User-centric technologies, crowd-sourcing, shared working practices: next-generation collaboration tools such as these may be in their infancy, but they will change the business of business forever.

At its high-profile annual conference in Davos last week, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its Technology Pioneers report, showcasing companies exploiting the latest technical capabilities in biotechnology, energy and IT. The power of collaboration was the central theme.

“The work undertaken by these companies holds the promise of significantly affecting the way business and society operate,” said WEF managing director Andre Schneider.

“Each innovation is another step in society’s attempt to harness, adapt and use technology to change and improve our world.”

WEF’s main argument is that the internet creates an almost unimaginably vast source of innovation. It also enables different types of products and services, creates giant data sets and gives firms access to the skills and ideas of enthusiasts and volunteers across the world.

What is not yet clear is how businesses can make the most of such potential.
Of the three UK firms included in the report’s 39-strong list of pioneers, two are technology companies.

One is Garlik, an online identity tracking and management service. The other is Imaginatik, one of the first companies to explore the potential for corporate problem solving using collaborative software tools.

Other notable inclusions are:

- The Wikimedia Foundation, whose projects include the multi-sourced online encyclopaedia site, Wikipedia.
- Polar Rose, a joint initiative from universities in Poland and Sweden that analyses digital photos. By helping its software to identify people, the project’s user base will support a new search engine for finding online images.
- AdMob, a US startup, creating a marketplace for buying and selling mobile web advertising. It manages 1.6 billion ads, allowing content producers to target users in more than 160 countries.

Collaborative working is not a new idea. Focus groups have used it for many decades, and the old adage that “many hands make light work” has been around for centuries.

But consumer access to sophisticated technology and the internet is taking the concept to an unprecedented scale.

And with traditional business models shifting to exploit customer participation, the industry is in an “innovation Big Bang”, according to Matt Bross, chief technology officer at BT, which sponsors the Technology Pioneers report.

“The power in a site such as eBay comes less from algorithms and computers, than it does from people and the objects they sell,” said Bross. “Facebook is powerful because of the sheer number of users it has.”

The changing environment requires a flexible approach from companies.
“The innovation genie is out of the bottle globally, so there has to be a fundamental move from closed models to open ones,” said Bross.

“You have to seek innovation around the planet, wherever it is, and use it together with the best men and women within your organisation.”

But not everyone is convinced that user-centric technology is all for good. There are major pitfalls in relying on the input of many individuals, according to London School of Economics professor of information systems Ian Angell.

“Such projects are not controllable,” he said. “The idea that someone can manipulate them over the long term, to their own ends, is naïve.”

User-centric systems undoubtedly can serve a purpose, but firms may be wise to take an even-handed approach.

“The best that business leaders can hope to do is to steer the course of events,” said Angell. “Build up a portfolio of approaches, watch to see which ones are successful, and stop the moment it appears they are failing.”

The inherent complexity of crowd-sourcing and collaboration can also be a significant hurdle, said Imaginatik chief executive Mark Turrell.

“Communication problems are tricky enough when you are working with six or seven people that you know well,” he said.

“When you scale the problem up to 1000 people, where 30 of them work for you and the others are based in different countries and departments, you get a lot of complex issues.”