Co-Creating Tomorrow: The Power of Community in Enterprise Innovation

The Innovation Advantage Competitors Can't Copy

Key characteristics of community-based innovation ecosystems, a portfolio of six modes orchestrated as one system, and profiles of eleven programs from P&G to LEGO.

Every business has to innovate, and none can do it alone. The richest source of insight, validation, and signals from the future is the extended ecosystem already around you: customers, partners, startups, and employees. I've launched dozens of community-based innovation programs, including the pioneering Dell IdeaStorm, and since 2015 Structure3C has studied more than 200 corporate innovation efforts to find what actually works.

The programs that work treat innovation as one connected system rather than a scattered set of idea boards, labs, and venture funds. Ideas surface in community channels, get validated in labs and betas, and mature into ventures and partnerships, each mode feeding the next. The job that holds it together is orchestration: a function whose work is connecting the portfolio and building community among the people in it.

Access to ideas was never the hard part, and it counts for less now that anyone can run a contest. What compounds is relational: developmental relationships and status ladders where participants earn recognition that travels with them across jobs, so the value follows the person and accrues to the brand over years. The eleven programs profiled here, from P&G's Connect & Develop to LEGO Ideas to AWS's Builder-to-Hero ladder, show how that advantage gets built and held.

What you get

  • The eight characteristics shared by successful community-based innovation ecosystems, with examples for each

  • The innovation ecosystem portfolio: six modes, from idea capture to corporate venture, orchestrated as one connected system

  • A map of the ecosystem, internal and external, with the Community Innovation Center as the orchestrating function

  • Profiles of eleven programs, drawn from a study of 200+ corporate innovation efforts: Adobe, Alteryx, AWS, BMW, Deutsche Telekom, LEGO, P&G, Salesforce, Siemens, Tableau, and the World Economic Forum

  • Ecosystem benefits and business impact for each, in the language of the business