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Charles Leadbeater

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We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production Paperback – July 1, 2009

by Charles Leadbeater (Author)

4.0 18 ratings

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You are what you share.

That is the ethic of the world being created by YouTube and MySpace, Wikipedia and Facebook. We-Think is a rallying call for the shared power of the web to make society more open and egalitarian.

We-Think reports on an unparalleled wave of collaborative creativity as people from California to China devise ways to work together that are more democratic, productive and creative. This guide to the new culture of mass participation and innovation is a book like no other: it started first online through a unique experiment in collaborative creativity involving hundreds of people across the globe.

The generation growing up with the web will not be content to remain spectators. They want to be players and this is their slogan: we think therefore we are.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Profile Books
Publication date

July 1, 2009
Dimensions

5.1 x 0.9 x 7.8 inches
ISBN-10

9781861978370
ISBN-13

978-1861978370
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Likely to be the most controversial book about the internet to be published this year . . . I urge you to read it."-The Independent

"A riveting guide to a new world in which a whole series of core assumptions are being overturned by innovations on the web."-The Spectator

"I was gripped. The book's theme is as big and bold as it gets ... Leadbeater's book should be compulsory reading for all who seek to understand the driving force of this century" - Management Today

"Likely to be the most controversial book about the internet to be published this year . . . I urge you to read it."-The Independent

"A riveting guide to a new world in which a whole series of core assumptions are being overturned by innovations on the web."-The Spectator

"I was gripped. The book's theme is as big and bold as it gets ... Leadbeater's book should be compulsory reading for all who seek to understand the driving force of this century" - Management Today

About the Author

Charles Leadbeater is one of the world's leading authorities on innovation and creativity. He has advised companies (including BBC and Microsoft), cities and governments; has won the David Watt Prize for journalism; and is one of the top management thinkers in the world (Accenture, 2005). Previous books include Living on Thin Air and Up and Down the Escalator.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1861978375
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Profile Books; 2nd edition (July 1, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781861978370
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1861978370
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 0.9 x 7.8 inches

Customer Reviews:
4.0 18 ratings

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white cloud blue sky

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2016

Flat cool.

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2011

Charles Leadbeater's We-Think is an easy to read discussion of how the Internet is changing how we live and work because of collaboration. While these points will be rather familiar to most people, the value of We-Think is in its predictions on the social changes and the internal dialogue it creates for the reader.

So while most of us know that the Internet allows developing nations free access to previously limited information, it is when we consider the implications of a non-profit organization sharing its discovery of a special bacteria that can replace expensive bio-technology with developing nations we really see just how important We-Think truly is.

But Leadbeater does not just present a rosy, one-sided view. He is keenly aware to the Web's limitations, and by looking at these limitations we get a clear idea of the Web's positive potential. Furthermore, he explains how and when these changes work, as well as why such changes have not affected many part of society.

So while it might seem that since everyone can put forth their voice on an issue, democracy would be enhanced, we find that the debate has not been enhanced since the Web tends to favor the loudest voices we tend to attract only the like-minded. By tempering the upside of connectivity, the reader is able to get a clear picture of how and in what ways will this greater connectedness spills into our personal and business lives.

Ultimately, despite its clear and easy to understand style and presentation, We-Think will benefit most those readers who already understand the basic points, and are looking to stimulate their own ideas on the topic.

I hope this review has been helpful.

One person found this helpful

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H. Schwartz

You're serious that "Mark Zuckerman, Facebook founder" is a typo in this book? But it's true...

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2015

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I was initially excited about this book -- the introduction contains a fascinating discussion on Wikipedia and how the nature of "what is a fact" is changing.

However, when I got to Chapter Two, Leadbeater started making errors like referring to facebook founder Mark Zuckerman, (it's Zuckerberg, everyone knows that), and like called LinkedIn "Linked.In", and he referenced a lot of totally out of date companies like Swiki or JotSpot that have been defunct for years. I lost interest and it became hard to continue after reading such obvious mistakes in editing.

