Innovation is spurred by getting the right people together at the right time. Entrepreneurship is built on collective ideas and knowledge of bringing innovation to market. Rarely is it from a single mind working alone. The key is getting the right minds together.

We know a few things about what makes innovation and entrepreneurship successful. One important facet is to “get out of the box”. Bringing in novel ideas, especially those that question rather than concede, create opportunities for getting creative juices flowing. This often involves bringing together minds from often disparate places. Crossing disciplines and careers. Non-intentional networking needs to occur.

The convergence of technologies may create new structures to make this happen, and Twine could be one of the leaders. What we need is a way for ideas and interest to become digitized, then linked, and opportunities for discourse to be embedded in the structures. Then for the owners of the ideas to see the links, the other owners, and have the ability to continue the discourse.

It’s a complicated process, something that humans can accomplish on a small scale. But for it to work across organizations and wide physical boundaries, involving greater numbers of people and ideas, we really need machines.

I’d like to see how Twine evolves. In fact, I’d like to see what happens when you add it to a school that embraces cross-discipline project-based learning. Students could be given the opportunity to share their projects and interests, and allow Twine to facilitate the connections to students with similar interests.

Facebook has the potential to network, but it is intentional. Twine could facilitate non-intentional networking.