We20 It's hard to know where to begin in talking about the state of the world economy, but one theme that constantly returns for me is this: there is a lot to be said for placing less faith in supposedly exceptional...

Sicamp Fab little video giving the headsup on Social Innovation Camp. What a great event. Social Innovation Camp II, Dec 2008 from The People Speak on Vimeo. Hat tip: Rohan at NESTA...

"It's unacceptable not to share what you know" Very interesting post by Mark Brady. It contains this diagram. I usually hate this kind of thing but found this one quite engaging. It explores how we respond to shocks; I'm intrigued by the parallel paths of responding to both...

Collaboration Penny Edwards' post - Are we really collaborating? - got me thinking. I'm wary of definition deckchairs, but I liked the idea of seeing a difference between collaboration and mere co-ordination. For me, collaboration involves something richer, more complex (so...

The benefits of rough prototypes David Smith pointed to this article about innovation at P&G. I think it smacks a little too much of the corporate Kool Aid; I'm just naturally wary of claims about "transformation", especially of human beings. Still, this quote about their...

Cynefin Framework, down under Shawn from Anecdote plays with a new web app called Sketchcast. He uses it to explain Dave Snowden's Cynefin framework. The result is something rather brilliant, I think: This is a great bit of co-creation from which I learnt a...

We're connected... NESTA have had some interesting events lately. They're clearly into what Steve Moore calls "the convening power of the brand" as they assemble groups of people and interesting speakers, usually relying on word-of-mouth through social networks to get the right...

Chaos? Josh Porter has a good post on recent events at Digg. This is the bit that most interested me:One is as described by Mike Arrington of Techcrunch: Digg Surrenders to Mob. Simply using the word “Mob” makes for great press....

Fairness and monkey business The Frontal Cortex: Inequality and the Perception of Fairness. I love the experiments psychologists come up with.One of the more powerful examples of this behavior comes from Franz Waals and Sarah Brosnan, who trained brown capuchin monkeys to give them...

Palaeolithic wisdom Ken Thompson enthuses about a Harvard report, Virtual Teams: Palaeolithic Insights About the Art of Cyber-Managing. Ken summarises:Three instincts in particular have to be excavated from our caveman days and brought back into our organizational teams... 1. Purpose shapes function...

Costwolds or Milton Keynes? Euan Semple's talking about how he developed social software at the BBC. It's nicely put. And I think the metaphor carries way beyond software.When we started building this stuff at the BBC we were consciously trying to build the online...

Fingering the Ninjas... I met Euan Semple for tea yesterday at the slightly bizarre Brunswick Centre in London. Euan talked about the fun he's having coaxing organisations into social media and it all made sense to me. We kept returning to the idea...

Beyond the black box Some months back, Ross Dawson sent me a free copy of his book, Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships: Leadership in Professional Services. I am not a prolific reader and the book sat on my desk for a long time, leaving me...

Co-creation Rules James and I are getting to work on a new manifesto for Change This. It's called Co-creation Rules, a deliberately ambiguous title. Our aim is put together some of our insights from working with brands and organisations. These are the...

Polychronic (instead of just chronic) Euan Semple blogged Teemu Arina's lucid presentation on the social web in support of informal learning. Teemu cites Lev Vygotsky's notion that "all higher understanding is dialogic by nature". I love it when he talks about a customised interface for...