Oh what might have been.....

Helpful

Ira Laefsky

Applying Web Trends & Bottom-Up Collaboration To Worldwide Innovation and Development

Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2009

Many of the trends and ideas described by Charles Leadbeater are well known to readers of business and technology publications. These include the power of Web and Internet Communication, new Collaborative and Virtual Organizations, and the quality and pervasiveness of Open Source efforts. There is a certain correspondence between the observations of this excellent volume and Clay Shirky's widely popular "Here Comes Everybody". But the novelty and emergent necessity of this volume lies in how these observations are applied by an International Consultant who advises worldwide corporate leaders and several European government organizations on achieving innovation.

Mr. Leadbeater offers insightful models of how bottom-up distributed innovation has had success in widely divergent technologies and geographies. These include his "Pro-Am" model of amateur do-it-yourself innovators delivering leading contributions and products above the quality of professionals employed by corporate giants; and his "pebbles" versus "boulders" model of bottom-up small scale innovation.

The excellent writing in this volume goes beyond telling a good story about technology, society and collaboration; he describes how these trends which individually have been observed by many business and technology pundits can be applied to achieving corporate, national and global innovation in the future. As a British and European expert who has advised governments and global corporations, Mr. Leadbeater brings new insight to those who have observed these trends chiefly in the American environment.

--Ira Laefsky

5 people found this helpful

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placeshaping

Interesting take on the potential of ubiquitous connectivity

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2015

A thought provoking premise with a few fascinating case study examples. This book provided a bit of inspiration and definitely changed the way I perceive the world and engage online.

Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2011

A book with a vision I entirely subscribe. It's in our hands to use the Web in a positive and productive way, to foster democracy, equality and freedom. The Web gives the ordinary citizen the possibility to produce contents, share knowledge and participate in projects wherever in the world.
This new culture of We Think, as Leadbeater puts it, is an open door to do things differently:

«If globalization is to be no more than the march of McDonalds, Coke and Microsoft, it will be a shallow and distorted account of what western culture has to offer that many in the developing world will reject. We Think offers a different possible story, one of trust and collaboration built on liberal and enlightenment traditions of peer collaboration in pursuit of better ideas, arbitrated on the basis of evidence rather than ideology.»

«The Web ... is creating a world that works to the logic of With - structured lateral, free association of people and ideas. The principle of doing things with people rather than to or for them will breed very different organizations, services and experiences in virtually every field.»

The author's vision in video:
TED Talk by Charles Leadbeater [...]

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Alistair Kelman

A good primer on the collaboration business model

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 8, 2008

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Charlie Leadbeater has written a very well researched and approachable introduction to collaboration and creativity. His illustrations of how successful enterprises can be built by harnessing the "Pro-Am" (the amateur who is as skilled as a professional) are sources of hope. He is undoubtedly right but he has also missed a couple of good points. The first is that in science and engineering like Moore's Law (in respect of computer power) and Sod's law ( in respect of things in general) there is Stigler's Law of Inventions: "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." No modern scientific or engineering discovery can be laid at the door of one person - the reality is that multiple entirely independent individuals come up with the same thing at the same time. From the lightbulb to the telephone this has always been shown to be true. This is where "We-Think" can gain its power since, thanks to the Internet entirely independent individuals can collaborate to innovate and invent at warp speed

The second point which Charlie misses (or, to be fair, probably choose not to mention since I believe he is is fully aware of the issue) is the inability of the legal system to protect inventions and technologies developed through collaboration. Brainstorming solutions to problems is overrated - it is easy to brainstorm but it is hard to execute the ideas that have come from the brainstorm. "We-Think" collaboration suggests a mechanism to do just that - but the business models to protect the collaborative effort do not yet exist. (I have some possible solutions but a review of this book is not the place to discuss them.)

All in all a fascinating and thought provoking read - hence the five stars.

