The notion that innovation proceeds through the recombination of existing ideas to form something new is not unique to the Web, or even the last century. In fact, it was Isaac Newton who famously said in a letter dated February 5, 1675, "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," His modest explanation for how he achieved such incredible insight into natural phenomena has come to represent the idea that all innovations are ultimately cumulative, with each generation of advances resting on the previous.

Today, with open platforms for innovation inviting unprecedented participation in value creation, cumulative innovation is going into ores drive. Growing numbers of professional and amateur developers are crest ing their own content and applications by combining various fragments the find freely scattered across the Web. As described in Chapter 2, this fluids combinatorial approach to innovation is making the Web look inc easing1 like a traditional librarian's nightmare-a noisy library full of chatty compo vents that interact and communicate with one another. "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything"

While criticising the books lack of walking the talk, it still is the best business book on the changes that are being wrought by the success of small pieces, loosely joined by cheap high-performance communication, on open platforms, supported by cheap high-performance computing.