What do a business author, a financial journalist, a medical illustrator, and a software architect have in common? If I said advice on innovation, would it surprise you?

Practically Radical, William C. Taylor’s latest book, is a wonderful thought provoker, full of stories of companies and leaders taking a novel approach to improve profits and create new enterprises. One of Taylor’s main concepts addresses the idea of engaging customers and in some cases any interested persons for ideas for new products, for solutions to business and technical problems and even for product design. Although companies are constantly receiving feedback from customers, Taylor encourages reaching out beyond customers and well beyond the responsible employee group to consciously track, value and encourage participation from the human race.

This is very reminiscent of the “wisdom of crowds” data presented in detail by James Surowiecki, a financial journalist, in his 2004 book, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. Here, he suggests that ideas submitted by a wide range of people are of higher quality and greater innovation than those by a single individual or an ongoing committee of people. Continue reading…