I spent the day Tuesday at the Civic Media conference, put on annually by the MIT Center for Civic Media and the Knight Foundation.  In addition to being a gathering of a fabulous community of civic hackers and builders, it's also where Knight announces the winners of the NewsChallenge grant contest each year (here are this year's winners, in the category of "strengthening the internet") Closing out the conference was Joi Ito, head of the Media Lab (and also on the Knight board).  I always love listening to Joi speak, and reading his writing.  He is like the Yoda of open innovation.  The force is strong in him. In his remarks, he lays out his 9 principles for guiding the Media Lab into the future, which really double as 9 principles for open innovation. They are:

• Resilience over strength (I would actually change this to "resilience over rigidity")

• Pull over push

• Risk over safety

• Systems over objects

• Compasses over maps

• Practice over theory

• Disobedience over compliance

• Emergence over authority

• Learning over education

This video is the best example of how I try to think about the world, and how I try to work, as I can think of.  It's speaks to the USV investment thesis, to the ideas behind Regulation 2.0 (in particular resilience over strength and emergence over authority), and to the impacts that the web is having on every sector of the economy. Here's his talk -- it's 27 minutes worth watching, for a pure dose of Joi's philosophy of innovation and the internet: