Friday TED Talk: Charles Leadbeater on True Innovation

Charles Leadbeater, an English researcher, journalist and author, has studied the origins of genuinely new advances in technology and the arts, from mountain bikes to rap music, to computer games in China. He has a surprising take on how real innovation comes about: not from lone geniuses, or the R&D departments of large corporations, but from the interactive and collaborative efforts of passionate amateurs. This nineteen-minute talk was given at the first TED Global Conference, in Oxford in 2005 (you will need to adapt to some British pronunciations, such as "pay-tents" for the American "patents"), but it is still timely:

There is more about Charles Leadbeater at this page (with links to his books), and this is his home page on the Web. Watch the high-res version of his talk at this link, and download his talk in that and other formats from this page.