Brett Richards talks about one way of using more brain power to fuel innovation.

When a senior executive asks an experienced middle management or frontline team, how many of them think their brainpower is being fully utilized and challenged by their current job? Ninety per cent demur. If the same question is asked in a blind survey, the 90 per cent will answer “no” and will indicate that they would be happier if their company engaged more of their skills, experience and brainpower.

Clay Sharky, the author of Cognitive Surplus, a writer in residence at NYU and contributor to TED talks, has spent the last 20 years studying community dynamics and structures. He estimates the US has five trillion underutilized brainpower man hours annually.

These hours could be harnessed to increase productivity, to improve your company’s skills, strategies and service levels, or to advance mankind, feed the poor, or preserve the planet.

He believes the answer to the world’s greatest challenges is to use decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer idea sharing, wireless software for social creation and open-source development where everyone is motivated and rewarded. He sees centralized and institutional structures, as self-limiting and argues "a group is its own worst enemy" in getting things done”.

New technologies are expanding the world’s knowledge base at an unprecedented rate, and enabling us to dramatically shift how we get things done.

Brett Richards is a senior facilitator for the Schulich Executive Education Centre and an expert in mapping and developing thinking and emotional capabilities that increase individual, team and organizational performance. In this video, Brett tackles the human side of accelerated innovation and explains that, to achieve the kind of innovation these changes enable, people must “expand the winning thinking cycle” through sharing knowledge.