Why Julian Assange, Founder, Wikileaks Models Great Creative Leadership - TED video

In watching this video, you can see the emergence of a genuine creative leader at work. Creative leadership requires conviction and commitment with one component marking out the great creative leaders from the others - personal risk!! The great creative leaders in our world, Socrates, Joan of Arc, J.B. Priestley, Nehru, Nelson Mandela to name just a few all took great personal risks to ensure their beliefs in one way or another effected the world in which we live for the common good. Whilst it is difficult to say just exactly what the common good is, universally we know it when we see it and we know when the common good is not being served. Historically the sign of a great creative leader is when someone takes the risk to speak out against entrenched power that we know refuses to allow proper debate regardless of the risks.Julian Assange, Founder of Wikileaks has done that.

Here is the introduction form the TED interview.

You could say Australian-born Julian Assange has swapped his long-time interest in network security flaws for the far-more-suspect flaws of even bigger targets: governments and corporations. Since his early 20s, he has been using network technology to prod and probe the vulnerable edges of administrative systems, but though he was a computing hobbyist first (in 1991 he was the target of hacking charges after he accessed the computers of an Australian telecom), he's now taken off his "white hat" and launched a career as one of the world's most visible human-rights activists.

He calls himself "editor in chief." He travels the globe as its spokesperson. Yet Assange's part in WikiLeaks is clearly dicier than that: he's become the face of creature that, simply, many powerful organizations would rather see the world rid of. His Wikipedia entry says he is "constantly on the move," and some speculate that his role in publishing decrypted US military video has put him in personal danger. A controversial figure, pundits debate whether his work is reckless and does more harm than good. Amnesty International recognized him with an International Media Award in 2009.

Assange studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne. He wrote Strobe, the first free and open-source port scanner, and contributed to the book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier.

"WikiLeaks has had more scoops in three years than the Washington Post has had in 30."

Clay Shirky