Charles Leadbeater's "We Think" to comment on

British author Charles Leadbeater has just released a first draft of his upcoming book for anyone to read and comment on. It's called "We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing". I'm generally skeptical of "next big thing-isms", but Charles is an insightful analyst of the socioeconomic evolution. He has coined the concept of "Pro-Am" to describe those pursuing activities as amateurs (often unpaid) but setting the same standards as professionals, and has been very influential in shaping our understanding of the developments of the last decade.

With "We Think" he tries to go beyond that and describe how the increasing involvement of "large groups of committed and knowledgeable amateurs, working without pay, are creating highly collaborative forms of organization which operate with little hierarchy and bureaucracy and yet mobilize resources of a scale to match the biggest corporations in the world" and analyze what that means for the future of society and businesses. "Thank to low-cost technology, many more consumers can become producers at least some of the time (...) The next big thing will be us, our power to share and develop ideas without having to rely on formal organizations".

In a nutshell, the book is about the impending conflict between what Charles calls "collaborative mass innovation" and the hierarchical, formal, rigid organizations (corporate and others).

Charles -- who discussed some of these ideas already during a brilliant keynote speech at TEDGLOBAL last year in Oxford -- is asking for comments, remarks and suggestions, so that "we think" won't only be the title of the book, but also the method by which it was written. The finalized version is scheduled for publication mid next year. The draft is printable in full (PDF) and after reading today the first two chapters I definitely recommend it. Will blog more about it when I'm done reading.

Comments

[EricB]

Hi Bruno. Thank you very much for this advice. This book is very interesting. I'm currently reading it (chapter 3). It's a good mixture of self organisation and innovation management. It’s a really good stuff for the brain ;-). I will give Charles my comments when finished. Cheers Eric

[cri]

When I saw him yesterday at that conference in Lisbon, I immediately knew that I would have found something about him somewhere here... ok then, I really appreciate the subject, and just wonder if this is the first published version or only a new released one... Anyhow, I only started to read it now and as the subject interest me a lot more now, obviously, I liked it. It’s funny to note that I needed two years (after your post) and a second presentation to realize the possible impacts. Is it because the subject start to be mature only now... world is moving... am I taking too much time to understand something.. in any case thank you to have long ago opened my mind on that subject

[BG]

Hello Cri. Thank you for your nice words. Charles' book actually is just out in the UK in its final form: "We Think"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/We-think-Power-Creativity-Charles-Leadbeater/dp/1861978928/

Ciao! B-