Earlier this week, Netflix announced a winner in a $1 million contest designed to help the company improve its recommendation engine. While other companies shouldn't blindly mimic Netflix's specific program, they ought to step up efforts to share the innovation load as widely as possible.

Netflix announced its contest in 2006. Teams had to develop a technological solution that provided 10 percent more accurate movie recommendations than Netflix's internal engine. The challenge literally came down to the wire &#8212 as two teams provided indistinguishable results, the prize went to the team that submitted its final algorithm mere minutes before the runner-up.

There's a lot to like about Netflix's approach. It focused on a "modular" problem (that individual teams could solve independently) with "measurable" results. It provided 100 million anonymous movie ratings to contestants to help them crack the problem. Thousands of teams from around the world tried to crack the problem, with the winning team ultimately constituting a merger of two other teams.

Netflix now plans to replicate the contest approach, creating a $500,000 prize for a team that develops the best algorithm to turn demographic and behavioral data into a "taste profile."

The seemingly low success rate of Netflix's first contest &#8212 less than 0.2% of teams hit Netflix's goal &#8212 carries a hidden lesson. If you are inside a company, and you have a single team working on a tough problem, what are the odds that you can beat the dozens or hundreds of groups working on related problems outside your company?

Many companies will tell me they just don't have sufficient resources for innovation. My first reaction to this statement is to ask the company to carefully assess how it currently is allocating its results. Further investigation often highlights that a scarily high number of resources are working on "zombie projects" that really have no hopes of succeeding in any meaningful way. Reallocating those resources can dramatically increase a company's innovation capacity.

The second recommendation is to do what Netflix did and find ways to spread the innovation load. This isn't just about running contests. It is about involving customers in the innovation process in new ways; finding creative ways to collaborate with erstwhile competitors, and tapping into individual experts wherever they might be.

This isn't a new idea &#8212 Hank Chesbrough, Don Tapscott, and others have written very eloquently about the power of more "open" forms of innovation &#8212 but it is even more important when times are tough and internal resources grow increasingly scarce.

Companies shouldn't go to the extreme of outsourcing innovation. Complete outsourcing builds dependency and leads to internal innovation muscles atrophying. The very process of innovation &#8212 even unsuccessful efforts &#8212 can teach companies important lessons. And some tasks can really only be done by internal innovators. As always, balance is critical.

I believe in promiscuity when it comes to searching for new ideas. Look in every possible direction. You'll be surprised by what you find.

A senior publishing executive at William Morris once told me how baffled she was when an aspiring literary agent asked her to be a mentor. She looked at me and said, "She's got to make me want to be her mentor. Isn't she supposed to do something for me?" The answer is a definitive yes.

A mentor can prove invaluable when it comes to providing insight into your organization, inside information about the politics of the place, or just some over-the-shoulder advice about who to work with and who to stay away from. Mentorship, however, is a two-way street — and you've got to figure out how to repay the favor and make the relationship work for both of you.

We're all busy. Like you, your mentors have competing demands on their time and resources. It's not hard for them to let mentorship fall by the wayside when they're closing a deal, bringing a new product to market or putting out the next fire with an important client. That's why you — as the mentee — have got to make your mentor's investment in you worth their time and energy.

Here are four ways you can provide value to your mentor:

1. Send "TOUs" or thinking of yous Share articles of interest or relevant news stories. Keep your mentor's projects and areas of influence on your radar so that you can weigh in periodically on thought-provoking topics. You can even set up Google alerts on her key clients to make sure you're the first to see breaking news — then pass it along and make sure she's "in the know" too.


2. Provide insight into the rank and file of your organization By definition, you are more junior (in terms of age or experience) than your mentor. Senior leaders often feel out of touch with the cubicle culture and lack meaningful interaction with the front lines of their organization. You may be able to share reactions of your peers to a new corporate policy or change in organizational structure. Giving your mentor feedback or insight into employee morale is a great way to give back.


3. Help with extra-curricular activities. Perhaps your mentor does a lot of college recruiting for the firm or runs a leadership development program for women. Why not offer to accompany her on a recruiting trip, sift through resumes in advance or bring her ideas of guest speakers for the leadership program?


4. Buy 'em lunch. At the very least, if you really struggle to find ways to add value, take your mentor to lunch or dinner. Even if your mentor tries to foot the bill, be firm and generous in your offer. Let your mentor know that you appreciate his help and it's your pleasure to be able to return the favor in some small way. A nice glass of wine or good steak goes a long way toward building good will.

Jodi Glickman Brown is the founder and president of communication consulting firm Great on the Job. She is the author of the forthcoming book Great on the Job, to be published by St. Martin's Press in early 2010.

What keeps high-performing employees devoted to their jobs, even in a dismal work environment? The answer isn't a steady salary. According to research for my upcoming book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down , the two key levers in strengthening employee engagement are stimulating assignments and great colleagues.

It's impossible to understate the importance of having a sense of community at work, especially in these turbulent times. After enduring wave after wave of job cuts, plant closings, and corporate bankruptcies, employees uniformly say that what enables them to keep going is being able to talk to others who listen to and understand their concerns.

Company-supported networks or affinity groups — grassroots internal organizations that address the needs of a particular employee population, such as women, engineers, African Americans or millennials — have proved a huge winner for employees and employers alike in this recession. These groups provide a much-needed sense of connection for employees who might otherwise feel adrift as their companies focus on survival.

