Getting Clever Together » Collective Intelligence

Toward a Civilization of Collective Intelligence

mary — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:53:15 +0000

Very cool exploration of how social media, human development and …well…I think you should look for yourself…

Creative Commons – A Shared Culture

mary — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:35:57 +0000

Creative commons is the way forward for dealing with so many our challenges within society and business. But the culture is very different from that we have created in the social Darwinistic (read dog-eat-dog) corporate scuffle. Re-thinking our approach to how we share what we create goes along with the re-think that we need to do concerning how we use or squander our natural resources. Here is a short video about the shared culture that is Creative Commons. http://bit.ly/jteE9

Sharing Knowledge and Staying Safe

mary — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:16:40 +0000

What does ’safe’ mean these days ? – none of us really know the direction that social media will take next and where our identity will appear. But the same sort of anxiety is being felt across the corporate world in terms of how can we share information quickly and effectively but maintain a boundry or ‘membrane’ with the outside world.

The purpose of a membrane is to allow ‘information’ to travel in both directions. In other words the question we need to ask is “How can we stay in intimate connection with the larger field of knowledge and maintain an ‘identity’ and ‘brand’ with respect to our own corpus of knowledge.

Bertrand Duperrin poses the question “Does enterprise 2.0 threaten your security ? ”

This is a core question – or should be – for people working in the field of knowledge management. Of course we should also be mindful that wherever we are going , we are going to get there sooner than we think.

Uploading Your Brain

mary — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:26:20 +0000

Raymond Kurzweil wants to up load your brain. Is this really the direction we want to be going in? http://bit.ly/YjHfc

What do bacteria know that we don’t?

Stephen — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:52:53 +0000

In a previous post I talked about how much we can learn from bacteria in terms of collaboration. Collaboratively they are extremely sophisticated. Bonnie Bassler gives us an amazing presentationat TED and the fact that bacteria can use ‘quorum sensing’ to respond to their environment is a little breath-taking.

Bonnie Bassler: Discovering bacteria’s amazing communication system

Knowledge – Use It or Lose It

Stephen — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:29:49 +0000

“Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.” Peter Senge

With the rapid rate at which our society is changing and the ‘information explosion’ we are all experiencing – managing information and more importantly knowledge is becoming a basic survival skill. The old saying ‘it’s not what you know – it’s who you know’ is no longer just as valid as it used to be. Now it’s more like ‘it’s not what you know but who you know and what they know’ – in other words the hermit-genius approach to dealing with problems is being sidelined for the collective-intelligence approach to solving challenges.

Andrea Saveri of the Institue for the Future recently made a presentation at the NLab: Creativity and Collaboration conference in Leicester, England. In that talk she shared some future job ads. I was amused to see the position of ‘Collective Intelligence Officier’ described as ‘Someone to oversee the improvisational human resources for our company’ – what a great job. I think Andrea is on to something here and it will be sooner rather than later that we see companies realizing that they need people to do these sorts of things full-time for their organizations.

Knowledge, who has it, who knows how to grow and use it, is increasingly going to define the companies that create and shape the future of business. Anyone thinking that KM is just the latest fad are themselves firmly on the road to obsolescence.

Communities of Practice & Collaboration

Stephen — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:51:41 +0000

Communities of Practice: are defined as : ‘the process of social learning that occurs and shared sociocultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have common goals interact as they strive towards those goals’. (Wikipedia)

There does not seem be in any doubt – our economy and that of the entire globe is going through pretty strange times. One of the features of this ‘global crisis’ is the amount nations are trying to collaborate. The penny has finally dropped, political and business leaders seem to be realizing that we are all in this together. When it comes to ‘throwing’ there isn’t an ‘away’ anymore. Everything that is thrown lands somewhere, usually in another nations backyard.This applies just as much to economics as it does to refuse.

At the same time enlightened employees of business organizations are realizing that if their company is going to make it through the tough times ahead, then everyone is going to have to get engaged. But this is more than “everybody get behind and push” – as Jonas Salk pointed out – “Our future evolution will not decided by the survival of the strongest but by the survival of the wisest” .

And this brings me to my real point – to be the ‘wisest’ we have to start tapping into our collective capacity and this is why I say it is time we started ‘Getting Clever Together’. Communities of Practice (often called CoP) are a brilliant social invention whose time has come.They existed long before we named them – bacteria have been using use the principles behind CoP for over 3 billion years, so I guess the model has held up to the test of time. When I am speaking to business audiences I often make the point that it’s time we got as collaboratively smart as bacteria – but we do have a lot of ground to cover.

Never have we needed each other more (considering all the systemic threats facing us) and never has our ingenuity and resilience been more tested. CoPs enable us to craft deep wisdom around important competencies in a dynamic and adaptive fashion. There is literally no end to where they could take our larger social structures.

Companies that embrace the CoP model and are willing to support them with the necessary resources now, will be those that are able to emerge on the other side of this planetary challenge smarter and stronger.

Collaborative Intelligence and the Living Universe

Stephen — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:38:36 +0000

Duane Elgin expands on the topic of the ‘Living Universe’ and what how recognizing the universe as ‘alive’ can have profound effects.

Collaborative Intelligence : Staff Retention

Stephen — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:59:04 +0000

Collaborative Intelligence: Team Enablement

Stephen — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:56:54 +0000

‘Competitive Success Depends on Enablement‘ doesn’t specifically mention Collaborative Intelligence but the concept of spreading ‘enablement’ throughout the team structure certainly could also be a description of how CQ is developed within business.

(from the article) ‘Among the conclusions the study reaches are:

The more a company empowers its employees to make decisions, the more likely it is to perform better financially and competitively.
True enablers use technology to improve collaboration, encourage risk-taking, and optimize decision-making.
Companies categorizing themselves as “true enablers” are three times more likely to be more profitable than their competitors.
Compared with other types of firms, companies described as “true enablers” have a higher proportion that are more profitable than their competitors.’ Read on….

Thanks to Ty Franks for this reference.