The modern Idea Machine better reflects how people self-organize today. They are decentralized, more closely intertwined with public dialogue, and work symbiotically with a community that anyone can join: many individual nodes operating in a loosely-organized network, instead of a monolithic organization.

Part is cultural norms within a company: the ability to use lean startup methods, try stuff, get it out there, get feedback from customers, an iterate aggressively. That’s not the way large companies work. It’s not the way a planning cycle works, it’s not the way to get budget dollars, it’s not the way you deal with colleagues who don’t want you to

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Most of us know the term “Echo Chamber,” and we’ll get to that in a minute—but we sorely lack a term for the opposite of an Echo Chamber. When the rules of a group’s intellectual culture mirror the values of high-rung thinking, the group is what I call an Idea Lab. An Idea Lab is an environment of collaborative high-rung thinking. People in an Idea

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