I was pleased I'd done it but left the saddle vowing never to do it again. But then all sorts of forces began to work on me:

I met and was inspired by John Grimshaw when he gave the keynote speech at the ruralnet|uk conference. We talked about many things including the signage on the NCN.

This got me thinking. In 2006, I'd taken a GPS unit with me: it recorded the route and gave me lots of data to play with when I got back. All this data was published for other would-be end-to-enders on the trip's blog: ruralnet.typepad.com/endtoend  I was also aware that this gadget could be used to plan routes in advance.

Soon after, on signing up as a Sustrans supporter I heard about  Sustrans' 30th anniversary – what an opportunity for celebration: before I knew it I was planning a turn by turn route from Land's End to John o' Groats on the National Cycle Network.

This little project kept me busy on many a dark winter evening! The 48 stages are published here: www.gpscycle.com. for anyone to view, download and use.

I wrote about the planning process at: blog.gpscycle.com and the site turned into a 'saddlelog' as I blogged the ride live from the saddle, using a fancy mobile phone.

So how did I get on? Did I stick to the network? Could I have done it without the GPS? Well, the NCN route planned was 1,235 miles. Sadly, I managed to cover only 647 of these on the network.

Working to a tight timetable, using major roads for half the route was unavoidable: we were committed to doing 100 miles a day and on some stretches of the network a sustained average speed of 10mph isn't possible. Without exception they are routes to savour, not so good for chewing up the miles in a hurry.

I couldn't have done it without the GPS: the signage was generally not good enough to guide the unfamiliar traveller. Even the best-signed routes generally had a crucial sign missing. An exception was route 3 over Bodmin: brilliant, with on-road markings at every decision point. I dream of the day when on-road NCN signage is integral to every 'Give way' triangle on every minor road in the country.

After all the investment in time and resources to set up a route adequate signage is essential. Cheltenham was an example of where the balance is wrong. The cycle path from the station to Waitrose is superb but when you approach the superstore there are routes going off in various directions and absolutely no signage. If you do happen to chose the right path you are dropped onto a minor road with a superb sign, pointing back telling you where you come from but no indication of where to go next. Information is crucial to the successful use of any transport system. Good NCN signage is as important as the NCN itself.

Thanks go to all the Sustrans Rangers who are working hard to achieve this and to the Local Authorities who are investing in good signage. The National Cycle Network is undoubtedly one of the jewels in the crown of national UK infrastructure – a huge achievement in both development and upkeep. The challenge of riding from one tip of the country on the network is still there! Anyone up for it, should plan to take several weeks and enjoy the views and watering holes. Meanwhile, I'm up for joining a Rangers' Relay.

Empowerment - a matter of life or death

What's in a word? In an environment of jargon, cliché and political correctness the word 'empowerment' has suffered badly. Let's stand back, and elevate it to its proper place: arguably, empowerment is the key concept for people supporting community development.

There are two housing estates on the outskirts of Glasgow: Drumchapel and Bearsden. In the early nineties, life expectancy in Drumchapel was 10 years less than in neighbouring Bearsden, Glasgow's richest area (1 - PDF). The Scottish Executive's website says that the difference today is 11 years (2). Both areas are served by the same health service and the same general hospital (3). So, what is going on?

These statistics illustrate a hyposthesis: the more you control your own destiny, the healthier you are likely to be. Empowered individuals are healthier and live longer, the theory goes.

A survey in 2003 (4 - PDF) established that 16% of Drumchapel working population were unemployed and a further 14% were permanently sick or disabled. 22% reported some form of financial difficulty. As an unemployed person, you are less likely to live in a place of your own choice, and other people are more likely to be telling you what you can and can't do. You are more likely to be stressed and more likely to smoke, drink and take other drugs.

But what about those well-off people in high-paid, high-stress jobs who may also smoke, drink and take drugs? Interestingly, research amongst the employed appears to reinforce the empowerment and health hypothesis. A study of male civil servants showed conclusively that those in the lower grade jobs (messengers, doorkeepers) had a three-fold higher mortality rate than men in the highest grade jobs (5).

