Over the last twenty-five years, there have been a number of overlapping descriptors of the economic systems in which businesses live. Regional and global economies have moved through the Industrial, Informational and Knowledge Economies to the Network, and now into the Creative Economy. All of these shifts have been rapid and each has incorporated and built upon – but certainly not eliminated – the previous ones.

So begins a Shift Paper that Tomorrow Makers published earlier this year in preparation for our workshops at Davos and which has drawn considerable interest and engagement since. Though we published it as a pdf, we realize it becomes much more useful as a living document, with which to engage our collective thinking...

This shift paper is written not as a wrong way/right way to think about and do business, but rather as a way to have a dialog about our assumptions and ways of working in order to increase our fitness for the kinds of situations, decisions and responsibilities that a Creative Economy imposes on us.

In this spirit, we thought it would be fun to list the "emerging patterns" of organization we identified in the shift paper, using them as a source from which to link to ideas, conversations, illustrations and other examples of these patterns in the world around us. We'll continue to add, edit and annotate after our initial post - and would love to get your input. Some of these may be familar to you, but hopefully we've uncovered a few new discoveries, as well.

• Patterns, principles, and relationships create standards that evolve and shift with new context - Building Living Neighborhoods
  
• Ideas grow from bottom up and are designed with inclusivity of all involved in their development and use - Gaviotas, Columbia; The Evolution of the Web
  
• Disruptive; value derived from the differences of perspective, experience, intelligence - Mashups
• Experts in collaboration with others from many vantage points - Group Genius Weekend
  
• Parts reusable, re-create and re-combinable to create entirely new products and services
• Answers emerge from within context and collaborative engagement - DesignShops
  
• Creates and grows communities and webs of relationships - The Well; ValueWebs; Network Weaving; Creative Clusters
  
• Open systems - The Burn Station; Folksonomy
  
• Rational, emotional, intuitive; engages cognitive diversity and multiple intelligences - The Co-Intelligence Institute
  
• Organic, biomimicry - Organic software and biomimetic architecture (and comic books); Center for Biologically Inspired Design
  
• Iterative and multi-layered - Strategic Modeling Language
  
• Multi-solution based, finding fitness - Evolutionary Algorithms; Complex Adaptive Systems - Webs of Delight
  
• Search images guide and shape emergent solutions
• Rigorous and open-ended; learn by doing and learning through multiple explorations - 22 Habits of Creative People
  
• Willingness to start from scratch -- employing a beginner’s mind
• Short and long term in symbiotic relationship with each other - The Long Now Foundation
  
• Hopeful, playful and imaginative; aspires to expand and create possibilities - Second Life; Professional Video Game Players

These are, of course, just a taste; an inkling. What do you think? Where do you see behaviors and patterns of the emerging Creative Economy... and what difference do they make?