Community based innovation as panacea?

Open innovation, community-based innovation, user innovation, crowd sourcing, open source, the wisdom of the crowds are the new buzzwords in many discussion about innovation which indicate yet another shift in the traditional understanding of innovations processes and innovators. No longer the genius inventors or research groups within company are in center focus. Rather, the realization that the number of experts outside any company exceeds the internal reservoir has created more sensitivity for the increasingly dispersed nature of knowledge and the potential of these groups to bring about new approaches and solutions.

At the same time we claim that community based innovation approaches have been around for quite some time: (Expert) commissions, meetings, consultation or even Toyotism would fall in this category and are the standard repertoire of many processes. Merging these traditional form of group decision making with the potential of the Internet allows for new decision making processes which use the knowledge of many to arrive at truly innovative solutions. This forum is about these approaches, their usefulness, the potential outcomes and potential pitfalls.