Tragedy of the commons refers to a situation in which individuals with access to a public resource act in their own interest and, in doing so, ultimately deplete the resource.
The Ingenesist Project uses Game Theory to create a situation in which individuals with access to a public resource act in their own best interest and, in doing so, ultimately preserve the resource.
It is called The Value Game because it creates value rather than destroying value.
This value is represented by a cryptographic token which in turn compensates the players.
A Value Game allows the value of collaboration to exceed the value of competition.
By eliminating incentives to cheat, a Value Game is more efficient as no punitive friction is required.
By rewarding self-interest, there are no limits on human ambition.
By preserving public resources, sustainability of our civilization is assured
Nobel Economist Robert Solow calculated that 80% of economic growth is the result of advances in technology. This Makes sense. Technology makes us more productive.
However, GDP measures the products, not the producers. Engineers, Scientists, and Technologists are responsible for ideation, design, and implementation of new and improved technology.
Unfortunately, Engineers, Scientists and Technologists are classified as “intangibles” Intangibles are, in turn, classified as expenses to be minimized, not investment to be maximized.
Here’s the good news… 80% of the true global economy is simply hidden from view. Trillions upon trillions of dollars are sitting on the table waiting to be measured into existence. Can you see it?
The Ingenesist Project uses game theory, blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence to convert Intangible Assets into a tangible form.
Join The Ingenesist Project
Analysis
The purpose of this video is to synthesize the simplest interpretation of value and test that against prevailing economic principals. Engineers, scientists and technologists are treated as EXPENSES, let that sink in. If they are not assets, then they are LIABILITIES… full stop. This is a clear, present and vastly consequential flaw that must be addressed by someone somewhere.
Otherwise, if there is no institution willing or able to defend this flawed economic principal, then it is super-vulnerable to disruption. We need to maximize innovation, not minimize innovation. There needs to be a wholistic and systemic approach to solving problems in the world. We must head off global systemic risks. As clever and experienced as the VC community is, they cannot be expected to pick and choose winners and losers in the next economic paradigm.
There is far more ‘money to be made’ by shifting engineers, scientists, and technologists to the ASSET column of the global balance sheet.
A firefighter is worth millions of dollars per hour preserving lives and property… but only when there is a fire. A Fire Protection Engineer can design thousands of buildings that will never burn.
In the absence of a fire, the true value of the Scientists, Engineers, and Technologists is invisible. But the value of their economic contribution continues to persist.
What if we could measure the true value of intangible assets into present value existence. A massive new asset class would be unlocked.
The Ingenesist Project uses Game Theory, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence to convert intangible assets into tangible form, at scale. There is no shortage of money, only a shortage of imagination.
Join The Ingenesist Project
Analysis
The purpose of this video is to demonstrate how engineers, scientists, and technologists remove RISK from complex systems. Risk is directly correlated to “return” and, therefore, profits.
So what happens to all of that value that a single diligent engineer creates when they remove all of the risk? Is it paid to the engineer? no. Is it returned to the non-victims of the calamity averted? no. Is captured by the the banking system as some form of arbitrage? Yes, absolutely, yes.
This is the deep dark secrets of finance. Don’t let the engineers, scientists, and technologists know that they are paid 2-20% of what they are worth. They may want free stuff like healthcare, job security, or royalties, or else they’ll go build something else that pays better social dividends. Can’t have that.
Obviously the question becomes, what happens when there are no more engineers to eliminate risk? There is a tipping point and we are dangerously close to approaching it. These things are easy to measure, assess, and resolve but there needs to be an institution able to secure material facts and assert the economics of those facts.
What if there was a tiny and nearly imperceptible flaw in Market Capitalism that could be easily corrected? To do so would solve many of society’s most pressing needs without disrupting the institutions upon which we depend.
Technological change must always precede economic growth. We are going about the business of civilization as if economic growth must always precede technological change. It’s like driving a car while looking through a mirror. In other words, money is not the cause of innovation. Money is the result of innovation. The implications of this tiny flaw impacts everything from Climate Change and Social Equity to Venture Capital and Global Debt.
It started with classical economic theory. In the 1700’s economic inputs such as Land, Labor, and Capital were easy to measure. The products that resulted from these inputs were also easy to measure. However, in the 1700’s; social, creative, and intellectual inputs by humans were not so easy to measure. Accountants call them intangibles, but they are simply “invisibles”.
Today, this is an easier problem to solve. Ironically, technological Change has brought us new ways to measure intangible assets. All we need to do is convert them to a tangible form. The resulting economic growth will far exceed global debt because there is no such thing as “not enough money to innovate”. Together we can correct A Tiny Flaw
Join the Ingenesist Project.
