Peer-To-Peer Innovation Networks

If we want change to be systemic, we need to engage people across multiple levels, from influencing and involving many, to co-creating with some. The "Engagement Staircase" from Russ Gaskin (CoCreative) and Akash Bhalerao (Ashoka) is a really helpful, research-informed framework for thinking about who we need to engage and how. Their core premise is that engagement is not a single act. It exists on a spectrum of levels, from communicating to many, through consulting, involving, and collaborating, to co-creating with a smaller core. Each step represents a progressively deeper level of stakeholder participation, ownership and shared power. In health and care, that tends to mean a lot of communication and consultation, and not enough collaboration and co-creation. We often inform people about change. We ask for their views. We call it engagement. But informing is the bottom step of the staircase, and consulting, however well-designed, still positions the leader as the one who decides. Working at higher levels of engagement requires a different kind of change leadership capacity. Co-creation is likely to mean relinquishing control over outcomes. Collaboration requires an ongoing investment in relationships, not just in on-off tasks. Most change leadership development is better at building lower-level engagement skills than upper-level ones. In our sector, there is a big push towards “co-production” or “co-creation” which is a positive thing. However, It is also problematic to think that we need to co-create with a lot of people. The higher up the staircase, the fewer people are involved, and that's by design. We communicate to many; we co-create with some. We have to be intentional about this distribution. The risk is trying to get everyone to the top step, or, just as problematic, keeping everyone at the bottom. Both are strategic errors. We should seek to work across all five levels simultaneously. It’s about holding large-scale awareness and influence across a wide network while nurturing a smaller network of co-creators who are deeply invested in the work. This requires thinking about engagement like a portfolio, mapping who needs to be where on the staircase, and actively managing upward movement over time. There is also an equity dimension. Who gets invited to collaborate and co-create? In too many change initiatives, the higher levels of engagement get reserved for those who already hold formal power or existing relationships with the change leader. Creating the conditions for systemic change means actively seeking out people whose experience is closest to the problem, even when that requires bridging structural divides. We might treat the Engagement Staircase as a mirror - reflecting on which levels we are working at, with whom, and what it would take to move the right people to higher levels of ownership of the change. The article: https://lnkd.in/eaDX8z5p. It has links to some great resources.

Skill Development is Broken. Here's How to Fix It. A client once ran a leadership training for a mid-sized manufacturing company. The participants were engaged, took notes, and seemed enthusiastic. One month later? Less than 10% remembered or applied what they learned. This isn’t their fault. It’s a system problem. 📌 Here’s what doesn’t work: ❌ A one-day workshop with no reinforcement. ❌ Generic training that doesn’t match real-world challenges. ❌ Passive content with no accountability for application. 🚀 So when they came to us, here is what we did instead: ✔️ Shifted from one-time sessions to learning nudges delivered over months. ✔️ Created scenario-based microlearning, where managers had to solve real workplace challenges. ✔️ Integrated peer coaching, so learning became part of their daily routine. 🔥 The result? ✅ 15% of managers applied new skills within 6 months. ✅ Teams reported faster conflict resolution and better decision-making. ✅ The company saved thousands in lost productivity from ineffective leadership. 💡 What’s the best (or worst) training experience you’ve had? Drop a comment! 👇

🌐 Interdisciplinary Research & Complex Problems 🌐 The international issues we face today are rarely contained within neat disciplinary or sectoral boundaries. Climate change, conflict, digital governance, pandemics, migration—all of these are complex, interconnected, and global. That’s why interdisciplinary research matters so much. No single field can offer the full picture. 🔬 Climate change requires climate science, economics, political science, and social psychology to understand not only the data but also how societies and governments respond. 💻 Digital governance needs technologists, ethicists, lawyers, and policymakers working together to address both the innovation and the risks of AI, cyber security, and data flows. 🕊️ Peacebuilding and conflict resolution draw on history, sociology, law, and diplomacy—because conflicts aren’t just political, they’re social, cultural, and deeply human. What unites these examples is that international problems demand international thinking, but also interdisciplinary collaboration. By weaving knowledge across fields, we gain a clearer picture of the challenges—and more innovative, workable solutions. 💡 In the end, interdisciplinary research isn’t a “nice to have” for global affairs. It’s a necessity. #Interdisciplinary #GlobalChallenges #ResearchImpact #InternationalRelations #Collaboration