This status-related risk factor was found to be more significant in determining death than smoking, high blood pressure, or cholesterol. None of those studied were living in poverty, and all had access to the National Health Service.

People in control, in the higher level jobs, 'the empowered', were healthier than the lower grade employees who had things done to them, who often had skills that were under-utilised, lacked clarity in tasks they were asked to do and had very little control or idea about what the future had in store for them.

So, for the individual, empowerment is the biggest gift that can be given: quite literally a matter of life or death.

For me, these principles can be applied at levels beyond the individual. Unhealthy families, communities or businesses are characterised by a lack of control over their own destiny. They have things done to them, they are not in control themselves. Failing communities usually exist in an environment - physical and non-physical - not of their own making. The way forward is to empower communities to take control of their own destiny.

Businesses usually fail because they are unable to manage aspects that should be under their control. Good business planning, timely access to information, just-in-time training and relevant, tailored support all enable businesses to be more in control of their destiny.

So, we use the word 'empowerment' with pride in the ruralnet|uk mission statement: To promote social inclusion and reduce deprivation in rural areas by empowering individuals, families, communities and businesses so that they able to control their own destinies and fully engage with society.

1: World Health Day 1996: The Who's Healthy Cities Programme
www.who.int/docstore/world-health-day/en/documents1996/whd2int.pdf

2: Building Better Cities: Delivering Growth and Opportunities
www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/finance/bbcs-05.asp

3:The myth of welfare dependency by Nicolai Gentchev
pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj69/gentchev.htm

4: Drumchapel Social Inclusion Partnership Board, Baseline Study, 2003 Update www.drumchapel.org.uk/downloads/baselineupdate2003.pdf

5: Marmot, Shipley and Rose, 1984 cited by www.workhealth.org/projects/pwhitew.html

Sustainable Rural Communities - what do we mean? Is this a pipedream?

There are problems with the word 'sustainable'. First of all, it's just an adjective and can be stuck on the front of anything: sustainable living, sustainable funding, sustainable farming.

So to say: “We are sustainable” is so ambiguous as to be meaningless. Do you mean you are earning enough to keep yourself or your organisation afloat. Do you mean you can keep going on, as you are, forever – perpetual motion on the way to Shangri-la? Or are we talking about striving to balance economic, social and environmental considerations in everything we do?

ruralnet|uk is a charity working towards 'Sustainable Rural Communities'. What do we mean? For us, sustainable rural communities are communities where there is a harmony between economic development and social cohesion and an on-going desire to reduce the impact of actions on the environment.

Even this will be interpreted in a spectrum of different ways according to who our audience is, and what they know about our work.

The term sustainability has become fashionable: it is used too broadly and is too complex to be useful in any practical way. It's a worthy vision, a responsible-sounding strategy, but how do you actually do it? Is there a simple yardstick we can use to guide rural communities to make them more sustainable?

There are often tensions between economic development, social cohesion and the environment. There need not be. And, big, big opportunities are missed when one of the three objectives are pursued without due regard for the other two.

Let us look at a selection of 'sustainable' initiatives to see if we can identify the yardstick we need.

Community Broadband Network

In 2003, when it looked like large areas of rural Britain were going to be denied access to ADSL broadband. ruralnet|uk worked with the Phone Co-op to establish the Community Broadband Network (CBN). At that time, a small number of rural communities were determined not to be left out of this strategically crucial development and decided to take a DIY approach. These communities got together, linked themselves up using blisteringly fast wireless technology and then shared among themselves the cost of linking this community network to the wider internet. The idea of CBN was to help these communities share what they knew with other communities who aspired to do the same thing.

