The Ingenesist Project

The Next Economic Paradigm

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Collateralized Innovation Obligations

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On June 9, 2009

In General Information

Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) are a type of structured asset-backed security (ABS) whose value and payments are derived from a portfolio of fixed-income underlying assets. In the case of the current financial crisis, the underlying assets were home mortgages.  It is not necessary for the CDO buyer or seller to know who lives in the home and what they produce; the asset is a contract backed by future productivity.

CDOs vary in structure and underlying assets, but the basic principle is the same. To create a CDO, a corporate entity is constructed to hold contracts as collateral and to sell packages of predictable future cash flows to investors.  The more money handed out in home loans, the more money could be collected in CDOs

You are a liability.

While corporate leaders proclaim that people are the greatest asset, corporate accounting practices specify otherwise.  Employees are an expense and their salaries, benefits, and pensions are liabilities to be reduced any time the opportunity arises.  So what’s the problem?  Liabilities can’t innovate.

Suppose for a moment that people were in fact an asset on the accounting sheet and their salaries, benefits, and pensions were “investments”.

Collateralized Innovation Obligation (CIO):

The CIO would obviously be a type of structured asset-backed security (ABS) whose value and payments are derived from a portfolio of fixed-income underlying assets, specifically, the output of productive and motivated people.

Like the CDO, a CIO would vary in structure and underlying assets, but the basic principle is the same. To create a CIO, a corporate entity is constructed to hold assets as collateral and to sell predicted future cash flows to investors.  It is not necessary for the CIO buyer or seller to know who is innovating or what they are producing; the asset is a contract backed by future changes in productivity. The more money handed out in innovation loans, the more money could be collected in CIOs.  For all practical purposes, we could call it an Innovation Bond.

Enter Social Media:

Social media is teaching us an important lesson about innovation.  Every time you get a diverse group of people together to share ideas, new ideas form.  Every idea is useful as long as it is shared; thousands of bad ideas must expire before the good one appears.  Conversational currency is the vetting mechanism of all ideas.  While not every good idea becomes a great invention, every great invention is built from good ideas.  Machines cannot produce ideas and no single company, country or person holds a monopoly on ideas.  Innovation and the creation of all wealth arise from the social, creative, and intellectual interaction of people.

Conversational Currency: The underlying asset

The underlying asset that supports both the Collateralized Debt Obligation and the Collateralized Innovation Obligation is a person and their ideas; one is an asset and the other is a liability.  Both types of people go to work every day to interact with other people.  They both share ideas and create better ways of doing things.  People increase human productivity through fault tolerant networks and support systems. They transform information into knowledge and innovation – and both pay their mortgage.

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Buddhist Economics

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On June 2, 2009

In General Information

Back atcha!

Everything is Connected:

The economic models and theories that prevailed through the 20th century are rapidly falling apart. Economists scramble to offer explanations and solutions. However, much of what has gone wrong was anticipated years ago by E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977), an Oxford economist and protégé of John Maynard Keynes who proposed a theory of “Buddhist Economics” following his interest and studies in Asian philosophies.

Schumacher was among the first to argue that economic production was too wasteful of the environment and non-renewable resources. But even more than that, he saw decades ago that ever-increasing production and consumption — the foundation of the modern economy — is unsustainable.

Never see what has been done; only see what remains to be done.

Schumacher wrote that western economics measures “standard of living” by “consumption” and assumes a person who consumes more is better off than one who consumes less. He also discusses the fact that employers consider their workers to be an “expense” to be reduced as much as possible.  He questioned the theory that some amount of unemployment might be better “for the economy.”

What we think, we become.

Schumacher argued that an economy should exist to serve the needs of people. But in a “materialist” economy, people exist to serve the economy.  Notably, he argued that labor should be about more than production because a person’s work has psychological and spiritual value that must be respected.

Instead we consider goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, “from the human to the subhuman.”  We have outsourced our soul.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

Today, many enterprises – some entire industries – are failing and they cannot understand why.  Over time, they have crossed that philosophical line and now serve advertisers, not their customers.

Traditional media and journalism are an example; they scare people, feed on their anxieties, promote insecurities, and stoke desire.  Demographers trespass into people’s homes, collect statistics, run numbers, and design messages that steal the things people love about their self and sell it back for the price of the product.

We end up with no end of entertaining consumer products that soon end up in landfills, but we fail to provide for some basic human needs, like health care for everyone.

A jug fills drop by drop:

Top News in Business Week Print Edition v. Growth Rate for print media:

•    Pending Home Sales Rise for Third Straight Month
•    GM: A View from the Back Seat
•    U.S. Corporations Size Up Their Carbon Footprints
•    Move Over, Amazon? Google Aims to Sell e-Books

Top News in Business Week Exchange – Reader Chosen Topics vs. Growth rate.

•    Social Networking

•    Global Economy
•    US Economy
•    Green Energy

The Editor selected topics in the top chart are aligned with corporations, consumption, and large bailout efforts.  Meanwhile, the reader selected topics in the second category screams: “Hey, where are we and where are we going?”

It would seem that mainstream media should be asking the same question.

