This image, posted by Corante contributor Rod Boothby on his Innovation Creators blog, is one of a delightful series illustrating the pitfalls of micromanagement and the benefits of leveraging the collective wisdom of an organization. Yeah, we've all read this kind of thing before, but I've never seen an actual series of images that conveys the point as clearly.

While I'm pointing to delightful things, let me point you to "I for one welcome our new Corante overlords" by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang at The End of Cyberspace. It's my nomination for best post informing readers of a blog's inclusion in the Corante Network! While you're at The End of Cyberspace, check out the series of posts on what the future might look like according to Bruce Sterling's Shaping Things, which Alex calls "the first book in which metadata is a superhero."

I want to welcome you to Corante's newest hub. Co-editor Paul Williams (who has posted his own welcome here) and I look forward to participating in an exciting, ongoing conversation about innovation and creativity. It's a conversation in which I've been participating for almost four years.

During that time I've witnessed the growth of a huge groundswell of interest in innovation, an understanding that innovation could be and should be managed for best results. There remains a great diversity of opinion on exactly how best to do that -- how best to sustain and manage it without killing the energy, spirit, and magic of it. But it's clear that innovation is not just a buzzword but a nascent discipline.

We've invited almost two dozen bloggers who are writing about all aspects of innovation and creativity to be part of this new hub. And we've been humbled and grateful at the speed and enthusiasm with which the bloggers we invited responded. Apparently the time has come for innovation to have a home in the blogosphere, and we're thrilled to be part of this one.

As Corante founder Hylton Jolliffe has written:

"[On each Corante hub is] a mixture of human and machine-driven editorial offerings that aggregate, distill, synthesize, and remix the best writing and thinking from across the Corante Network and beyond. The goal of the hubs: to marry human intelligence and editorial voice with useful technologies to become a trusted and useful tool - one that helps you find and sift through what's worth reading, one that provides valuable context and perspective on the critical issues impacting your industry and interests, and one that engages in and extends the conversations that make social media such a rich and enlightening experience."

I've been working with the Corante hubs since they launched in November 2005, when I started herding cats -- err, editing -- the Marketing Hub (now quite ably edited by Olivier Blanchard). Like many innovations, the hubs have undergone a great deal of rethinking and tweaking over the last few months. And by no means do we consider ourselves done. But hopefully by this point the hub navigation is intuitive enough not to need more than a quick explanation. You'll see the editorial roundup blog (of which this post is a part) on the top left of the hub page. In the middle are the posts from network contributors' blogs, complete with a thumbnail of their home page. On the right are the links for things we hope you'll find useful -- archives, contributor bios, RSS feeds, email subscriptions, a category cloud.

If you can't find something you need, or have a suggestions, please mail us at hubfeedback@gmail.com. And again, welcome!