tales of the strangely successful

So in a further bid to overcome my blogophobia, today I am going to take a different tack. Yesterday I got some ribbing from Matthew "blogatron" Taylor, saying that he was surprised my "day in the life"  blog on Wednesday didn't detail my bowel movements alongside everything else. No time you see, Matthew.

One thing I'm told is how valuable blogs can be to share early ideas and see what kind of reaction they receive. Bloggers say it can help you sort the wheat from the chaff,  and possibly enlist some willing support into the bargain. Or get you thoroughly flamed by the harsh orcs of the internet.

Sounds fun.

So having donned my fire-retardant trousers...

This morning I drafted a pitch note for a cheap and cheerful online exercise we could conduct via this blog and the RSA web pages. I'm not going to regurgitate all that because I want to keep my blog posts short so I'll try "tweeting" the essence of what it says:

What:

Collecting, investigating and celebrating examples of unknown institutions that are "strangely successful" i.e. achieve great things in extremely unusual ways or conditions

Why:

Our institutions need to be bold and experimental if we are to adapt to this century's challenges. We need a wide variety of institutional "forms" in the gene pool. So we need to encourage diversity.

How:

We crowdsource examples of little known businesses, public bodies and civil society organisations that are doing well, and doing good, by behaving very differently. I have come across some of these recently and you know them when you see them.

We collect these in various forms - blogs, video clips, narratives - investigate their commonalities and differences, and celebrate them with an exhibition where their unusual forms are represented creatively.

So what?

They get the exposure, connections, profile and recognition they deserve. But ultimately the result is greater encouragement to more conservative organisations to push the boundaries of what they think is possible.

So there we go. A very hasty version of a bigger idea, which leaves many unanswered questions, but is hopefully better than reading about bowel movements.

What do you think? Should it be attempted, how could it be made to work? Send in your comments and I'll try to answer them.

Or  if you think you work in such an organisation, please post a comment and tell us what makes it a) positively strange and b) highly successful. You could be the first in the spotlight.