(ed note: special thanks Barbara O’Brian at about.com)

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The Next Global Currency

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On May 26, 2009

In General Information

Charging interest on money was at one time illegal.  The concept of “interest” was legitimized by the argument that lenders needed to be compensated for the risk that they assumed.  As such, currency is married to risk and not necessarily actual productivity.

Whoops.

Risk can never be negative because it is a measure of volatility where zero is the lowest possible value.  There is such thing as good volatility (winning the lottery) or bad volatility (my 401K) or zero volatility, but volatility can never be negative; hence the term “Breaking the Buck” which is considered a failure of the monetary system.  Interest rates respond causing inflation or deflation relative to other currencies, causing more volatility, thereby inducing more risk, etc.

Who wants to be a numéraire?

The dollar is a “numéraire” – the standard by which value is compared.  Recently there has been a strong call for a global currency to change the numéraire to something else.  Ideally, the numéraire should be able to manage negative interest rates to keep volatility pegged to real productivity and not speculative emotions.  This would keep the system from crashing in a whirlpool of volatility that incessantly feeds on itself.

So what are the practical implications?

With a positive interest rate, I am penalized for borrowing currency since I need to pay the risk premium to a lender while I produce something with the currency.  On the other hand, I am rewarded for lending currency because someone pays me the risk premium to borrow it.

With a negative interest rate, I am rewarded for borrowing currency (because the lender is deeply penalized for not lending it) so that I can produce something with the currency.  Then I am penalized for not lending (or spending) the currency that I made from the thing that I produced.

Enter Social Media:

The whole idea of risk as the justification for interest does not make much sense any more.  In fact, during periods of deep inflation or deflation, currency becomes divorced from actual productivity and people hold some other store of value instead.

People are flooding to social media because information, knowledge, and innovation are behaving like currency.  Social currencies are perfectly suited to accommodate negative interest rates.  For example: if information were a currency, I would be rewarded for giving it away and penalized for hording it.  If knowledge were a currency, I would be rewarded for sharing it with others and penalized for withholding it when it is needed.  If innovation were a currency, I would be rewarded for crowd sourcing and penalized for patenting.  Does this sound familiar?

The Next Economic Paradigm

Conversation and relationship are two of many denominations of the new global currency called the ‘rallod’ which is allowed to float against the dollar. Continual development of social media tools, systems, economics and aggregation will facilitate the exchange of social currencies by increasingly enabling the ability to store, form, access, and exchange them.  Social networks and communities of practice will allocate social currencies as factors of production: social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital – for the production and dissemination of innovation.

The Next Numéraire; human productivity

Let countries compete in the economy where net human productivity is the standard by which all value is compared.  With the constraint on land, labor, and capital, this is the game we all need to play now.

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The Currency of Transformation

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On May 19, 2009

In General Information

The words “conversation” and “convertibility” are really quite similar.

Information, knowledge and innovation are distinct phases of human intellect which are profoundly related.  The vehicle for transformation across these phases is the “conversation”.  As the medium of exchange, the conversation acts as a currency.   The speed at which these exchanges take place defines the value of a market – a good party is where everyone is engaged.  A good time is of the essence.

Changes in the value of the market defines the potential for value creation through conversation – a great party pulls more people into engagement and becomes a social movement; i.e., a marketing success.

Currency (money) and Current (time) and Current (force) are similar too!

Conversations exist as a state of shared information tied to a common and progressing theme.  The internet enables the propagation of conversations from two persons to millions of people.  The propagation of conversations is dependent on interest rates of the audience.  The rate of propagation accelerates with the transformation of information into knowledge by others in it’s path.  People are driven to entrepreneurial action when the alignment of information matches the environment that they observe.

Conversation is Currency

Currencies come in many different forms and the best ones are convertible – or can be transformed – into other currencies.  Our objective is to convert social currency, creative currency, and intellectual currency into a universal currency such as, but not necessarily, money.

Anything of value such as an option to exercise an action at a later date, or an equity position in the actions of others, or a mentorship opportunity with a great teacher are all convertible currencies.  Of course, this is nothing new; we pay money to buy a book, take a class, invest in start-ups, and teach our children.

An End to a Means:

What is new is that social media allows us to convert the other currencies before, after, and in between the conversion to money.  The option to convert to money is simply an option like any other option, not necessarily a means to an end.

Obviously we could pay money to buy a book, use that book to teach our children and hope our children can start up a new company, etc.  However, suppose we could pay money to buy a book, improve the book by adding information shared by others, teach hundreds of other people how to apply the ideas to their start-up, take an “knowledge equity” position in those hundreds of start ups, have access to the data that they produce, and write a book that improves the likelihood of successful start-ups.

The Interesting Thing About Interest Rates

The next economic paradigm will introduce thousands of convertible currencies in the form of infinite conversations.  Those currencies will be converted in infinite combinations for infinite applications each adding value to the conversation.  Relational data aggregation will match most worthy currencies and social vetting will manage the production process. The corporate silo will no longer form; therefore the exploitation of the creativity class will end.  Interest is not measured in terms of risk, but rather in terms of productivity where deficit spending is impossible. This is the currency of transformation.

