Incubate 2.0 and the networked enterprise

As many of you know the No Straight Lines project is picking up apace (sxsw keynote) (Do Lecture) (Latin America tour – to come). As a consequence of the work I have been doing with a small team, we have identified that the connected and networked world presents a design challenge to existing companies but also to entrepreneurs – how business and entrepreneurship is taught and how it can be accelerated. The rise of networked platforms like GrowVC which are designed to unleash innovation via crowdfunding is but one example. Another is Local Motors, or indeed mobile developer communities which are bringing a different type of rocket fuel to the party. (also see dotOpen)

On 17th November I will give a keynote on No Straight Lines at Incubate 2.0 on business creation and organization – as what is clear to me, that the networked world must be addressed not through social media per se, but a much deeper and broader understanding of the networked and its implications. For example, how does one leverage open social systems, global connectivity, open innovation and its implications from a skills, tools, process and legal frameworks, and, lightweight (green) business practices to create companies in the future? We need to design and build smart organisations, and understand mutuality as a business model.

The benefits of designing the smart organisation, coupled with the smart business model – purpose built for the needs of 21st Century culture and commerce gets us to ask these types of questions:

1. How does a company decrease the cost to build a car 100 fold whilst also halving the time in development?
2. How does a company perfectly match supply and demand?
3. How does a company use its employees to achieve business and commercial success greater than a $billion ad campaign?
4. How does a fashion retailer make €83m from mobile phone sales?
5. How does a company achieve a 29%+ response rate to its marketing with the subsequent uplift in sales?
6. How does a company spend $60,000 and get a $45m return?
7. How does a hybrid business model of [1] Freemium [2] Subscription [3] micropayment work to generate significant revenues?

From an incubation perspective – incubation has been done traditionally within a space and mostly as a real estate play or an economic development play. Now there are virtual groups allowing and enabling rapid flows of information to be created and shared – networking simultaneously with the creation of multinational micro-corporation, with funding provided by crowds. I argue, the way to start a business today is by being networked, and the way to run these businesses is networked (which is more efficiently done when it was conceived in a networked environment than when you have to transition from a straight line business).

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Posted in: Alan Moore Speaking, Convergence, Data, Distribution, Economics, Education, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Organisations, Government & Politics, Green tech, Law, Link Economy, Marketing, Media, Mobile, Networks, No straight lines, Participation, Philosophy, Search Econmics, Social Marketing Intelligence, Society, Strategy, Television, Trends, Web/Tech

A compassionate society understands fairness

Twenty years ago, Ernst Fehr had a seemingly sensible idea – that a deep-seated human preference for fairness might play an important role in economics. He writes,

A substantial number of people exhibit social preferences, which means they are not solely motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or negatively for the material payoffs of relevant reference agents. We show empirically that economists can fail to understand fundamental economic questions when they disregard social preferences, in particular, that without taking social preferences into account, it is not possible to understand adequately (i) effects of competition on market outcomes, (ii) laws governing cooperation and collective action, (iii) effects and the determinants of material incentives, (iv) which contracts and property rights arrangements are optimal, and (v) important forces shaping social norms and market failures.

Kate Pickett writing a review of of Will Hutton’s new book Them and Us: Changing Britain – Why We Need a Fairer Society, writes

What Hutton offers beyond a detailed description of the rise to and fall from grace of the financial sector is an examination of the role of fairness in the creation of prosperity and the good life. We’re taken on a gallop through the history of western philosophical thought on fairness, proportionality and luck, from Plato to Adam Smith to Marx, with side trips into behavioural economics and psychology.

What emerges is the centrality of fairness to human instinct, morality and social relationships. When society is fair – and, just as importantly, seen to be fair – in its procedures as well as in its systems of reward, all works well. Fairness fosters trust and democracy in virtuous circles, and these in turn foster the openness and reciprocity within society, institutions and markets that create successful capitalism. Fairness is therefore, says Hutton, “in the vanguard of the march of civilisation and the evolution of prosperity”.

Kate Pickett is co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.

We are today, as social philosopher Richard Sennett argues; seeking too recover something of the spirit of the Enlightenment on terms appropriate to our time.  Indeed, Stephen Heppell considers the 21st century to herald the ‘learning age’. In the 20th century, he argues, we built big things (railways, universities) but the focus for the 21st century is ‘helping people to help each other’. In his view, “The old stuff won’t do any more”. And Larry Elliot, economics editor of the Guardian remarks that though Osborne uses the word fairness – his “fiscal orthodoxy is considered dangerous” by Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz – both Nobel prize winners for economics. Which leads to the question are we creating a fairer society through the Big Society.

