How the internet can facilitate social change directly | Charles Leadbeater | The Observer

Author and social entrepreneur Charles Leadbeater says that new technology can give ordinary people the means to tackle social problems in direct, innovative ways charles-leadbeater-activisim-internet Charles Leadbeater, online evangelist, at home in London. Photograph: Sonja Horsman for the Observer Charles Leadbeater is an online evangelist. The former Financial Times journalist has moved away from politics into a world of social entrepreneurs, amateur activists and grassroots campaigners who are exploiting digital technologies to develop solutions to problems that lie outside the interests of commercial and state institutions. He believes that online tools can be used to organise and galvanise. He produced a call-to-arms in We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity (Profile), a book that documents the rise of amateur activism in a time of information revolution. His research with digital activists who work with people in some of the world's most impoverished places shows how the web can galvanise support from around the globe – using new applications, devices and social networks – and what needs to be in place for this to happen.

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Three Ways to Distinguish an Edge from a Fringe - John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison - Harvard Business Review

We believe in the power of edges. We even named our research outfit at Deloitte the Center for the Edge. It seems reasonable to ask, though: what is an edge? And how does it differ from a fringe? Fringes are marginal, by definition. A political group with extreme views. An artistic movement without commercial ambition or potential. Most of us try to avoid the fringes, unless we're trying to make a point of some kind, because fringes rarely lead anywhere useful. They're dead ends, to mix metaphors. They neither grow big nor powerful enough to influence the center — which we call the core — of society and commerce.

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