Our objectives are to:
- Develop a transferable model for amplifying a diverse city’s grassroots innovation capacity through connecting diverse communities through key individuals
- Provide practical examples of how collaborative technologies can be exploited in a city context
“A group that thinks in diverse ways will address a problem from many angles.” Charles Leadbeater, The Difference Dividend
Although diversity of perspective is often cited as a key driver for innovation there is little understanding of how to capitalise on the increasing ethnic diversity of our cities for social and commercial benefit.
Whilst the city of Leicester is often cited as an exemplar of multiculturalism, the experience of its residents is one of a poly-monocultural city where community boundaries are well marked and rarely crossed. This project will identify key and already proactive people from across the city who have the ability to cross community divides and indeed do so already, and bring them together in a new and powerful social network to identify and develop innovation opportunities.
The growth of social media and the skills that it encourages will be key to the 21st century skillset.
Informed by research conducted by the Institute for the Future, De Montfort's Institute of Creative Technologies's work on transliteracy, the NLab regional social media network and the IOCT’s Visiting Professor Howard Rheingold, the project will build on the participants' existing understanding of their working styles, motivations and expertise to create new structures and processes that bypass traditional constraints and stimulate innovation for social and commercial benefit across the city.
Amplified Leicester uses leading-edge network theory to focus on the people and the relationships that will allow new ideas to flow.
“The city has a coherent personality that self-organises out of millions of individual decisions.” Steven Johnson, Emergence
“The many are smarter than the few.” James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds
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