Charles Leadbeater has advised companies, cities and governments on innovation strategy and has drawn on that experience in writing his latest book We-Think: You are what you share, which charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation. It will be published early next year by Profile Books. A past winner of the David Watt prize for journalism, Leadbeater was profiled by the New York Times in 2004 for generating one of the best ideas of the year, the rise of the activist amateur. In receiver, Leadbeater sketches his 'We-Think' concept of mass creativity. According to him, new forms of social networking and multi-user collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea.

http://www.wethinkthebook.net
We-Think

Artwork for this article by Sebastian Ziegler

A mass of independent people, with different information, skills and outlooks, working together in the right way, can discover, analyse, strategise, coordinate, create and innovate together at scale. We are developing new capabilities to participate and collaborate, to have our say – through blogs and video – but also to listen and learn from others – through wikis and social networks. We have only just begun to explore how this will change how we think, our sense of ourselves and indeed in what mixture this capacity for collective innovation will be good and bad for us. This is the world of We-Think.

The phrase cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am", was inscribed onto our culture in 1637 by the French soldier cum philosopher René Descartes, announcing a dramatic inward turn in the way we think about ourselves. In search of certainty about his own existence, Descartes declared that the act of doubting was proof that we exist. To doubt is to think and to think is to be. For Descartes thinking was the creation in our minds of order, collecting and bringing together ideas in our heads. We-Think comes from a different cultural and intellectual root, one in which creativity is invariably not an individualistic activity but a collaborative one that thrives when people share and mix their ideas, allowing them to cross-pollinate. Creativity emerges from how we think together, by debating, comparing and combining ideas. In We-Think culture what matters is social organisation: how we publish, debate, test, refine and reject ideas to think together.

Creative thought is not just the destination of Descartes' inner journey, a flash of insight inside the head of a gifted person, the product of profound reflection: the writer in their garret, the artist in their studio, the boffin in the lab. More often than not new ideas emerge from creative interaction between people who combine different but potentially complementary insights. Our capacity for collaborative creativity will become ever more powerful because the opportunities to engage with others in creative interaction are expanding largely thanks to the spread of the web. The generations that grow up with these ways of thinking will have as their motto: "We think, therefore we are."

Efforts at We-Think – from Wikipedia to open source software such as Linux, to large-scale scientific collaborations like the Human Genome Project to Oh My News, the South Korean citizen journalism collective – are successful only when they are organised. They are not an anarchic free for all. Yet they are organised without the hallmarks of a traditional organisation with ranks of people in positions of authority. They can be structured without anyone obviously being in control; they get work done without a division of labour imposed from on top. People seem to work best in We-Think when they assign themselves to tasks and most management is exercised through consent and peer review.

We will get more of this collective innovation: from mass online games like World of Warcraft where most of the content is created by the players; more sophisticated versions of social networking; new approaches to scientific collaboration like the Encyclopaedia of Life; more tools that will allow collaborative innovation in companies, such as immersive environments in which many people can interact; from the 'mixed reality' worlds that will follow in the wake of Second Life, where the real and the virtual will get scrambled up.

These phenomena all share important characteristics. Invariably they involve a mass of contributors, who are not employed by a single company, contributing to an initiative, collaborating despite working at a distance from one another. Often these contributors are not professionals, but amateurs and users of aspects of the very service they are helping to create: the players help to develop the game as it unfolds. They often rely on lateral, social links to get their work done – distributing, rating, ranking, assembling content – rather than going up through a hierarchical organisation.

They are all outgrowths of a more participative and collaborative media culture, in which it has become far easier for people who used to be the audience to create, publish, share and rate content. The participatory culture of YouTube, Flickr, blogging and social networking provide the primeval stew from which We-Think can emerge. But participation on its own is not enough to guarantee anything of any value will emerge.

Millions of bloggers spouting off into the void of cyberspace and amateur video makers posting their videos on YouTube do not, on their own anyway, create anything more than a vast treasure trove of user-generated content. There is very little deliberate, collaborative creativity on YouTube and Flickr beyond the occasional parody or homage. These are quite different from Wikipedia or Linux where people consciously join together to solve a complex puzzle or to create something of lasting significance. In We-Think people participate but also collaborate. And unlike Google they consciously set out to be creative and intelligent together. Google provides a collective intelligence service, a reading of our preferences reflected in the links we make on the web. When I link to another website I do not do so to help the cause of collective intelligence, I am just revealing my tastes. Google turns that raw material into something useful. In contrast, when I choose to add something to Wikipedia I am deliberately adding to something shared. The kind of collective intelligence exhibited in Wikipedia emerges only when the power of participation is matched by collaborative control.