Most training fails for one simple reason: it’s designed for consumption, not change. We know from behavioural science that lasting change depends on frequency, feedback, and follow-through. So you just don’t form a new habit by attending a workshop and hoping for the best - you form it by practising it, reflecting on it, and repeating it in the context of your work. That’s why at Peerpod we use what we call a Learning Sprint. A Learning Sprint is a short, high-intensity burst of applied learning that blends social accountability with behavioural design to make new habits stick. Each Learning Sprint combines the following to fuel real change: 🔵 Live peer sessions - The sprint kicks off with a 60 minute session facilitated by an expert coach who introduces the tools and context, and creates a space where learners can apply new tools to real challenges and exchange feedback. 🔵 Micro-assignments - At the end of every session, learners are instructed to pursue up to 1-3 simple job relevant experiments they can work on between sessions - that help turn insight into behaviour. 🔵 Accountability buddies - For every programme, learners are equipped a buddy to work with on their micro-assignments outside of the session - creating social pressure and support for putting it into practice. 🔵 Digital nudges - At regular intervals between sessions, learners receive timely prompts via email - offering reconnections to the key lessons, opportunities for reflection, reminders of their micro-assignments, or direction to new resources to deepen their understanding and practice. All of this is done in a way to not only fuel behaviour change, but in turn respect the time, energy and attention of the learners too. And it's not just theory - it really works. Having recently analysed over 200 hours of learning sprints, the numbers speak for themselves: 💥 A 44-point uplift in learner capability from before to directly after the programme is completed (50 % → 94 %) 💥 95 % of managers observed sustained behavioural change in learners three months post programme completion (up from 74% at programme completion) 💥 74 % of learners had not just applied what they learned - but had also seen an immediate impact on performance - either their own or of others. Real learning is not a one off event. Learning Sprints create the system for habit formation - where reflection, repetition, and reinforcement combine to drive measurable behaviour change. #HighPerformance #BehaviourChange #PeerLearning

Last night the Founder/CEO of a Series A hyper-growth startup called me and asked why his salespeople aren't getting better. It took 1 minute to diagnose. I don't care how much training your VP Sales or Sales Trainer provide to the team, there's one thing that's always most important, yet often missed. That's Peer-to-Peer training (I call it P2P for short). P2P training should become your greatest knowledge sharing practice on a weekly basis. This makes sense when you get to the point of scale where you have top reps on the team who are crushing it. At a certain point they'll ultimately know more than your VP Sales or even trainer, because they're on the front lines every day. --- Here's how it works (super simple): 1. Schedule weekly team meetings that have only one item on the agenda; Peer-to-Peer training in open dialogue format 2. VP Sales, Director, Manager, or Trainer should host the session but the real magic is coming from the team 3. Everyone prepares in advance by bringing 1-3 scenarios to the table that they either need help with (or) want to teach to the team 4. Each rep shares their scenario (describes it, or plays a video, or shows the email dialogue) and either teaches the team what worked (or) asks the team what they would do in this situation 5. An open dialogue takes place, some debating, and eventually some consensus (if no team consensus, the leader provides it) 6. The VP Sales (or whoever runs the meeting) documents the agreed upon best practices and distributes to the team afterwards by updating scripts, objection playbooks, etc. --- By taking a proactive approach to facilitating P2P conversations each week you enable a massive amount of knowledge sharing that otherwise wouldn't happen. By requiring everyone to bring 1-3 scenarios to the table you push salespeople who would otherwise be less inclined to ask for help (or offer it) and the culture of the team becomes one of growing and learning together. As a sales leader, you'll be absolutely shocked at how productive these sessions become and how much YOU actually learn from your team. Don't just wait for questions to come to you... you have to facilitate these conversations on a regular basis. This is EVEN MORE important for remote teams who don't have the luxury of asking the person sitting next to them for help. How many of you have participated in sessions like this? If not... suggest it to your leader today. It's the one team meeting that's actually worth having on the calendar.

