In our day-to-day work at ISITE Design, we produce a constant stream of client projects, ranging from CMS-driven websites to native-platform mobile apps, and everything in between.  These projects often involve a wide range of technical and creative challenges that test and push our professional capabilities.  But they typically have one thing in common -- an external client, usually with a clear vision and expected project outcome.

On the occasions when we create on our own behalf, however, we have an opportunity to cut loose a little, and scratch our creative itches. We did just that with the recent launch of our PhotoBlast iPhone application. The app is creative, fun and showcases our mobile talents. But more importantly it's the product of a culture of innovation we've worked hard to establish. 

With a 60-person-strong crew of driven, creative professionals, the challenge facing management is often how best to harness and direct the creativity and collaboration that results.  We've done two things to encourage and cultivate that creative collaboration.

First, we designed our new Portland, Oregon headquarters to be conducive to both ad-hoc, incidental collaboration, as well as structured, long-form working sessions.  An open floor plan with no physical boundaries between departments helps encourage cross-functional collaboration, and discourages silos.  Dedicated brainstorming and collaboration spaces provide the space and tools necessary to support extended, collaborative work.

Secondly, we've made a deliberate effort -- and investment -- in our internal innovation engine, which we call ISITE Labs.  The mission of ISITE Labs is to encourage, nurture, and cultivate creative passion and innovation among teams to surface new ideas and technologies for the benefit of the company and the creative community at large.  We've designed this effort, and continue to support it, as a platform for collaboration among our team members, beginning with after-hours brainstorming and work sessions, and continuing with company-sponsored time to create and ship projects using new technologies.

The Labs initiative started to bear some fruit with our holiday release of PhotoBlast. It was our gift to our greater community in the form of a free iPhone app allowing anyone to photograph otherwise average moments and make them awesome. PhotoBlast is the first internally produced iOS app to be born of this program, and its cultivation is a great example of our Labs initiative at work.

The primary ingredient in any innovative undertaking is initiative.  Driven employees who are passionate about their chosen fields -- whether technical, creative, or both --  are essential to the success of a Labs project.  Tim Sears, the driving force behind PhotoBlast, came up with the first rough app concepts based on some experimenting done with the iOS camera API, and put together a simple proof of concept -- overlaying images on the camera view -- to give the rest of us an idea of what was possible.

This kind of speculative prototyping can make all the difference in an innovation initiative.  The spark that a rapidly-developed proof of concept provided was much more effective at mustering support --and probably less expensive -- than, say, a thirty-page specification backed by a mountain of feasibility research.

Catching lightning in a bottle, however, requires knowing when to close the lid.

Once we had a solid proof of concept and support from key company decision makers that this was a worthwhile idea, we set about scoping the boundaries of our project.  We considered and negotiated  features, created estimates, and developed a plan -- with a budget of hours.  Involving a bigger team  (designers, project managers, web developers)  is key to a successful, polished execution; since this raises the cost and stakes of the project, a careful balance of ethereal, speculative thinking, and project-management rigor is critical.

Having a hard ship date can help enforce this rigor (and remember: "shipping" is a key feature).  In our case, we wanted our app out in time for the holidays, which gave us less than two months to get to market.  A quick timeline required a certain amount of schedule overlap between disciplines, and forced us to get to some decisions faster than we might have with the luxury of a longer timeline.  Mobile app projects, due to the relatively high level of uncertainty, tend to require earlier and closer collaboration between departments.  In our case, the schedule amplified this requirement and pushed us to refine our collaborative process.

I'm happy to say we hit our launch date, and all are thrilled with the finished product.  Perhaps more importantly, this project has been an important example of the power of cross-team collaboration, and an indication of a positive shift in the process by which we produce our work.

With an eye toward closer collaboration between different departments, we're reworking our processes to be more iterative, agile, and productive.  And, we're actively working to surface and encourage innovative ideas from within our family of creative and technical professionals.  We're quite encouraged by our preliminary results.