When It's A Sharing And

Some Great Minds Become Great By Turning The Rubble Of An Exploded Paradigm Into Something Consistent And Meaningful. Others Become Great By Laying The Gunpowder, Grain By Grain. Every Important Revolution Needs Both Kinds Of Minds To Complete Itself.

Organizations That Empower Folks Further Down The Chain Or Try To Get Rid Of The Big Hierarchal Chains And Allow Decision Making To Happen On A More Local Level End Up Being More Adaptive And Resilient Because There Are More Minds Involved In The Problem.

This Is How Great Intellectual Breakthroughs Usually Happen In Practice. It Is Rarely The Isolated Genius Having A Eureka Moment Alone In The Lab. Nor Is It Merely A Question Of Building On Precedent, Of Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants, In Newton's Famous Phrase. Great Breakthroughs Are Closer To What Happens In A Flood Plain: A Dozen Separate Tributaries Converge, And The Rising Waters Lift The Genius High Enough That He Or She Can See Around The Conceptual Obstructions Of The Age.

Chance Favors The Connected Mind.

Good Ideas May Not Want To Be Free, But They Do Want To Connect, Fuse, Recombine. They Want To Reinvent Themselves By Crossing Conceptual Borders. They Want To Complete Each Other As Much As They Want To Compete