Monday, July 2, 2012

Dan Tapscott: Networked Intelligence

Dan Tapscott took the stage at TEDGlobal 2012 in Edinburgh, Scotland last week.  He talked about how openness is changing the way we collaborate, learn, and create value for everyone.  He gave interesting examples of how sharing more information and open communication with transparency leads to greater goods for everyone.






He presented an idea that we are entering Age of Networked Intelligence where everyone is sharing and collaborating to create something that is greater than sum of its parts.  He juxtaposed this idea with starling murmuration, how thousands of starlings fly together to form cohesive movement that can be far greater than individuals or groups.

It's a very interesting idea.  In some sense with social networks we as individual nodes are already connected with hundreds of neighboring nodes around us.  When we share idea or interact with someone else's idea, we are firing a signal to people around us for thousands of potential feedback.  With a few iterations of interaction, we can see the power of our interconnected network where our simple idea can morph into many completely different ideas.

In this networked age, what will be important is the quality that is needed for denser connection.  More open you are, more densely populated networks will be possible.  As Dan Tapscott hinted on his talk, prerequisites to have denser network are to have open collaborative environment where ideas are welcome, and mutual trust where individual members can share information based on personal integrity.

Opposite to this open collaboration and mutual trust would be resisting the Age of Networked Intelligence.  In the world where everyone has potential to share and collaborate, not embracing it would be detrimental to any organization.

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