In this chapter (Page 97):
A new global marketplace of ideas and innovations, from uniquely qualified minds, thrives outside the boundaries of traditional firms. From the ancient Greek word "agora" (marketplace), an "ideagora" is a marketplace of ideas, where insights and experiences are shared, debated, and refined. This free exchange of personal insight and research data can be viewed as an accelerated form of group learning, a pooling of human experience, enabling the members to move faster as a team than they could as independent seekers.
Companies that leverage these new "ideagoras" can tap a global pool of talent that exceeds what they may marshal internally.
How can firms harness ideagoras to deliver superior value creation, growth, and competitiveness? How can companies harness the global “on-demand” workforce? How should firms reconfigure their innovation processes to take advantage of the rapid growth of talent in India, China and other emerging markets?
Innovation may come from the company around the corner, or the high school student researching his first paper. The new "wiki" ideas are not bound by places, companies or countries; they are "min(d)ed" and shared from all spectrums of life. Are companies ready to share their examples of ideagoras you're aware of that were not discussed in the book? Once comfortable with collaborative innovation, will companies move into competitive ideagoras in pursuit of goals that may not be singularly achieved?
References:
www.theglobeandmail.com
One of the potentials of a collaborative creative approach, such as this wiki, is that seemingly individual "stupidity" or "lack of intelligence" may be overcome by a challenging process in which respondent/contributors "draw out" new information through question/answer process that leads into all into "new territory."
This is, as it turns out, is the basis of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of debate. It is also that which Win Wenger described (in various books, articles etc. including "The Einstein Factor") as "The Socratic Method." Wenger writes that the question & answer sessions that Socrates and his students conducted were not actually so much for the direct benefit of the students, as they were for Socrates a means of "gaining insight". Socrates was "a channel" through which information could flow. The students' job was to question. Socrates' job was to let information flow. Everyone, including Socrates, listened to and learned from that which "came-through".
Today, facilliated by web technology, the same process is being employed on a massive, trans-national, trans-gender, trans-temporal, virtual scale. The caveat is: QUALITY of information.
Does the process actually "go anywhere new?" Does it produce - or introduce - anything meaningful? The Web is filled with a babble of forums, chat rooms, games, blogs, and so on.... much of it entirely meaningless as far as true innovation, new thought or new understanding is concerned. "Working-together" can transcend boundaries, but does not necessarily do so. More often these "joinings" simply reinforce existing, specialized, opinionated, world views.... closed group-thinks - a lot of noise, about nothing.... This is not our quest.
Today we like to talk about the "Wisdom of Crowds," but it's important to remember that crowds don't always live up to that potential (Charles Mackay published a great book about the "madness of crowds" back in 1841). The difference between the two results - madness vs. wisdom - is often argued to be one of structure. A provocative Essay called "Structured to Fail" suggests that the structures we choose to collaborate/organize may have a surprisingly large impact on whether we succeed or not. Interviews with "crowdsourcing" startups like Cambrian House suggest that one of the most important things to offer some kind of structure (or "rails") that can define the interactions amongst participants. It matters less whether the structure is right or not. The fact that it exists can channel productive collaboration and avoid the "wheel spinning" that is often found in less-productive collaborative venues. Building the right structure seems part art and part science, plus you have all that chance and randomness to contend with. But if people like Doyne Farmer can navigate chaos and randomness well enough to Predict Roulette, then certainly it should be much easier to define the underlying laws and structure governing successful collaborations.
The Hive Mind, a discussion of crowdsourcing in the book Out of Control (Kevin Kelly, 1995) cited an example of an auditorium of people waving cardboard wands and synchronizing their movements with no discussion at all. They quickly assemble and disassemble to form numbers when commanded, and function like self-organizing pixels. This model of a collective self-organizing mind can be applied to other forms of collective wisdom. One man (according to an article starting to appear today January 8, 2007 on MIT Tech Review) who is very interesting in this regard is Charles Simonyi. His achieved track record that has taken him from a young escapee from the Soviet Block, to one of the richest men in the world, who introduced a lot of the code the enables web based stuff, demonstrates that he is onto something with his concept of "GOING META". That is: rising above the current problem to envision/perceive/invent a transcendence.
If this wiki, or another collaborative effort can do this, TOGETHER, instead of merely recycling self-indulgent thinking, well......
The virtual world Second Life and other entertainment and social network websites have unprecedented economic, social, political and psychological research potential. These Internet “communities” house untapped knowledge about human activity. True innovation would involve creating virtual technologies to extract meaningful information from these sites. This information could, for example, be used to produce products and provide services desired and designed by members of these “communities”.
contributed by jransom on Feb 3 10:10pm
A new Ideagoras is just being launched at www.ideaconnection.com. Focused on collaborative problem solving as well as the buying and selling of ideas, inventions, and innovations. The collaborative problem solving is being monetized by facilitating the people with problems posting their problem with the amount they will pay when it is solved to their satisfaction. Problem solvers post their profile on the site, chose problem(s) they may wish to help solve, and then are invited in to work on the problem. One or more people can be invited in. Funds for the solution are divided evenly among people participating in solving that specific project(minus 10% Admin fee).
contributed by Scott Wurtele on Feb 11 9:30pm
All this talks about Web 2.0: There is neither a Hype nor a new Technologie - it is a habit. So, if you think about what human beings really want to do, you will find out, that there are some fundamentals. Beeing social, beeing active, looking for acceptance, belonging to a community, being powerful. Now, with the enhanced telecommunicationtools something natural happens: People do, what they did since they hunted mammooths in a group. They connect, they form new communities, be active - but in a global scale. The really new thing is: because even the smallest interest will be shared by many people if you look worldwide, they become power. As a customer, as an prosumer or as an pressure group.
contributed by Michael Leitl on Apr 4 10:30pm
Page Last Updated: Jun 17 7:33am by robert lavoie