These broadband communities were ground-breaking in many ways. First of all they took a collective approach, not an individual approach to the issue. Without exception this strengthened the social cohesion of these communities, with significant, non-broadband-related spin-offs. People got to know each other better, other community initiatives were started in the can-do atmosphere created. And finally, it established in many rural areas a foundation stone for the new knowledge economy, supporting jobs where weightless information is mined, harvested and moved around, rather than more traditional rural commodities.

CBN was essentially an initiative that was driven by an economic development imperative, but which had significant social and environmental benefits.

Community Carbon Network

ruralnet|uk is now working with the Carnegie Rural Community Development Programme to look into replicating the principles of the CBN in a 'Rural Community Carbon Network' (RCCN) to raise awareness of community approaches to increased efficiency in energy use, including local generation of energy from renewable sources. Like its predecessor, RCCN would also promote and fund knowledge transfer, including peer to peer support both online and face to face.

Sustrans

Another example: at the ruralnet|2006 conference last week in Sherwood Forest, John Grimshaw, CEO of Sustrans and mastermind of the National Cycle Network pointed out that the UK was the poor man of Europe when it comes to the use of the bicycle (See below: Percentage of trips by bicycle by country).

   
Figure 1: Percentage of trips by bicycle

He then went on to make an alarming link between the levels of cycling in the UK and childhood obesity (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Cycling and obesity

People in colder, wetter and hillier countries in Europe cycle more than we do in the UK.

Cycling ticks more of the 'sustainability' boxes than you first expect: yes, it is non-polluting, and uses renewable energy, but it also impacts on health; encourages community projects and involvement in building, signing and maintaining tracks; helps reclaim and restore natural environments; and with the right planning and incentives, encourages local economic stability. It could do much more. John argues that we need to move around less and invest more in our own localities: to make the Trussocks as attractive as Tuscany.

Why not give visitor discounts to those who arrive by bike? Employers should aim to reduce car miles of their employees by 10% year on year through the encouragement of decentralised working. He even suggests that it should be legal to use place of residence as a criteria when recruiting. Many factors make cycling more viable and more popular: building safe routes is just one, and Sustrans also works hard to encourage more women to cycle and to ensure children adopt a life-time habit to counter the worrying trends in obesity shown above.

Local food

Food Links projects and Farmers' Markets are another example of activities that promote sustainability on a number of levels. They promote healthy eating, improve demand and markets for local food and reduce 'food miles' and the associated damage to the environment. Farmers' markets are viable for the farmers who participate in them because they make a significantly larger margin on what they sell directly to the consumers, rather than to supermarkets.

Think global, act local

All of these initiatives seem 'sustainable'. But they are initiated by different primary drivers: to improve living standards, services, or work prospects, a better environment, improved community cohesion or health. With just a little thought, planning, and the right incentives, many of these objectives can be combined, giving a triple bottom line: financial, social and environmental benefits. But what is at their heart? For me, what all these sustainable actions have in common is that they focus on the 'local': people getting together and harnessing both outside help and their own determination to make a difference. It is easy, when faced with seemingly huge and intractable problems – climate change; soaring energy prices; depleted communities - to feel disempowered, to think that small actions are worthless. But Patrick Geddes' aphorism: 'Think global, act local' (Cities in Evolution, 1915), taken up by E F Shumacher in the 70s and by many others since, is perhaps still our best yardstick for rural sustainability.

Rethinking the future for rural service delivery

  Crudwell Post Office 
  Originally uploaded by S1m0nB3rry

This is the Executive Summary of an original vision created to inform the work of the Labour Group of Rural MPs in 1998. The vision was updated and presented at the ruralnet|2004 conference. It has been presented at many conferences since.

Executive Summary
Access to services is crucial to reduce rural deprivation and increase social inclusion. However, access to services for rural people has been declining for many years and will continue to do so unless we inject new thinking and start doing things differently. We need new paradigms for rural service delivery that focus more on the integrated needs of service users and less on the 'needs' of service suppliers.

The idea of 'multi-purpose village centres' was first published in 1981. Since then there are many more post offices in shops but true multi-service outlets (MSOs) are so rare that they still make the headlines.

