IBM’s Global CEO study for 2006, ‘Expanding the Innovation horizon’, focuses (it follows..) on innovation. Building on interviews with 76 CEOs across the globe they conclude that today collaborative innovation is that involves actors outside of the firm or organization is indispensable. Furthermore, ,’business partners and customers were cited as the  top sources of innovative ideas while research and development (R&D) fell much lower on this list’ .

The main challenge for the future is thus to involve your stake-holders in extended networks of cooperation; to ‘ collaborate on a massive, geography-defying scale to open up a world of possibilities’  and to ‘force an outside look, every time,  Push the organization to work with outsiders more, making it first systematic and then part of your culture. ‘

Many of the CEOs interviewed stated that their companies were seriously working with strategies to leverage the innovative potential of stake-holders.  In today’s global, networked and info-tech-saturated (to use a couple of clichés) economy, immaterial productivity has been thoroughly socialized, to quote Sam Palmisano,
Chairman, President and CEo of IBM : ‘ The nature of innovation - the inherent definition of innovation- has changed today from what it was in the past. It’s no longer individuals toiling in a laboratory, coming up with some great invention. It’s not an individual . It’s individuals. It’s multidisciplinary. It’s global. It’s collective.’

download the whole report here