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Follow The Leader

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On May 12, 2009

In General Information

Two Types of Leaders

There are two types of Leaders in the World.  The first type elevates themselves by standing on the shoulders of others.  The second type elevates themselves by elevating the people around them.

The first type of leader gets ahead much faster but often produces unsustainable conditions.  The second type takes much longer to get ahead, but creates a solid foundation for much greater growth and benefit to the community.

Follow the speculator

This is often the difference between the entrepreneur and the speculator.  The entrepreneur will scour the earth looking for resources to elevate from a low level of productivity to a higher level of productivity.  The speculator simply looks for volatility and instability so that they can place bets for or against the success of the entrepreneurs.

Social media aggregation services and search engines are very good at analyzing followers and using the quantity of followers as a proxy for leadership.  They are not, however, very good at identifying leaders any more than they can identify empathy, kindness, and courage.

Leaders follow leaders….

The next paradigm of economic development will be an innovation economy characterized by social aggregation and search devices that identify both types of leaders in a community. Once visible, an entrepreneurial community, by definition, will reject the first type of leader and elevate the second type to a level of higher productivity.

…not followers

The Ingenesist Project specifies the structure of an innovation economy where human knowledge is tangible outside the construct of the Wall Street.  All of the functions of a corporation can soon be duplicated in social networks enabled by social media.  We are very close to this day.  One of the critical evolutionary steps will be to identify and segregate the leaders from the speculators. This simply cannot be accomplished if preoccupied with watching followers.

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What is the ROI for Social Media?

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On May 5, 2009

In General Information

The quick answer is that ROI is indeterminable – get over it.

ROI is a static measurement where financial decision makers look into the Crystal Ball to project a future economic outcome which is then be protracted back into the present to arrive at a value of an investment opportunity.  In case you have not noticed, this valuation method is largely bankrupt.

Like lipstick on a pig

Yet ROI Persists. B-schools teach SWOT; Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats as a means of dressing up our projections with yet more projections.  All the ROI in the world may predict the economic future but as soon as people react to the market condition through improved information in Social Media, all those models fail.  This is called reflexivity and it is becoming a dominant influence in all financial projections in the age of Social Media.

Fortunately, the true visionaries of the next economic paradigm are increasing in numbers and rapidly moving away from the ROI model into something far more valuable simply by asking the serious questions……

Hey, what exactly is the currency we’re using?

David Bullock and Jay Deragon from the Social Media Connection Network are producing a series of videos investigating the currency of social media where they astutely ask the tough questions, “What are people trading?” and “what is a Tweet worth?” While these may seem like simple questions, they have many an ROI expert stumped.

Nobody really cares if I had bacon for breakfast; so the ROI on that tweet is exactly zero.  However, if you get 15 tweets in an hour on the same subject – there must be something important related to bacon today.  The more people sending bacon tweets, the greater is the value of my “option” to react to what looks like a bacon pandemic.  Still, I hold the option, without the obligation, to expend my limited resources in response.

Options have value

The value of social media is counted in options – not ROI.  Social media is dynamic, not static. Therefore “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT)” are also highly dynamic moving targets that are highly contagious in social media and cannot be foretold in the next 5 days let alone 5 years. The cardinal rule of business is to collect assets and reduce liabilities. An option is an asset and an obligation is a liability.

ROI fails.

ROI is a future projection brought to the present.  Options are collected in the present and projected to the future – there is a fundamental difference between the two that must not be overlooked.  People are doing something, they have a plan, they are cooking up a new trick and the ROI is indeterminable…

Options have value and obviously people are willing to pay for them with their time at a keyboard, therefore, they are willing to pay for them through any medium of exchange.  This is what people are doing on social media – collecting options. The Next Economic Paradigm will provide a means to cash in those options. Hold on to your chips, the social media game is far from over.

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The New Economic Paradigm; Part 6: The Business Plan

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On April 10, 2009

In General Information

The objective of this series is to contain what we know about social networks within the construct of the financial system.  The intention is for knowledge to behave, and thereby trade like a financial instrument.  In prior articles, we discovered the currency, the inventory, the institutions, and the entrepreneurs of the next economic paradigm.  This module will construct the business plan:

A business plan is the blue print for the construction of enterprise.

Like the construction of any tangible asset, an inventory of parts is assembled in strategic proportions.  The ability to accomplish this gives the enterprise a strategic and competitive advantage in a market.

Business failures are knowledge failures

Most enterprises will emphasize design, or service, or performance or price in their proprietary secret sauce of market success.  The question becomes, what quantities and qualities of strategic components allow the new enterprise to create a positive economic outcome.

Most business failure are due to knowledge deficits such as the inexperienced management team, a poor assessment of market conditions, under estimating the amount of money needed, under estimating a competitor, loss of a key employee, or the poor understanding of the technology, etc.  These are knowledge problems not financial problems.

Prediction is the quality of knowledge:

To solve the knowledge problems is to decrease the risk of innovating and increase the predictability of innovations. To decrease the risk will decrease the cost, and increase the availability, of venture capital.  To increase the predictability would increase entrepreneurial activity.

