And the nominee for best business book title so far this year goes to ... Swarm Creativity. Does it live up to its own buzz?
The big idea here is COINs, or Collaborative Innovation Networks. (We guess the more accurate abbreviation CIN was less catchy.) Peter Gloor defines COINs as “a cyberteam of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by the Web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work.” What elevates this book above many of the current titles on collaborative innovation, we think, is its emphasis on and understanding of networks, particularly social networks.
“COINs are the most productive engines of innovation ever,” the author writes. This book is about why COINs rule: their key elements, how people participate in them, how organizations can or can't control their output, and the essential role technology plays in gluing the whole process together. The book takes its name from the swarming behavior of insects, which features a collective intelligence, self-organization, and the ability to successfully solve complex tasks.
There are five essential elements to collaborative innovation networks: learning networks, sound ethical principles, trust and self-organization, making knowledge accessible to everyone, and internal honesty and transparency. COINs rely on modern technology such as the Internet, e-mail, and other communications vehicles for information sharing.
COINs are indeed powerful. Gloor attributes the evolution of the Internet to a COIN, albeit an extended one, stretching from early ideas on hypertext by Vannevar Bush in 1945 and progressing through Tim Berners-Lee's creation of what we today call the World Wide Web. Of course, the growth of the Web continues to evolve dramatically year after year.
To make the concepts concrete, Gloor devotes a chapter to real-life examples involving DaimlerChrysler, Deloitte, and Union Bank of Switzerland. But much of the actual detail work on COINs is laid out in three appendixes. In Appendix C, for example, you will learn success factors for creating a collaborative Web workspace, including the right protocol for successful e-mail communication.
Gloor is a research fellow at both MIT and Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, and a former Deloitte partner.
- Sean Silverthorne