Analysis
This is largely the initial video in the series and the first that we published. Attention should be drawn to the idea that maybe there is a tiny flaw that can be easily corrected. Instead of trying to solve every single problem that is strangling civilization as we know it, we could solve one single problem and the other problems will solve themselves.
The question becomes: are we too vested in our misery to even consider such a possibility? Are we so narcissistic to believe that our particular problem is the one that must be solved even if it worsens someone else’s problem? Are we all expecting the “other guy” to change and that will make your world work? Good luck with that.
The flaw is no tiny, so hidden, yet so obvious that it defies the imagination. All we need to do is measure ourselves differently. Who is stopping us from doing this? nobody. What law says we can’t do this? There is none. And if we do correct the flaw, who suffers? No one.
A Knowledge Inventory System; The Ingenesist Project
Have you ever wondered why the credits at the end of a movie are printed so small and scroll by so fast? The credits are not there for your benefit. The credits exist for the benefit of the movie industry.
Film production is a highly intellectual, creative, and social enterprise. In other words, Hollywood is denominated by knowledge assets. The rolling credits serve as a knowledge asset inventory system for all things needed to make the next movie.
Everything revolves around being on the credits or being known by people on the credits. This is how people find each other. The rolling credits make this possible. Not unlike a blockchain, in order to cheat the system, one must alter every instance of the celluloid reel or digital file.
Engineering, science and technology are also social, creative, and intellectual industries fueled by knowledge assets. Not unlike a blockchain, engineering processes are irreversible and immutable.
When we look at a sturdy bridge, or magnificent structure, or a brilliant piece of software, there is no easy way to find the people who are responsible for a specific element of that work. The Ingenesist Project uses game theory, blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence to create a knowledge asset inventory so that Engineers, Scientists, and Technologists can find each other.
Join The Ingenesist Project
Analysis
Engineering and science have long been compared to the Arts as a creative profession. The point of this video is to demonstrate how other creative professions deal with the intangibles gap. While the Hollywood system has its own set of pros and cons, the comparison is worthwhile. Notably, the arts often compensate creators with “royalties” while engineering, science, and technology most often pay hourly wages.
In addition, there are comparably fewer barriers, silos, or human resource management hurdles to navigate for artists. They don’t attempt to reduce a 4-dimensional performance down to a 2-dimensional CV/resumé. Instead, they can submit the 4D performance as their resumé. A great deal of efficiency is retained.
An Algorithm For Innovation; The Ingenesist Project
A useful definition allows people to identify, replicate, or measure the subject being defined. Yet the best definition we have for Innovation is basically, “You know it when you see it”.
How can we sustain our world if we cannot even define the sole instrument of change?
Have you ever had an epiphany? That ah-ha moment that comes from deep within… …when suddenly your knowledge about something grows exponentially within a very short period of time? Let’s call that “innovation”, where one large innovation is comprised of many smaller innovations.
In order to measure innovation, all you need to do is measure the rate of change of knowledge with respect to time. You don’t need Calculus to recognize this as an algorithm for innovation … but it helps.
If that idea doesn’t change the world, nothing will.
Join The Ingenesist Project
Analysis
Innovation is a great mystery that does not need to be. Everyone innovates – it is necessary for survival. Yet the magic and mystique of the innovator is a cultural phenomenon that forms the foundation of tech social status. Innovation is denominated in money – if you are not flush with cash, then you are not an innovator. Only VC can be innovators due to their ability to navigate financial markets. It almost seems that the more difficult it is to identify something, greater scarcity can be assigned to it. With greater scarcity come greater value. Again, when we become vested in our own misery, progress grinds to a halt.
This is all quite counter productive.
The problems of the future will require innovation, creation, new ideas, and vast execution at an astonishing scale. In order to achieve true economic sustainability, we need to a metric to denominate true value, not propped up scarcity value.
It is relatively easy to create and measure where high rates of change are occurring in a community or society. It is then relatively easy to observe what innovations take place as a result. This isn’t exactly a unicorn farm, but you probably can’t have a unicorn without these conditions in the first place. It is then only a matter of memorializing these conditions in a tangible form.
Innovation is not linear Modern civilization did not begin 10,000 years ago with 250 Trillion dollars sitting in a box somewhere in the desert.
Money was measured into existence as a function of the things that scientists, engineers, and technologists built. Innovations such as the wheel, wedge, and lever came long before the invention of International Trade Agreements Innovations in machinery, transportation and energy enabled advances in sanitation, healthcare, and computers
Yet, the wheel, wedge, and lever are more important and more widely applied than ever. Wouldn’t it make more sense if we developed a monetary system backed by the dividends of innovation rather than the gravity of debt?
The Ingenesist Project uses game theory, blockchain, and artificial intelligence to measure the true economic contribution of engineers, scientists, and technologists.
The Ingenesist Project Uses Game Theory, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence to convert intangible assets to a more tangible form.
