A Lesson In Innovation From The Founder Of Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales, the brain behind the world’s biggest non-profit encyclopedia, explains how you could be the person with the next society-shaping idea.

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If you want to innovate, always be learning.

We have a tendency to think of innovators as experts in a specific field, but true innovation is far more likely to come from recognizing things in a cross-disciplinary sense.

You also need to become comfortable with failure.

You’re going to be testing and trying new things. If you’re not failing, you’re not innovating. Learn to fail faster. Adapt, and try again.

Some of the Global Goals being agreed to this week at the UN are straightforwardly achievable if we just focus our resources and spend more money in the right places.

But other goals are going to require real innovation that brings down costs and benefits lives.

Jimmy Wales (Getty Images)

That’s why I’m putting my support behind Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.

Wikipedia was founded on a simple concept: Large groups of people can work together to make something valuable on a volunteer basis.

That’s a concept I believe young people can use to find new solutions to social problems.

Wikipedia wasn’t a technological innovation: All the technology we use existed long before we launched in 2001. It was a social innovation.

I believe it’s important for more people to think about innovation in terms of how we can harness existing technical breakthroughs to address social problems.

Wikipedia is doing its part for Goal 9 by welcoming volunteers to program content in new languages and make the site more accessible to the developing world.

We’re also expanding our editor base – away from its traditional core of computer geeks – by making the editing process easier to use.

Show your support for Goal 9 by lobbying for less red tape. In order to be innovative, we need to advocate that governments get out of the way of innovation.

There are so many cases where social innovation is waiting to happen. Use Wikipedia concept to inspire your own solutions.