But of course we face a significant conflict – enough of society is in flux for it to be melded into something more substantial that can serve us more humanely – without it becoming wimpy pimpy – yet there is and will continue to be a great deal of resistance to change.

Pickett again

The final third of Hutton’s book sets out a wide-ranging menu of proposals and reforms, aimed at unlocking innovation and enhancing the capabilities of all citizens, including financial regulation, strong support for universities, devolved authority to local government, school reform, and so on. There is a huge smorgasbord of good ideas in there to chew on, worthy of serious discussion and debate. But what we really need for change, Hutton says, is “intellectual conviction, social support and political chutzpah”. He ends by hoping that Britain has turned a corner.

I wonder whether that is true – though I see in my own region (East Anglia) a grassroots engine beginning to warm up which is not waiting for the ideology of any political party to put us on the right path. What we make is up to us. Carlota Perez in her book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital – says that there comes a point in time when;  old institutions are found wanting, and the old frameworks of society insufficient to respond to the needs and demands of society.
At this moment we seek a new language, a new common sense that allows us to remake the world afresh.

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Posted in: Culture, Education, Engagement Civil Society, Engagement Politics, Ethics, Government & Politics, Health, No straight lines, Social Networks, Society, Trends

Our 2.0 destiny with data

Refined Data, is the black gold of the 21st Century (SMLXL posts on data) something we have been writing about since 1995. We even wrote a book about it, as did Tony Fish (My Digital Footprint) So now The World Economic Forum is beginning to take serious interest in how data in its myriad forms will be part of our transformation.

Rethinking Personal Data – is a brief outline of the initial stages of that investigation. in a post published by Telco 2.0 (also part of The Futures Agency), they write,

Given the speed at which technology and online user behaviour is developing and the slowness of regulators in keeping up, the project looks as much at legal/governance issues as commercial, technical and user acceptibilty issues.

In an event organised by the WEF the top 7 issues were:

1.) To create a global ‘trust framework’ for customer data and digital identities.
2.) To re-define the fundamental telco business model and the methods for industry commercial innovation.
3.) To define how to partner better with adjacent industries
4.) To develop more appropriate regulation for cross-border, cross-industry collaboration.
5.) To create a more compelling business case for (fixed/mobile broadband) infrastructure investment.
6.) To clarify the opportunity for Telco Cloud infrastructure.

Telco2.0 point out that, this is the sort of list that existing telco trade bodies can’t really conceive of, and which WEF is uniquely placed to support. But, the striking thing for the Telco 2.0 representative was how important customer data and business model innovation ranked in order of strategic priorities for the telecoms industry (as opportunities and challenges).

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Posted in: 7th Mass Media, Advertising, Convergence, Darwin, Data, Distribution, Economics, Engagement Civil Society, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Mobile, Engagement Research, Generation C, Government & Politics, Identity, Law, Marketing, Media, Mobile, Networks, Search Econmics, Social Marketing Intelligence, Social Networks, Society, Trends

GrowVC launches in China

Grow VC & C2I Ventures Launch National Funding Network For China.

early stage startups in China into the “crowdfunding” arena and also aims to provide a strong startup support infrastructure that encourages startup culture. The launch of an exclusive funding network for China by Grow VC comes just months after a similar local network was launched in India. The India Grow VC network which was launched in July 2010 gathered the backing of important partners such as IndiaCo Ventures and The Indian Angel Network, has already grown to almost 1000 members  and the growth continues strong. The China Grow VC network which is the second local funding and startup ecosystem on the platform will also partner with top local angel funding organizations and investors in a bid to create an online eco system for Chinese startups to thrive.

The local Grow VC network for China which can be located at China.GrowVC.com was officially introduced to the public on the 10th of October 2010 at the OpenSourceCamp Event in Beijing. Membership on the local platform has been offered with a special free promotional offer valid until the end of 2010 with some limitations that will ensure quality, to ensure that the community itself would get a flying start.  Grow VC China will be presented in the coming weeks at several other events in the country including the upcoming China Mega Forum and the China Mobile Developers Conference. With talks actively progressing to engage more partners and key organizations through the next two months more developments are expected soon for this promising entrepreneurial community. More about GrowVC.

A warm welcome to the networked society

In a mass media society, the basic units are the large collective ‘masses’. In contrast, a network society is based on individuals who form voluntary connections with other individuals regardless of location. In a network society, the network becomes a basic unit of organization at all levels (individuals, groups and organizations). Online social networks, media networks and technology networks act as the catalysts for a networked society.