Part One: Observe The game is based on a system of claims and validations among a population of players.
Part Two: Measure Blockchain acts like a giant datalogger that captures time-value data of game transactions.
Part 3: Predict The Percentile Search Engine predicts the likelihood various combinations of players would produce novel outcomes.
These three applications acting together create a virtuous circle that converts intangible assets into a more tangible form. Join The Ingenesist Project
Analysis
In almost every video, we make the statement that The Ingenesist Project uses game theory, blockchain, and AI to make intangible assets more tangible. This sounds pretty complicated, so how do you explain it in under a minute? The audience deserves to know how we intend to deliver on the promises that we are making.
The answer to this, and almost every engineering or scientific problem, boils down to making observations, measuring outcomes, and predicting future results. The same should be true here.
We’ve also stated that engineers remove risk from complex systems. Risk assessment follows a similar sequence; first you need to identify the risk exposure, then you need predict the likelihood it will manifest, then you need to measure the consequences of the event.
The game sets things into motion, the blockchain records the motion, and the AI reads the recorded motion and predicts the next point on the curve.
So what may seem like a very complicated and jargon laden geek storm is actually an extremely simply set of tasks that almost everyone already practices in the professional lives. Why reinvent the wheel?
To borrow from a famous quote: “Uber, owns no vehicles… Google and Facebook create no content… Alibaba holds no inventory… Airbnb owns no real estate….” But they have a combined value of almost 3 Trillion dollars. This is very interesting.
Whereas most companies are priced according to strict financial performance, Network platforms provide a virtual bridge that connects people to each other. They are priced proportional to the square of the number of human connections they serve.
This is known as Metcalfe’s Law of Network Value. If network platforms create a virtual bridge connecting people, why can’t we value real bridges using Metcalfe’s law? Why can’t we value roads, airports, buildings and all manner of engineering, scientific, and technological infrastructure as proportional to the connections they serve?
The Ingenesist project uses game theory, blockchain, and artificial Intelligence to convert intangible assets into a more tangible form. Join The Ingenesist Project
Analysis
We often say that Engineers, Scientists, and technologists need only to measure themselves differently in order to become “more tangible”. Most people’s eyes glaze over as if we’re living in some fantasy world. This video demonstrates that principal exactly as it happens with network platforms that are popping up everywhere around us. Really, we’re not making this up.
Metcalfe’s law arose from the telecommunications industry to measure the utility of telephone connections. The value of the network grows exponentially with the number of points in contact. Let’s start by saying that telephone networks themselves are a creation of engineering and scientific professions.
The engineering value of a bridge is equal to it’s replacement cost – so that’s what they pay engineers to create one. However, the economic value of the bridge includes every transaction, truck delivery, soccer game, doctor appointment, and math class that resulted from the ability for 10,000 people per day to cross the river.
Facebook, Google, Alibaba, AirBnB, et al, could not exist if they were valued according to their replacement cost. Imagine what amazing works of engineering, science, and innovation are non-existant today only because it is valued incorrectly.
As the saying goes, money makes the World go around. This may not be entirely true.
Where risk is high, the cost of money is high. Where risk is low, the cost of money is low. Engineers, scientists, and technologists specialize in removing risk from complex systems. So, why is there never enough money to mitigate the world’s most pressing risks?
Fortunately, all we need to do is reorganize engineers, scientists, and technologists and the money will surely follow
The Ingenesist Project uses game theory, blockchain technology, and Artificial Intelligence to reorganize the engineering and scientific professions.
This video poses a legitimate question. If there is money to be made by mitigating risk, why are Engineers, Scientists, and technologists classified as expenses (liabilities), and not assets on global balance sheets?
It’s amazing how vested we are in this staggering little flaw in market Capitalism.
Solving the problems of the future will require humans to innovate at an astonishing rate… … far greater than anything our existing economic system can support. In order to achieve this, there must be a fundamental shift in how knowledge assets are measured, curated, and exchanged.
Today, a traditional bank distributes money backed by your promise of FUTURE productivity. Innovation is also a promise backed by FUTURE productivity. Two currencies backed by the same underlying asset are readily convertible.
In the future, an Innovation Bank, would issue currency backed directly by the true value of innovation. All we need to do is measure ourselves differently.
The Ingenesist Project uses game theory, blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence to convert intangible assets into a more tangible form.
Join The Ingenesist Project
Analysis
The Innovation Standard is a reference to the Gold Standard or the Debt Standard, or the Oil Standard, etc. Whatever the standard, it needs to represent human productivity or else nobody would work in exchange for it (think about that for a sec).
The problems that face the world are global and they are systemic. That means that free markets technically don’t exist and the next thing that needs to be produced is the thing that society needs. Sure everyone wants a new Lambo, but it’s not very useful if the roads are too rough to drive it. Sure.Bitcoin is awesome but it’s contingent on a reliable energy grid. Sure, I love AI and much as the next geek but who’s going to read my content if they lack education to act on it?