How do organizations integrate knowledge and technology to develop AI-based solutions in healthcare? Together with Grzegorz Leszczyński, Piotr Gaczek, and Jędrzej Kociński we explored this question in our latest paper "Integration of Knowledge and Technology in the Co-production of AI-based Solutions for the Healthcare Sector", published in the Central European Management Journal. What did we examine? ✅ The process of integrating medical knowledge into AI-based healthcare solutions, ✅ The role of interdisciplinary collaboration in AI co-production, ✅ How AI can bridge the gap between tacit medical expertise and digital innovation. Key take-aways from our research: ➡️ AI-based healthcare solutions require deep collaboration between medical experts, IT specialists, and designers to translate tacit knowledge into actionable AI insights. ➡️ The success of AI in medical applications depends on balancing predictive accuracy with user experience and trust. ➡️ Regulatory constraints shape AI’s role in healthcare—once certified, AI models cannot continue self-learning, impacting their adaptability. Practical implications for healthcare innovation: 🔹 Developing tools to transform expert medical knowledge into structured AI-ready data, 🔹 Involving interdisciplinary teams early in the AI design process, 🔹 Ensuring user-friendly interfaces that enhance doctor and patient trust in AI-based diagnostics. A huge thank you to my co-authors and to StethoMe® for providing a fascinating case study on AI-powered stethoscopes! 👉 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/dpu8p45s #AI #Healthcare #Innovation #MedicalAI #KnowledgeIntegration #CoProduction #Research #CentralEuropeanManagementJournal

I spent 3 hours stuck outside an operating theatre While waiting for my turn, I saw firsthand how critical the flow of medical consignment goods can be. Nurses were manually checking trays. A missing item meant delays. I overheard conversations about "where the laparoscopic specimen retrieval bag was last seen" became all too common. It hit me: even in high-stakes environments like surgery, inventory management today still relies heavily on manual processes and tacit knowledge. That’s why this challenge launched by DHL on IMDA’s open innovation platform to tackle inventory management of medical devices hits close to home. We’re looking for fresh, bold ideas that can:
🔹 Bring real-time visibility to consignment stock
🔹 Automate reconciliation and reduce stock-outs
🔹 Reduce admin burden 
 💡 If you’re a tech solution provider, this is an invitation to help solve this very needful challenge, which can impact health outcomes. Dive into the detailed brief here, together with >20 other challenges worth >S$2mil: https://lnkd.in/g5mge7ex IMDA PIXEL 
#OpenInnovation #HealthcareLogistics #InventoryManagement #IMDigitalArchitect #openinnovation #innovation #FromPIXELtoPossibilities 📷: I couldn’t bring my phone in, but this reflects my point of view while waiting to be wheeled in for my surgery

How can we design meaningful #interactions on digital #platforms that bring results? That was the task Dr. Anja Leckel gave herself for her final PhD paper at our RWTH Institute for Technology and Innovation Management (TIM), and together with Krithika Randhawa and myself, we worked on this. 🎉 After a long review process, the results have now been published in the JPIM Journal of Product Innovation Management (article is open access, see comments). THE PROBLEM. In digital platform ecosystems, complementors (such as solvers on #openinnovation or #crowdsourcing #platforms) play a critical role in providing fresh ideas and solutions. However, many platforms and seeker organizations (those posting challenges) overlook the non-monetary motivations and social value expectations of these contributors. But when solvers’ expectations are unmet, participation drops, the quality of submissions declines, and the platform struggles to sustain long-term engagement — even if the economic incentives (prizes, contracts) are attractive. OUR FINDINGS. Based on a study with 842 innovation professionals and qualitative follow-ups, we identified four key interaction design features that matter most to solvers: 1️⃣ Two-way communication. Solvers value open, direct communication with seekers. They want access to clarify challenges, discuss ideas, and feel involved — not just submit into a black box. 2️⃣ Team-based collaboration. Solvers prefer opportunities to work in small teams rather than only as individuals or in uncontrolled mass collaborations. This creates social benefits, shared learning, and better solutions. 3️⃣ Involvement in solution pre-selection. Solvers appreciate participating in shortlisting or having transparency in how decisions are made. This boosts trust and legitimacy. 4️⃣ Individualized or semi-personalized feedback. Solvers deeply value feedback, even if they don’t win. Knowing why their submission succeeded or failed helps them improve, stay engaged, and derive learning and recognition benefits. Seekers (and platform owners) should ... ✅ Design for social exchange, not just transactions. Solvers want to capture value beyond money — through learning, relationships, recognition, and legitimacy. ✅ Educate seeker-side managers., who play a crucial role in shaping solver interactions. Find individuals with high social trust and openness, as they are more willing to engage meaningfully with solvers. ✅ Rethink current platform practices. Today, most platforms underdeliver on two-way communication, team-based collaboration, and solver feedback. Bridging these gaps offers a competitive advantage. 💡 CONCLUSION. Complementors (solvers) are not just prize-seekers; they are partners in co-creation who care about how they are engaged, recognized, and developed. Platforms and seekers that have adequate social exchange mechanisms will outperform those that treat solver participation as a mere transaction.