The Unit Business Plan:

The business plan of the innovation economy is very simple; it starts with the single transaction between two people.  The lender provides information and the borrower combines the information with their existing knowledge to create more knowledge.  This single transaction has a value of 1 unit of currency and we call it a unit business transaction:

The Parallel Circuit:

Now we will assemble these single transactions in many combinations.  When we combine two unit transactions in a parallel circuit.  This represents a brain storming session between two people.

The Percentile Search Engine matches the person with the most worthy knowledge supply to a person with the most worthy knowledge demand. The transaction is a simple conversation and the outcome is a prototype process, system, method, or iteration.

The Series Circuit:

The next transaction type is modeled as two unit business transactions occurring in a series circuit.  This represents a product development cycle.

Each cycle of these transactions is an improvement to the business objective. Each time the transaction occurs there is a net increase of new knowledge and therefore an increase in value.  New options are created.  The conversation stops when the product is ready for the market, cancellation, or next physical iteration.

The transaction is recorded as an event between two known persons of known knowledge inventories.  The transaction is stored in the intellect of the participants and becomes their property in the form of a knowledge asset represented by the things they create with their knowledge.

The Social Network:

Now if we combine the parallel transaction with the series transaction we have what now looks like a network.  In practice, we know that strong networks of people freely exchanging ideas make organizations better, smarter, and more efficient.  Networks are where knowledge and community wisdom is stored. A network is fault tolerant, if one person leaves, the network survives. For a relatively small input into a network, we can produce a large output of new knowledge – we have a learning organization.

However, in society, these interactions are largely accidental; people meet at Church, Starbucks, and Social Events or by word of mouth. Other times, these interactions are concentrated inside a single community of very similar people such as a technical conference, group meeting, or lunch buddies and are often not well diversified.  More recently, interaction is self selecting through social media devices such as Twitter, Linkedin, Craigslist, Biznik, and Meetup, etc.

What if the social interactions could be made less random and more intentional?

Suppose interactions be designed with a specific purpose by the entrepreneur as a means toward producing a unique outcome. The Innovation Bank will combine people of complementary knowledge assets in a calculated manner in order to arrive at specific business approaches and applications.

What if Innovation could be made less random and more intentional?

The Multiplier Effect:

A special case business plan is called the Multiplier Effect. In effect, building a network of applications from a network of knowledge assets.

Suppose that a company owns composite material technology for use on aircraft.  Since the company specializes in airplanes, they have no intention of pursuing other applications such as recreational equipment, energy production, or health care products.

The Innovation Bank:

Suppose that the company could deposit this asset in a bank and collect interest.  The Search Engine can scan the business landscape to find persons or organizations with a worthy knowledge deficit in the area of your technology. The originator holds the option to see what those other companies invent and hold the right to use their new ideas in an aircraft application. 

Contracts manage those options.  Those contracts are social contracts and they can be traded.  They are a form of currency – or stored value.

In the event of a cyclic downturn, instead of “laying off” knowledge assets, people can work in tangential industries where they will continue developing – literally putting “Knowledge in the Bank” – to be called back to their original company when market conditions improve.  A mobile knowledge asset increases in value and continually becomes smarter and more productive over time. This is not socialism, this is not capitalism, this is Ingenesism – from the root word: Ingenuity.

Market Efficiencies:

With an innovation Bank, a company can reduce their Research and Development costs and create additional revenue in a tangential innovation market.  Millions of people are being layed off work from corporations – billions upon billions of dollars of innovation potential is being squandered.  With reduced cost and risk of innovation, The new American corporations will specialize in inventing, networking, and applying new ideas as their primary revenue source.

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What Comes After the Knowledge Economy?

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On March 25, 2009

In General Information

The Ingenesist Project was featured in this video for Social Media Connection Broadcast Network produced by Jay Deragon. This is the first of many videos that we will be producing in order to explain what the Ingenesist Project is and why it is so important.

The Innovation Economy is the next level of economic development following the knowledge economy.  It will not be induced by corporations, Wall Street, or even the Federal Government.  This is something that we must create for ourselves as a social movement.  Social Media will play a pivotal role in this next economic paradigm.

Please watch this video and send any comments, questions, or ideas for future broadcasts about the Ingenesist Project.

I would like to thank all of our contributors for their endless support.

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Are we competing with the truth?

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On March 21, 2009

In General Information

The blogs are going wild, the headlines are snappy, and late night comedians bristle with glee.  First it’s a $165M payout to AIG executives, now it’s AIG’s $75M lobbying campaign and payout to the politicians who were supposed to vet them in the first place – and the majority of the beneficiaries were Democrats!

Far greater crimes have been committed in the financial meltdown, but this one is catching fire and it’s trying to burn the house down.

As if fanning the flame, Obama loosens the reigns on the Freedom of Information Act, publishes bailout beneficiaries, identifies stimulus projects, opens doors to Iran, health care, education, and forces earmarks front and center. He is taking political bullets from all corners, but so is everyone else – nobody is safe.  Not even Rush Limbaugh; now neutralized and tossed in the surf like a beached whale.  People flood to social media, traditional media fails. When everyone is to blame, the finger points backwards.

