Dennis Howlett and I had a great conversation last week about the most recent debate over the meaning of “Enterprise 2.0″. He invited me to write a guest article for his ZDNet blog while he’s on vacation this week, and I decided to look at this phenomenon from a historical perspective, through the lens of course management systems and educational technology. The article is called Rules are for Impatient People, and here’s a short excerpt on being innovative by looking for patterns:

Being innovative is not something you do based on a neat, step-by-step process. There isn’t a universal set of rules that make your behavior innovative. Instead, it’s a result of understanding the purpose of your work, observing how it gets done and thinking critically about your role, and recognizing the things you can do to make it better.

Sometimes that results in refinements, and other times it leads to more significant changes. But when you’re in tune with the purpose and process, you intuitively know when and why change is necessary, and you can communicate that to others with authenticity.