JAN VAN DIJK

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Posted in: Darwin, Economics, Generation C, Link Economy, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, Web/Tech

We educate kids in batches

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Posted in: Education, Engagement Civil Society, Society

The Futures Agency takes off

I am proud to be part of the Futures Agency today which launches officially today. Gerd writes,

Today I am delighted to officially announce my new company, The Futures Agency (TFA). TFA is based in Basel, Switzerland and is currently comprised of 15 amazing people i.e. Associates that are working with me on an independent basis; additional team members will be announced shortly. Think of us as a ‘band’ of futurists and foresight-experts, visionaries, advsiors and idea-curators …and you’ll get the idea.

I will serve as CEO and plan to grow this company into one of the most amazing agencies on the planet, employing these 5 key principles:

1. Knowledge grows when shared (therefore we share everything)
2. Proudly find elsewhere (PFE)
3. Do what you do best and link to the rest (Jeff Jarvis)
4. Spend less time being important and more time being relevant
5. The leaders of the future are connectors – not just directors

The purpose of TFA is to provide our clients with a lot more firepower and emotional intelligence when answering this key question: What does the future bring, and how do we prepare for it…?

Or, to put it more proactively (for those inclined to that sort of thing;): Which future do we really want to create?

TFA offers seminars, workshops, think-tanks and advisory sessions ranging from 3-5 hours to 3 days, with anywhere from 2 to 10 people, worldwide. Some of our thinktanks may use a format called the Disruption Experience which I have been finetuning together with my good friend and world-renowned leadership expert Didier Marlier, who lives in Switzerland as well. Other thinktanks may use our “FuturesExperience” format, and additional formats will be announced soon.  As an example, a few weeks ago TFA undertook a really amazing mission for a one of the largest mobile operators and telcos in Africa; 3 days of serious future-thinking and plotting with the executive team. Hopefully I can share some of those stories with you in the future.

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Posted in: Convergence, Data, Economics, Engagement Education, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Mobile, Engagement Organisations, Identity, Law, Link Economy, Marketing, Media, Networks, No straight lines, Participation, Social Marketing Intelligence, Social Networks, Society, Strategy, Trends

Mobile enterprise in Latin America

For two months this year, I travelled through Latin America on a speaking tour with Blackberry called, The Blackberry Collaboration Forum.

My topic, was how mobile communications could enable businesses to be more effective, more engaged, to work smarter and leaner. I was asked to share my insights, and perspectives on how organisations could adapt to a networked world and what that meant to them. Read the To Do List at the bottom of this post

The events took place in Sao Paulo, Santiago, Mexico City, Buenos Aries, Caracas and Bogota. The total audience was something like 9000 people, the biggest single audience was 2600 people in Mexico City. And even the Canadian Ambassador turned up. In Mexico I also had the pleasure of being invited by the British Consulate to talk about the No Straight Lines project, how we can build a more sustainable world by thinking how we go about designing solutions that are more lightweight, and consequently more humane. And I was invited to meet the Minister for education in Colombia to discuss hand-held learning.

To the entire RIM team, I want to thank you for giving me such a great opportunity and also I would like to say what an amazing team of people you are. As my friend Gerd would say “you totally rocked”. And what I took away from my travels was this… mobile communications, its platform, its eco-system is transformative, and Blackberry has developed for enterprise large and small capabilities that every organisation should look seriously at. From inter-organisational communications, inventory management, in-field training, as but a few examples, Blackberry provides a robust eco-system. Any organisation that does not take mobile seriously, that does not learn how to embed mobility into its day-to-day operations is simply not part of the 21st Century. Further whilst google is a highly adaptive platform it is a media company, and Apple has staked its claim to the consumer market. Education, Healthcare, Local government services, Enterprise – who is going to look after these industries? I think I saw a credible answer to that working with Blackberry.

I also got to meet some great people in each and every city. In Buenos Aries I met Antonio Pena of Altergaia, and Juan Ramiro Fernandez Senior Director; Digital Media MTV Networks. The lunch was fabulous as was the conversation. And also I met Frederico Mikaelian and his lovely girlfriend, via a friend in Amsterdam who saw my tweet and made the intro. We went to an amazing restaurant recommended by Matt Garlick of Vostu, The Cafe San Juan.

