The Ingenesist Project

The Next Economic Paradigm

Tag: education

Introduction To Curiosumé

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On September 13, 2014

In General Information

(Editors note:  We are publishing the documentation and tutorial for the Curiosumé application for review and comment)

Introduction To Curiosumé

Curiosumé is an open source specification for the analog-to-digital conversion of knowledge asset objects.  Designed as a system to replace the résumé as a means for describing the interests, skills, and abilities of people, things, and ideas —  it functions as a personal digital API for the trade and exchange of actionable knowledge.

Since semantic knowledge assets are machine-readable, they generate matches, proximity measurements, relevance and importance rankings, and predicted probabilities of various outcomes.  As such, the economics of “intangibles” becomes computable and meaningful.

By activating knowledge assets within an economic system, social entrepreneurs may readily trade and exchange intangible assets much as they do with tangible assets.   Curiosumé facilitates trade of intangibles through a unique distributed network of objects and assigned attributes.

  • Ownership of one’s Personal API
  • Anonymity until point of transaction
  • Deploying multiple personas
  • Combining multiple personae
  • Imaginary personae
  • Measuring proxies for economic output, matching, assessing, scenario testing
  • Anonymity and privacy

Use Cases:

The use cases for Curiosumé will be a numerous as the number of entrepreneurs who can articulate the protocol in a market.  Since Curiosumé eliminates “Competition” from the onset,  there is little or no economic incentive to lie, deceive, or cheat.  This allows the market an opportunity to defer vetting mechanisms to downstream applications that can compare (for example) a submitted persona against a control personal as a cryptographic key to unlock a transaction or block chain, etc.  In essence, making cheating too expensive to sustain.

  • Individuals may overlay their own persona on any dataset to visualize and discover adjacencies, paths, and connections.
  • Individuals may interact with the web using a Personal API
  • Protegé and Mentors may find each other in close proximity in community or within an organization.
  • People with special skills can find worthy and productive collaborations in communities or within the organization.
  • Trade in knowledge assets is facilitated through “anonymous until point of transaction” protocol.  People will provide better data knowing that they have complete control over their personal identities.
  • Build Social Currency; multiple personas may combine Curiosumés to establish the knowledge inventory for a team or to discover the probability that a group of friends may produce any mutual affinity efficiently together.
  • Any product or service may be described in Curiosumé format and compared to a community listing to discover customers, partners, and employees.
  • Curiosume data is pre-normalized allowing any user to make predictive assessments about any collection of personas relative to a project, product, event, itinerary,  or interaction with any physical asset.
  • Cryptographic; a personal API may be used as a private key in unlocking smart contracts on the block chain protocol
  • Toll Booth on Big Data; marketers, employers, or data aggregators would pay individuals for access to their persona.
  • Instead of advertising to a demographic, marketers may identify specific knowledge assets and may offset prices based on the social values or proclivities of the persona.
  • Economic development agencies can take a knowledge asset survey of a region to identify what institutions or industries they have a strategic advantage.  Or, they may retrain or import specific knowledge assets in order to grow into new industries – with great precision.
  • Philanthropic  institutions can assess need and impact prior to committing to directed giving by assembling strategic knowledge assets around a specific philanthropic goal.
  • Corporations may assess their ability to enter a develop a new products or enter a new market based on a Curiosumé survey
  • Competitors may assess the ability, and cost to defend against their competition disrupting a new product initiative.
  • Corporations can better tailor their products to what customers actually want to buy rather than trying to “market” what the company already knows how to produce.
  • Corporations can make hiring vs training decisions with better clarity based on a Curiosumé survey.
  • The college “degree” system may evolve in favor of boutique personas designed for innovation in an industry.
  • The financial industry (from the NYSE, Banks to VC) can determine the probability that a company may be able to execute a business plan given their Curiosumé survey
  • The Insurance industry can mitigate risk exposures by assuring that the right collection of knowledge assets are deployed to, say, a construction project.
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Goodbye University Hello Multiversity

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On March 9, 2012

In General Information

I recently responded to the following Question on a Facebook group:

How could a newly established university be designed today in order to be elite? Which features must be included, and which features can be left out?

