Here’s a great article you might be interested in reading. It’s about the development the Web and New Media strategy for the Smithsonian Museums. The strategy was set up in co-creation with a large part of the community and in an open source environment on a wiki. The Smithsonian also used Twitter and YouTube, organised a 2.0 conference (Keynote speakers were Bran Ferren of Applied Minds, Inc.; author Clay Shirky; George Oates, founder of the Flickr Commons; and Chris Anderson, author and Editor-in-Chief of Wired) and workshops.

The article gives a good runthrough on the importance of a good (online) strategy, and the benefits of the open process is was created in. The article can be read here. The whole text is licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives. The wiki where the online strategy was formulated can be found here on wikispaces.

“Good strategy helps you prioritize tactical decision making. Today, a teenage intern can harness more technology and reach a larger audience with free cloud-based applications and a little moxie than an army of Unix system administrators could ten years ago. It’s easier to do stuff now, and that makes choosing what you do, and what you don’t do, even more important. Organizations without good strategies tend to pursue disconnected opportunities – short-term successes  –  that give the illusion of progress, but which aren’t aligned along a strategic path and don’t add up to much in the long run. This is like a junk food diet that feels satisfying at the time but leaves you hungry 30 minutes later and gives you long-term health problems.”

On September 12, Charles Leadbeater will open the Incubate festival week with a lecture on social innovation and the role the arts can play in this process. Charles Leadbeater is a leading authority on innovation and creativity. He is Tony Blair’s favourite corporate thinker. He has advised companies, cities and governments on innovation strategy and drew on that experience in writing his latest book We-think: the power of mass creativity. This book charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation from science and open source software, to computer games and political campaigning.

In 2009, Charles Leadbeater wrote the essay ‘The Art of With’; a most interesting and highly recommended text on the practices of the (avant garde) art and how it stands in opposition to the art and the world of to and for:

Often in the name of doing things for people traditional, hierarchical organisations end up doing things to people. Companies say they work for consumers but often treat them like targets to be aimed at, wallets to be emptied, desires to be excited and manipulated.

The arts, and the modern avant garde in particular, has stood in opposition to this commodified, regimented world of to and for. The arts offer a space for contemplation and reflection, challenge and controversy, higher meanings and deeper purpose. Yet in its way the modern art world and modern arts institutions embody the principles of to and for just as powerfully as the modern factory or school.

The modern, iconoclastic avant garde starts from the idea of separation and specialism. To produce good art, artists have to separate themselves off from the society around them – physically, emotionally, morally, socially – the artist as a self-styled resistance fighter pitted against the trivialising distractions of popular culture. The untrammelled imagination of the avant garde artist is one of the last redoubts against bourgeoise, traditional, commodified culture.

Further on in the essay, Leadbeater goes on talking about the resemblances and role of the web within this context; how the art and the web of with drive innovation:

The appeal of the web, however, stems from the way it connects to and amplifies the idea of with in other areas of life. The working ethos of open source communities, Wikipedia and the web more generally is a culture in which people work with people. In the world of the web the main principle is that you can freely communicate with anyone you need to regardless of title or hierarchy.

Innovation invariably comes from a version of with: creative collaboration and conversation in which people share and blend their ideas. With should be the guiding principle of politics in liberal communities: politicians working with people to find solutions to shared problems. People want a more gown up, bottom up, conversational politics rather than being spun messages or broadcast to from on high.

Download the full essay by Charles Leadbeater here in a pdf file. The text is licensed under Creative Commons. Presale for the Charles Leadbeater lecture & panel has begun. Tickets are for sale through the website of Incubate.