While we believe that Collaborative Innovation is a process that can be applied to any situation, we have found that it really requires a serious commitment on the part of a person or a team to be successful with this approach. It takes energy, trust, steadfastness and belief to truly employ this approach. As we listened to other individuals and organizations that have employed Collaborative Innovation successfully, one commonality stood out. The process was used because there was a break-down or serious challenge of some kind that had to be resolved if an important goal was to be achieved or a disaster averted. That drove the commitment to using Collaborative Innovation. If that commitment was strong enough to see it through, a breakthrough was achieved.

So why doesn’t everyone use it? There seems to be a few principles and tenets that are at the heart of Collaborative Innovation and we can confirm many of these from observations in our workshops and projects. Six stand out and seem to be prerequisites for Collaborative Innovation.