Does collaboration hurt a retailer's ability to innovate?

I had an interesting week talking with retailers that are using collaboration tools.  I'm not going to name names in order to protect my sources (their innocence or guilt is for you to decide), but what I found was extraordinary.

Each one of the retailers that I talked to (companies we all recognize) are using multiple collaboration, idea management and social tools to communicate with their employees and customers.  I don't mean one tool for customers and another for employees, I mean that they are using multiple tools for each!

I think we all know why.  I argued in my earlier post, "Does the Pace of Retail Preclude Innovation?" that the pace of retail retards innovation because business unit leaders can't look beyond this quarter's results. While that may be true, I also think that another major challenge retailers have when it comes to creating a healthy, innovative culture is the fact that they operate in silos.

Now the buiness silo has its merits.  It provides focus, creates experts, teams can form, goals can be set.  Good stuff, right?  Now throw the quarterly Wall Street number into the mix.  They whole team works together for a common goal!  That's good, right?  Of course it is.  Good department heads that have made this formula work are usually rewarded with more budget (and bonuses) to make themselves and their teams more successful.  Funds they spend on themselves, or jealously guard for a rainy day.  No sharing allowed, because they paid for it with their own budget money....

Sorry, I digress.

For all of the strengths this lends to a business unit, this focus can actually hurt the overall enterprise.  Retailers always say that "retail is different". Each of the major business units, Merchandising, Marketing, Store Operations, Logistics and Information Technology, often take that attitude when they talk to their peers working in other units in their own company, and as a result, they discount their opinions because they cannot speak the right language.  So when a ground breaking technology comes around like social innovation software, that is designed to get large groups to collaborate, you know what the first thing the business units do?  They only ask the people on their team for help, and they are unwilling to extend their budget to accommodate other perspectives because it's their money.

Listen, I am not going to argue with retailers here because these silos create more opportunities for social innovation platform to be deployed, and the type of innovation that this model spawns is pretty tactical, so we can generate pretty ROI charts that show big black numbers!  In addition, when it comes to collaboration & innovation, you need to start somewhere, and the business units are a great place to get started!

Real sustained innovation, however, is about marshalling the forces of your entire organization to contribute and comment on ideas.  Without a wider perspective, departments run the risk of doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.  In most circles, that is the definition of insanity! 

Open up your processes.  You might be surprised at the results!