10 people found this helpful

Mark Pack

Interesting, thoughtful but some questionable assumptions

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2015

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Charles Leadbeater book, is – as you would expect from him – an interesting and thoughtful study. It clearly and persuasively lays out how “an unparalleled wave of online creativity” is upon us, with collaborative efforts such as Wikipedia providing information for free and in a way that would have been previously unthinkable.

Underlying it though is an assumption which features on the book’s cover: “The generation growing up with the web will not be content to remain spectators. They want to be players.” The extent to which this is true matters in particular for those seeking to use the internet for politics, for in the political arena online collaborative generation of content is relatively rare. Is this because those in politics just don’t get user-generated content, Web 2.0 and the whole modern way of doing things? Or is it because they understand the limitations of such approaches – and that only very few people want to stop being a spectator?

To Leadbeater’s credit, he himself provides evidence which undermines the breathless excitement of the book cover. For example, as of January 2006 less than 50,000 people worldwide had made even just five or more edits to Wikipedia. That is a tiny proportion of Wikipedia’s visitors, with the vast majority happy to remain as spectators, consuming the work of others. It’s a large enough number to provide an impressive collection of information – but that is far from saying we’re all moving away from being spectators.

This asymmetry appears again and again in his book. Another example: he received around 200 emails in response to his online drafts during the writing of the book. That’s a large enough number to add significantly to the quality of the final version, but is still a tiny number of the total readers a best selling author like himself can get to. Moreover, in this and other cases, it is far from clear that we could all cope with a scaling up of collaboration on a scale sufficient to make the number of collaborators more than a tiny proportion of the audience. 200 emails would be great, 2,000 challenging and 200,000 a nightmare.

What is the lesson from this for politics? It is that an openness to user-generated content, collaboration and making producing content more like a conversation is really about making what you produce better; it isn’t about involving the public on a significant scale in a paradigm-shifting manner.

Think back to Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign for example. It certainly featured massive successful use of the internet, but that was in aid of getting out his chosen message, his chosen policies and to his chosen strategy. They may have been better informed and selected due to dialogue and feedback, but policies, messages and strategy were not written collaboratively, wiki-style.

Political use of such approaches also has another hurdle: politics has a strong adversarial streak. Voting, after all, is about choosing who to vote for – and who not to vote for. That means political online collaboration and the like is in practice far more vulnerable to online vandalism, negative comments, votes to bury content and so on than most other areas of discussion. There are tools which make handling this problem easier, but the existence of this underlying dynamic is one reason why politics is, to a degree, different.

Involving the public more in politics would certainly be a good thing; it’s just the Web 2.0 world of collaborative and user-generated content isn’t a primary means to do so. Wikipedia gives huge power over the public’s consumption of information to 50,000 people. That may be better than it being only in the hands of a small number of publishers, but it is still a fundamentally elitist structure.

A bigger elite people can opt to join is a nicer, cuddlier one, but still an elite. Part of the reason for that is that, as Leadbetter points out, “communities that share and develop ideas usually start around someone who donates their knowledge.” In other words, the usually start around someone who has something that others do not – and that core role and power is not a position anyone has been elected to. Hence my use of the word ‘elite’.

We see this with open source software projects, where the most successful almost always have a small elite core of people making key decisions and driving the project forward. Linux is many good things, but it is not a democratically created or formed piece of software. Linus Torvalds really has the role of benevolent dictator. And that doesn’t make him or the Linux process a great role-model for how our politics should operate.

KEATINGCORP

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 5, 2017

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great

Mr. S. Jeffery

Been said before

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2008

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From the very start, re-labelling 'Collaboration' with 'WeThink' is actually annoying. After 200 odd pages of hearing 'We Think' can do this and that, becomes downright offensive. 'We Think' is mentioned probably a hundred times, and WILL drive you mad.
This book is one step above rubbish. It repeats age old examples of well known successes, and tries to convince the reader that it has been rebadged and improved. And by rebadging an old idea, means you can call everything We Think.

So, my honest opinion is that you should not pay for this book. Sure, if a friend gives you a copy, then read it.. You can then laugh at them for paying for it (speaking from experience!)

8 people found this helpful

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