john seely brown

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John Seely Brown is a visiting scholar and advisor to the Provost at University of Southern California (USC) and the Independent Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge.

Prior to that he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)—a position he held for nearly two decades. While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as organizational learning, knowledge management, complex adaptive systems, and nano/mems technologies. He was a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). His personal research interests include the management of radical innovation, digital youth culture, digital media, and new forms of communication and learning.

John, or as he is often called—JSB— is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and of AAAS and a Trustee of the MacArthur Foundation. He serves on numerous public boards (Amazon, Corning, and Varian Medical Systems) and private boards of directors.

He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals and was awarded the Harvard Business Review's 1991 McKinsey Award for his article, "Research that Reinvents the Corporation" and again in 2002 for his article “Your Next IT Strategy.”

In 2004 he was inducted in the Industry Hall of Fame.

With Paul Duguid he co-authored the acclaimed book The Social Life of Information (HBS Press, 2000) that has been translated into 9 languages with a second addition in April 2002, and with John Hagel he co-authored the book The Only Sustainable Edge which is about new forms of collaborative innovation. He has just completed two new books – A New Culture of Learning with Professor Doug Thomas at USC and The Power of Pull with John Hagel.

JSB received a BA from Brown University in 1962 in mathematics and physics and a PhD from University of Michigan in 1970 in computer and communication sciences. He has received five honorary degrees including: May 2000, Brown University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science Degree; July 2001, the London Business School conferred an Honorary Doctor of Science in Economics; May 2004, Claremont Graduate University granted him an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters; May 2005, University of Michigan awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree, and May 2009, North Carolina State University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree.

emphasize the roll of mentorship
if you get the edge really high performing, the core takes notice

when you can move to a full inquiry method..

we need space for messing around in order to find our sweet spot - love it
petri dish is where learning happens


leadbeater 
and

architect - someone who can transform constraints into 

one room school house like a petri dish  have to teach others - best way to learn

we have to be able to show what we've accomplished - ?

1/2 life of any skill has moved from 30 years to 5 years or less
so we need to learn how to embrace change - turn everything into a learning oppotunity
through the collective
listen with humil
ty to others and to the pushbacks of the situation


structure and agency vs structure and freedom
Agency is what we rob kids of in school, as the typical picture, and thus goes motivation

learning in collective:
in regard to kids not doing anything on facebook, etc
harry potter - kids absorb everything... they live it - they're learning to be
indwelling - not thinking about the learning

indwelling plays at the tacit level - tacit is where you live

“Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.” James Carse

proofs and refutations

it's about making visual arguments
you can completely change the movie as it's perceived by changing the audio - you can almost change what's seen

Andrew Hiskens: 'The computer scientist Chrstipopher Langton observed several decades ago that innovative systems have a tendency to gravitate towards the 'edge chaos': the fertile zone between too much order and too much chaos' - Steven Johnson (sorry to keep quoting him!)

clay shirky

surprised we don't study more - true expert coaches..

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