I came across this talk by John Seely Brown at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on reforming the way we educate kids. He proposes to change the way kids are taught to allow for more tinkering and creating. Kids learn to find information themselves and build upon the information they find by sharing and collaborating with each other. John Seely Brown ends his talk by saying the current technology greatly supports such tinkering, collaborating, and sharing.

Why is this talk relevant to innovation? If you look at truly innovative companies, they have achieved a state where a broad base of their employees are innovating in such a way. If employees come up with an idea, they start the preliminary research themselves. They collaborate with other colleagues or people outside the company to enrich their idea. They share what they are doing so the work is useful for the other employees and can be built upon.

Working in this manner does not require large innovation budgets, which is a big plus in the current state of the economy.

We are currently working with a large Dutch company to achieve such a state of ‘continuous innovation.’ They are using our innovation portal to share and collaborate and for all employees it is possible to be coached on how to engage in this process.

Watch the talk and imagine your employees or colleagues working in such a way…..

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u-MczVpkUA&eurl=http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/weblog/&feature=player_embedded