Open Source Leadership
By Don Ledingham on Aug 21, 2007 in Blogging, Communication, Culture change, Ideas, Leadership
I’ve just finished reading and can recommend Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.
The strapline for the book reads: “How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything”
The dustcover describes the book as follows :
In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superceded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.
Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.
A brilliant primer on one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand the key forces driving competitiveness in the twenty-first century.
During my time in the U.S the I was struck by the idea of Open Source Leadership – as a metaphor for a leadership approach where collaboration was the key factor in moving an organisation forwards.
Of course on returning home I googled “Open Source Leadership” – it came as no surprise that others have been here long before me. However, if I were to try to capture the type of approach which I think education needs to develop in the next few years then “Open Source Leadership” – with a focus upon peer production and mass collaboration – would appear to have massive potential.
Post Script:
It’s nearly two years since Robert Jones first introduced me to the concept of Open Source – now here I am using it a metaphor for leadership in education.
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4 Comment(s)
By Ewan McIntosh on Aug 21, 2007 | Reply
I’ve been using it to describe the great way things are done in East Lothian schools all year:
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/06/leading_from_be.html
There are so many labels to describe the great feeling of freedom to innovate and do well by the kids in those classrooms; each one, I guess, helps a different mindset of person ‘get’ the idea.
By Jim Mcdougall on Aug 22, 2007 | Reply
Don,
Not sure how and where to categorise this commment, but thought you might like the kind of quirky block diagram on specialists and generalists which I found in the “CommunicationNation” blog and which I have reproduced in my blog. I also like the metaphor for thinking and thinkers, borrowed from the classics, of “the hedgehog and the fox”, hence the title of the post.
By Admin on Aug 22, 2007 | Reply
A key book about the development of open source is The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Eric Raymond, subtitled “Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary”. The text of the book is online, under the Open Publication Licence, here.
Although written mainly in the context of software development, he concludes with a more general section on management, where he makes this observation:
By Robert Jones on Aug 23, 2007 | Reply
Yep – I remember that meeting well Don. I remember your enthusiasm for the idea, which was in stark contrast to the amused cynicism my discussions of Open Source usually elicited back then