Subquestion: “What would you include in all dimensions: desired faculty, desired student body, location, graduation, research and tenure requirements, institutional structure and purpose, among other things, and what features would you exclude that are currently prevalent at “elite” institutions such as the Ivy Leagues?”

***
My answer as follows:

Why not go farther, much farther. Teachers would not get paid. Instead, they would hold an equity position the future of their students. Sort of like an inverse pyramid scheme built on knowledge assets – teachers would collect a small % amount from many students and a smaller % amount from their many future students students, and so on (multiplying value instead of dividing value). This would attract a certain type of teacher as well as a certain type of student. It would also favor research and innovation since the promise of stagnant salaries are not attractive in this arrangement.

Why two or three subject minors? How about a 3 platform minors; one in social philosophies, a minor in creative arts, and a minor in sciences. Instead of a “degree” your education would be expressed as a string of code representing each unit of study to form your unique API. Your API would interface with the APIs of your colleagues and teachers such that an algorithm could predict the likelihood that a strategic combination of knowledge assets could execute a particular business plan. Such probabilities would be able to predict and associate future cash flows with such business plans. These cash flows could then be securitized into a financial instrument called an “innovation bond”.

Rich people, corporations, and governments would buy these bonds and the revenues would fund the school. Access to the bonds also provides access to the underlying assets – the world’s knowledge. They would be hugely valuable as a hedge agains a declining fiat currency because, like money, knowledge assets can be deployed to create the things people need. Soon, everyone would become a teacher and everyone will become a student in a new form of capitalism will emerge where factors of production are allocated as social, creative and intellectual capital.

***

There were several interesting responses to this question as well as comments to my response.  Admittedly, I was riffing a bit with my response , but I’ll defend it as follows:  

First, let us not mistake “money” for “value” as a so-called “equity position” can be denominated in either. Second, there are many examples in society that demonstrate my conclusion.  Parents take an equity position in the future of their children, executives across America have a cadre of protege from whom they take an equity position in their careers, and Society accepts levies, and taxes, and buy bonds that fund public education so that future productive generations can support the elderly.

The miracle of capitalization and securitization have created extraordinary levels of prosperity on Earth compared to historic social structuring.  The ability to capitalize and securitize knowledge assets (as opposed to classical land, labor, and capital) is likely the next economic paradigm…if not the only sustainable economic paradigm.  I would suggest that current university system is the aberration, not my comment above.

Goodbye Universe, Hello Multiverse

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Who is Awarding The Disruption Badge?

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On November 10, 2011

In General Information

There are some big names getting involved with “badges”.  Modern ideas about badges arise from incentive used by the gaming community to indicate achievement.  Historically, however, badges are older than money itself. Recently, badges are gaining attention in the area of education as a means of indicating achievement.

Badges are steeped deep in our economy and culture

When people write their resume, they “badge” themselves with the names of the companies that they worked for and the schools they attended.  They badge themselves with the market brands of the products that they worked on.  They badge themselves with the trademarks of the technologies that they applied.

People even badge themselves with corporate ideals such that “chronology”, “reasons for leaving” and “no blank spaces” are somehow rational proxies for intellect, creativity, and team working skills. We need a behavior platform, kids. Passion, family, and purpose are merely business disruptions.

There are several directions that this can go

The first is the inevitable collusion between badges and branding.  I am still scratching my head over AMEX hijacking the “Social Currency” badge.  Other badges (or logos) are considered among the most valuable assets that a company can own from Microsoft certifications to the Chuck E Cheese Rat … badges have value – with their own branch of the legal profession to prove it.

The second direction can be quite disruptive to branding.  For example it can cost well over $100K to wear the Harvard “Badge”.  Meanwhile Steve Jobs literally ridiculed Stanford to their collective face(s) with the idea that diverse combinations of knowledge assets are what set the innovation enterprise apart from the old guard.

What if the college degree badge is irrelevant? 

Who is to say and engineer in not an engineer until they take on $2000 more debt for a course in Western Civ.  And, if not Western Civ., then what course denotes the ascension into engineerhood?   A physics major that rules video games, kite surfs, plays in a punk band, and writes decent code is equally, if not more likely, to create a new industry than someone with a CS degree from MIT. Where is that badge?