So the competitors are actually cooperating; with the right information everyone has the incentive to make the game fair (and the highest probability of surviving).

By far the most important job in any sport is a referee.   The referee wears the black and white stripped shirt in order to contrast with visual information in the field of play.  They blow a whistle in order to contrast with the audio information in the field of play. They stop the game if the rules are violated in order to contrast with the dynamics of play.  If a violation is too close to call, they consult the slow motion replay.  Both sides agree to play fair and to obey the referee or else they get thrown out of the game. Contrast is good.

Obama is relentlessly pushing as much information onto the playing field as he is pushing money.  Could it be that information and money are related in some inherent way?

Innovation is the science of change and economics is the science of incentive.  Information, knowledge, and innovation are profoundly related.  High rates of change of information yield higher rates of change in knowledge inducing still higher rates of change of innovation.

There is nobody to blame except the truth.

What Obama is doing is irrelevant to a manufacturing economy because market forces are a sufficient vetting mechanism for product quality.  It is also irrelevant to the knowledge economy because that is destined to be outsourced.

However, Obama’s actions are definitive for an innovation economy.

Not unlike the financial meltdown; the only ones who don’t see it coming are the ones who don’t want to.  Are we competing with the truth?

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If It Ain’t Broker, Don’t Fix It.

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On February 25, 2009

In General Information

The function of the innovation economy is to improve information.  This has the derivative effect of improving knowledge which, by definition, fuels more innovation.   Monetization is easy if we simply improve information between any buyer and any seller in any market, anywhere.

…If it is, please do

For example, the job of a broker is to mediate the transaction between a buyer and a seller.  There are real estate brokers, mortgage brokers, stock brokers, etc.  Unfortunately, it is not always in the best interest of the broker to provide perfect information to both sides of the transaction.  Rather, the broker provides the minimum amount of information needed to complete the transaction, within which they build their commission for rendering such filtration services.

Any B-school undergrad can tell you that a market is most efficient when the buyer and the seller have exactly the same information as the other when making a transaction; this is called “perfect information”.  As such, “supply and demand” can do its magic.  Resources of production can be perfectly allocated in the glorious capitalist system.  The financial meltdown has shown us that the more complex the product is, the greater the deficiency in perfect information becomes.

The Holy Grail:

The great opportunity for social media is the ability to improve information in almost every transaction conceivable and create wealth.  The next generation of social media strategists will rise to tremendous heights in this domain of the Innovation Economy. However, the Holy Grail of information improvement is the knowledge asset market itself:

For example: Corporations have a great deal more information about employees than employees have about corporations.  People are encouraged to compete with each other, not to cooperate, for that carrot on a stick. They are trained to keep their salary a secret.  The “job statement” is in a secret code language that is only understood inside the company, not in the general work force.  Managers “broker” information by filtering it on the way up and on the way down the corporate structure.  It is little wonder that corporations are having a tough time with the social media stuff.

When the layoff comes, the outsourcing begins, or the life change happens, the resume is often no better than a bingo card in a key word lottery.  By the way, customers have even less information than the employees. Peanuts anyone?

The mothers of Invention

The knowledge market is the mother of all imperfect information markets.  Social media is a single iteration away from greatly improving information in all knowledge markets. Nothing happens without applied human knowledge, as such, the potential capitalization of the next generation of social media applications is as big as the market itself – and it will challenge the very structure of the traditional corporation and associated filtration services.

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Necessity Is The The Mother of All Stimuli

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On February 10, 2009

In General Information

So who exactly is paying for this? The next economic stimulus package will not come from the halls of Washington or the boardrooms of Wall Street, but from the streets of America.  The objective of The Ingenesist Project is to induce a crowd sourced innovation economy by integrating Social Media with three web applications. It’s all about to become extremely exciting.

Social Media Grows Legs

There only remains three tiny applications yet to be developed and deployed to social media that will allow human knowledge to become tangible outside the construct of a corporation, and therefore, independent of Wall Street.  Social media technology is very close to duplicating nearly every function of the corporation outside of the traditional corporate structure.  America’s most valuable asset is not money, it is social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital, and it’s about to stand up, brush itself off, and walk away from the mess left by the excesses of greed and power.

The Evolution of a Species:

1. Social Media will be used to develop a knowledge inventory in a computer code based on, say, the Dewey Decimal System.  Suddenly, human knowledge will become organized like a library and searchable by computer in very high resolution.

2. Boolean logic will be applied to the knowledge inventory and the resume will be replaced by a high resolution computer readable descriptive code.

3. Communities of practice will normalize (bell curve) their knowledge domain. At this point, knowledge will appear in the same form as a financial instrument and can then be treated as a tangible asset.

4. A percentile search engine will calculate the probability that a various collections of knowledge assets can execute collections of innovation business plan scenarios.

5. An Innovation Bank will match most worthy knowledge deficit to most worthy knowledge surplus and keep a record of the “secret sauce” of success feeding back to the search engine.