In Caracas, I had the good fortune to meet Nidal Barake Awar and his team at Tedexis and La Causa. Again great conversation, and great food, and finally in Bogota I hooked up with Carlos Sierra of Inalambria. These are contacts that will develop into lasting friendships, enabled initially by my friend Lars Cosh-Ishii in Japan as is the way of this networked world.

What else happened to me? Well you can feel Brazil’s economic heartbeat, and perhaps more importantly immersing myself for 2 months in Latin America, I realised that I was able to see the world and its context from a very different perspective – and that was very useful.

So the To Do List – my challenges to enterprise was

To Do List:

[1] Adapt to thinking like a network – a collaborative ecosystem = (strategic opportunity)

[2] Offer value to customers from day #1 (the Bill Bailey principle) Bill Bailey is a comedian and he is asked how he comes up with his jokes, he says, “I start with a laugh and Iwork backwards, what do I need to do to create that amount of laughter”. The point of where we start to imagine possible scenarios is not always that place that it should be.

[3] Start with basic things and increase complexity only step by step. Speed before perfection, you succeed quicker by failing faster and learning from those mistakes – but I also made the point Blackberry already has some potent tools avaialable for enterprise

[4] Organisational: where does mobile sit in your organisation? A silo in a silo or integrated into management and marketing. This is a key point to the life and death, success or failure of truly adapting mobile into the fabric of an organisation.

[5] Payment via mobile – a strategic opportunity – enabling payment mechanisms on the mobile is significant

[6] Identity protection – data / services / marketing = trust = $$ – and protection of data / peoples privacy whilst providing truly life enabling services is vital

[7] True Engagement in mobile – changing from an interruptive “PUSH” to a model of attraction and “PULL” is imperative

And lastly I pointed out that we had only just begun – therefore we needed to upgrade ourselves constantly in a process of evolution.

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Posted in: 7th Mass Media, Alan Moore Speaking, Convergence, Darwin, Data, Economics, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Mobile, Engagement Organisations, Government & Politics, Identity, Marketing, Media, Mobile, Networks, Strategy, Trends

The Do Lectures, Paula Le Dieu

The Do Lectures and The Do Village Blog

SMLXL on copyright, open source, innovation, culture

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Posted in: Culture, Engagement Organisations, Ethics, Generation C, Law, Media, Networks, Participation

The problem with Murdoch’s media

Henry Porter discusses some of the key criteria as to why Vince Cable has such an important contribution to  make in controlling total media and therefore political power currently wielded by Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. This follows on from my post A people wil only be free when they control their own communications Mr Murdoch.

Porter writes,

There is almost no one in the business outside News International who disagreed with the director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, when he said on US television that there was a case for looking at Rupert Murdoch’s media ownership systematically because of the “potential for abuse of power”.

At the heart of this is media ownership, and how that ownership is used as a source of power.

The corruption that stems from Murdoch’s power and his willingness to intimidate politicians has become so entrenched that we barely notice it. Instead of seeking to control him, we give him the easy pass to the rear entrance of Number 10 so the influence he exerts goes unobserved. Instead of being shunned, he is offered the podium in Lancaster House, from where he will no doubt lecture us on the self-serving conviction that unfettered markets result in free minds.

NewsCorp is very focused on commerce it seems a little more distracted about the quality and veracity of its journalism, or where it comes from, read phone hacking scandal. Its motivation to sell news and media as content, has nothing to do with the needs  of this country. Porter describes Murdoch as a marauding foreign power – an Ozzie who is now an American citizen. Though to be fair it was the bungling of the British media buffoons with British Satellite Broadcasting that gave Murdoch his entreé into British broadcast media – he then adopted the google maxim “speed before perfection” and then exploited his position.

The press, was once described as warhorses, prepared to stand up to and challenge, investigate and defend matters of importance, this has largely been given up to the grocers, those that have a very different perspective of media ownership and its role in our modern world.

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Posted in: Convergence, Culture, Darwin, Engagement Civil Society, Ethics, Government & Politics, Law, Media, Politics, Society, Uncategorized

tattoos, identity and meaning [2]

I am writing this post as my old friend David O’Hanlon asked a question to my post on Tattoo’s, identity and meaning that I think requires a somewhat in-depth response. Patrick Skinner is a PHD student at Cambridge University, his interest, interactions and social identity in Palaeolithic Europe.

Patrick and I met earlier this year, when he overheard me. discussing the No Straight Lines project with someone in a coffee shop in Cambridge. So Patrick contacted me, and this is what he had to say.

