Читать книгу Digital Disciplines - Wiersema Fred - Страница 12

Digital innovation is in many ways easier than physical: It can be easier to build and experiment with software than to build a full-size prototype. In either case, though, accelerated innovation uses the Internet, open innovation mechanisms such as contests, crowdsourcing, innovation networks, and idea markets, and cloud-based experimentation and platform as a service to dramatically accelerate the invention, commercialization, and adoption of improvements to processes, products, services, and solutions, and customer relationships. Netflix famously improved its Cinematch movie recommendation algorithm over 10 percent via an open contest, engaging scores of researchers around the world for the same cost as hiring a handful of them, and paying only upon attainment of a quantifiable improvement.13

Netflix then performed an encore with the Netflix OSS (Open Source Software) Cloud Prize, which used a somewhat different approach. There were multiple categories, rather than one objective. The goals were qualitative rather than quantitative. The results were dedicated to the improvement of cloud technology generally, with all entries treated as open source. Cloud computing technologies help Netflix but making them broadly available doesn't hurt Netflix's core differentiators, so an open-source approach garnered more entrants and better results.

Amazon Web Services has created challenges won by cities such as London, New York, and Asheville in implementing cloud technologies for better government; Goldcorp has run seismic analysis challenges on gold mine data to turn bankruptcy into, well, gold; Procter & Gamble complements its formidable internal R&D capability with crowdsourced and external open innovation to create new billion-dollar brands, as we'll see in Chapter 16; and GE has run them for improved airline and hospital operations, as we'll see in Chapter 17.