Continuing my recent Doug Engelbart kick, I’ve been thinking about why so few industries – particularly the one I’m most familiar with, the world of fast-moving consumer goods – have embraced his ideas of collective IQ and improvement.
In particular, why are there so few attempts to create the “improvement alliances” that Engelbart described in his writing? These alliances are cross-industry groups that exist at the frontier of knowledge, advancing our collective ability to solve problems.
“Because they’re difficult to get off the ground” feels like a bit of a cop-out answer; lots of things that exist were difficult to create in the first place. I don’t have the solution, but I’d love to be a part of finding it.
This week’s article
Improvement communities
In their quest to improve how they improve, how can organisations learn from not just from their allies, not just from their competitors, but from everyone?