The internet is lowering the barriers for people to enter into public debate, to put their piece of information into the pot. More people in more places can have their say and add their piece to solving the puzzle. That should make it easier for us to devise collectively intelligent solutions. The spread of the web makes it more likely that we can reach people with something useful to add to solving a puzzle or devising a solution. The challenge is how to organise this rapidly growing mass of contributors so their contributions amount to something more than an avalanche of diverse perspectives, rants, lies, gossip, falsehoods, truths and hearsay.

Yet We-Think must also avoid falling into collective stupidity and group think. Crowds and mobs can be stupid as easily as they can be wise and intelligent. Everything depends on getting the balance right between intense collaboration and independence of thought. Groups that are made up of independent people with diverse views and skills, which are nevertheless committed to collaborating, are the most creative forces going. Groups that have lots of diversity but cannot find a way to collaborate get nowhere. Groups that become too consensual do not innovate. If we want to make something creative out of our shared capacity for innovation – more Wikipedias – then we have to navigate our way through these challenges.

To make that more likely we need a better understanding of how this open, collaborative creativity happens. This is my take on the process.

Invariably a small group creates a core, or kernel, that provides the starting point and focus for development. Often this core is given away – as a kind of gift – and around that gift a community forms. In Linux the gift was the original kernel written by Linus Torvalds. In Wikipedia it was Jimmy Wales' investment that made Nupedia possible. In the Human Genome Project the gift came from the Wellcome Trust and other public funders: the more they gave away their knowledge the more they got back in return. Communities of innovation usually form around some kind of gift. We-Think takes off if this core then attracts a mass of input from highly distributed and independent contributors seeking to play their part in solving the puzzle or developing a solution. They need common goals and to develop a shared way of working, to allow collaboration to develop, but they also need to think differently, to prevent a cloying consensus developing. The contributors have to be able to connect with one another, to start sharing ideas, for example through bulletin boards, discussion forums or websites. They have to be able to start building one contribution on another like something made from Lego bricks. Collaboration requires more than exchange and transaction; the partners have to build relationships to be creative together. The Human Genome depended upon public funding but also the Bermuda Principles, a code for collaboration that set out how researchers would share data with one another. If collaboration emerges in the right way – self-governed by a spirit of creative inquiry in which everyone is open to proposing, debating, testing and refining ideas for the good of the shared undertaking – then people can start creating something together, designing and refining it as they go.

http://www.wethinkthebook.net

Deliberate efforts at We-Think are likely to work only when these five main ingredients combine: a small group creates a kernel or core that attracts a mass of decentralised contributors, who can then connect with one another in a way that allows them to collaborate creatively to build something robust out of their various contributions. But We-Think is not all or nothing, black and white, open and closed. There are degrees of openness to innovation. Wikipedia and Linux are at the most open, collaborative end of the spectrum. Computer games like The Sims and World of Warcraft are hybrid models which mix a commercial core and lots of community participation. Companies like Procter & Gamble are pursuing open innovation strategies with 20 web portals linking their in-house research to external communities. And even this story is more complicated than it looks because open source communities such as Linux support a mass of commercial activity and are now sustained by corporate investment.

What this means for the future of business is that more businesses will need to mix community and company, commerce and collaboration, in different ways. What it means for the future of consumer culture is that more people, more of the time, will want to be participants and contributors, creators and innovators as well as being spectators and consumers. Some people will want to be fans, participants who want to pay homage to a brand like Apple; others will want to be more like hackers, doing it for themselves. No one will want to be a participant all the time; most people will still be consumers at least some of the time.

But the world is getting scrambled up. The cast iron categories of industrial era capitalism are breaking down. We are moving into a world where at least some of the time demand can breed some of its own supply, consumers can be producers, leisure can be a form of work, amateurs can mimic the knowledge of professionals, and the most effective commercial strategies might start by giving away content. It is going to be creative but only by being very confusing.

Welcome to We-Think.

This article was written for receiver. Early drafts of We-Think: you are what you share and other material is available at www.charlesleadbeater.net.

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