Money as we know it just does not move fast enough. It does not represent the true productivity of Moms and Dads, soccer coaches, engineers, Scientists, teachers, and event organizers. Money needs to be produced as thenet sum of productive human behaviors. People know what problem needs to be solved next and if you give them the tools to fix things, they will.
Competition is one way of arriving at the optimal solution to a problem. Some call it the “Law of Nature”, survival of the fittest – where the final score can only be One to Zero. Unfortunately, in order to feed the winner, we must cultivate suitable losers. Evolution is slow and inefficient as a business optimization tool.
The laws of Nature provide infinitely more examples of collaboration than competition. Even if one player does not win today, their capacity to innovate remains to continuously improve the game for everyone later … if we let them.
The Ingenesist Project uses game theory, blockchain, and artificial intelligence to convert intangible assets into a more tangible form. Join The Ingenesist Project
Analysis:
This video acknowledges the value of competition as a solution optimization tool. So competition is not being called into question. However, a different problem involves preserving the knowledge, innovation, and wisdom that was created in the act of competition so that they can be developed in future or tangential problem solving environments.
Economics is the science of incentives which invariably invokes the discipline of game theory. we do have complete control over how a game is played, how players are preserved (or destroyed) and how equity is distributed. As such, we have complete control over the sustainability of the game which is ultimately in the best interest of everyone.
The conclusion is that a game which maximizes the health and welfare of the players ultimately maximizes the value of the game.
A bank won’t lend money to a project that is not insured. An insurance company will not underwrite a project that is not properly engineered. Engineering projects need to be financed to cover the cost of design and construction.
This is the Virtuous Circle of economic development. If any part of this cycle is broken, incomplete or corrupted, economic development fails.
Financial institutions simply issue paper receipts called “Money” to represent the actual things that engineers, scientists, and technologists create.
Money is, in fact, the intangible asset and engineering is the tangible asset! We’ve gotten it backwards.
When a virtuous circle reverses itself, it becomes a vicious circle. This is where we are today Fortunately, this is an easier problem to solve. The Ingenesist Project uses Game Theory, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence to reverse this vicious circle.
The purpose of this video is to introduce the big picture of how the Innovation Bank will integrate with existing financial networks to make the production cycle more efficient and more responsive to systemic risk.
The point of this video is to isolate the idea that our global economy is an interrelated system with 3 critical components that must be integrated and operating at peak efficiency in order for the economy to serve global citizens equitably.
The challenges of the future will require humans to innovate at an astonishing rate – far more rapidly than our current financial system can support. There is no way that Venture Capital – our current “best bet” – can respond to the speed, breadth, and depth of technological change.
The problem ahead is systemic risk. It is not possible for a collection of competing VC to pick the winners and the losers of the next economic paradigm. Unintentionally, the the VC system may cause more damage than good.
This idea is useful for when we introduce the game, blockchain, and AI components – the blockchain serves as a check valve that allows the virtuous circle to spin in only one direction. The game mechanics provide the energy to keep the virtuous circle spinning in the right direction, Augmented Intelligence will help identify what components of the system are operating optimally so that innovation can be applied correctly.
Decentralization is the rallying cry of the Blockchain Movement.
Few people realize that the Science, Engineering, and Technology professions are already decentralized. Unlike Banking and Finance, there are no all-powerful incumbents that must be vanquished. And the laws of Nature already apply to everyone.
Instead, Scientists, Engineers, and Technologists are contained by innumerable silos that have little to do with the Natural Laws We are segregated by jurisdiction, academia, ontology, corporations, politics, Trade Groups, Societies, international borders, and much more.
We represent 5% of the workforce but are responsible for 80% of economic growth. But collectively, we are weak, disorganized and powerless to prioritize the needs of our World. The only thing standing in our way, is ourselves. This is a much different problem than decentralization.
The Ingenesist Project uses Game Theory, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence to remove the silos that divide us.
Analysis:
The single point of this video was to introduce the distinction that a centralized institution and a collection of compartmentalized institutions may have similar characteristics to the participants, but are not the same thing. The former is far more difficult to disrupt while the latter is entirely vulnerable to disruption. This represents a huge opportunity for those who can see the distinction.
This idea plays a central role in the execution of The Innovation Bank. Where many see a stone wall of resistance to change, there may actually exists a paper veneer.
Have you ever wondered why a soccer goal has a net? The purpose of the net is to provide a visual contrast so that 50,000 observers can immediately reach a consensus that something very important has happened.
After that, a digital token is awarded to the team that scored a goal. The digital token also secures valuable business intelligence like game strategy, player stats, league standings, revenue, and everything else.
