Innovating After the Internet

In his innovation talk, Joi Ito explains how he collaborated with others to create Safecast, arguably one of the most successful citizen science projects in the world. This occurred when he instinctively tried to go online to take matters into his own hands after the 2011 Japanese earthquake so he and other concerned team members could measure radiation and get data out to everyone else. 16 million data points and 3 years later, Safecast was clearly not a fluke, but enabled by a new way of doing things due to the internet.

The innovation talk lists new principles in play for permission-less innovative strategy. When the cost of innovation went down, the world changed from a MBA to designer and engineer driven model. Coining the term 'deploy or die,' Ito insists entrepreneurs must get stuff into the real world to count. This new bottoms-up, democratic and chaotic system proves traditional rules don't work anymore. Other principles include the power of pull (pulling resources from the network as you need them instead of stockpiling), learning over education and compass over maps.