Getting Unusual Suspects to Solve R&D Puzzles
Reprint: F0705H
Your problem solvers could be not only out in the wider world but also in the wide reaches of your own organization.
For even the toughest of R&D problems, there are often people out there with innovative solutions already on their shelves or in their back pockets. The trick for corporate executives is finding and gaining access to those individuals. Our research with a company that broadcasts technological problems into the ether—and gets back solid results—has given us a profile of the kind of people most likely to solve R&D puzzles. We wonder whether firms might be able to emulate this method to draw new insights from the talents and expertise of their own employees.
A little background: Open-source software communities have shown that broadcasting technical conundrums to a broad network of individuals can yield effective solutions. Open-source problem solving has now migrated beyond software to industries as diverse as custom integrated circuits, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, content production, and music.
Our profile was drawn using data from InnoCentive, the well-known Andover, Massachusetts, company that posts corporate R&D problems for outsiders to solve, offering substantial monetary prizes. In collaboration with InnoCentive, client companies have learned to break up their problems in sophisticated ways to avoid revealing strategy and other proprietary information. In a remarkable 30% of cases, problems that could not be solved by experienced corporate research staffs were cracked by nonemployees. When we analyzed all the problems broadcast from 2001 to 2004, we found that on average, each one received detailed attention from more than 200 people and received ten solution submissions. It’s similar to what the British Parliament did in 1714 when it solicited ideas for obtaining longitude at sea and got a solution from an unknown Yorkshire clock maker, John Harrison.
We were curious about today’s John Harrisons. What fields are they in? What motivates them? Could a system in which companies post their R&D problems for outsiders ultimately replace an internal R&D staff? Through our studies with Jill Panetta and Peter Lohse of InnoCentive, we found these answers:
Radical innovations often happen at the intersections of disciplines. In fact, the more diverse the problem-solving population, the more likely a problem is to be solved. People tend to link problems that are distant from their fields with solutions they’ve encountered in their own work.
A pharmaceutical firm’s researchers were stumped, for instance, by the unexpected results they encountered from a toxicology test in a drug study, even after consulting with toxicologists inside and outside the company. After being broadcast by InnoCentive, the puzzle was solved by a scientist with a PhD in protein crystallography who didn’t normally encounter toxicology problems but was able to apply methods common in her field. In another case, an aerospace physicist, a small-agribusiness owner, a specialist in transdermal drug delivery, and an industrial scientist came up with entirely unique solutions to a problem in polymer science.
Our analysis shows that prize money is important in motivating individuals to participate—people expect financial rewards for solving corporations’ problems, and, indeed, firms must pay for solutions in order to retain the IP rights to them. But the enjoyment of taking on a novel problem is a bigger draw: We found no significant correlation between the size of the prize and a problem’s likelihood of being solved.
Scientists and engineers inside the company are critically important in determining which problems should be broadcast and which potential solutions are best. And they are needed to help implement the solutions in products.
It’s also possible, theoretically, to post problems internally. Some large corporations may be heterogeneous enough to include significant numbers of John Harrisons. Presumably, firms could use our research as a guideline, broadcasting problems to the most diverse possible population, offering prizes but emphasizing the fun of the problem-solving process, and reassuring R&D staffs that their jobs are not in jeopardy. We are planning to run experiments in which we broadcast a problem both inside and outside a company and compare the results. We hope to find ways in which organizations can create successful innovations by reaching across traditional organizational silos.
Studies indicate that companies shouldn’t waste resources vainly looking for the right people to solve some of their trickiest problems. It’s more effective to encourage a diverse group of people outside the company, or the discipline, to seek innovative solutions. Individuals capable of finding solutions often do exist, and they’re often willing to invest the necessary hours. The solvers in our study reported spending, on average, about two weeks creating their solutions. If people are excited by the challenge, they can find the time.
Karim R. Lakhani is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration and the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Fellow at Harvard Business School and the founder and codirector of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard. He is a coauthor (with Marco Iansiti) of the book Competing in the Age of AI (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020).
Lars Bo Jeppesen (lbj.ivs@cbs.dk), an assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School, in Denmark, is the director of its Danish User-Centered Innovation Lab.
Getting Unusual Suspects to Solve R&D Puzzles
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