A little over a week ago I published a post called Is that gemeinschaft uncomfortable in your geshellschaft?, which was about an unfortunate Schnitzel incident that I had at Octoberfest once. Er, I mean it was about the two sociological categories that were introduced by German sociologist Fredinand Tonnies in 1887 (You can think of Gemeinschaft as community interest, and Geshellschaft as self-interest), and how they applying to strategic choices for business in the age of wikinomics.

The insightful comments from Venkat added a lot of value to the post, and he dropped me a note to say that our brief exchange helped him frame the Outsider Innovation 101 post he put up yesterday. I think wikinomics readers will find it interesting. The start of the post lays the foundation for the concept of outsider innovation he hopes to explore, and this touches on many of the themes of the book. The middle of the post then focuses on what we would probably call Education 2.0 (and what he refers to as the missing Education Revolution), which is a particular interest of mine. Having recently went back to school to complete a master’s degree, I’m wholly convinced we’re closer to Education 0.1 than 2.0 right now – but that’s a topic I’ll have to come back to later.  

It’s the end of the post that I’m currently kicking around a bit in my head – this notion of a “reverse surge protection” model to guide organizational R&D. I also rather like this quote:

In essence, the R&D function will be expected to act as the seed/DNA of innovation rather than the tree, managing the scaling of innovation activity up or down, tracking the constraints of the business cycle.

Interesting concept and visual – though I need some time to blend the “reverse surge protection” model with the tree analogy. I encourage you to have your own read and let Venkat know what you think.