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The Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) explores the ways the business landscape is changing in response to the growing integration of content and brands across media platforms and the increasingly prominent roles that consumers are playing in shaping the flow of media. C3 connects researchers and thinkers from MIT's Comparative Media Studies program with companies looking to understand new strategies for doing business in a converging media environment. The consortium provides insights into new ways to relate to consumers, manage brands, and develop engaging experiences, strategies to cut through an increasingly cluttered media environment and benefit from emerging cultural and technological trends. We aim to expand the role of industry leaders by bridging the gap between academic and market research; Partners gain access to both broad-perspective thought leadership and focused analysis on events and campaigns.

Futurists and innovators can teach each other lessons to help their ideas succeed. Innovators and futurists ought to have a symbiotic relationship. Often, they do not. The futurist aims to help us understand how trends and events will shape the future, so that we can chart our business and policy courses to bring us to a future that most appeals to us. The innovator, on the other hand, aims to realize a possible future by getting ideas (i.e., possibilities for the future) adopted as practice in our communities. Many would-be innovators ask in frustration, Why do my own good ideas often go by the wayside and other people's bad ideas get adopted? Why do I invest enormous time and resources to systematically generate new ideas, only to see much of my effort go to waste? Leaders in all fields fret and fume over these questions. They want to improve their innovation success rates. Increasing success and reducing wasted effort on the path to innovation are very important goals. Many people believe innovation is the key to economic development, technological progress, competitiveness, and business survival. Policies that enhance a nation's ability to be innovative are constantly in public discussion and are hot topics among politicians and business leaders. Futurists collaborating with innovators can contribute to these goals. I have been investigating these questions for many years and have learned many things that I wish I knew when I was younger. Based on these investigations, my colleague, Robert Dunham, and I wrote a book, The Innovator's Way (MIT Press, 2010, innovators-way.com). I will share here some excerpts from the book as a guide for innovators-and futurists-who are trying to get their ideas adopted.