This article, and TED Talk video, examine a phenomenon that Chris Anderson calls "an upward spiral of improvement," which is essentially improvement due to transparency, and he suggests that "the arrival of free online video may turn out to be just as significant a media development as the arrival of print." Specifically, he notes the LXD dancers at last year's Academy Awards. Several of the dancers were self-taught, and all engaged in a series of international "challenge videos" which improved their skills.

Then he notes that after TED began putting its various talks on line, the presenters started putting even more and more work and effort into their presentations. The quality spiraled upwards.

This is a must-read for planners. You may think differently about video, reading, and crowd-sourcing. Page two contains a chart emphasizing A History of Collaborative Circles, ranging from early trade routes (producers and traders), through the scientific revolution of the 1500s scientists), and eventually shared, online videos (everyone).

The way I see it, Crowd Accelerated Innovation requires three ingredients: a crowd, light, and desire. Let’s take each in turn.

A crowd. A crowd is simply a community, any group of people with a shared interest. It can be narrow (unicycling, Greek archaeology) or broad (science, world peace), small (my village) or large (humanity). The community needs to contain at least a few people capable of innovation. But not everyone in the community need be. There are plenty of other necessary roles:

• The trend-spotter, who finds a promising innovation early.

• The evangelist, who passionately makes the case for idea X or person Y.

• The superspreader, who broadcasts innovations to a larger group. The skeptic, who keeps the conversation honest.

• General participants, who show up, comment honestly, and learn.