Social Media and Experimental Innovation

Interesting post by Clark Quinn - Innovating by Conversation - where he refers to the idea of the Experimental Innovator - an innovator who iterates through lots of ideas before arriving at something that works. Clark tells us ...

Surowiecki’s Wisdom of the Crowds, Tapscott’s Wikinomics, and Libert & Spector’s We Are Smarter Than Me, are telling us to tap into the wisdom of crowds, and with lots of examples of how creating conversations with folks can spark new insights.

The thought this sparks is that experimental innovation can be accelerated through broader conversations. This is interesting. Much of Gladwell's discussion of experimental innovation discussed innovation occurring over very long periods of time (10 years). But one of the promises of social media is that we can arrive at innovation more quickly and test it more quickly.

In many ways, this is exactly how we are approaching Work Literacy. It's a big, hard problem. Get lot's of people together to foster discussion, innovation, experimentation.