This was pretty amazing: a post about Corporate Rebels United by Peter Vander Auwera on his personal blog. Peter works for Innotribe:  SWIFT’s innovation initiative.
“Corporate” and “Rebel”? The corporate world seems to be the world of the suits, no? Places where one better can be predictable and reliable, achieving the top-down defined objectives – and oh yes, new ideas are welcome, as long as they don’t rock the boat. The notion of “corporate rebel” is not new but, as could be expected, some express reservations – Â “rebel” might be “too negative”. Are there “good” and “bad” rebels, or should that distinction be deconstructed? References to this discussion can be found in Peter’s inspiring post.
His own position is clear:
The aim of “Corporate Rebels United†is to create a global community of extraordinary corporate change agents. It is not an academic exercise or research effort. It’s something deeply actionable.
Our mission is to build the most amazing community of corporate rebels worldwide to ensure that true change and innovation happens virally
The initial idea for Corporate Rebels United emerged when innovation teams of Alcatel-Lucent and Swift met and worked closely in the context of Swift’s Innotribe program. We were excited by the exchange of ideas and energy that emerged when like-minded folks came together. And that got us thinking about some big “what if’sâ€:
- What if we could create a tribe of the best and most exceptional corporate rebels worldwide – people like us, people like you?
- What if we could start leveraging each other’s ideas, energy and best practices?
- What if we could design a movement to support each other when the going gets tough?
- What if we could cross-fertilize and infect our organizations with the change-virus from within?
More about the spirit of innovation in Peter’s Prezi presentation:
More about the practical organization of the Corporate Rebels United in Peter’s post. What fascinates me also is whether this can be considered as yet another example of peer2peer learning – at the level of big corporations. Will they recuperate the notion of being a rebel and of peer2peer learning into sanitized versions, acceptable for the status quo? Or will it facilitate a wave of innovation, involving also one person-enterprises, scientific institutions, local groups into a bewildering but highly productive variety of connections?
This work by rolandlegrand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International