Progress relies on both new technologies and new social arrangements to liberate and direct human creativity, knowledge, and energy. At times, technologies have catalyzed social progress. Fire and cooking enabled more efficient nutrition, and freed up time for exploration. Roads and viaducts sped transportation and improved public health. Drawing, writing, and later the printing press enabled the accumulation and spread of knowledge, as well as abstract thought itself. The internet hyper-accelerated our global capacity to create and share information, commerce, and understanding.

But social innovation has played an even greater role in spurring progress–including breakthrough technologies. Agriculture began in small groups, but its organized spread formed the basis for markets and money, and the creation of governmental, religious, and educational institutions. The erosion of monarchies and the rise of merchant classes sped trade in goods and ideas. The American constitution encoded and accelerated self government. Public health measures radically increased the average human life span, and universal education spurred rapid social and economic development.

In the past two decades, we’ve seen seen explosive growth in bio-, info-, and nano-technologies. But in many respects our social structures–in education, health, and government itself–have not kept pace. While the potential and need for social progress is now greater than ever, its record in recent years has lagged. Institutionalized structures and practices that reward waste and pollution have caused massive environmental destruction. The concentration and deregulation of financial power has led to worldwide economic crisis. Billions of children and adults who could contribute to future progress are malnourished and poorly educated.

Fortunately, we believe that a new force for social innovation is being born, one that we call “collective invention.” Information technology and new brain research have fundamentally shifted our understanding towards a new conception of the social mind and social intelligence. International crises as well as movements for social justice and environmental restoration have focused our energies toward global solutions, and underscored our interdependence. Social science and organizational experimentation have yielded new tools for releasing what James Surowiecki labels “the wisdom of the crowd.” The open-source software movement, new technology-enabled markets and social services in global barrios, group “buddy” systems for managing chronic illness–these are just a few of the many social innovations from which we can learn, and whose benefits we can amplify and spread.

Through experiences across a variety of institutions and disciplines, we’ve uncovered key elements that foster the growth of collective invention. Organizations can and do learn to use all the information at their disposal, internal and external–to engage the individual and collective “whole mind”–through visual tools, experiential learning, and intensive, focused workshops or “charrettes.” Leaders can develop an awareness of individual and group rhythms in order to make collaborations more harmonious and effective. Leaders and facilitators are beginning to understand the critical importance of encouraging cognitive diversity among participants to maximize creativity.

In short, our organizations, businesses, and public institutions can reorganize to maximize human creativity and productivity, to liberate and direct our full potential to invent solutions to our most pressing needs. They can take advantage of social media to spread expertise while capturing the knowledge of everyone. To succeed, businesses and funders must invest, leaders must inspire, facilitators must guide, and researchers must study the social innovation we so urgently need. Collectively, we can–and we will–invent a better future for us all.