‘Jam’ begins to pay off

It’s one thing to get thousands of people together to brainstorm and quite another to translate what came out of it into profitable business. IBM’s, rather the largest ever innovation exercise, that started in 2001, and a follow up jam session in 2006 to translate the outcome into business ideas, seems to b paying off.

In an article titled ‘An Inside View of IBM's Innovation Jam’ Osvald M. Bjelland, chairman and founder of Xyntéo Ltd and Robert Chapman Wood, professor of strategic management at San José State University, in the latest issue of MIT Sloan Review, say that “The Jam was successful to a considerable degree. It uncovered, solved problems in and mobilized support for substantial new ways of using IBM technology.” The process involved 150,000 IBM employees, family members, business partners, clients (from 67 companies) and university researchers. Participants Jammed from 104 countries, and conversations continued 24 hours a day. Incidentally, "Jam" was IBM's term for a "massively parallel conference" online.

Here’s a list of businesses to come out of the Jam process:

Smart Health Care Payment Systems: Overhauling health care payment and management systems through the use of small personal devices (such as smart cards) that will automatically trigger financial transactions, the processing of insurance claims and the updating of electronic health records. This business has "graduated" from the in cubator stage, and its products are now part of the IBM Healthcare Industry Solutions product offering.

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