I was contemplating Kirby Ferguson's excellent series "Everything is a remix" in its entirety trying to find the ideas that reside in the negative space in between the four short documentary films.

If you have yet to see this series then follow this link to watch the series in full. I haven't included the videos here simply because I think it is important to explore these ideas at their source.

My initial impression of the first film was it reminded me of Peter Sellers reciting the Beatles's Hard Day's Night as Richard the III or She Loves You as Dr Strangelove. We are left with the question is it a cover, a remix or has he created a new and original piece of work. e.g. If it is a cover. What has been covered? Shakespeare, Laurence Olivier or the Beatles? A song has become a piece of theatre made for TV. A minor performance art piece.

The same applies of course to Orson Welles and his radio broadcast of HG Wells's War of the worlds. A novel becomes a radio play that also becomes a performance art piece.

Then there is Sergei Eisenstein who, like his contemporaries in early Soviet Film, learnt how to make films by editing (i.e. mashing) together old films from the state film vaults simply because the revolutionary Government couldn't afford to by new film stock. A case study in necessity being the mother of invention if ever there was one.

All of which leads us nicely into the second film on the remix in cinema...

My initial impression of the second film was it reminded me of that old design school adage "A Designer is only a good as their reference". Where by I would always counter you're a wrong. A designer is only as good as the questions they ask of themselves and others.

It also prompted me to contemplate what set apart true creative genius from the rest and the best of the field.

Over the years I have managed a variety of innovation teams. Both large and small. And upon reflection I have come to recognise that chaos is a strong indicator of creative talent.

You see anyone who can live in chaos. And by chaos I mean chaotic thinking, chaotic work space, chaotic work practises, chaotic life. Anyone who can juggle all that chaos and still produce great work must have both a great memory and the ability to construct order and meaning from chaos on demand.

They must be able to ask themselves the right questions just to survive and live with the chaos they create around themselves.

On the other hand the designer with the ordered desk. The clean workspace. The Filofax lifestyle (Yes it is an old prehistoric word for the iGens. So go Google it.). The one with all the answers before the question is asked. They are hiding something. You see all that order. All that preparation. All that organisation in their life is making up for a mind that is not so sharp as that of the chaotic personality of the true creative.

You see the true creative doesn't just remix. They don't just amp up the volume on the feedback loop. They 'Blage'. They don't just mash-up they smash-up ideas together to create something new. As Sergei Eisenstein said. Art is Conflict. You find the new stuff in the friction.

The lesson here then is if you want to build something great you need to learn how to introduce and manage chaotic elements into your team.

At the heart of film number three is the premise "Nobody starts out original. We need copying to build a foundation of knowledge and understanding. And after that… things can get interesting."

Here I suspect Kirby like much of his generation is fundamentally wrong.

You see I believe that Everyone starts out as a original and we need play with ideas and questions, tools and techniques to build a foundation. And after that… things can get interesting.

You see I fundamentally disagree that the basic elements of creativity are copy, transform, and combine.

The idea that creativity is simply about copy, transform and combine is merely an expression of the digital tools we use to create with today. These Ctrl OCVZXS machines that now shape the way we think and act.

Where pen, paper and conversation once provided an infinite forum for observation and the exploration of ideas and dreams we now limited our imaginations to the finite capabilities of the Crtl OCVZXS time machine - The Illusion of Life

Plus, in a market driven economy, the most effective innovation strategy is a ME2. It doesn't matter what business you in, be it Finance or Media or Information Technology or Telecoms, if the goal is profit then who cares who created the original signal? The main objective it to amplify the feedback loop and take home the biggest share of the money from the noise being generated.

You see the basic elements of creativity in any profession - be it words, pictures, numbers or people - are questions.

Your actions follow the questions you choose to ask of yourself, your tools, your environment and of course others.

After all Sergei Eisenstein didn't learn by copying. He and his generation of Soviet filmmakers learnt by cutting up the past and reassembling it into something radically new. The film montage.

Today is no different. But unlike Soviet Russia we are awash with media to play and experiment with.

So much so that today we are faced with the infinite potential of the endless mash up.

Which means we face an (un?)enviable choice. We can blage to create a new world or we can be simply absorbed, consumed and excited by the activity of blaging.

We can blage for entertainment. For play. Live life as a blage if you like. A Bloogle or a Faceblage, a bucket list of Xe.Me's, or we can Blage to create something new. A better world for all humanity.

The choice, as they say, is up to you.

