A researcher at the London think tank Demos, Charles Leadbeater was early to notice the rise of "amateur innovation" -- great ideas from outside the traditional walls, from people who suddenly have the tools to collaborate, innovate and make their expertise known.
Why you should listen to him:
Charles Leadbeater's theories on innovation have compelled some of the world’s largest organizations to rethink their strategies. A financial journalist turned innovation consultant (for clients ranging from the British government to Microsoft), Leadbeater noticed the rise of "pro-ams" -- passionate amateurs who act like professionals, making breakthrough discoveries in many fields, from software to astronomy to kite-surfing. His 2004 essay "The Pro-Am Revolution" -- which The New York Times called one of the year's biggest global ideas -- highlighted the rise of this new breed of amateur.
Prominent examples range from the mountain bike to the open-source operating system Linux, from Wikipedia to the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which helped persuade Western nations to cancel more than $30 billion in third-world debt. In his upcoming book, We-Think, Leadbeater explores how this emerging culture of mass creativity and participation could reshape companies and governments. A business reporter by training, he was previously an editor for the Financial Times, and later, The Independent, where, with Helen Fielding, he developed the "Bridget Jones' Diary" column. Currently, he is researching for Atlas of Ideas, a program that is mapping changes in the global geography of science and innovation.
"Charles Leadbeater is an extraordinarily interesting thinker. His book asks critical questions. I know it will be widely read and debated."Tony Blair
Blog Posts on TED
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Mash-ups, from the Model T to Johnny Lee – July 27, 2008
The New York Times has a thoughtful piece today on Model T hacking -- which kicked off the modern sport of customizing, bending, modding and otherwise repurposing a commercial item for unintended-by-the-manufacturer uses. As Steve Lohr writes:
The early Model T hackers were really pioneers in a realm of creative activity that academics call “user innovation.” It has become subject of systematic study only in the last few years, as researchers examine how this kind of individual endeavor works and try to assess its economic impact.
The approach is a break with the tradition of looking at companies, either large ones or start-up ventures, as the main engines of innovation in the economy.
In Charles Leadbeater's TEDTalk, learn more about the power of user-driven creativity -- then watch Johnny Lee's TEDTalk on Wii Remore hacks or Joshua Klein's demo of crow hacks and get inspired to do your own. Photo: Henry Ford Museum / New York Times
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Charles Leadbeater on TED.com – January 20, 2007
In this deceptively casual talk, Charles Leadbeater weaves a tight argument that innovation isn't just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can't.
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Four new books by TEDGLOBAL 2005 speakers – July 21, 2008
Four of the speakers that participated in the first TEDGLOBAL in Oxford (July 2005) have all published new books recently. Former Afghani minister and head of Kabul University Ashraf Ghani (watch his TEDtalk), together with Clare Lockhart, has penned "Fixing Failed States: A Framework For Rebuilding A Fractured World". They discuss the "between forty and sixty nations" -- that's one-quarter of all the countries in the world -- that are broken to various degreees and have become "the breeding ground of networks of criminality and terror", and suggest an integrated state-building approach that goes beyond military intervention and humanitarian aid to make them "stakeholders in a global system". It's a radically optimist book. Since Ghani spoke at TEDGLOBAL, he and Lockhart have co-created the Institute for State Effectiveness. In "We Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production", British innovation and creativity guru Charles Leadbeater (watch his TEDtalk) makes the case, based on countless well-documented examples from all over the world, that innovation in the era of the Web has become a collective, collaborative effort. "You are what you share", he writes. Walking his talk, he shares part of the final book and the full first draft on his website. Groups of people increasingly coming together to share, work or take public action are also the starting point for Clay Shirky's new book "Here Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations". The social-media master (watch his TEDtalk) contends that "when new technology appears, previously impossible things start occurring". For example: "We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money. Love motivates people to bake a cake and money motivates people to make an encyclopedia. Now, though, we can do big things for love". The reference, obviously, is to Wikipedia, which is just one of many examples used by Shirky. Recently, he told me that the book somehow was born at TEDGLOBAL 2005: "That speech was the opportunity to link a lot of my earlier work into a coherent structure". He's blogging and discussing the book at HereComesEverybody.org. Carl Honoré's previous bestseller "In Praise Of Slow" discussed our culture obsessed with speed (that's the topic of his TEDtalk). In his new book, "Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood From The Culture Of Hyper-Parenting", he applies that lens to growing up in today's developed societies, and says that we are raising "a generation of overprogrammed, overachieving, exhausted children". Based on extensive research -- fact after example after anecdote (including that of the father of a tennis player who drugged his child's opponents) -- and beautifully written, "Under Pressure" is not a parenting manual. "Slow", in the meantime, has built up to somewhat a global movement, and Carl is one of the co-founders of a website for all things slow, Slow Planet. Where they remind us that "slow is not about doing everything at a snail's pace; it's about working, playing and living better by doing everything at the right speed". The next TEDGLOBAL will take place in Oxford, 21-24 July 2009. More details will be forthcoming in September. (Note: Some of the cover images above may be different from what you will find online or at your local bookstore, depending on the different country-specific editions of each book.)