Badges should be disruptive

What happens when it is no longer important to have “Google” on your resume? Why is it so now? What happens when being a Princeton drop-out is no better or worse than being a drop out from State U?  What happens when people are recognized for their passions and the things that they are naturally good at?  How can a credit score extrapolate success from measuring failure? What happens when there is no badge for the color of one’s skin, physical appearance, or family connections.  What happens when Brands are accountable for the people who wear their badge instead of the other way around?

Badging already exists and in order to improve anything, badges must be disruptive.

So, who is awarding the disruption badges?   

 

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Where Teachers Hold an Equity Position

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On October 19, 2011

In General Information

Teachers are “threatened” with layoffs. In some cases, the profession is openly mocked. Meanwhile, corporations are staring blankly at the knowledge gap in their industries.  The older generation is retiring, moving on, and taking their knowledge with them.  Teacher’s unions are busted and disappearing. Apprenticeships are a thing of the past.  Everyone is asking “where are the jobs – there is plenty of work to do”

Education is obviously a financial instrument.  Think about that for a minute – it is an investment like any other investment. Wall Street has an arbitrage instrument for every market anomaly – why not education?

What would happen if teachers were given an equity position in their students?  Isn’t this what families do to prepare their kids to take over the family business?  Isn’t this what happens in corporations where executives pick proteges?  Isn’t this what happens in politics where knowledge is traded among a closed group?

A school like Harvard University or MIT certainly hold and equity position in their students. What if every community viewed every child as an asset instead of a liability?

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Will Social Capitalism Replace Market Capitalism? (Parts 1&2)

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On June 21, 2010

In General Information

This video describes a set of predictions for 2020 based on an entirely new form of capitalism whose velocity and voracity will take the world completely by surprise. Nothing is sacred and nobody is immune, not Facebook, not Google, not Wall Street, not even Governance itself….

Part 1

Part 2:

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Does School Interfere With Education?

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On April 2, 2010

In General Information

I guess that is could be considered sacrilege for a college professor to suggest that higher education is inadequate in some way.  My position is that the college degree must go away in favor of strategic combinations of high resolution knowledge assets.  The irony is that those who really “get it” understand “school” better than the schools.

The price of college education compared to the value of college education in society is skewing toward obsolescence. The news reports are filled with stories of unemployed MBAs and Engineers.  Over qualified, out of date, over generalized, specialized into obsolescence are all risk conditions that can make college a liability, not an asset.

There are many articles in these archives that outline my opinions on the subject. So here is what the kids say….

*************

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Video: Money vs. Productivity

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On January 19, 2010

In General Information

The questions are:

1. What is money? 2. Why is it important? 3. Why is it all so confusing?

The answers are:

1. You are money. 2. You are important. 3. You’re not supposed to know this.

This video provide an easy way to find the truth among the high-fiber ambiguity that has become our political morass. Oh Yeah, they want you to be confused because they don’t want you to act any differently.

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Should Education be Open Source?

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On December 18, 2009

In General Information

We continue to challenge the relevance of the college “degree” as being an insufficient measurement for what “educated” is, or is not, in an innovation economy. With the cost of a college degree spiraling upward and the value of the degree spiraling downward, the market will tip in favor of the alternative education measurements.

It is important to note that we do not challenge the existence of institutes of higher education, only the “degree” as a unit of measurement. The four year Bachelor degree and two year Masters degree are irrelevant as a title (there is no legal title since the age of the guilds) and arbitrary in duration to respond to the diversity, speed, and scope at which new technologies become available for deployment.

Ray Barton writes: The UK House of Commons in its’ report on Re-skilling in January 2009 stated the useful life of a degree is five years. In high tech professions, the useful lifetime of knowledge can be as short as 1.5 years.

This alone disrupts the current paradigm of higher education in several ways.

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Why is college measured in “degrees”?

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On December 9, 2009

In General Information

 

(Editor’s note; This is the first in a series of articles that challenges the “degree system” of knowledge measurement as archaic and irrelevant to what is actually happening in the world today.  Like the resume system  – it is ridiculous if not outright damaging to the prospect of knowledge behaving, and therefore, trading like a financial instrument.  

Why do we still care about college ‘degrees”?

The information that fuels the next economic paradigm will not be captured in the form of college degrees; rather, it will be captured in extremely detailed granularity of unique collections of knowledge assets in diverse combinations of persons that solve complex puzzles – and then share the solution with others.

