What Howard said about Openness and Innovation
While finishing my previous post ‘thinking about openness and innovation’, I found an interesting and informative article in my local newspaper. It is a small piece by Samela Harris talking about Howard Rheingold’s upcoming visit to Australia. The title is ‘Teachers should learn from cyber generation’ and it contains some biting insights from one more eloquent (and ancient) than I.
My favourite is the closing paragraph:
‘Remember the days of two or three television networks and one phone company? That’s what that these (neutrality/drm/openness) battles are all about - putting the genie of innovation back into a well-controlled bottle.’
That quote really struck a chord with me, and provides insight into the sometimes confrontational nature of the ‘battle’ to bring innovation into the workplace. Every successful innovative project I have seen has had more than its fair share of struggles around control.
Digging a little deeper into the article one finds such gems as:
‘But our educational institutions are still preparing students to be 19th century factory workers.’
- which speaks to one of the key tenets underpinning theprocessofinnovation.com - the de-industrialisation of stuff in a bid to re-kindle the inner creativity of learners.
Fang - Mike Seyfang
technorati tags:eduausem2007, education
