From the October 16 Business Week: Innovation at BMW. Note the emphasis on informal networks, which have worked quite well for them. The 'lunch exchange' idea reminds me of a method touted by the Santa Fe Institute, having folks from many disciplines interact informally over lunch. Saw this in operation during several visits, though it was unclear it could scale.
"The Secret of BMW's Success
BMW's reputation for innovation can be traced to its equally innovative lateral management techniques
At 4:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, when most German workers have long departed for the weekend, the mini-cafés sprinkled throughout BMW's sprawling R&D center in Munich are jammed with engineers, designers, and marketing managers deliberating so intently it's hard to hear above the din. Even the cappuccino machine is running on empty. It's an atmosphere far more Silicon Valley than Detroit.
"At lunch and breaks everyone is discussing ideas and projects all the time. It's somewhat manic. But it makes things move faster," says BMW chief designer Adrian van Hooydonk. The intense employee buzz at BMW is hot management theory in action. Top consultants and academics say the kind of informal networks that flourish at BMW and the noise and borderline chaos they engender in big organizations are vital for innovation--especially in companies where knowledge sits in the brains of tens of thousands of workers and not in a computer server. Melding that brain power, they say, is essential to unleashing the best ideas. .... "
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