This begs the question, why do we still care about University Degrees?

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Set the Data Free, Please

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On September 11, 2009

In General Information

The following commentary was posted last week  in  Wall Street Journal Op Ed. This is an opportunity to consider the term “Conversational Currency” at it’s most literal meaning. People pay money to talk to each other. Other people want to control how when and how much people can talk to each other. The battlefront is technology, like rockem-sockem robots, technologies duke it out in this trillion dollar struggle to control our conversations.

Who benefits … shareholders?

The irony is that each and every titan is the beneficiary of conversation. The 135 year old Alexander Graham Bell era is about to End. Will patricide or scionism prevail? Will unified voice systems integrate all mediums and devices into a single channel? Will the elimination of conversation “frictions” also eliminate innovation “frictions” (you know, all those things that make innovation impossible to capitalize by regular people; Patents, risk, velocity, market intel, 1000% VC, etc.).

It’s about the data, stupid

Mr. Kessler proposes a National Data policy – after all, voice, text, video, etc., are simply different forms of data and should be treated as such.  Any device should work on any network and data should flow freely.  What’s with owning airwaves? Who came up with that idea ? – it creates more interference than it is touted to solve. Ditto for exclusivity contracts – who needs them, except those who stifle innovation.  And finally, the mother of all frictions, restricting speed and bandwidth.  Sure, I like driving with the emergency brake on – it improves my eligibility for “cash for clunkers”.

Resistance is futile

The truth cannot be hidden by economic tyranny.  Noble institutions like journalism, education, and entrepreneurship are being sacrificed in the name of shareholder value. People communicate freely and freely they shall communicate.  These are the profound questions of our era that play out every day in the news. Please read this and our other posts at CC with great optimism that a new paradigm is arising where an innovation economy will be built on a social media platform outside the construct of corporations:

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The 2.3 Trillion Dollar Mentor Market

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On June 29, 2009

In General Information

Mentors provide expertise to less experienced individuals to help them advance their careers, enhance their education, and build their networks. In many different arenas people have benefited from being part of a mentoring relationship: Freddie Laker mentored Richard Branson, Bach mentored Mozart, Dr. Dre mentored Eminem, Aristotle mentored Alexander the Great, and Obi-wan Kenobi mentored Anakin Skywalker.

Mentorship: a Valuable 2-way Conversation

Suppose that mentorship could be monetized like financial instruments.  Within the structure of an innovation economy specified by The Ingenesist Project; a knowledge inventory, a percentile search engine, and an innovation bank will match the most worthy student to the most worthy mentor in the respective market structure.  The mentor would take an equity position in the protégé, not unlike taking a stock in a corporation.

For example:  A single mid-career mentor could take on 10 protégés with an option to exercise, say, 1% of the students future salary for every year mentoring upon predetermined retirement date. Say that the average mentorship lasts 10 years.  Likewise, each of the protégés also becomes a mentor taking on 10 protégés of their own.  The Master mentor will collect 1% of the revenue that each of the 100 sub-protégés provide to their middle mentors per year.

The Educational Pyramid Scheme

If each protégé becomes at least as successful on average as the mentor, the master mentor can collect the equivalent of their average salary for the duration of their retirement.  If each of the protégés become equally effective mentors, then the master mentor can double their average salary for the duration of their retirement.   A third tier adds another salary to the master mentor.

This is what actually happens in an informal way within companies, government, and Jedi Knighthood; the exception is that social media will enable this to occur outside the construct of a corporation – and such.

Game Theory for the Rest of Us

An interesting social game emerges:  It becomes the best interest of the mentor that each of their protégés is successful in their field and practice high integrity.  It is in the best interest of the mentee to learn as much as they can and become as proficient as they can. It is the best interest for mentees to pick appropriate mentors and it is in the best interest for mentors to take on appropriate mentees.  It is efficient for mentees to form a social network among themselves and for Master Mentors to form a network among themselves. A multiplier effect surges with cross-mentoring.

In aggregate, it is in the best interest for the membership in the social network to cooperate rather than compete because their income would ultimately benefit less from competition than from cooperation.