However, the consensus is by far the most important part. With the consensus, a player can make a lot of money. Without the consensus, they are invisible. With the consensus, the community can invest in a new stadium. Without the consensus, we can only play at the school yard. With the consensus, the economy flourishes. Without the consensus, it fails.
Lots of crypto projects have these same pieces. But mostly, they are mixed up. The Ingenesist Project uses Game Theory, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence to secure community consensus.
Classical economics is built upon a scarcity model of supply and demand of physical assets. In the trade of knowledge assets, the transfer of knowledge to one party does not require the cessation of knowledge by the other. As a result, it is estimated that 80% of a modern economy is intangible simply because it is not measured in accordance with generally accepted accounting practices. New methods in Blockchain and AI allow us to measure new value assets into tangible existence. This article proposes an accounting system for the next economic paradigm.
When Bears and Bulls Collide
In conventional accounting practices, a positive entry in the asset column of a balance sheet must correspond to a negative entry in the debit column. However, Knowledge Assets (K-Assets), function differently. The transfer of K-Assets does not require deducting the asset from the previous owner. Consequently, K-Assets are abundant and necessitate a different form of accounting to correctly attribute the contributions of STEM practitioners on a balance sheet.
A Brave New GAAP:
The Innovation Bank by The Ingenesist Project, provides the substrate for the production of K-Assets. This process is similar to how financial institutions facilitate the production of Capital Assets (C-Assets), but with distinct differences. Furthermore, the successful accounting system would facilitates the equitable exchange between of K-Assets and C Assets. The goal is to establish parity between these previously separate asset classes based on an universal risk-adjusted basis, rather than a scarce profit-adjusted basis.
Revolutionizing Technology Transfer
The Innovation Bank revolutionizes technology transfer by focusing on knowledge assets in their natural state – the mind of the practitioners – rather than a physical objects like machines, buildings, or processes that they may create. Although the end result is identical, this approach proves far more efficient.
In the Innovation Bank, the K-Asset, is created when one practitioner makes a claim and another practitioner validates it on a decentralized database. As a reward, they each receive cryptographic tokens that can later be used to access system metadata or traded on an open exchange for business intelligence. This dynamic “nano-credentialization” in aggregate, forms a means to measure economic potential.
A simple game with extraordinary implications.
The system operates autonomously, providing practitioners with incentives to generate new K-Assets. The rate at which they gain access to other practitioners depends on the quality and quantity of their own K-Asset production. Practitioners are driven to maximize token rewards and accumulate a personal transaction record consisting of successful claims and validations. Access to the database opens up more opportunities for them to generate further claims and validations, creating a positive cycle of growth.
Digital Career Path
Individual transaction records essentially serve as a digital public key, representing a practitioner’s résumé, CV, or portfolio. The owner maintains full control over this record. To ensure integrity, the same game mechanics that populate the Innovation Bank discourage trivial, false, inaccurate, and malicious transactions. The ledger is immutable, auditable, and incorruptible, providing a robust system that prevents such fraudulent or malicious behavior.
The Economy of the Future
In this brave new world of accounting, where knowledge assets are valued on their intrinsic merit rather than their scarcity, the Innovation Bank represents a significant step forward. By embracing this new accounting paradigm, we can unlock the full potential of human knowledge, foster innovation, and create a more inclusive and sustainable economy for the future. Imagine the world that humanity can build for itself if the other 80% of economic growth could be measured into tangible existence.
The Innovation Bank is an autonomous network platform applicable to all branches of technical services enterprise. The platform is governed by game theory, actuarial math, and blockchain technology. The purpose is to capitalizing the STEM professions.
The Innovation Bank Project Overview
The objective is to reward individual practitioners to establish physical facts in collaboration with other practitioners. Knowledge, innovation, and wisdom may be discerned from these interactions. Where such metrics exist, intangible “in-situ” knowledge assets may then be capitalized in a manner analogous to how tangible assets are capitalized in the existing economic system.
Past research has demonstrated individual components of the Innovation Bank within various for-profit enterprise settings. This current effort is unique in its attempt to integrate these components in an autonomous public network.
Several factors need to be taken into consideration:
Engineering is an essential industry – it is essential that the Innovation Bank is complementary rather than disruptive to existing institutions and operations.
All STEM professionals and practitioners are unified and enabled for cross-discipline interaction.
Practitioners are economically compensated within the platform for their contributions to the Innovation Bank. Compensation is proportional to the value of the contribution.
Practitioners own, control and hold title to their identification, and thus, their specific transaction records.
Specific Outcomes:
The initial funding for The Innovation Bank will result in the production of a minimum viable product comprised of an operational native blockchain with decentralized governance, algorithmic token allocation, and database auditing system (block explorer). These outcomes will be suitable for research, analysis, development and future growth within the professional and academic STEM communities. This test bed will allow us to develop means, methods, and metrics for advancing the above considerations.
