efios     Efios home Weblog     The efios blog: "It's all about people and networks"       07 May 2003 Abstraction of ideas in innovation communities to facilitate larger social networks Is innovation almost always a recombination of existing ideas, fed by different insights and driven by opposition of the existing (or past) ideas and concepts? This central question has come up in the discussion and conceptualization I was having about innovation communities of practice I am gearing up; one of the central issues was whether increasing the network around (in) an innovation community will actually not make the discussion items, or topics, more abstract. This abstraction in my opinion will be inevitable if the number of people that is contributing to the (intellectual) value creation increases, and these people have different backgrounds and insights. The collective thinking in these innovation communities, can only be facilitated by abstraction of ideas - then taking them away from this state and branching off to further concrete ideas and concepts. This happened at 12:40:18 AM  Ideas and comments to this [] or trackback [] Social interaction vs. isolated thinkers and innovation communities Innovation or thought leadership can take place only in a socially networked environment; energy for individual thoughts formed by social interaction and anticipations on future relationships will determine success - isolated thinkers will be left with cliches of their own thoughts. This means that recombination of ideas can never occur on individual level, but requires a (social) network. In that way innovation through communities does not become more predictable, but establishes a controllable environment for these opportunities to occur. This happened at 12:31:42 AM  Ideas and comments to this [] or trackback [] © Copyright 2005 Erik van Bekkum. May 2003 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat         1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Apr   Jun Blog categories: (All) innovation Social Networks Blogging Blogroll: [Macro error: Could not open the url, "http://www.efios.com/blog/gems/blogroll.opml", because it could not be converted to an outline.] 25 most recent: Intervision and communities of practice Weak ties in communities of practice Corporate SNA in CIO magazine Introduction to UCINET and social network methods The navigational aspects of social networks Blended Learning in KM Supporting Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Pr... WHO uses communities of practice to achieving univ... Communities for Project Offices Power struggle in radical innovation communities Xwiki, the MT of Wikis? Workshop Report on the Theory and Practice of Phys... Inquiry: Learning begins with Questions Deadline for VC2005 on the 30th of May Learning for development (Organizational Learning) ICTs and Social Capital in the Knowledge Society: ... NGMTI communities of practice Communities and change agents Informal learning and communities CITSA 2005 - Information Systems Analysis and I-KN... PhD Seminar in Copenhagen Business School Community of Practice in technology platforms The Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities and Techno... Workflow learning Using virtual communities in marketing APQC's blog on KM and Communities of Practice