The perils of small worlds I'm still mining Keith Sawyer's Group Genius for insights; the more I re-read it, the more useful and powerful I think his research is. One nuggest he reports is the study done by Brian Uzzi of Northwestern University and Jarrett...

Massively collaborative mathematics Keith Sawyer highlights an article from Nature. It describes how a complex mathematical theorem is solved by massive collaboration, hosted on a blog. Here's a key point that Keith identifies from the piece:For the first time one can see on...

Relationships before ideas From the time we were little children my brother.. and myself lived together, played together, worked together and, in fact, thought together. We usually owned all of our toys in common, talked over our thoughts and aspirations so that nearly...

Incentives, innovation, community I just posted about Umair's suggestion about a mega-version of the netflix prize. I've been involved with some of NESTA's many open innovation projects (here's Roland on one of their latest.) It occurs to me that I and others sometimes...

Born Social Keith Sawyer reports on a new book by Michale Tomasello, Why We Cooperate. Studies of infants suggest that the urge to help others is innate, and not learned. Tomasello’s book presents data showing that infants as young as 18 months...

Innovation with a capital I I've been enjoying James Gardner's blog, especially since he moved from his bank to the Department of Work and Pensions. I get the sense that with this move he's able to speak more clearly about the issues of supporting innovation...

High status deadens experience That Bob Sutton piece on GM also has a great attack on how the company dishes out free cars as perks. The higher you are in the company, the more attractive the deal. At low levels, you buy your own...

Structure and freedom Dave Snowden has good post about putting tools in their place. The essence of his argument is this:If you pick up a tool and it fits your hand its useful, if you have to bio-rengineer your hand to fit the...

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...