Open Innovation Exchange starts to buzz

Since starting the Open Innovation Exchange a couple of days ago we've had a really gratifying response to our experiment in developing an open source bid for a £1.2 million Government contract. The aim is two-fold: first, to create an exception proposal for ways in which nonprofit can share knowledge, and improve public service delivery. Secondly, to demonstrate that it is possible to collaborate in a competitive situation, and so improve upon public procure processes. As I wrote previously:

The difficulty in tendering for complex and challenging projects is that you know your proposals may well turn out to be inadequate because there's no way of figuring out in advance  what will work. Ideally the solutions have to be worked out with those who are "the problem". But if you do go in with a proposal full of co-creation workshops with stakeholders, there's a danger you will be seen as fuzzy. It's all too easy to end up either in tacit collusion between consultants and funders to do something rather inadequate, or acrimonious disputes about failure to "deliver".

Quite a few people seems to agree, and are blogging and commenting on the site with enthusiasm. If you have a moment, do take a look, and join in. Simon Berry has put together a first model for our proposal, and will shortly be posting the work packages that will deliver this. We are exploring collaboration with a number of people and organisation, and would welcome more.  The site seems to be providing a further benefit - a space to talk about the general issues of collaboration, knowledge sharing, process evaluation and more. That's another lesson - if you open up, good stuff happens.

Technorati Tags: innovation, knowledgesharing, nonprofit, openinex

Comments

[Simon Berry]

Thanks for this item David - just to let you know that the draft workpackages you mentioned have now been posted: http://www.innovationexchange.net/enough_of_the_theory

And other interesting stuff from innovators: http://www.innovationexchange.net/unique_network_application_of_model

Simon