Stephen Downes

"Innovation and creativity will be the new literacies," writes Harold Jarche. "This is scary because most of our schools and other institutions do not foster innovation and creativity." We need to focus - in our schools and in our companies - not on people and skills that demonstrate conformity, but those outside the straight and narrow. See my other post about polymaths. Jarche continues, "The rebel spirit is the competitive advantage for innovation and creativity. Most organizations do everything possible to extinguish it, but rebels can help cycle more quickly through increasingly shorter stages of competitive advantage. The new economy's equivalent of the industrial assembly line will likely be some system that celebrates rebels... In the new economy, it's not what you know, but what you do with what you can learn, that will be valued. It will take rebels on the edges to do this." What are the edges? Here's what I think.