What does gossip and open innovation have in common?

I am like most people, I think, when it comes to taking in information. I hear new bits of information–via newspapers, journals, blogs, AP iPhone app, tweet, etc…–which generates a “ping” (that is the sound of the information banging around in my head and then being filed). Then I hear another bit of information and tie a virtual string to the new and old information. This sounds like a “pong.” Sometimes I am cognitively aware as to why my mind connected the bits together and other times I am not.

Over the past several months, my mind has tied the words “gossip” and “open innovation.” I recently deciphered why my mind made the ties. The ties could be as weak a spider’s web or as strong as a sailor’s knotted ladder. As a reader, you make your own call. First, I will take you down my mind path then I will reveal what I discovered as the common thread.

I am interested in the psychology of social networking and the like, so I was drawn to an article in the Oct/Nov 2008 issue of Scientific American Mind titled, The Science of Gossip: Why you can’t stop yourself. It is a great article, by the social psychologist, Professor Frank T. McAndrew (Knox College), discussing the basis for gossip as an important bonder for social groups, as well as a necessity for the ability to thrive in prehistoric environments. Think about it, if there was not someone gossiping (sharing knowledge) about that bright red poisonous plant, our lives could be very different now. McAndrew also suggests that gossip can also be used to support unwritten rules in a group or society, in essence a creating social laws that are enforced by others.

You are likely thinking “All well and good for our ancestors, what does it have to do with me and my life?” Here is how gossip translates to knowledge sharing, per McAndrews, “Successful gossip is about being a good team player and sharing key information with others in a way that will not be perceived as self-serving… .” I think this sounds like sharing lessons, sharing successes, and sharing how-tos, all necessary to creating a successful work environment, something NASA knows about. Just in case you are thinking about “rumors” verse “gossip,” the article presents definitions that discerns the two–gossip shares factual information; a rumor shares non-factual information.

The next information bit tied came from my reading of this article in Psychology Today, March 2, 2009, How “Open” Should Innovation Be?: The enabling factors that can transform open innovation at your company, by Moses Ma. Ma makes some good points about what open innovation is and is not which I think are very constructive uses for NASA. Ma, says that “…openness in innovation isn’t about opening the kimono to potential competitors or about irrevocably committing to the open source model… it’s really about three enabling factors that can transform the collaborative process at your company, especially around innovation.”

• “First, it’s about increasing the diffusion of innovation by making both internal and external corporate boundaries more porous.” Ma says open innovation is about sharing information peer-to-peer, top-down, bottom-up, and internal to external. In other words, “360 degree innovation.”
• “Second, it’s about developing more refined non-binary trust models that let you digitize the paperwork of innovation.” Ma suggests that by “digitizing innovation,” via an “electronic IP policy server” you can create an “enterprise social extranet” that allows “you to more reliably locate partners you can trust and who won’t let you down.”
• “And third, it’s about creating open standards for automating the innovation process just like Obama hopes to do with health records.” After first having standards on your data bases and content management systems, you can then begin to automate processes for innovation, and then you can connect to other sources of information push content to your social extranet, thereby enabling open innovation with your trusted partners.

Perhaps you are beginning to see the thread between gossip and open innovation. Both are methods of communication whose use and benefits are frequently misunderstood, or should I say overlooked. Humans have am innate need to share knowledge (AKA wisdom). Because most of us no longer need to worry about basic survival needs (I am thinking about how most US lives vs. the poorest parts of the world), what we share via gossip has changed over the years of human existence. Now we gossip (share knowledge) about information that makes our personal and work lives easier, like saving time via recommendations, and making a process or event more efficient via lessons shared. Even more recently, we learned to gossip even quicker and more efficiently via the onslaught of online communication tools. “Word-of-mouth” is the term that is frequently used today to refer to the passing of information person to person, thus replacing the term “gossip.”

Open innovation is another method to share information that can bring fright or delight. The Moses Ma article on open innovation really brought home for me, practical implementation ideas that can elicit a mind-shift about open innovation activities. In many ways, NASA gets caught, like many Federal Agencies, when it comes to the type and nature of information pasted internally and externally. I know there are many documented regulations and policies outlining information sharing and communication. Those should always be followed.

Of the “okay-to-discuss” information, I believe that NASA is working on some of the suggestions presented by Ma. I can think of the Extranet site that the knowledge management group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was working on while I was there; Chris Kemp, CIO at NASA’s Ames Research Center, is working on the Nebula project which could lead to automated processes for innovation; and finally related to 360 degree innovation, there was one pilot/research study on Agency-wide social networking (NASAsphere, see other blog posts about the project) showing the potential use and power of social networking in NASA, and there is currently released Spacebook for employees and is just getting started.

These are my thoughts. What are your thoughts about knowledge sharing via gossip and/or open innovation? Do you know of other examples where NASA is using open innovation? Do you have any NASA examples where you heard something via word-of-mouth and it saved you time or keep you from a mistake? Please share.