Intellectual Merit:
The purpose of the Innovation bank is to unify the STEM professionals in society at large. Typically, STEM professionals are segmented by institutions with mismatched ontologies, competitive restraints, or regulatory limitations. While such hierarchical arrangements were well-serving in earlier times, new tools exist allowing network platforms to efficiently deliver value at speed, and at scale.
The core activity of the Innovation Bank is to develop worthy claims such that a qualified validator would be willing to be permanently and immutably associated with the claimant. This union forms a node with two branches for which each would be compensated in proportion to their total stake in the system. A network graph is thus formed from the interconnectivity of aggregate nodes and branches.
The dominant game strategy for each individual would be to allocate knowledge resources to where they are needed most rather than where profits are most assured. Financial value is derived from the dynamic metadata embedded in the aggregate network yielding business intelligence which would command a premium over static non-validated data.
Broader Impacts:
Economic growth is contingent on technological change – this is the exclusive domain of STEM professionals and practitioners. There is currently no reliable way to directly measure the impact of technological change on economic growth. Pricing and allocation are often irrational. Engineers, scientists, technologists, and mathematicians, serve to remove risk from complex systems ranging from consumer products to public infrastructure and the natural environment.
The Implications of the Innovation Bank includes the reduction of systemic risks and improved allocation of natural and intellectual resources. In essence, The Innovation Bank will gradually replace Consumption Capitalism with “Preservation Capitalism”. The introduction of a new risk-backed asset class would amplify the missions of existing institutions such as universities, corporations, finance, insurance, and government.
Given a game that everyone can potentially win, universal engagement in STEM education and STEM applications would become a dominant social policy strategy. More information can be found at The Ingenesist Project. Please contact us for more information regarding The Innovation Bank Project Overview or please read the the following paper:
The Value Game (TVG) is a new class of business methods where value is extracted from an asset, not by consuming the asset, rather, by preserving the asset. The process of preservation and maintenance is the substrate for the creation of social, creative, and intellectual capital in a community. TVG is a difficult thing to sustain in a legacy economic model, but may be quite efficient and profitable in the modern networked organizational structures enabled by decentralized adjudication, a decentralized ledger. and simple game mechanics.
To illustrate, we cite examples from on-line games collectively referred to a Fantasy Sports. Fantasy baseball for example is a game played by adapting real life game statistics to create hypothetical game scenarios using some randomization system such as a set of dice. Over time these games have become more sophisticated, computerized, and have spread to other sports, and now they are on-line. Today, fantasy sports are estimated to be a 2 billion dollar industry involving over 56 million people.
What if a “fantasy play” could be replicated given a set of validated statistics, in real life? How would the real world game actually turn out? This is not an uncommon thought. Many HR directors, corporate recruiters, and entrepreneurs dwell on this topic extensively: “How could we identify social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital of people, given a set of market measures, and allocate them into a self-optimizing game to yield production and profit?”.
Building A Value Game
The Value Game starts by identifying any asset that a group of people may share.
The next step is to find 3 or more diverse communities that have a vested interest in preserving the asset rather than consuming the asset.
Each player acting in their own best interest will seek to play their expertise among the others as best as possible.
Any threats to the shared asset will be neutralized by the majority of players in a network.
The transactions between the diverse communities of people will “mine” social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital into existence generating tokens in the process.
Individual transaction records will be memorialized on a blockchain under the control of the individual.
Validated transaction records may be transferable to other Value Games, blockchains, or tokens.
Example: A condominium is an arrangement of several individual owners (of living units) who all have individual talents. It is in the best interest of each that the building is well maintained, but none are necessarily qualified to manage and maintain a complex structure. Another community of nearby vendors such as restaurants, accountants, engineers, physicians, and employers have in their best interest that the condominium is maintained because the value of the units impacts the value of commerce – and the productivity of the residents is the primary source of revenue for vendors. It is also in the best interest of neighboring buildings, the school district, and the city tax pool, civil servants, etc., that the shared asset is maintained to optimize it’s value. Each player is aware of the impacts in the network based on the analysis of similar networks.
While malicious actors may be a symptom of illness, by actual attack vector is apathy and neglect. Gravity, weather, and deferred maintenance are constantly trying to reduce that condominium structure to lower state of value. Maintaining an asset creates value equal to the entropy of the system plus asset appreciation due to the creation of social, creative, and intellectual capital.
The Value Game would form a cryptographic token that may be exchanged among the parties in whose best interest it is to preserve an asset rather than to consume the asset. This is done in many forms today – a restaurant may offer a coupon to residents for a lunch special. A physician may locate close and rely on referral instead of advertising. An trades person saving time and travel expenses may pass that on to local community. When a drug dealer comes to town, they are quickly identified and excised from the community by the community.
