A CollectiveIdea is the output of a CollectiveIntelligence.

[this space is itching to be filled with more ideas, collective or otherwise...]

See InsectBehaviour and XpIsaCollectiveIdea for discussion of some collective ideas.

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It should be noted that a CollectiveIdea, once formed, is almost impossible to unform, deform, or reform. TheCollective provides amazing self-reinforcing strength that repels, rejects and represses alternative concepts. After all, since the CollectiveIdea filters into the minds of the individual agents, the agents themselves cannot formulate a new idea because they are so attached to the old one. Also, GroupThink pervades TheCollective and squashes dissenting views. -- SunirShah

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If an idea includes meaning, then I'm not sure it is well defined. This implies that ideas will reduce to slogans unless they are guided by some single reference mind which looks for misinterpretation.

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Although I concur with Mr SunirShah about the reformulation (refactoring) of an idea, I do think there's an evolutionary biology of ideas (not entering into memetics, just at the formal level). let's imagine an idea expressed in an English phrase. By choosing synonims for nouns, adjectives and verbs, we can rephrase that sentence and, thus, refactor the idea. However, NaturalLanguage(s) have this ContextSensitivity, multiple semantic on them. While the phrase can be the same, the chose of words may have moved the emphasis of the phrase, suggesting different interpretations of the same idea... This can lead to the evolution of the idea (which, in a way, can be thought as a new idea by itself, the same way the evolution of a species is a new species when the differences are big enough...)

In any way, this reinterpretation may very well partitionate the space of ideas into "currents of implementation" which would attach different emphasis (and extract differng conclusions and new ideas) from the original idea. I find it fascinating that evolutionary theory can be applied to so many fields and still be useful and consistent. --DavidDeLis

Witness the move of Rape''''''And''''''Paste''''''Programming to CopyAndPasteProgramming.  A whole lot of sanitization for managers and perhaps just a little reflective of the increasing maturity of agile methods.  (not that I necessarily agree with the name change)