The final video in Kirby Ferguson 's excellent series "Everything is a remix" deals almost exclusively with the ideas behind intellectual property and the impact any revision of copyright and fair usage laws will do to innovation on the Internet.

Of course intellectual property is a very narrow view of the value of business or corporate "intelligence". I much prefer the ideas explored by Leif Edvinsson and Michael Malone in their book Intellectual Capital. First published in 1997 it explores the idea that organisations should apply the same techniques they use to measure, monitor and manage their financial capital to maximise the ROI on their intellectual capital.

You see Intellectual Capital is part of that portfolio of "intangible" assets that fail to make the company balance sheet.

More importantly it introduces us to new ideas about how an organisation's portfolio of Intellectual Capital in all its forms can be leveraged to improve shareholder value and customer satisfaction.

If we cross fertilise these ideas about Intellectual Capital with Treacy & Wiersema's Value Drivers we discover a new design paradigm that closely links organisational creativity to value creation.

Design Value is the Intellectual Capital created and "banked" by the organisation. The design driver is the motivation for generating new value.

For example: In this context Social Capital is best understood as the Intangible Asset of market reputation. It is perhaps the best economic argument you could mount for forgetting about ROI for Social Media. Indeed elevating the primitive ideas now in circulation about social business into Social Capital Management takes the opportunity to whole new heights for the management consulting industry.

Agility is of course your organisational capability to respond to change, and other disruptive market forces (e.g. changing customer and investor expectations).

Seasoned observers will recognise that these three Design Drivers are largely incompatible. For example we have seen before that in the cement industry Efficiency and Agility are like oil and water. You can have one but not the other. The same goes for the hamburger game. You either get a Big Mac quickly or you wait patiently at the gourmet burger bar to get one made to order.

What the Internet offers is the potential to achieve all three or at least two of these drivers simultaneously. This was alluded to in those much earlier posts. e.g. In Isn’t it time we became more innovative about how we innovate? and Why agility and efficiency are the new benchmarks of Innovation.

Which brings me to my final observation about everything is a remix.

Episode Four in the series opens with meme and how ideas are like cells. The divide and replicate.

Perhaps the two most compelling memes to come out of the meme are Chaos theory and Network theory.

At the heart of chaos theory is the Fractal. At the heart of the Network the node and the connector.

Unlike memes they are both building blocks that allow complex structures to be created. The strength of meme of course is they are simple messages that remain simple and are therefore easily transmitted across the network.

What I find fascinating about the network paradox however is we assume the network allows us to create complex webs of information and structures (e.g. Facebook) and yet when we look at the history of the underlying technology we do not see a history of construction. We see a history of fragmentation.

Take for example the screens. At the beginning of the 20th century interaction with screens was a community experience. People gathered together in large numbers to watch films on big screens. By the middle of the century this experience had fragmented into a family based activity in from of the TV. By the end of the century it had become a personalised activity on the laptop or mobile phone.

The same applies to messages. Where once we read a newspaper or a magazine from cover to cover. Today we simply read 1 or 2 key stories from a list of headlines on the front page of the publication's web site. Or, more likely, Facebook, Google or Twitter.

The same applies to music 30 years ago we bought albums. A collection of songs. Now we buy singles on iTunes.

The same applies to organisations. At the beginning of the 20th century corporations amassed large workforces to manufacture products and deliver services. Now thanks to the agility and efficiency provided by the network corporations are fragmenting through outsourcing, offshoring and teleworking.

Which leads me to suspect that far from everything becoming a remix. We face a future where everything becomes just a fragment. A meaningless fragment, lost in a meaningless network. Awaiting on us to remix it. To bring it to life. To give it meaning. To make it Xe.Me something.

Where do our concepts of intellectual property stand within this context? Within this highly personalised experiential moment?

After all what is the value of a meaningless fragment scattered across the network? Is the value to be calculated before or after it is remixed? Before or after new meaning is applied?

And what does that make us? Who owns the copyright, the intellectual property, to all the fragments of experiences that constitute you? Who owns your Intellectual Capital? The fruits of your creative labours?

More importantly where does the true creative moment, the creation of value, now reside in the value chain. With the author who creates the fragment? With the audience who goes in search of meaning by connecting the fragments? With the network that makes the here to impossible connection and allows you to navigate towards the message, the experience, the moment? With the application logic that allows you to make everything a remix? With the database that stores the originals, the copies and the remixes?

Who has the right to harvest and ultimately profit from our collective Intellectual Capital?

These are the real questions that need to be asked in a world where everything is a remix.

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