When push comes to pull. The new economy & culture of networking technology

I have been reading the Aspen Institutes latest ouvre, entitled When push comes to pull. The new economy & culture of networking technology

Which resonates deeply with Communities Dominate Brands.

David Bollier the author states

If the world seems a confusing place at this moment, part of the reason may be that we are living in an epochal period of transition bridging two very different economies and cultures

Bollier references Carlota Perez and her 2002 book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital read a review here

The full deployment of the enormous wealth-creating potential brought forth by each technological revolution requires, each time, the establishment of an adequate socio-institutional framework. The exisiting framework, created to handle growth based on the previous set of technologies, is unsuited to the new one. Thus, in the first decades of installation of the new industries and infrasturctures, there is am increasing mis-match between techno-economic and soci-institutional spheres, as well as an internal decoupling of the economic system, between the old and new technologies. The process of re-establishing a good match and creating conditions both for recoupling and full deployment of the new potential is complex, protracted and socially painful

Just listen to Lawrence Lessig describe the impact of this decoupling is having around the issues of copyright

The report looks at society, communication, the media, business and education. And discusses at great length the differences from living in a “Pull vs. Push economy”

The report also mentions a couple of favourite themes. Creative Destruction and also punctuated equilibrium and of course the power of the connected community

Thoughts that fell out for me from the piece is that technology as we argue enables us to connect, work and collaborate in ways previously thought impossible. And the industrial mindset of rigid institutions and architectures of revenue created as choke points can no longer work, when we are busy creating our own, content, our own media ecologies, our own brands and business models.

Its a bit like the Punk movement, but hypercharged.

The Long Tail gets a look in and so does a discussion around how one creates value in a world where production and businesses are being virtualised.

The benefits of living and working in a pull world? John Hagel believes

that pull is much more adept at promoting innovation, learning and capabiility building (read the world of warcraft piece ) on the part of the people. It assumes that you’re going to give people resources in very flexible ways so that you can experiment, imporovise, and tinker in ways that you cannot anticipate.

so what I see is web 2.0, the economics of richness and rich, of superdistribution, curated consumption and collective intellignece all combining to drive change.

John Hagel and John Seely Brown belive

Pull platforms harness the passion, commitment and desire to learn of their participants, thereby enabling the formation and functioning of distributed communities that can rapidly improvise and innovate

Bollier pushes the point further

Pull platforms tend to mobilise and deploy social energies more effectively and beauracratic standardised push platforms. The architecture of a “pull corporation” has profound implications for the structure of markets and new business strategies. It also implies new business processes and organisational ppractices to take advantage of the pull platform and leverage outside resources more efficiently than ever

Other quotes that caught my eye were

Communities of interest are morphing into communities of creation and communities of production

John Hagel

And a big thought, which occupies the minds of quite a few people at the moment

The tensions between push and pull systems raise new questions about the nature of leadership in the transitional environment. The tension also raises questions about the most appropriate forms of marshalling and protecting “social capital.” How should leaders interact with communities of practice, and how can they recognise the actual roles social communities play in creating value?

And of course that question can be applied to politics, education, business etc. And, is a trend that I am convinced is the future. But of course one has to respect the community you wish to engage with, one has to think more thoroughly about the why and the how.

As we all know social interaction can deliiver negative as well as positive advocacy.

Therefore the power of leadership within a more socially connected world is less about coercion, and definitely more about inspiration, self esteem, transcendence, cognition, authenticity, trust, and transparency. Bollier states,

in this sense, leadership in the pull environment becomes more authentic and organically connected to communities

Back to the collective power of a super connected community

The collaborative peer production acheived through pull platforms can be radically more efficient than classically structured corporation can acheive

Driven by shared meaning and trust

and Yochai Benkler in Coases Penguin says

Commons based peer production is an emerging third model of production that relies on decentralised information gathering and exchange and more efficient allocation of human creativity

And the legacy companies are in a bit of a flap as they are being disintermediated twice. Once by technology and rival companies leveraging that opportunity but also via peer-to-peer communities that are communcating and creating without intermediaries.

It is nothing less than full blown participatory democracy. And as we like to say, once you have stormed the Bastille, you don’t go back to your day job.

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