At the same time, organizations also benefit from encouraging and endorsing employee communities. In addition to a sympathetic ear, the groups also help build internal professional networks and develop career skills. Many offer nuanced learning opportunities; for example, women's networks may teach negotiating skills, while millennial groups could pair young members with senior members. All of these actions make talented employees feel more attached to both their colleagues and to their company.

A wide spectrum of options exists to create a sense of collaboration and camaraderie, from in-person meetings to videoconferencing, webcasts and even Twitter. Virtual forums are especially important to cement connectivity between workers scattered around the world.

EMC, the technology giant, offers one example of how to use social media to improve collaboration and innovation during uncertain times. The company launched an experiment in October 2007 with EMC ONE, an online forum based on off-the-shelf social-networking software that allows basic collaboration and discussion.

Even as the recession bore down, EMC ONE flourished. One spin-off community that has been particularly successful is called "The Water Cooler." True to its name, any topic is open for discussion, from company cost cuts to the economy's effect on families. In addition to advice and healthy venting, Water Cooler conversations have also provided productive solutions to the special challenges of the recession. In December 2008, an EMC employee invited colleagues to post "Constructive Ideas to Save Money." More than 320 ideas were suggested, including unpaid time-off and lowering the temperature at EMC headquarters by two degrees. "There were hundreds of very tangible cost-saving ideas that went above and beyond any ideas the company might have come up with," says Polly Pearson, vice president of employment brand and strategy development.

Today, EMC ONE hosts more than 160 virtual communities, where any employee can brainstorm new ideas, ask questions, share what's on their minds, solve problems and disagree — in any language. Almost one-third of EMC's 40,000 workers worldwide are registered users who actively contribute and another 11,000 are "lurkers," totaling an impressive 50 percent adoption rate among the workforce.

For companies, these online forums provide unparalleled insights into workforce issues that might otherwise go unaddressed and fester. For employees, knowing that their company cares what they have to say, encourages them to say it and trusts them enough to let them say it without prior approval or censorship is a gift of inestimable value. Without much effort and at a negligible cost, both are part of a community — and can reap and promulgate its many benefits.

Learn more about EMC's use of social media and enhance your company's sense of community with these tips.

Have you ever heard the expression: "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing"? I thought of this phrase recently when I got caught in a construction bottleneck on the Whitestone Bridge. It wasn't that construction was unusual (if you've ever driven in the New York area you know what I mean); it was that the construction was initiated during two of the busiest traffic weeks of the year. In addition, the US Open Tennis Tournament, various baseball events, and people driving to the airport for end-of-summer travel were making the area around the Whitestone Bridge even more congested than usual. I wondered why these repairs hadn't been done earlier in the summer or later in the fall. And if not, couldn't there have been other contingencies (e.g. re-routing or police facilitation) to better manage the flow?

It's easy from a "user perspective" to raise these questions. But the reality is much more difficult. There are many different agencies and institutions that all play a role in New York City
traffic — the city, the bridge authorities, construction unions, the tennis association, police and emergency units, and many more. Since these organizations don't report to any single entity, there is no easy way to get them all on the same page. At the same time, they all have different schedules, priorities, incentives, and processes which complicate attempts at coordination. The result is that "simplicity" for the end-user is elusive.

Even inside organizations where there is a single hierarchy, we've all seen this complexity dynamic. A few years ago I was working with a GE business that was having problems with customer returns due to glass breakage in a particular product. To understand the issue, a team followed the product from order-inception to manufacturing to distribution to the customer. It found that the plant was saving money by placing the shrink-wrapped products on inexpensive pallets. But the forklifts in the warehouse were cracking these pallets so that the bottom layer of product shifted and broke — which wasn't discovered until the customers eventually opened the package. Of course manufacturing was not intentionally trying to cause breakage; it was only trying to save money. But because the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, the net result was lost money and dissatisfied customers.

Simple never means easy. But if we don't want to get ourselves and our customers stuck either in construction or process bottlenecks, we need to cut across the organizational boundaries and proactively pull things together. Just like "reading, writing, and 'rithmatic" were the three "Rs" of early 20th century education, we need to think of collaboration, coordination and communication as the three Cs of 21st century organizational simplicity. As John Chambers of Cisco points out, we now have technologies that allow us to dramatically improve our capacity to work with each other across space and time, no matter the organizational arrangements. But to do so we need to change our behaviors and mindsets.

Let's map out how our work interacts with others to create a total end-user experience — and let's actively engage with those other parties no matter where they may reside. Life's too short to be sitting in traffic.

What's your experience?

Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Robert H. Schaffer & Associates, a Stamford, Connecticut consulting firm and the author of the forthcoming book Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done.

Some people start a business because they're passionate about a particular cause and they want their business to have an impact. Some people start a business because they are looking for a better work/life balance. Some are simply looking for more freedom...

This is what Michael Gerber spoke of when he coined the term, "The Entrepreneurial Seizure." For most people, having your own business is about being your own boss, having freedom and making your own money. But one thing people often don't consider is the idea that a business -- at it's best -- should serve as a financial asset today and in the future.

Have you thought about what your business needs to look like in order to provide you with the passive income to live the life you truly want? Do you have an exit strategy that will allow you to sell your business for top-dollar?

In the first part of this E-Myth Your Business podcast, E-Myth's President Wendy Vinson and Seminar Leader Karin Iwata, discuss the common personal attributes successful business leaders possess and how those attributes help them turn intention into action.

Podcast: Wendy Vinson E-Myth's President Wendy Vinson and Seminar Leader Karin Iwata, discuss the common personal attributes of successful business leaders.

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