It is argued that a sole focus on location for the delivery of services is not helpful and that the current way of measuring access in terms of the distance from locations needs to be reviewed. The focus should be on 'Integrated Service Provision' and not on 'Multi-Service Outlets'.

At the heart of the vision presented is the notion that successful service integration needs to be preceded by an analysis of the component parts of each service. Then services can be re-engineered and integrated. This can be done by considering the functions a service performs under the following headings:

1. information function
2. expert function
3. social function
4. physical function

Examples of this analysis are given in the full paper and applied to a whole range of services.
Analysing services in this way before integration, enables us to identify two things:

1. The elements of the service that need LOCAL physical space (the physical elements and some of the social elements);
2. The elements of the service that can be delivered without a local physical presence using the telephone and ICT (ie the expert and information elements and some of the social elements).

Only the physical and some of the social elements of a service need a local venue. The expert and information elements can be delivered remotely (to the local venue or to the home or business) using ICT. In simple terms, experts can sit anywhere on the end of a phone and information can be delivered using internet-based technology. A local advocate operating from a local venue could act as an intermediary to such services where required.
NHS Direct and the way the delivery of library services has changed over recent years are used in the full paper to demonstrate these principles in practice.

The paper emphasises, that despite the fact that ICT is influencing service delivery, local, physical locations are still required and will always be required to deliver the physical elements of the various services. For financial reasons and for the benefit of service users, these should be co-located in multi-service outlets.

Various forms of co-location are considered in the full paper.

A remaining significant challenge is the integration of services for the benefit of end users. NHS Direct, innovative though it is, has still to be integrated with the rest of the NHS let alone services from other sectors.

The rare examples of true service integration are generally driven by those who need the services and not by those who supply them. They require true partnership working across sectors and this, more often than not, is managed by the voluntary and community sector (VCS). The VCS has a key role in the integration of services for the benefit of service users in rural areas.

Download the full version of this paper (PDF Format, 2.15 MB).
Download the slides used in the presentation (PPT Format, 4.33 MB).

Rural Broadband - Is BT good for rural communities?

Everyone is delighted at BT's announcement on 27 April 2004 that they are abandoning trigger level campaigns. Like the proverbial good genie, BT is going to enable any exchange with a trigger level set. No more campaigning required. Most people will have access to ADSL by the summer of 2005. Our wishes have all come true. Or have they?

There is no doubt that this is a very popular measure, the sort of thing a government would love to do just before an election. In the short term ADSL will be fine for most people. As a rural regeneration charity, ruralnet|uk will be promoting the rapid uptake of the service as it becomes available. But that is not all we will be doing.

BT was reluctant to abandon the trigger level campaign as it involved more than 3,000 volunteers promoting ADSL; for nothing. Let's say, conservatively, that these have each put in 10 hours' work (most will have put in a lot more) and their time is worth a conservative £10/hour. That's £300,000. You can double that for the overhead costs which BT didn't incur, and double it again for non-paid sales bonuses. Which makes £1.2m. However, this is small change when compared with the costs that BT have been incurring through engineers having to flit from exchange to exchange, in a haphazard response to consumer demand.

Abandoning trigger levels means that BT can now control which exchanges are fixed, and when. They can thereby enable exchanges in an engineeringly efficient manner.

Bell Heads vs Net Heads

On the face of it, it seems perverse and churlish to criticise BT's initiative. Doesn't it? Well no actually. When a genie grants your wish, it's best to look hard at what you're really getting. Through this move, innovation will be stifled and competition reduced. Smoke has been thrown in the eyes of some of the senior decision makers who now believe, and will say, that the 'broadband issue' has been resolved. It hasn't and here is why.

When the railways came along nearly 200 years ago, this spelt doom for the operators of the canal network. However, we did not nurture the new technology by suggesting that railway tracks should be laid along tow paths. We did not put the horses out to grass and shackle the new trains to canal boats. Neither did we make trains go through locks! But this is what we are doing by our current obsession with ADSL delivered through the antiquated telephone lines.

