innovation eXternally

Innovation: externally-oriented or x-teams
(book by Henry Bressman - INSEAD and MIT Professor Deborah Ancona)

Organisations, increasilgly becoming more knowledge driven, and competing through innovation are built around multi-disciplinary teams. The focus on interaction between different groups within an organisation is also repeatedly stressed, but innovation and meaningful interaction is often stifled "because they don’t take into account external stakeholders and conditions".

The teams do look outside, but with a mental model built around internal processes and expectations. Teams look outside of their boundaries at very specific checkpoints and/or problem situations. Externally-oriented teams operate consistently outside the realm of the organisation, constantly scoting for problems, plausible solutions, research and other activities. This enables not only a more real sense of the need, and capabilities required by a service, it also allows the team to collaborate effectively and leverage external services and thought.

x-teams will also be more effective in collaboration within the organisation, as they can better gauge the impact and scope of varied products/services. By engaging with problems, solutions and processes explored in neutral space, x-teams can constantly look beyond long-term expectations for internal vs. external services, products, processes and partners

Bresman points to corporations such as Microsoft, BP, Merrill Lynch, Procter & Gamble and Southwest Airlines as examples of companies which have successfully used X-teams “because they work so hard at building linkages with other groups within their own large organization, X-teams also serve as a powerful tool for top management to create a culture of innovation across the wider organization.”

Bresman and Ancona’s book provides a toolkit for firms looking to create their own innovative X-teams. It outlines three elements – external activity, extreme execution and flexible phases – which form the principles by which X-teams guide themselves

http://knowledge.insead.edu/contents/Bresman.htm