IBM has been organizing these jam things for the past couple years. I’m participating in this year’s global innovation jam, and it’s been an interesting experience so far.

My first reaction was similar to a comment I saw on Digg. If IBM wants my innovative ideas, they can pay for them. Just like any other client. No – they’re not just any other client… they’re IBM! They can damn well afford it.

I reflected on this and realized that maybe I was missing the point (my reader will confirm that sometimes I do). I’ve told several clients in the past that ideas are free. Ideas should be free. Yes, if you hire me you’ll get more exposure to my ideas, and I’ll be billing you with the understanding that my ideas generate value for your business. But ultimately selling ideas is not my business. I like it when ideas are open and free.

That was my second reaction; I like free ideas, so I should be generous and share my ideas with IBM.

My third reaction was to assemble a team of market minded eco-freaks and to storm IBM’s happy chat with a left wing agenda. I went so far as to email some of my more radical business friends, and we shared an email or two about how we might make an impact. It’d be a great accomplishment to influence IBM to think differently about their role in the world, right? Well, turns out that was a pretty serious misconsception too.

Fortunately I decided to skip any disruptive organizing and just login and give the jam some honest participation. If they want to hang out, smoke herbs, and sing old dead tunes, I can roll with that. And you know, the early results haven’t been that amazing. They haven’t been bad either. Not a single djembe in the house.

Over the course of the next couple days I’ll be reflecting more on the experience. Maybe I’ll post some of the writing that I’ve been posting in there.

My current feeling is that there’s a time and a place for free ideas, free collaboration, free anything. IBM obviously isn’t making the discussion free; it’s closed to the public at large. They’re haven’t allowed me to include Plan Resonate on their list of large scale multinational participants; I missed the deadline or whatever. It’s clearly not a free for all.

The state of the ideas seem to reflect that it isn’t an open conversation. No offense IBM’ers, I think you’re great. I’ve been reading a lot of sincere and thoughful ideas in there, and they’ve helped me better formulate some of my own ideas. But so far I haven’t seen much of anything on the level of what’s taking place every minute in the blogosphere.

The jam is not RSS enabled. The jam doesn’t promote linking. No images. No file attachments. Linear. Very low chaos to coordination ratio. Maybe there’s some kind of traffic jam going on, but the jam’s server has been considerably less than fast consistently slow. Some of the ideas and language in the jam are ok, and more are middle of the road. Some of the stuff is pretty cool too.

If the blogosphere is an echo-chamber, at least it’s a great big open one. In contrast, there have been moments when the innovation jam reads like a small, sound proofed box. Sort of like a basement closet, where I once hung the walls with green shag carpeting so I could silently practice the electric guitar. The room was stuffy and it stank like the off-gassing of cheap petro-chem synthetic fibers. At it’s worst, the innovation jam is a little like that basement closet.

At it’s best the innovation jam is a fun chat with a lot of smart people from all over the world. I’m currently discussing water quality economics with someone from India, and the politics of bicycling with someone in Germany. I know there’s visionary potential in there.

In terms of opening up the discussion, the participants creating content in the jam could obviously participate in the blogosphere, and if they don’t already, I hope they will. Something makes me think they don’t/won’t. Perhaps it’s that this is an opportunity for the internal people at IBM to show off a little. Most of the participants are IBM’ers. More importantly, it’s a closed, safe environment where they can share their thoughts without feeling the pressure of speaking on behalf of IBM. This is a good thing, typos and misspellings and all. They should have that space. Ideas should be shared.

Not everyone should feel the need to spout off on a blog…

IBM clearly believes in the value of distributed strategy making. Maybe this is part of a bottoms-up approach. You can read more about IBM’s strategies on Irving Wladawsky-Berger’s blog. He’s IBM’s Vice President of Technical Strategy and Innovation. I first read about him this morning via Silicon Valley Watcher (thanks Tom). Tom is interviewing Wladawsky-Berger today. I wonder if they’ll talk about the innovation jam?

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UPDATE: IBM reports that 53,000 participants from over 70 countries created 37,000 posts in the 72 hour phase 1 of the jam. No hanging out, no herbs, no dead covers. Impressive numbers. I’m totally bringing my hacky sack to phase 2.
Click here for Foremski’s most recent interview with Wladawski-Berger. [tags]IBM, Innovation Jam, Collaboration, Plan Resonate[/tags]