2.3 Trillion Dollars Market

The American Public education system is in disarray.  Standardized education defies the diversity of the country.  Teacher’s pay has been stagnant. Curriculum takes years to respond to new knowledge. Recent McKinsey research finds that a persistent gap in academic achievement between children in the United States and their counterparts in other countries deprived the US economy of as much as $2.3 trillion in economic output in 2008

None of this has anything to do with the dreams of our children.  None of this has anything to do with the intellect, motivation, and perseverance of our kids.  It has everything to do with Political stalemate and failure of the economic system.  All children can achieve their dreams, and ours, if there were a market for mentors.

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Social Media Strikes Back

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On June 26, 2009

In General Information

Money represents human productivity.

Recent headlines declare that 78 billion dollars worth of fuel and productivity are wasted each year by congestion on highways. 1.2 Trillion dollars per year in productivity is lost due to past failures in education. The US spends 7% more of our GDP on health care than the average of other developed nations leaving nearly 1 trillion dollars of unknown ‘productivity value’ in vapor per year. 200 Billion dollars per year is spent on war, whether necessary or not, that has not increased American productivity in an economic sense.

2.5 Trillion Units of Human Productivity

Without even trying hard, 2.5 Trillion Dollars per year in stuff not produced is wasted on activity that does not increase human productivity (stuff produced). Obviously debt is a promise to produce stuff in the future. But we’re wasting stuff now? At some point the logic falls apart but no matter how you look at it, money represents productivity and the only way out of this mess is to innovate at an astonishing rate.

Conversational Capital

In an earlier article, we conjured up a rough tabulation of productivity gains due to social media:

One billion messages are sent on Facebook every day. Suppose that each Facebook conversation has a net value of $1.00 per person. That comes out to 730 Billion dollars per year of human productivity saved.

Twitter is worth a cool 100 Million tweets per day. Let’s assign a net productivity gain of $1.00 per tweet delivered. That is $36 Billion per year in increased human productivity.

Suppose each blog article published increases human productivity by $0.50 each. With over 100M blogs, that is 10 billion dollars per day – or1.8 trillion dollars per year.

The grand total is 2.5 Trillion Dollars worth of conversational currency.

In Search of Waste Economics:

Now, return to the waste side of the balance sheet let’s reflect on the areas of impact that social media has on: transportation, energy, education, health care, and world Peace:

Social media reviews automobile quality and drives social priorities toward green industry. Social media allows people to find work close to home, social media vets energy systems such as wind, solar, nuclear. Social media is driving journalism to value added roles and away from corporate collusion. Social media provides richer and more current content than textbooks. Social media is driving social priorities over Wall Street priorities in health care, energy, politics, industry, and science. You Tube is seeing a 1700% increase in downloads as people set up video cameras all over the world searching and reporting injustice.  Little Brother is watching.

Social media strikes back

In order to predict where social media will strike next all we need to do is look for the waste economy; areas where world governments, institutions, and corporations are inefficient, wasteful, co opted, or corrupt.

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Is the Corporate Structure Obsolete?

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On June 24, 2009

In General Information

The Social Media Production System

Social Media has demonstrated in many ways capable of meeting or exceeding the deliverable output of many traditional industries such as advertising, marketing, journalism, human resources, design, community organizing, education, and social vetting.

We have also seen social media form communities that increase productivity in manufacturing processes, software development, and project management.  We have seen people self manage in social media to segregate and elevate good information away from bad information.  We have seen communities act with logic, tact, and precision previously thought to be the province of top management guidance.

In short, we have seen social media replace or duplicate almost every structural element of the traditional corporation outside of the construct of corporations.  Can social media provide a corporate structure in and among itself?

General Accounting Practices:

Corporations have an internal accounting system, internal processes, internal procedures, and often their own lexicon and unique job descriptions relative to their product.  This is how a corporation stores knowledge and trades value internally and defends itself from external influence.  The common thread is that each department is accounted, assessed, and compared in terms of money.  Standard balance sheets are compared by banks and investors.

Social media uses the exchange of information, knowledge and new ideas to store value.  Processes, procedures, job descriptions, and accounting are done in a public lexicon that everyone develops collectively.  People share, trade, and exchange information, knowledge, and new ideas like tangible property; and they trade options on futures in the same.  Increasingly, access to the community knowledge inventory is becoming a means be which people can convert productivity to money.

