I like this column by Nicholas Taleb. I haven’t read his book (The Black Swan) but now I think I might.
I’m more and more convinced that this ineffable activity called “innovation” is merely the story we user after the fact, to help ourselves feel like we understand what happened to bring that innovation about. […]

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I finally got a chance to listen to Bruce Sterling’s rant for SXSW 2007 via podcast as I was driving between PA and NC last week.
There were a lot of great things in it. A number of people have taken great notes and posted them (here’s one example). It’s worth a listen either way […]

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Austin Govella puts a question to me in his post here: Does Comcast have the DNA to compete in a 2.0 world? at Thinking and Making
Context of the post: Austin is wondering about this story from WSJ, “Cable Giant Comcast Tries to Channel Web TV” — specifically Jeremy Allaire’s comments doubting Comcast’s ability to […]

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Ran across this bit in Andrew McAfee’s Blog
Ford once enlisted an efficiency expert to examine the operation of his company. While his report was generally favorable, the man did express reservations about a particular employee.
“It’s that man down the corridor,” he explained. “Every time I go by his office he’s just sitting there with his […]

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I managed to finish my presentation for this year’s IA Summit, and present it in under 50 minutes. Huzzah!
As promised, I’m posting the whole thing with notes here on the blog. If you want the PDF of the presentation (16MB), go here: http://www.inkblurt.com/media/hinton_summit07.pdf

And if you want to see the “blog post of record” about the […]

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Colleague Michael Magoolaghan passed along a link to the transcript of Tim Berners-Lee’s testimony before Congress.
Hearing on the “Digital Future of the United States: Part I — The Future of the World Wide Web”
It’s fascinating reading, and extremely quotable. But one part that really struck me is in the first paragraphs (emphasis added):
To […]

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Austin Govella makes the point razor-sharp in his post on Agile Development and Design:
Agile development won’t give you better design. Design models things to be made. Development makes things you’ve modeled. Agile development methods promise better model-making, but don’t promise better models. Agile development can actually devastate design.
Thanks man. I’m going to quote you in, […]

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Excellent video interview with Wenger.
Interview with Etienne Wenger on Communities of Practice — Knowledge Lab
Etienne Wenger is one of the founding fathers of Social Learning Theory and the concept of “Practiced Communities”. People are learning together – every individual deals and engage in many different communities of practice. Here people negotiate and define what […]

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HBS prof and Enterprise 2.0 thinker/blogger Andrew McAfee back in July, commenting on the implications of people being fired for what they say on personal blogs or otherwise (as in the Axsmith case).
Andrew McAfee
Smart organizations will accept and embrace the fact that Enterprise 2.0 tools will be used to voice dissent within the community. […]

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For a year or so now, “innovation” has been bobbing around at the very top of the memepool. Everybody wants to bottle the stuff and mix it into their corporate water supplies.
I’ve been on the bandwagon too, I confess. It fascinates me — where do ideas come from and how do they end up […]

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There’s a lot of buzz about the BBC’s recent announcement:
MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | BBC unveils radical revamp of website
The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com.
I’ve been hearing a lot of talk lately about […]

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Ok, it could be that my current obsessions are just warping my otherwise good sense (cough), but I couldn’t help but comment on Lou Rosenfeld’s recent post (Developing a Participation Economy) that the participation economy among IAI volunteers he envisions sounds an awful lot like game-thinking.
That is, motivating people to create innovative stuff and […]

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