The Association Innovation Blog by Jeff De Cagna

T5/05: Innovation (#1 and #100)

Happy New Year from The Association Innovation Blog! I want to wish everyone who reads this blog, everyone in the association community and everyone, everywhere for that matter a very happy 2005.  I hope those of us who really care about the future of associations and who share a concern about the way things are going can find a way to work together to make 2005 a remarkable year for this extraordinarily important community of ours!  I look forward to using TAIB as a vehicle for advancing those efforts.

Before I get to the actual post, let me just add a quick plug for my 100th post to TAIB.  Tomorrow, I will have been blogging for exactly 16 months (my first post was September 2, 2003) and I am going to keep on blogging in 2005.  In fact, I hope I will spend more time writing (and recording...sorry text lovers!) this blog, because it is something that I genuinely enjoy.  Thank you all for reading and listening.  I greatly appreciate your continued support. 

I don't think anyone will be shocked by my choice of innovation as the top issue for the association community in 2005.  Perhaps the first four issues--the (impending) death of best practices, competition, new science and technology and intangibles--were actually clues designed to guide you toward this final choice.  (Hmm...am I that clever? ;>)  And I suppose it might seem like a bit of self-serving choice, since innovation is "my thing."  I might even willingly plead guilty to that charge.  But I know deep inside that this is the work we must do and that we're meant to do.  I know that in the 21st Century, associations are destined to transform the landscape of society for the better, and our only hope for seizing the initiative and setting that agenda is devoting ourselves to the whats, whys and hows of innovation today.

An observation and some opportunities...

The March 19th issue of Association Trends covers ASAE President and CEO John Graham's recent address to the Washington Nonprofit Legal and Tax Conference. According to the article, "[Graham] told the breakfast group that, by definition, assns are risk adverse: 'If they have 99% of the information they need, they have enough to send it to a committee. We need to get that decision point down near the 75% level.'"

Although I don't agree that associations are risk adverse "by definition" (I believe they make themselves risk adverse through politically-motivated and consensus-driven rather than strategic decision-making) and while I might choose a lower figure than 75% of information as a goal, I am nonetheless encouraged by John's observation about the need for association leaders to increase their risk tolerance. And as the process of shaping the new ASAE/The Center organization continues, I can see some extraordinary opportunities this new entity can leverage to help build a deeper understanding of risk in this community and to assist leaders and organizations in making innovation a priority:

+I recommend that we begin conducting a "State of Association Innovation Survey" of association CEOs around the country. It would help the innovation effort in our community immeasurably if we had some baseline data to offer association leaders as they think through the wide variety of issues--including risk--that affect innovation. It would also provide us with some insights on where to find the small pockets of innovation that must surely exist within our community.

+Last year, my company created a free and open online "idea marketplace" called the Principled Innovation Exchange. The purpose of this marketplace was to make it possible for association leaders to seek and share ideas of all kinds that might be useful in their organizations. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, this idea marketplace did not catch on as I had hoped and, at least for now, it has been discontinued. But the need for this kind of idea marketplace still exists and I am thinking that perhaps the new ASAE/The Center organization could be more successful in creating such a space for the benefit of our community. I believe that if we can increase the sharing and discussion of interesting ideas, we will encourage more action on them as well.

+I urge ASAE and The Center to create a community-wide venture capital fund to support innovation that is "open source" and collaborative. If one of the chief concerns about risk is money, then our community has a responsibility to make at least some resources available to support risk-taking on new ideas. As I see it, the basic premise for such a fund would be simple: 1) the community fund would make resources available in an amount equal to what the association is willing/able to invest to ensure risk-sharing and not risk-shifting, 2) the entirety of the innovation project being supported would have to be open for the community to view, study and learn from regardless of its eventual outcome, 3) the association receiving venture capital would be expected to "invest" back into the fund in some fashion should the idea in question generate new revenue. Of course, we would need to put other funding criteria, such as having a business plan, in place as well. The point, however, is to create another access point for funds and to propagate a shared understanding of how innovation actually happens so that other organizations can learn.

+Perhaps the simplest thing we can do, however, is to engage association CEOs, senior executives and volunteer leaders in a genuine dialogue around what risk is, what it means and how it is effectively managed and leveraged. We obviously live in a time of increased risk and our real-world focus on increased security measures, financial uncertainty and legal minefields can diminish anyone's appetite for innovation. But even in the face of these considerable challenges, innovation remains an absolute necessity for associations today and in the years to come. The question cannot be whether our organizations should take a risk, but which risks they will take to create new value for their members, customers and stakeholders.

While the jury is still out on the ASAE/The Center consolidation, there are some great opportunities out there that can broaden the rationale for it beyond the rather small goal of simply offering better programs and services. In my view, the consolidated organization should use its increased scale, resources and reach to be a force for fundamental change in the association community. It's a risk, to be sure, but then again what isn't a risk these days?

An interesting article about open source

As I mentioned in my January 8 audio post, I traveled to Los Angeles on business this weekend. On the plane to L.A., I read an interesting article by writer Tom Mueller in United's outstanding in-flight magazine, Hemispheres. The article is on open source and I wanted to extract a paragraph for our consideration:

"Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative, characterizes the difference between proprietary software and open source as that between cathedrals and bazaars. Proprietary software is written by a small, secretive caste that programs in splendid isolation, handling company protocol and new releases as reverently as Holy Writ. Open source initiatives, by contrast, are anarchic swap meets, as short on reverence and secrecy as they are long on good humor and inventive one-upsmanship. All of which give the bazaar a huge creative advantage."

