The archive · Work & Ways of Doing · Strategic decision · 2006–2008
IBM's InnovationJam: 150,000 people brainstorm online — $100M funds the 10 winners
IBM opened its labs to 150,000+ employees, clients and partners in two 72-hour online jams, then committed $100M to ten ideas.
IBM
What it had to solve
IBM's labs produced breakthrough research, but turning ideas into new businesses was slow and internal ideas rarely escaped the hierarchy. CEO Sam Palmisano wanted a bigger, faster idea funnel — so he opened the process beyond employees.
How it works
InnovationJam was an experiment in collaborative innovation run by IBM in 2006 — billed as the largest online brainstorming session ever. CEO Sam Palmisano wanted ideas that could become real businesses, and he opened the process far beyond IBM's own walls.
Across two 72-hour sessions in July and September, more than 150,000 people from 104 countries took part: IBM employees, their family members, universities, business partners and clients from 67 companies. Participants explored IBM's most advanced Research technologies and posted more than 46,000 ideas on their real-world applications.
IBM winnowed the ideas with analytical software and a second jam in which participants voted and refined the proposals. The list was eventually reduced to ten initiatives. On 14 November 2006, speaking at a Beijing town hall before more than 6,000 employees, Palmisano announced the company would invest $100 million over two years to pursue the ten new businesses — from real-time translation and smart healthcare payment systems to Big Green Innovations.
The jam built on internal online brainstorming sessions IBM had run annually since 2001, and the company later began offering jam services to outside organizations. Big Green Innovations became a business unit and helped lead into the Smarter Planet campaign of 2008, making InnovationJam a reference point for company-wide collaborative ideation.
Why it lands
- Scale changed the game: 150,000 participants produced more ideas in days than R&D could alone.
- Opening IBM's 'crown jewels' — its Research portfolio — gave outsiders something concrete to think with.
- The two-round design, generate then vote, combined divergent thinking with disciplined filtering.
- Funding the ten winners made the jam credible: ideas became businesses, not just reports.
What it did
The ten funded bets ranged from real-time translation to Big Green Innovations, which grew into a business unit and fed IBM's Smarter Planet strategy — a landmark of large-scale collaborative ideation.
What you can take
Treat ideas as a pipeline, not a privilege: open the problem to the whole organisation and beyond, make participation time-boxed and massive, then prove the process is real by funding the winners.
Since then
InnovationJam built on a series of internal 'jams' IBM had run with employees annually since 2001. The ten selected initiatives were developed with clients and universities, and some became real lines of business: Big Green Innovations, one of the ten, became a business unit and fed into IBM's Smarter Planet campaign from 2008. IBM went on to sell jam-style collaboration services to outside companies and governments, and the format became a frequently cited case of mass ideation inside a large enterprise.
Sources
- IBM Invests $100 Million in Collaborative Innovation Ideas
- IBM's chief steps into 'Second Life' for incubator launch
- Sharon Nunes
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