Innovation comes from the edge

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“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over; on the edge you find things you can’t see from the center.” Kurt Vonnegut.

“Innovation comes from the edge, almost never from the centre. Sometimes it’s cool to live on the edge but for the most part it’s hard work. Things keep breaking. The business models are not proven. The procedures aren’t fixed. The models and metaphors are not understood by everyone. It’s difficult to connect with the mainstream. This is life on the edges.”          Harold Jarche www.jarche.com

Jarche thinks development of organisations requires a partnership between managers on the inside, workers at the edges, and consultants beyond the edge. Amongst those “workers at the edge”, I’m interested in those who have taken themselves to the edge of authority. They no longer believe that hierachy is the only or best form for organising action, and question these presumptions when they appear in organisational behaviour. Nor are they just building networks as a self-protective reaction to hierachy, but looking for the ways networks and hierachies can work together.

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