Standard Balance Sheet for Social Media

Most elements of a corporation can be duplicated in social media.  For those parts that cannot, the entrepreneur will soon figure out how they can.   The entrepreneur does not worry about money, they worry about productivity and the money always follows.  The next paradigm of economic development will reside almost entirely on a statistical game of managing risk and return, matching surplus to deficit, and increasing human productivity in the operating system of Social Media.  Every Newspaper that falls to Social Media is simply transferring its value to the new paradigm.  That value is still in play.  This trend will continue until a new currency representing that value is introduced.

Business Plans of the Future:

As you witness the progression of Social Media unfold, look for innovations that contain incentives for people to reorganize themselves.  Look for similarities between new social media developments and traditional corporate departments.  Look for businesses and institutions that support social vetting mechanisms, knowledge exchanges, and groups bringing together strategic combination of diverse knowledge assets, not just similar knowledge assets.  Most importantly; look for the “Last Mile of Social Media”; diverse groups of 5-10 people living within a few miles of each other forming new enterprise.

Threats:

Finally, look for the threats that can corrupt an innovation economy.  Social Media is currently responsible for trillions of dollars of productivity gains – all this money is still on the table for social entrepreneurs to monetize once the integration reaches a tipping point.  Be watchful for attempts at censorship, attempts to monopolize information nodes, and the corporatizations of social networks.   Wall Street was corrupted when the value of the currency became divorced from human productivity.  Don’t let the same happen to Social Media.

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Oh, What a Semantic Web We Weave

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On February 5, 2009

In General Information

Innovation Economics:

is the conscious practice of investing in innovation as a method for driving economic prosperity.  Innovation is the science of change and economics is the science of incentives.

Money is fictitious:

Money does not represent gold or silver, it represents your productivity.  The value is held in the productivity, not coins or bank notes.  Debt represents future productivity and savings represents past productivity. It’s very simple.

So if the word “money” and the word “productivity” mean the same thing, they should be interchangeable. Right?

As a test, try the following:

Every time you hear someone use the word “money”, simply insert the word “productivity”.  Try it with the kids, your boss, the news broadcast, or your favorite politicians.  If their statement still makes sense, then it is likely a logical statement.  If the statement is confused, reversed, or makes no sense whatsoever, then this is where we need Innovation Economics.

The Reversal:

  • “Mom, can I have some [productivity] to buy an ice cream cone?”
  • “We don’t have enough [productivity] to invest in R&D”
  • “There isn’t enough [productivity] in the budget so we must cut education programs”.

The Confusion:

  • “It concerns me that Facebook has yet to find a [productivity] model that seems likely to secure its future.”
  • “Icelandic [productivity] collapse is heard around the world”
  • “Global Warming costs too much [productivity] to solve”

The Ridiculous:

  • “Wall Street Executives earned excessive [productivity] in 2008”
  • “State of Washington opens more liquor stores to raise much needed [productivity]
  • “Lawmakers from both political parties have criticized banks for failing to use the taxpayer [productivity] for lending to help stabilize the hard-hit U.S. economy”.

It’s really fun to play this game when you start getting bored with the endless dribble of spin.  You can even go backwards; hear “productivity” and insert “money”. Pour yourself a glass of wine, sit back to the nightly news and you may start noticing some interesting trends.

Discussions related to engineers, infrastructure, airplanes, teachers, doctors, police and firefighters, etc., tend to get The Reversal. Discussions related to innovation industries such as social media, environment, and social causes tend to get The Confusion.  Discussions related to gambling, marketing and advertising, money shuffling, law suits, Wall Street, and various forms of speculation, are simply The Ridiculous.

It will make you wonder why we would need a Web 3.0 Semantic Web.  We really need a Web 3.0 de-Semantic Web.

(Picture from Charlotte’s Web; a story about a dinner pig who makes friends with a spider who comes up with a plan to save the pig by writing words in her web.  All the town’s people thought that the pig was special and his life was spared. The farm animals knew that it was really the spider who was special – she was an innovation economist)
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The Knowledge Inventory; Part 2

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On September 17, 2008

In General Information

Suppose we used the Dewey Decimal System to write a resume. A person could be described as a series of numbers instead of words and computers can search the numbers as they do key words today.

