I have made a few such attempts at “organized randomness,”
and they have yielded interesting results. For example, for several
years, Babson ran executive education programs for managers
at Digital Equipment. After more than three hundred managers
had gone through our program, we wanted to have a “reunion”
where people could meet others who had similar experiences.
The question was how to let them know each other. We arranged
an idea fair, where each person who attended could post on
one flipchart sheet something interesting that he or she was
working on as a result of the prior training. We posted these in a
large room. Participants could stroll around, stopping where they
saw something interesting to them, making a new connection.
Indeed, people who do executive education know that no
matter how good the teaching is, participants always say the best
part of the program was meeting the others in it! This can be dis-
couraging to faculty who do not understand the phenomenon, but
it illustrates just how hungry organizational members are for
chances to make new relationships and learn about other parts of
their own or other organizations in ways that can turn out to be
very valuable.
Xerox PARC, a pioneer in attempting to maximize the social
nature of information sharing, had its researchers doing short post-
ings outside their offices on current projects so that passersby could
rapidly discern whether they might want to talk more with the
occupant of the office.
One of the best applications of this idea I have heard of
appeared in the Harvard Business Review.^5 The World Bank, noto-
rious for its stodginess and for funding gigantic, often ineffective
projects, developed an “innovation market” where new ideas could
be posted for viewing by others with ideas or with funds for grants.
This has blossomed in the past few years and is generating many
good ideas with excellent payoffs. There is an initial vetting of
ideas to choose those that seem to have potential, but then the
“market” decides which are best. People can move around to see
the posted ideas and proposals and act quickly.
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