Two superior books on a popular subject

INNOVATION has become a popular subject on the business bookshelf over the past few years. But few of the new titles have offered much in the way of vision, insight or practical guidance. Two recent works—Charles Leadbeater’s “We-Think” (Profile Books) and “The New Age of Innovation”, by C.K Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan (McGraw-Hill)—are an exception to that rule. That each of them manages to say something potentially useful makes them worthy of special attention.

“We-Think” is the more radical of the pair. After a spell in journalism, Mr Leadbeater, a Briton, reinvented himself as a management thinker and as an adviser to governments via Demos, the New Labourite think-tank. There is a predictable whiff of third-wayism around his book’s central point: that internet-based, mass collaboration is mounting a serious challenge to the traditional, hierarchical company—and thus to the very organisation of capital in society.

“We-Think” innovation supposedly unites amateur and expert volunteers in such a way as to enable them produce goods and services that are not only free but often superior to those provided by corporations. Moreover, its acolytes seem happier than the wage-slaves who belong to the typical firm: “Well-being will come to depend less on what we own and consume and more on what we can share with others and create together,” says Mr Leadbeater, adding that this approach is “as effective a base for productive activity as private ownership”.

Such utopianism can provoke cynicism. Wikipedia is cited as a successful example of such new-fangled collaboration, and supposedly it outperforms traditional encyclopedias not only in its raw volume but also in accuracy. Really? And even if it is true that the “We-Think” approach is, as this book argues, spreading rapidly in business, politics, education, health care and more, unsuccessful collaborations abound, interspersed between the gems of the open-source software movement Mr Leadbeater so admires. No small number of Wikipedia entries testify to this sad fact, however useful the whole thing may be.

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A couple of very different perspectives . . . well worth reading - IT