Almost any shared asset may be used to form a value game.
A residential or commercial building
A Corporation
A car, airplane, or other transportation asset
Land for farming, mining, or urban forest
Water, food, and energy
Engineers, Doctors, Civil Servants
Educators, mentors, apprentices
Laborers, Maintainers, cleaners
Planet Earth
New Value Entrepreneur
The objective of the New Value Entrepreneur will be to organize three or more communities to interact around a shared asset where the interactions among these communities act to preserve the asset rather than consume the asset. As people interact with each other, they teach, learn, and iterate with each other. This activity manufactures social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital memorialized by transaction records represented by the community token.
In general, once a value game is started, it will improve itself. All players will eventually find and play roles in Value Games that correspond most closely to their natural interest and passions and therefore maximize their personal value.
(update; as of November 2012, The Monitor Group headed by Michael E. Porter, the subject of this article, declared bankruptcy ending an era of C-Suite omnipotence strategy thinking. This article compares competitive strategy to collaborative strategy)
In short, a competitive company’s position in a market is threatened by five main forces acting on the corporate asset:
new competition,
substitute products or services,
bargaining power of customers,
bargaining power of suppliers,
intensity of competitive rivalries.
Any changes in these 5 forces would be cause for the company to re-evaluate their place in the market … thus leading to healthy consulting practices for strategists the world over.
The Rate of Change
In the 1990’s critics began to argue that Porter’s 5 Forces thesis assumes that the forces are static and non-related. At the time, the world was becoming more dynamic and more interrelated. For example:
Buyers, competitors, and suppliers can interact, and even collude.
Value cannot be created in the long run by constantly introducing barriers to entry
Participants in a market have the ability to plan and respond to competitive behavior.
As a result, they added another Force called “complementors” while introducing rudimentary game theory to explain the role of strategic alliances to the analysis.
Constant Change
Now in the year 2012, we routinely assume that all players can instantaneously access the same real-time dynamic market information from the cloud. We readily accept that all players will collaborate massively with whomever they want from anywhere in the World. As a result, we must assume that all five forces will change constantly and rapidly in real time.
Now imagine how 1990’s game theory would manage conditions where the company AND their competitors must continuously re-evaluate their position in a market under the circumstances of continuous change. In effect, nobody has the ability to compete with each other, they are competing with the game, therefore, they are cooperating to keep the game in play.
Is Collaboration Underrated?
If any player tries to introduce a barrier to entry, THEY risk get knocked out while the game continues without them. In fact, value is created by applications that remove barriers … and brokers are punished. All of these factors cause the game to self energize and improve as players preserve the asset rather than consume it.
The Value Game
It should not be surprising therefore that Porter’s 5 forces now resemble what we call the Value Game that we have described here (and here, and here). In the ultimate manifestation, however, The Value Game will play automatically through multiagent algorithmic game applications where tangible and intangible assets would be accounted equally in a Value Game. Individual would own, manage, and deploy their secret sauce of knowledge assets through their personal API that interfaces with the game that is most relevant to their highest abilities.
Where competition has met it’s match
Remember that little regarded fact of Capitalism: Markets are efficient where there is perfect information. This means that if everyone involved in a transaction has the exact same information as everyone else, the true supply can meet the true demand. Nobody ever said that this must be accomplished through competition especially if collaboration can do it better.
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.
It’s been a few months since Social Flights entered the market with our February 28th Soft Launch. Since then we have grown at an amazing rate after getting picked up by a series of important news publications. But for this article, I would like to talk about what we learned.
He who hesitates, iterates
Learning is a critical element in any organization. The iterative process is a series of intentional steps that a group of innovators must invariably endure. The iteration process requires a strategy for introducing new variables to a product or process in such a way that the experimenter can isolate the effects of each change.
Social Flights was very much launched with this in mind. We prioritized the rollout of game features in order to form a player priority profile that will drive this Value Game. Nobody can simply invent such a thing, it must be observed empirically. This means that the right conditions must be in place to reveal the right data without bias. The data can then be used to improve the incentives that drive the game.
Resistance is futile
One of the most daunting challenges has been to identify the skill set for what makes an effective community leader. The Value Game is a value-based economy that is modeled after the mirror image of a dollar-based economy. It’s like driving on the left hand side of the road for the first time. Of course, you need someone who can drive a car – but in a very significant way, you need someone who has never driven a car. In either case, resistance is fatal (figuratively) and futile (literally). The willingness and ability to iterate is essential.
We do expect the results to surprise us. We went through many candidates for our social media distribution and engagement office before we found the right skill set; not in a marketer, or in an MBA, or in social media guru – we found the skill set in a Linguist. This makes perfect sense now – but we did not know that before we started the iterative process.
