Why Should We Have Fan-Theories In Our Workplace?

Note: If you are a GoT fan: SPOLIERS AHEAD; if you aren't, some references might not set in easily. But, hang on this is still worth it; I swear it by the old gods and the new. There are numerous fascinating fan theories based on GoT. The series is painful(sic) for various reasons; leaving subtle hints about what happened to the characters in the past and what is about to happen in future is just one; and only second to leaving your favorite characters dead. Much like any novel or series that is set in a fantasy-drama-world, there will be mysteries hidden from the audience and revealed at times the writers find appropriate. But, in the today's times that we live in; we're impatient and is eager to know and make guess on the outcomes and the general direction of the series. While I find the entire series pretty damn awesome, the coolest thing to me the is the people who come together on the internet with fan theories that predicts what will happen to the characters and generally on how the series will move forward. These theories have had emerged as a result of collective thinking, analysis and open discussions on their rationale or the lack of it. There have been forums on the internet with reference to certain theorieson GoT since the year 1996 that got revealed in the series in the year 2016. There is an important element of people coming together to debate on things that they find interesting that is worthy of emulation in our workplaces. It is that these people are motivated by their genuine interest towards something; and they find the pursuit interesting. What possibly can we emulate from the behavior that creates fan-theories, innumerous funny memes and hashtags that unites people with common interest or a movement? In stark contrast to this light subject; consider if you were to set out to start a software project that will challenge the largest of corporations that dominates the industry. Or, what if you were to build the world's largest encyclopedia with little or no capital? I'm referring to Linus Torvalds building Linux and the OpenSource community around it challenging Microsoft and Jimmy Wales's Wikipedia rivaling Microsoft's Encarta. These are two of the largest sucessful decentralized large scale projects in the world. How many decentralized, all-inclusive innovation projects do we run in our organizations? We tend to build teams and keep our innovations and findings to ourselves binding to the rules of compliance, regulations, corp. heirarchy and confidentiality (not that these are not important; we tend to overdo this). The true reason for the success of Wikipedia or OpenSource is the people with multi-disciplinary skills coming together in pursuit of common interests. Multi-disciplinary skills and multi-disciplinary interests are increasingly becoming important in today's world for sucess of organizations and projects we run; and thus it is important to get any help we can from anywhere within an organization; outside of the boundaries of the teams some heirarchy sets us.The team structure and hierarchy are just management boundaries and in no way should it be an boundary for flow of knowledge, information and collective imagination. The people you let(sic) in to contribute to your projects and innovation are the invaluable fans; value them, evoke the best in them.

Our future prosperity depends on the quality of our collective imaginations - Eric Ries After all, if your workplace does not have fan-theories; it's because you do not have fans. And, that's a problem.