What you seem to be talking about runs in parallel to much of the social theory being used within archaeological theory today. Basically, many archaeologists are now beginning to realise that the behaviour of people (I am referring to stuff that was going one about 20,000 years ago when mobile art, figurines and parietal – cave – art largely first appeared in Europe) had much to do with building and maintaining networks, not just with people but also with other elements of the world). Of particular interest is that some archaeologists are now discussing the role of possessing and interacting with mobile (e.g. animal) figurines as a means of creating and maintaining human identity. Much of the ethnographic data suggests that these people actually thought of these objects, and other things in the world, as actually being part of them in a very real way. Thus, when objects such as these are exchanged, it is not simply that they represent the identity of a person (e.g. relative): they actually are part of the person. Archaeologists are also beginning to employ social theories such as Actor-Network Theory to explore such concepts.

What I have now realised is that the way that people engage with objects and media (e.g. mobile phones) in the Western’ world today is not so different to 20,000 years ago. I am not saying that people thought about the world in the same way. But what seems to be apparent, especially with the enormous rise of social networking today, is that human identity is embodied with in the very objects (real and virtual) that people use, and when people communicate with each other it is not simply a matter of communication, but it is in a very real way part of themselves that is being sent/communicated. This is very interesting, because human identity then becomes something which is not confined to the immediacy of the person and the immediate surrounding world, but is distributed throughout the world in the form of pictures, emails etc. Interaction with these things (both real and virtual) then becomes a matter of necessity, as it did during the Palaeolithic, as their identity or personhood is embodied within these things. No longer can be people be socially secure (i.e. interact with important elements of the known world on a regular basis) through normal modes of communication: in order to maintain a sense of social cohesion people must now continually interact with elements of their identity that are distributed throughout the globe via objects (e.g. phones). Social cohesion becomes a matter of remote rather than direct interaction.

My simple observation is that if we are are designing a society and world that is becoming more inherently social through connectivity, this has to relate to identity, and meaning. How we create meaning. We cannot ignore that for many people modern life is rubbish, or that the shopping mall really is Van Diemens land. As I wrote in that post

For me this is the backdrop to perhaps some of the biggest, and perhaps intractable problems of our current society. Loss of identity, belonging, and community – with all its subsequent fallout.

In the issue of identity in a post modern world, psychologist Sandra Harilld points out

Until postmodern times, we dealt with problems that had their origins in relation to the other or the outside in a concrete way and in imagination problems tended to come from people with psychosis or personality disorders. We are still getting those problems but what has changed for some people are the triggers to illness, in so much as people who do not have a strong inner sense of self tend to feel more fragmented more easily and the idea of self construction is very threatening to these types of people.

They seem to need more direct human contact to help them to define themselves and years ago would have been defined and lived within the confines of their families, villages, social classes or friends, with daily personal interaction reinforcing that. So, for instance, we see a lot of phobias and depressions, particularly problems such as social phobia that are linked to this fearfulness of how to be in the world and whether one is acceptable or not.

And in my post human nature and the need for social connection, I point out using the work of John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, that,

Looking more deeply at the invisible forces that link one human being to another helps us see something even more profound: our brains and bodies are designed to function in aggregates, not in isolation. That is the essence of an obligatory gregarious species. The attempt to function in denial of our need for others, whether that need is great or small in any given individual, violates our design specifications.

Indeed, violating our design specifications in a profound way, “I” needs “We” to truly be “I” was the maxim of Carl Jung, as told by Charles Handy in The Hungry Spirit. The industrial age has done some fantastic things for us – but it also has stripped away for many of us what makes us human n the first place. In this context, I am frustrated with the word, “social media” as it just cannot describe the true reality of what is going on in the world we live in today. This perspective is I argue as relevant to business as it is organisations, as it is to education, and lastly to each and every one of us. Because, I think it alters the way we make things, and get stuff done. These are the drivers to the networked world where as Jan van Dijk explains,

In a mass media society, the basic units are the large collective ‘masses’. In contrast, a network society is based on individuals who form voluntary connections with other individuals regardless of location. In a network society, the network becomes a basic unit of organization at all levels (individuals, groups and organizations). Online social networks, media networks and technology networks act as the catalysts for a networked society

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Posted in: Culture, Engagement Civil Society, Engagement Education, Engagement Marketing, Engagement Organisations, Engagement Politics, Engagement Research, Engagement Sciences, Ethics, Generation C, Government & Politics, Health, Identity, Marketing, Media, Mobile, Networks, No straight lines, Participation, Philosophy, Science, Social Networks, Society, Sociology, Trends, Uncategorized, Web/Tech