8 simple steps for a leader to crowdsource ideas from their team. As a CS leader, everyone's looking at you for answers. Especially, your team. But sometimes, you might just not have the solution 🤷♂️ But guess what? It's not your job to HAVE all the answers. It is, however, your job to FIND/SOURCE it from others. And I think there is no other source better than your team 💡Enter the "𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐚 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥" 💡 Here is how it works: 1️⃣ 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝. First, share your goal and lay out the problems you as a leader are aware of. 2️⃣ 𝐔𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬/𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬. Ask your team to list out unknown or hidden challenges. 3️⃣ 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐫. Split into small groups. Ideally, each group has even number of members. 4️⃣ 𝐑𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐝-𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧. Each member gets 3 minutes to write three solutions that address the know and unknown challenges. It's a brainstorming blitz! ⏱️. Round 1: The first member lists out their 3 ideas. 5️⃣ 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐨𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐡. This is where the 𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐡𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 comes in. The next person can either add to the existing ideas or add their unique solution. This is team thinking on steroids. 6️⃣ 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭. After everyone's had their say, have the group pick the top 6 ideas. It's about synthesizing the ideas to come up with the best ideas. 7️⃣ 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐯𝐬. 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭. Place ideas on the effort-impact index. 8️⃣ 𝐋𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐦𝐚𝐩. Ask the team to sort these ideas into short (0-3 months), mid (3-6 months), and long-term (6+ months) plans. 💥 Voila, your blueprint to addressing your challenge. → This method doesn't just find solutions; it builds a bridge from problems to results with 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞'𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐩𝐮𝐭. Because when ideas come from the team, they're embraced with open arms and executed with passion. Remember, the magic happens when 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬. So, the next time you're staring down a challenge, remember: you've got a whole team of wizards ready to conjure up solutions. 💫 Feeling intrigued? Drop me a DM happy to share how to facilitate such a session. What framework/strategy do you use to get creative with problem-solving or idea-gathering with your team as a leader? ------------------------------------------- Think this is valuable for other CS folks? Hit "Repost" ⬇️ #customersuccess #saas #startups #careercoaching  #CS #CSM #SuccessHacks #customersuccessmanager #lessonsfromanewvp

Open challenges had their moment. Around 2018–2021, every corporate innovation team was running them. Big launch event, slick landing page, pitch sessions, internal excitement, and a lot of press coverage to go along with it. Then reality hit, and it hit hard. The applications were mostly noise, the evaluation process collapsed under volume, and the winning startup rarely got beyond a pilot. The business unit that was supposed to actually buy the solution? They were never really in the room to begin with. So open challenges quietly disappeared from most corporate innovation roadmaps, written off as another nice idea that looked better on paper than in practice. Now however, I see them coming back and that revival is actually justified. The core value was never broken. Open challenges still work as a marketing tool. Externally, they signal that your company is serious about working with startups, and internally, they create business unit buy-in before a solution even exists. That second part is more valuable than most people give it credit for. Teams running them successfully thus are combining two approaches that reinforce each other. 1) The first is the classic pull model, where you post the challenge and let startups find their way to you. 2) The second is an active push layer, where you proactively identify the 10–15 companies that best fit your problem statement and invite them to apply directly. That second part is the unlock. Instead of drowning in 300 mediocre submissions and spending weeks triaging noise, you’re curating a high-quality shortlist before the process even starts and the signal-to-noise ratio flips completely. 👉 Open challenges as the marketing vehicle, with active sourcing as the engine underneath. I see that combination becoming a standard part of the corporate innovation toolkit in 2026. The tool was never broken. The process around it was. How do you see them? Let’s discuss in the comments 👍