MIT and Harvard: when elite institutions open and hack knowledge

Résumé En

As researchers and/or entrepreneurs, we have been absorbing cultural knowledge of collaboration, entrepreneurship, coworker and maker movements for a number of years. We often face and hear about how to become disruptive by two keywords: opening and hacking. Between July 25 and 28, 2018, we co-created a rich learning expedition organized by the Research Group on Collaborative Spaces (RGCS), at MIT and Harvard University, in Cambridge (Massachusetts). This alternative academic network focuses on topics about new work practices inspired by open science and citizen science cultures. The starting point of our learning expedition was our astonishment: How can elite institutions (in particular, MIT and Harvard University) and an elite territory originate key collaborative practices and ideology such as hacking, open knowledge and open innovation? How to combine search for excellence, global leadership and selectivity with horizontal, transgressive, underground cultures of hacking and opening knowledge?