In a world with soooo many ideas, there’s no doubt that its only the ones that spread that win. The question is what drives idea diffusion? All of us have too many choices, and too little time. Seth Godin argues that we only notice the remarkable (worth making a remark about). We like new, we [...]

Collaboration feeds innovation, but often feels too hard to pull off. A few weeks ago I noticed Google released a ‘behind-the-scenes’ video about how a Gmail message travels around the world. Then they invited Gmail users to create and submit their own video clips to YouTube with the following simple instructions: “Someone hands the Gmail [...]

It’s easy to overlook the knowledge capital that exists at the grassroots. I’ve been reading a paper on this subject by Professor Anil Gupta, who teaches at the Indian Institute of Management (incidentally, the world’s most selective MBA school!) in Ahmedabad. In it, he challenges the implicit assumption in most development efforts, that the poor [...]

Here’s a question: Where did the mountain bike come front? Traditional thinking might suggest that it emerged either from the R&D department of a large bike manufacturer, or from the shed of a lone, slightly eccentric, entrepreneur… but neither of these is correct. It was put together, literally, by a community of Californian [...]