For example: 302, 307, 330, 607, 17, 500, 519

This person has experience in social interactions, communities, economics, educational research, ethics, natural sciences, statistical analysis

While memories of high school librarians may make us cringe, the computer loves numbers and classifications in this format. This will be important especially where knowledge is very specific. However, this simple list of numbers does not capture the knowledge of a person any better than the flawed “key word” search system that we are trying to replace. So we need to do something more.

If your mind were a library and you attempted to map it all out, one would see that everything is related in some way – intuitively, this is what defines you. If we looked at your brain, we would discover a huge network of experiences, relationships, books read, lessons learned, and people encountered. We would find a system of knowledge rather than random facts. Your likes and dislikes would be reflected in what you do and do not want to do. Everyone is different – nobody is the same. Everyone innovates, everyone has knowledge, and everyone shares information.

Somehow we need to reflect this on our computer readable resume.

The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) System was built on top of Dewey for precisely this reason, to catalog complex and dynamic knowledge. The UDC system uses symbols to connect and relate the categories.

• Addition (+) allows for a string of subjects to be listed together.

• Forward slash (/) defines a range – or a “system” of subjects matter.

• Colon (:) identifies categories that are related like; sports and medicine, ethics and law; innovation and economics.

• We can even employ Boolean Operations such as IF, AND, OR, NOT statements. For example; we can say Polo IF Horses NOT water OR trade marks

• In a Global Economy, we can employ language and culture assets as well.

Now, we have a system of numbers and symbols represent the knowledge of the person.

For example: {20,12};[302+307], (330):[607+17]+[500/519]

Now we see that a computer language is emerging for human knowledge. This “resume” is for a specialist in Social systems and communities of practice. Knowledgeable in economics related to educational research, ethics, and natural sciences. They also employ statistical analysis in their work and can do it all in either English and Spanish

This is starting to demonstrate several key advantages:

1. It is Infinite and expandable to any field of knowledge
2. Paints a picture of knowledge not simply a list of information about a person.
3. Machine programmable and machine readable.
4. knowledge of several people can be combined to represent the knowledge inventory of a team, group, or company

We are getting closer to the elusive true “Knowledge Asset”. Part 3 will demonstrate how knowledge can be made to look like a buck, walk like a buck, and quack like a buck.

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The Knowledge Inventory; Part 1

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On September 17, 2008

In General Information

We identified the 5 essential elements of a market economy. Then, we discussed the currency of the Innovation Economy; people trade information and turn it into knowledge and new ideas using factors of production; Intellectual Capital Creative Capital and Social Capital. Now we’ll discuss the inventory strategy for knowledge assets.

Most companies have an inventory of every nut, rivet, or panel that they need to build something of value. Innovation Economics will be no different – we need an inventory of knowledge in our community so that we can build things with it.

Google and Wikipedia offer us a huge inventory of information – we read that information and turn it into knowledge through a mental process. Since knowledge can only exist inside people, we need a catalog of what people know. Our Knowledge inventory must be able to catalog and classify all human knowledge from the past, present, and future. It must account for Intellectual Capital, Social Capital, and Creative Capital. If done correctly, our knowledge inventory will begin to take on the characteristics of assets – knowledge will look like money.

Suppose that we say your resume is like a book about you. This isn’t too strange since every book that you have read has become part of your knowledge inventory. Every conversation with another person has become part of your inventory. Every new idea that you have tried, successful of failed, is part of your inventory. The things that you like to do, things that you do not like to do, and things that you do not know are part of this inventory as well.

The Dewey Decimal System is a way to catalog information. Even though Dewey is somewhat archaic, it provides a good example of how a knowledge inventory should be structured. Entrepreneurs will improve it if needed – so let’s just understand the concept for now.

For a quick review, the body of written information is divided into 10 main categories. Each main category is divided into 10 more categories and each of those are divided into 10 categories – and this can go on forever. For example, the term 519 identifies a piece of information. The main category is 5 = natural sciences, sub category is 1 = mathematics, and the next sub category is 9 = probabilities. So to have the number 519 on your resume says that you have knowledge and can solve problems related to probability and statistics.

You will also notice that some Dewey categories favor Social Capital, some favor Creative Capital, and some favor intellectual capital. While a knowledge inventory may sound daunting, computers and modern Internet applications can now do much of the work for us – in fact, they already are doing this work.

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