http://blogs.nesta.org.uk/connect/2008/08/the-comedy-bow.html

Regards,
Roland

Open source and crowd surfing continues to baffle a world and leaders who can’t give up their command and control theory of management and business. We live in the age of the knowledge worker, but can not cross that bridge from pre-WW II, management philosophy of the labor worker.

We have a strong challenge ahead: undo the culture that the more knowledge I accumulate, the more I control others. It should be obvious no one can own all knowledge available, however, the attitude persists. A second challenge is to realize if we are in a knowledge-based society no matter the ability, skills, or knowledge of an individual or a team little will be accomplished without their motivation. We need to connect with people, not only financial projections or the expectation of unlimited quarterly profits. Too many are afraid to connect to a person to understand their role to organization success.

It is great to discover your posts, your thoughts, and your advocacy. Your thoughts present another example of normal distribution. If more people believe like you, it would no longer reside at the edge, but revert to a new mean.

Thanks,

Toby Elwin

twitter.com/telwin

Of course, I think the notion of failure has become somewhat confused, where some think you should aim for failure in order to succeed where in fact the point should be to not be afraid of failure on your road to succeed. With the global economy in troubled waters these days, it’s understandable that some companies would want to shy away from any innovations that might fail. However, I don’t think companies should aim to fail simply because they think that it will somehow lead to success. If we could ask Edison about his quote, I’m sure he’d clarify that if he had the option, he’d have preferred to have solved the light bulb design on the 7th try and not the 700th.

Again, a very-thought provoking post, Stephen. Thanks for sharing.

Tanveer.

“The big question for Big Pharma: Is the pipeline metaphor for drug discovery and exploitation no longer fit for purpose? And if so, where do we look for a more appropriate metaphor? ”

http://leaderswedeserve.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/the-drug-pipeline-is-it-bust-and-if-so-can-we-fix-it/

And so true about the Edison quote. He failed either 700 times, 1000 times, or 10,000 times. Regardless, I think we can be certain he did not find a solution on the first try.

The oldest quote I could find was… “Failed? — why we haven’t failed, we only know the thousands of ways that won’t work.” As paraphrased in Proceedings of the Regular Meeting (1924) by The Association of American Railroads, Car Service Division, p. 23, source http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

Thanks!

Ironically, it’s entirely possible that Edison never said that famous quote. It’s quoted in too many ways, with too many different numbers, and I don’t think anyone’s actually sourced it.

A big advantage is diversity of the solver community. If you have 100 chemist working on a problem, will adding the 101st really add that much value? But if you added people from different background, it increases the likelihood of the problem being solved.

Thanks!