Wall Street Calculus:

Using the same equations as Wall Street, the Innovation Bank will predict the probability that a venture will be successful given a set of knowledge assets.  The Innovation Bank can then predict the future cash flows associated with the venture. Now, thousands of ventures and their predicted cash flows can be combined, diversified, and diced up into innovation bonds having superior returns over any other investment.  Investors will flood the Innovation System with cash.  This cash will be used to fund more innovation investment and the cycle will continue.  Everyone takes an equity position and innovation reflects social priorities rather than Wall Street priorities.  This changes everything.

This can happen today with existing infrastructure.  The only thing needed is a social movement; that’s what Americans are best at.  Where does this leave Wall Street, failing businesses, and all their debt?  The funny thing about knowledge assets is that they can walk if necessary.

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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 Résumé Must Die

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On February 4, 2009

In General Information

Résumé: A French word for separating the body from the brain

We are entering a renewal in the work force.  The global imperative is for the United States to become an innovation economy now.  This is an entirely different animal than the Industrial revolution; I have long argued that the résumé system is by far the most archaic knowledge management “currency” of trade in use today.

The entire premise of the résumé is destitute, if not destructive, in the modern world.  Words on a computer screen are a very low level ‘media form’ being used to describe a very high ‘media form’; social, creative, and intellectual capital.  It’s like using crayons to design an aircraft.

If the key words are so important, why have any other words?

A manager always hires people that remind them of themselves.  They estimate the future success of a candidate based on their own limited, and often static, past experiences.  The world is moving so fast and has become so complex that no manager can possibly know enough to capitalize the future based on a viable statistical sample of past experiences – we’re all holding on for dear life in a hurricane of change.   The problems and opportunities of the future are so huge, so important, and happening so amazingly fast yet the allocation of human resources is worse than random for a candidate pool.

While the Ingenesist Project discusses a solution at great length, I’ll just stop complaining and share a few comments (self titled) that I’ve picked off some recent Human Resources Blogs:

***

1. And our future goes with it:

“Most recruiting systems I’ve seen screen out innovators. Any résumé that is unique, different or convention-defying gets surreptitiously put in the junk pile.”

2. Start by looking in the junk pile:

“The Innovation Economy requires that the talent that creates the most value for an organization must rise to the top.  Innovators are playing an increasing role in creating shareholder value – one might argue that they create the most shareholder value these days – and figuring out how to find and attract this very different breed of talent is one of the most critical initiatives you can launch within your organization.”

3. What part of “share holder value” are we having difficulty with?

“The most innovative people I have ever met don’t follow conventions in their experience or in their résumé.  Or, they get bored very quickly when they can’t innovate or are forced to focus on operations, and efficiency.  Most might look like (and even be) job hoppers”

4. Here is my favorite comment – I wish I could hug this person:

“I think it takes more than a résumé to screen an Innovator in or out. As blogs, blog posts, social networking, more powerful search tools, personal websites, the emergence of video on the web, talent platforms that offer CRM, etc. etc. etc. continue to become additional tools for an employer to consider in making a hiring decision, is the résumé still a currency for a candidate?”

***

We have an inventory and CAD model of every nut, rivet, and panel that goes on an airplane – why would we try to build anything without one?

So Please, let’s evolve out of the revolutionary times and develop a real community knowledge inventory.  It must be computer enabled and based on a taxonomy that everyone knows and understands.  It must be read, analyzed, sorted and vetted by social networks and communities of practice. It must integrate with  knowledge assets from anywhere in the world.   A self-perfecting algorithm must be developed for a predictive percentile search engine in a pull system that seeks, matches, and deploys the ‘secret sauce’ of success, specific to any application, anywhere, any time – and fast.

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To Awaken a Giant

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On January 23, 2009

In General Information

“Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished”.

– Barak Obama

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The gloves are off:

Mr. Obama’s statement is profound; in a single stroke, he liberated social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital from the oppressive arm of the financial markets.  This sends a strong message to entrenched and corrupted financial operatives that they no longer hold a monopoly on American productivity.

The factors of production carried over from the last century; land, labor, and capital, can be now be challenged by social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital as factors of production for an Innovation Economy.

The third option:

Q. So how exactly does a country meet a 50+ Trillion dollar obligation?
A. It depends on the social agreement.

First, we could default and let the system crash. Second, we could endeavor to pay it back by committing the next several generations to servitude of the debt.  Or, there is the third option that nobody talks about.

Create a new currency.

Almost every country has done it.  Mexico replaced the old “Peso” with a “New Peso” (worth 1000 old Pesos).  Europe created a new common currency.  Chinese Yuan is a “bridge currency” that gets them from point A to point B. Each of these examples is different, but they have one very important element in common; they are utterly dependent on a social agreement.

People must agree to exchange the new currency on the streets.  Social agreement, creative agreement, and intellectual agreement drives entrepreneurship and all must be achieved completely or “black markets” will form undermining the entire system.

The Tipping Point

We know a few things about currency outcomes.  If inflation occurs, people with “cash” will lose it, while people with “debt” will see it deflate.  The US can erase the deficit by inducing inflation and deflating the debt if production capacity remains undiminished. People, organizations, and governments that have exactly as much cash as they have debt will see no net loss or gain.  In fact, the entire world’s financial system is worth exactly as much as it owes to itself – minus the value of social capital, creative capital, intellectual capital and natural resources – now, set free. 