ADSL was recently described by a senior BT manager as a 'nurturing technology'. This is shorthand for "it's not very fast and will be redundant in a few years' time". Like ISDN before it, ADSL will soon be the slowest boat to China. And, like ISDN today, it will not support the applications most people and businesses will want to run.

ADSL is promoted by the 'Bell Heads'. Those who have gained their experience or have a vested interest in the telephone network.

Throw off the shackles of the telephone network, start talking about proper, future-proof broadband delivered by visionaries, using the latest technology, and it gets very very exciting indeed. This is the territory of the 'Net Heads' and the tragedy of BT's ADSL announcement is that the Net Heads have had the rug pulled out from under their feet. But don't feel sorry for the 'Net Heads'. They will go off and apply their enthusiasm, vision and entrepreneurship to something else. We need to worry about ourselves, the inhabitants of rural areas. Because when the Net Heads go, so does the prospect of future-proof broadband: we will be committed to a world where bandwidth is rationed and throttled in the interests of delivering shareholder value. Nobody is against shareholder benefits if there is a level playing field. Which of course there is not.

Real Broadband

So what have these Net Heads got in their box of tricks? Once you stop thinking broadband has to be delivered through telephone lines, then it is amazing what you can do. And you can do it now and affordably. Community broadband projects split broadband into two. They build very very high speed community networks in a local area, and then they plug these into the internet with as fast a connection as they can afford. The high-speed community network can support desktop video conferencing (for everyone), CCTV, health and care applications, proper distributed working, local (video) phone calls, live video links to anywhere in the community, applications which properly integrate the local schools into their community, real integrated service delivery and many more applications that we haven't thought of yet, but will as soon as we get our hands on this technology. The more people in the community that use these networks, the faster the link can be to the rest of the world. If most of the community is seduced by the promise of ADSL then community networks can be seen, by outsiders and potential funders, to be non-viable. However, this is a serious misconception. Selling ADSL, like the community does in the Calder Valley, can provide community broadband initiatives with the foundation they need to roll out real broadband. This is of interest to those who can't get ADSL now and those who do not want to go through ADSL initiation on their way to real broadband.

The Community Effect

As we have seen, BT Wholesale has very cleverly used the power of the community in its trigger level campaigns. However, this can be moved to an even higher level. If local people and businesses are properly engaged in determining what the service should be and how it should be run, the commitment that results generates innovation in the development of new applications, social inclusion, very high levels of local take up and commitment that results in very low 'churn'.

Business Broadband

The 'A' in ADSL is important. It stands for 'asymmetric' this means that the high speeds talked about only work in one direction, that is into your home or business. Outward speeds are only a fraction of the broadband speeds quoted. This is OK (just about!) if you are a consumer of information services but no good at all if you are a producer and need to get your services out to others as quickly as possible. So ADSL is no good at all as a basis for encouraging the development of knowledge-based businesses in rural areas.

The message for gatekeepers to broadband funding The message is simple. Don't abandon the Net Heads. If you want your region to be in the top ten in Europe then you need to invest in, and partner with, the Net-Heads not the Bell-Heads. This is where the vision and the future lie. The broadband issue has not been solved by BT's announcement. Maybe they've granted the first of your three wishes, but keep thinking hard about the next two: internet telephony is one genie that's now out of the bottle - and it isn't going back in.

Acknowledgements
Malcolm Matson for the canal/railway analogy.
The many community broadband activists that I have been inspired by the Community Broadband Network - see www.broadband-uk.coop
The ruralnet|uk team for providing the platform for ruralnet|uk's broadband work - see www.ruralnetuk.org
Jane Berry for her significant contribution to the first draft.
The members of the Community Broadband Network for their comments on the first draft.

Simon Berry
Chief Executive, ruralnet|uk
Chairman, Community Broadband Network