Create internal markets for ideas, talent & resources

“Organizations need a resource allocation process that more accurately mimics the selection pressures of a real market.”

Funding decisions in corporations are usually made at the top and are heavily influenced by political factors. That’s why companies over-invest in the past and underfund the future. By contrast, resource allocation in a market-based system like the New York Stock Exchange is decentralized and apolitical. While markets are obviously vulnerable to short-term distortions, in the long run they’re better than big organizations at getting the right resources behind the right opportunities. To make resource allocation more flexible and dynamic, companies must create internal markets where legacy programs and new projects compete on an equal footing for talent and cash.

182 Hacks
263 Stories
6 Barriers

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Everyone Innovates Everyday - Collaborative Idea Management at Ericsson

At Ericsson, a collaborative idea management tool is enabling all employees to innovate everyday across the organization. After 3 years of use, the pull based and self-organizing system has over... Read more

Story by Magnus Karlsson on September 5, 2011 8 Comments

Idea Market: A stock exchange metaphor for empowering collaborative innovation

At Experian Latin America, aiming to systemize innovation as a capability in an increasingly competitive market, we implemented an ideation platform that mirrors our company’s people-oriented... Read more

Story by Maria Paula Oliveira on September 6, 2011 37 Comments

The Tube: IDEO Builds a Collaboration System That Inspires through Passion

To be successful and truly collaborative, knowledge-sharing systems require intuitive tools that connect people, reward participation, and align well with existing work and communication patterns.... Read more

Story by Doug Solomon on April 6, 2011 27 Comments

Wisdom of Crowds to Empower Beyond Budgeting

The idea of our hack wants to challenge the highly unconscious, but nothing less dominant dogma of heroic leadership, epitomizing the command and control management model. Our offered solution... Read more

Hack by Michael Gebauer on October 11, 2011 33 Comments

Innovation Democracy: W.L. Gore's Original Management Model

With Shirley Spence It’s hard to talk about management innovation without tipping your hat to W.L. Gore, the venerable maker of Gore-Tex and a host of other pioneering materials and products as... Read more

Story by Gary Hamel on December 29, 2010 10 Comments

SHIFT CHANGES THE WAY CEMEX WORKS

CEMEX is fostering innovation by changing the way employees work. It is encouraging a change in practices towards more collaboration, transparency, and openness, and enabling these changes through a... Read more

Story by Jesus Gilberto Garcia on September 2, 2011 39 Comments

How do you get 13 ant-farms and a beehive to work together by using only 4 words ?

Facing the challenges of our comapny (mounting pressure, weak & uninterested governance, lack of centralization) our team realized that no singular solution could tackle the problem in its full... Read more

Story by Bence Horvath on July 18, 2011 2 Comments

elBulli: a creative organization

elBulli is a well-known restaurant famous not only for his chef, Ferran Adria, but also for being a creative organization in which every year more than a hundred elaborations are put in place.At... Read more

Story by Andrés Hatum on July 5, 2011 3 Comments

Exorbitant Executive Salaries = Resources Wasted On Those Who Don't Need Them

I've always admired CEOs who forgo multimillion dollar salary payments, like Jobs at Apple, but if you drill into the pay-scales at the top companies, you can see that executive compensation has,... Read more

Barrier by Aaron Anderson on April 28, 2011 3 Comments

Being a true learning company and being free of management: living the dream

Update to our semi-final entry (a kind of preface) This update summarises our story and focuses on two key principles that shape our work. We also give illustrations of how other organisations we... Read more

Story by Andres Roberts on February 25, 2011 3 Comments

"Innovation Project" is an oxymoron: how a coached social network experiment put the "us" back in stimulus

Innovation should be the most enjoyable form of work, but the project modality leaches all joy from it: deadline pressure, boss-driven scope, and a team made up of "the usual suspects". Innovation... Read more

Story by Jeremy Clark on June 20, 2010 7 Comments

Experimenting in a difficult environment

A colleague who I worked with 4 years ago tried to use the company bar, an existing employee perk, to generate an internal market for new product ideas. When hurdles to implementing his idea became... Read more

Story by Daniel Pay on September 22, 2010 2 Comments