Social Agreement

As inflation progresses, there will be a point where a critical mass of the “social agreement” will hold the same amount of cash as they hold debt – their net loss will be zero.  That’s when the system can reboot.  obviously there will be serious consequences to any of the options, but this time, unlike any other time in history, social media will be the vehicle upon which the social agreement is catalyzed and not necessarily mandated by policy makers.

The Obama Factor

“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America”

Mr. Obama is right – the outcome depends on us. We cannot expect government or corperations to attend to all of our needs because we are the ones who individually and collectively own and control the factors of production that will support the next currency. The road to opportunity has been cleared and the invitation has been cast.  We must now reach deep into our imagination and define the new business system where social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are directly tangible in a new global economic imperative; the Innovation Economy.

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Social Clipping and the Amazing Disappearing Economy

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On January 14, 2009

In General Information

In the early 1990’s, the NAFTA Mutual Recognition Document (MRD) for engineering professionals was the first modern attempt to treat knowledge like a financial instrument. Unfortunately it failed because of a tiny little flaw that I call ‘social clipping’.

Most trade agreements that followed were modeled after NAFTA and, as such, inherited the clipping flaw.  The flaw is that ‘products’, but not the knowledge assets that created them, are mobile in a global economy.

The MRD handed the knowledge economy to Mexico on a silver platter; but they turned it down.  The government did not want to give their engineers “wings” because they were afraid that they would fly away.  Instead, Mexico chose to sell their extraordinary young engineering talent off cheap to meet quotas promised to Asian, European, and American companies to relocate huge manufacturing plants to the country. Today, Mexico competes with China in a race to the bottom of a manufacturing economy and almost no indigenous design industries.

Two-way street:

Back then, the protesters raged about an influx of cheap foreign engineers to the US.  But many US engineers saw that Mexico needed everything that engineers make – roads, bridges, infrastructure, etc. The needs were endless and the objective was clear; to increase human productivity in Mexico was to create real and sustainable wealth.  Maybe then, the citizens would not need to fly away.

These infrastructure projects could have been funded because the Professional Engineering License behaves like a financial instrument mitigating project risks (so that nothing “disappears”). Only then banks would lend and insurers would insure.  The transfer of knowledge and accountability to Mexico would have been extraordinary; the relationships, profound; their development progress, astonishing.

The Disappearing Economy

But the MRD died by clipping.  Mexican Engineers would have been required to take the same engineering examinations as US engineer.  The government refused citing concern that they could not pass. So, in 1994-1997, this author directed a large comparative education project sending over 250 engineers to the US professional engineering examination (EIT).  The Mexican Pass rate was extraordinary – they were easily comparable to the US pass rate in most subjects and flat-out superior in mathematics.  There was nothing wrong with Mexican engineers, or the culture; there was something wrong with the financial system that keeps them invisible.

Knowledge is Power

As the story goes, Mexico has a family oriented culture where hierarchy is often based on seniority; a common examination may favor recent graduates.  It would be inappropriate for a young engineer to have authority over a more senior engineer.  Dig a little deeper and the real problem was power. In Mexico, power is concentrated among very few people.  It would have been unacceptable for transparency to exist.

We are facing a similar situation in America today.  Power has been steadily consolidating over the years.  A huge and fast stimulus package will enter a financial system with a shortage of vetting institutions. There is a strong pull toward ‘business as usual’ – creating J-O-B-S; not necessarily more entrepreneurs, engineers, or mentors, and certainly not empowering whistle blowers.  In the knowledge economy, Americans salaries are pegged to off-shore outsourcing. This is a game that we can no longer win playing by the rules.

Social clipping

As we have seen with less developed nations; when people are held below a certain economic level, they fail to organize for innovation, social change, entrepreneurship, and value creation because they are too busy trying to pay off debt and feed their families.  Social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are muted; that’s when the magic of innovation disappears. That’s social clipping.

America must move on to the next level of economic growth.  The Innovation economy is a game we can win playing by new rules. Government must trust the people, empower social media, and not clip our wings with an outdated economic model.

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Socialism, Capitalism, or Social Capitalism

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On January 13, 2009

In General Information

Throughout history, technological change has also brought changes in the organization of society around the new ways to allocate resources.  The industrial revolution spawned the two prevailing economic theories of our time; Capitalism and Socialism.

The current wave of technological change will likely spawn new economic theories and social organization systems as well – it makes no sense to look to the past for reference to the future of anything.

Capitalism arose from feudalism and is roughly characterized by a merchant class that owns the factors of production (land, labor, and capital) and a working class whose physical toil adds value to natural resources.  The capitalist acting in their own best interest is ultimately acting in the best interest of society by creating jobs that employ people.

Then Karl Marx came along and noted the inherent conflict where the workers would seek to maximize their wages and the merchants would seek to minimize wages.  He argued that class struggle would ultimately result in a communist system replacing the capitalist system. The communist acting in the best interest of society is ultimately acting in their own best interest.  Socialism is widely regarded as the transitional stage between capitalism and communism.