Easier Said Than Done
A travel community leader needs to solve a simple equation. Find 18 people to share an 9 – passenger jet (9 flying in each direction) within a certain span of time. This is much easier said than done – in fact, it’s like trying to solve a big Sudoku puzzle where all the rows, columns, and regions need to add up to the same number with no duplication. Of course the puzzle gets easier as more people join the community because the probability of finding 9 people that want to go to the same place improves. But still, someone needs to be on the ground to solve the puzzle.
Help us find the gamers
With that, I invite our readers to help us imagine what skill set would be the starting condition for an iterative process of finding hundreds of entrepreneurial community leaders that can solve this puzzle in diverse communities. I am leaning more and more toward the Gaming community on sites like http://gamification.org to find this skill set. Any thoughts? Thank you.
It has been a challenging month at Social Flights. Our soft launch story was broken by FAST COMPANY, then it was quickly picked up by THE NEW YORK TIMES, BLOOMBERG TV, FORBES, INC. TECH, WASHINGTON POST, and MASHABLE, then picked up by various other magazines and bloggers across the web.
Huge Interest in The Business Model
Social flights picked up tens of thousands of hits and several thousand members within a very short period of time. We also received almost a thousand RFQ’s for charter service and our web traffic rank according to Alexa.com is under 20,000 – better than any other private jet broker in the country, including NetJets.
I personally communicated with dozens of 3rd party entrepreneurs that want to plug into our value proposition and we are discussing multiple high value partnerships in North America and around the world.
Are We Hard Wired?
Introducing such a radical approach brings many challenges, especially in the area of customer expectation. People are hard wired to schedules, and lines, and pat downs, and waiting, waiting waiting. Social Flights was never conceived to dictate on a market how they should fly and to where. Social flights will certainly not take people someplace where they don’t want to go – like an airport hub for transfer. Social Flights will never hold a passenger’s dignity hostage behind some hidden cost or irrelevant regulation.
Losing The Hard Wire
We estimate that Social Flights will optimize at about 2.5 Million members – or roughly 5000 people in each of 500 locations across North America. At that point our service model will begin to “simulate” the selection and convenience of the commercial airlines. Keep in mind – this system will “simulate” scheduled service except without hard wires.
5000 people X 500 places model
This is the point where there will be a high likelihood that 8-10 people will all want to go to the same place from the same place within reasonable intervals of departure times.
This is the point where fluctuations in price and schedule such as de-icing costs, landing fees, fuel cost, or seat cancellation policy can be absorbed across the whole system rather than an individual passenger load.
This is the point where ground support vendors will commit substantial discount incentives to controlled bundles of passengers.
This is a point where the data that is generated by The Value Game and held solely by the players becomes valuable enough to predict the outcomes of future Value Games.
Not An Easy Puzzle to Solve:
Social Flights is attempting to do something that has never been accomplished in social media with such high value shared assets. We seek to answer the question: Can people organize themselves around the concept of “Value” much like we have organized ourselves around the concept of “Money”. Based on our earliest readings, the answer is that people are not as Hard Wired to money as those who control money would like us to believe. Looks like they’d jump the first plane out of Dodge if given a chance.
Social media is progressing in a direction where the SM application controls your information – not you. This is a game that you cannot win unless they let you win. Social Flights changes the rules by letting you control your own information. As such, we are growing in popularity among entrepreneurs who are looking for a game they can win playing by a new set of rules.
Social Flights is comprised of 2 components; Social Flights Corporate and Social Flights Travel Tribes. The corporate application provides vertical integration while the Travel Tribes provide horizontal integration. Each is hugely dependent on the other, but the travel tribe is where the value is.
Vertical Integration involves information technology; the collection and formation of system data. This is the information that helps groups stay in contact with each other giving the origin community a portal into the destination community (and vice versa) for a given flight. This helps airplane operators schedule flights, and it helps communities become attractive to entrepreneurs and other communities.
The horizontal integration is where information originates and terminates. The Travel Tribe disseminates information on the ground at both the origin and destination. What happens in a Travel Tribe, stays in a Travel tribe.
The most important aspect of data and information control is the ability to restrict it from communities who are not part of the transaction. Nobody else can know where you are going except you and the airplane operator – that’s what makes the game private. Nobody needs to know how much you are paying for a hotel room or travel service except you and the service provider – that’s what makes the game valuable. Nobody needs to know what you are doing on the ground except you and your friends – that’s what makes the game social.
A Value Game depends on the control of information. If someone else controls the information – they control the Value and there can be no game. They also control the use of information and the information technology. Don’t take this point likely; whoever controls the use of the information also controls the technology (vertical integration), not the other way around. Technology is deployed to the game – the game is not deployed to the technology. So, if you control the game, then you control the usage and the deployment of the technology; i.e., you control the value.
(Diagram credit and reference: Seven Faces of Information Literacy in Higher Education by Christine Bruce)
