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Academic Innovation Support presents at UIUC iSchool on
Community and Innovation Guest Lecture

Community and Innovation

Guest Lecture on Sept 29

Part I. Understanding Community

1. Opening Frame: What Is "Community"?

  • • Community is not just a group of people.
  • • It's shared meanings, rituals, values, and practices that generate belonging — and sometimes, exclusion.
  • • Hierarchy vs. Community:
    • - Hierarchies privilege titles, institutions, and rules.
    • - Communities privilege lived experience, trust, and circulation of practice.

Provocation: How do communities, rather than hierarchies, shape innovation in technology?

2. Community and the Founding of Wolfram Research

History:

  • • 1986–1988: Stephen Wolfram at UIUC (Physics, Math, CS)
  • • Founded the Center for Complex Systems Research
  • • Founded Wolfram Research in 1987

"In my life now, where I am a CEO of a company, the actual fraction of my time that I can get to devote to basic science thinking is probably much larger than the fraction of time that a typical senior professor at a university would get."

- 1996 interview

3. Community as a Global Force in Innovation

Wolfram Research Global Community

Context: Wolfram Research grew during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Community Migration: Many mathematicians from Eastern Europe moved to the U.S. — including Wolfram's later chief scientist of Wolfram|Alpha, from East Germany.

4. Community as a Carrier of Products

Case: Wolfram|Alpha

  • • Minimal marketing
  • • Spread through peer-to-peer circulation
  • • Communities of practice as "marketing department"

5. Community as Experiential Learning Environment

Wolfram Summer School

Case: Wolfram Summer School

  • • Annual, in-person, Boston
  • • Co-residence, collaboration, shared identity
  • • Alumni network: Wolfram employees and community members

Part II. Practicing Community Innovation as Students

Context & Future

  • • From Past to Present: Communities shaped Wolfram's history
  • • Future Context: AI and LLMs reshaping work
  • • Provocation: How to use community for innovation and resilience?

1. Community as an Alternative to Hierarchy

  • • Don't wait for formal programs
  • • Join or start informal initiatives
  • • Cross boundaries between disciplines

2. Community as a Response to Economic Contraction

  • • Volunteer in local organizations
  • • Build public portfolios
  • • Join open-source projects

3. Community as Innovation of the Self

  • • Innovation in learning methods
  • • Community as personal laboratory
  • • Unconventional learning paths

4. Community as Informal Networks

  • • Build peer networks
  • • Share resources and feedback
  • • Create distributed learning systems

Event Details

September 29, 2025

UIUC iSchool

Key Takeaways

  • 1. Communities shape innovation beyond hierarchies
  • 2. Global networks drive technological progress
  • 3. Products succeed through community adoption
  • 4. Learning happens through shared practice

Call to Action

  • • Identify your current communities
  • • Plan to initiate a new community this semester
  • • Think about innovation beyond formal structures