This article deals specifically with software development, but Raymond's metaphor--the cathedral and the bazaar--is applicable to other contexts as well. And it raises a question worth asking about your association. Is your organization more like a cathedral, i.e., relying on a small band of highly dedicated volunteers to create most of the value that you offer to members and customers, or is it more like a bazaar, in which wide variety of players can leverage their own value creating potential by self-organizing and sharing with others? I'd love to hear some thoughts on this issue.

Audio Post: Thoughts on blogs, transparency and innovation

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The open source question...

I've been looking through some of my December magazines, and I was intrigued to discover that my friend and colleague, Scott Steen, of The Center for Association Leadership, offered some thoughts on the potential impact of open source on associations in the Ideas into Action column in this month's issue of Executive Update. Kudos to Scott for putting this issue on the table!

It's an interesting although brief article, in which Scott explores the possible application of open source to the association context. And while I agree that open source principles might be applied to what we do in associations, I actually think the greater opportunity (and, for some, threat) comes from open source totally supplanting the existing association form. Consider a quote from the article on open source published in the November 2003 issue of WIRED:

"We are at a convergent moment, when a philosophy, a strategy and a technology have aligned to unleash great innovation. Open source is powerful because it's an alternative to the status quo, another way to produce things or solve problems. And in many cases, it's a better way. Better because current methods are not fast enough, not ambitious enough, or don't take advantage of our collective creative potential."

Why would anyone, especially a member of the Millennial generation, want to be a part of a traditional, highly centralized, highly bureaucratic and very slow decision-making process, when she can be a part of a global, distributed, fast-paced creation-centered experience that endures long after the work itself is completed? Why do I need to pay dues to finance an organizational infrastructure that pushes out products when all I need to create genuine value for myself is an Internet connection, and the desire and ability to contribute to projects that are much larger and more important than I? These are critical questions that association leaders are going to have to confront soon, and there are no easy answers. In my view, the open source approach and mindset is a full frontal assault on our purported competence in creating a context for "associating," and I'm delighted that we are now challenged to consider its implications in real terms.

It's important to remember, however, that a project can be very collaborative without actually being open source. Thomas Goetz, the author of the November 2003 WIRED article, offers the following framework, "So think of [open source] as a spectrum or -- better still -- a rising diagonal line on a graph, where openness lies on one axis and collaboration on the other. The higher an effort registers both concepts, the more fully it can be considered open source." For me, this insight actually suggests that the attempt to graft open source principles onto existing association structures is a recipe for failure. Instead, associations should look at open source as a credible way to deconstruct the organizational "black space" and systematically shift projects and initiatives that are consuming staff resources into the open source-friendly "white space." Let key stakeholders (and don't read that "members" because you can't afford to limit your intellectual capacity to only those people who have paid your dues!) seize the initiative and self-organize around open source ideals: share the goal, share the work and share the result. Associations that can take these simple initial steps will be among the pioneers in the effort to innovate the typical (and faltering) association business model.

If I may, one more quote from Goetz. "As technology reduces the costs of replication and distribution to nearly nothing, the open source approach could catalyze stagnant sectors of the economy --or, better yet, create new economic sectors." Associations willing to abandon convention and embrace open source thinking may be able to place themselves at the forefront of new era of genuine innovation and increased profitability. Will we do it? The jury is still out, but at least we've engaged the discussion!

Well, after a long hiatus...

Well, it's been an extended absence from writing the blog, too long in fact. I won't bore anyone with the gory details of why I haven't been writing, except to say that it is harder than it looks. Just to get back in the swing of things, I've got a few random thoughts to share:

1. I'm wondering aloud whether or not the open source movement represents the greatest threat to the long term existence of associations, or the greatest opportunity for a 21st Century association renaissance. Thomas Goetz's article in the November 2003 issue of Wired got me thinking about this issue and I'm still sorting it out. On the one hand, in an open source world, the engine of value creation is the energy of those who are willing to organize to make things happen. On the other hand, open source only works if those involved are committed to the interdependence of the enterprise. The ideals of open source--share the goal, share the work, share the result--are at once mandates for self-organization and values that reflect the value of associating.

2. The strategic planning argument continues to move forward. The October 2003 issue of FORUM (the magazine of Association Forum of Chicagoland) included an article from association consultant Harrison Coerver, "Straight Talk on Strategic Planning." Harrison's arguments in this article are, to use a word, "interesting" but deeply flawed because they fundamentally misunderstand the depth and breadth of the threat facing associations and the need for different approaches. I have written a letter to the editor of FORUM that I hope will be published in an upcoming issue. I will post the text of that letter here, along with the article text, after the first of the year.

3. I find myself talking to a number of organizations about the knowledge issue these days. It is a critical question facing all organizations, and especially associations, which are composed of nothing more than knowledge and knowledge artifacts. The concern emerges when I hear people talk about knowledge as it if were a thing to be managed. I know, I know, we call it "knowledge management." But that is only because the term was coined and we can't take it back. The first and most important thing that every association leader must understand is that you cannot and you never will manage knowledge. You CAN create an environment in which knowledge is more easily created, shared and leveraged, but you should not underestimate the challenge of creating that kind of co-created social space.

I have a lot more I'd like to write, but I've got to move on to other things right now. I promise that I won't take a six week hiatus next time. And soon, I expect I'll begin audioblogging, which should be a great deal of fun! See ya!