But the struggle is really over the control of the means of production, or factors of production. “Are land, labor, and capital” private property or public property? Are these notions even relevant in the age of the Internet?

Today, computer enabled society engaged in an innovation economy presents an entirely new set of conditions.  What happens when the factors of production are social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital?  How are these “means of production” going to be controlled and by whom?

This is a serious philosophical quandary that will be brought down upon us in the next generation of social media because neither socialism or capitalism are applicable in a traditional sense. Like Heisenberg’s theory of indeterminacy – the more control you have over one factor, the less control you have over the other.  This is not a condition related to the ability to control someone or something, rather, it is a condition related to the nature of the system itself.  That’s a big deal.

For the traditional Socialist: in order to control social capital, one must equalize society – as such, the system retains little innovation production value.  In order to control creative capital, one must standardize creativity – likewise, the system retains little innovation production value.  In order to control intellectual capital, one must control the intellectual development of another – again, the system retains little innovation production value.

Likewise for the traditional Capitalist: In your world is no ROI to curb global warming, there is no ROI to educate the poor, there is no ROI for human rights, and there is no ROI on the national debt, etc. As such, the system is constrained by the social burden to innovate – you can no longer scale.

There is, however, a business plan to liberate social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital as tangible financial instruments in their own right, by definition, reflecting social priorities in an innovation economy.  This is where the next generation of social media is leading to – and it scales magnificently.  Have you noticed?

That is Social Capitalism.

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Out of Cache; Will Work For Bandwidth

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On December 31, 2008

In General Information

We can measure the time in minutes, we can measure distance in miles, and we can measure mass in grams – so how do we measure Innovation?  Am I missing something or is this possibly the most stunning omission in the history of civilization?  Who is keeping score? Where’s the referee? This is serious business, folks – the fact, factors, and factories of innovation should be in laser sharp focus to everyone right now, here is why:

The total US liability is estimated at 53 trillion dollars. Every US citizen must become more productive by $175,000 each to cover the invisible mortgage.   Government and corporations are not going to fix this problem – they will leave it to the kids to figure out how to make, mix, and measure innovation.

Natural Resources of Bandwidth

It is official; the United States has run out of bandwidth and we need to create more. The only way to accomplish this is an extraordinary expansion in the breadth, depth, and scale of innovation. This is a situation that cannot be rationalized by any conventional school of thought – starting with our definition for innovation.

The accepted definition for innovation is “something novel and useful”. I hope that I am not insulting any B-school professors or innovation guru’s but “something novel and useful” is already bankrupt as a definition for the only thing that can pull us out of this flaming tailspin of debt economics.

So let’s try something that the kids can do well (because they get to pick up the tab):

Innovation = Bandwidth Created / Bandwidth Expended

So there it is: a simple, clean, and effective:  If the number is greater than 1 we have a creation of wealth. If the number is equal to 1 we have a transfer of wealth, if the number is less than 1 we have the creation of more debt.

It should not matter how one defines bandwidth as long as the top number and the bottom number are measured the same way. If the kids can increase the top number, or lower the bottom number for anything anywhere by using their social, creative, or intellectual ability, alone or in groups, then they can become successful innovators.

Business case

There is a clear and rational business case for bandwidth – people will pay for it at a price relative to their own available bandwidth. Let’s give the kids a game they can win.  Let’s give them a score that they can keep. Let’s show them how entrepreneurs work, think, and play.

For the same amount of bandwidth expended, they can create more bandwidth for 10 rich people or more bandwidth for 1000 poor people. Let the kids decide. If they give some people more bandwidth at the expense of the bandwidth of others, they lose.  If they find synergies that act as a bandwidth multiplier, they win. Let the kids figure it out.

All we need to do is help develop standards to measure bandwidth.

It’s the least that our old people can do and a much simpler problem for our feeble minds to solve.  The Ingenesist Project specifies 3 web applications which if deployed to social media will allow social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital to become tangible outside the construct of the traditional corporation – we believe that this may do the trick.  There may be others working on the problem too, we don’t care – at the end of the day, we all work for bandwidth.

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Advertising in the Age of Social Capitalism

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On December 31, 2008

In General Information

The recipe for selling great products to great customers in the age of Social Media resides first in helping people find their highest talent and passion.

The great innovations of our time were created by people doing what they enjoyed most by using their talents to the highest potential.  Disney, Boeing, Apple, Mattel, and nearly every other ground breaking venture had the secret sauce of people doing what they were best at and most passionate about.

Advertising in the Age of Social Capitalism

Computer Enabled Society is in the midst of a struggle to reorganize itself outside of the construct of the traditional corporation. People seek to develop methods and systems that allow for the reallocation of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital to match a person’s natural talents and passions with those complementary to other people.

If marketers have the foresight and methods to “get ‘em while they’re young”, they certainly also have the foresight and methods to develop ‘em to their highest purchasing potential.  All they need to do is listen and support to the future trends in Social Capitalism.

Instead, mass marketing pays mass money for mass audience from which to draw mass revenues.  As a result, actual products are designed to be marketed and thrown away; not to be particularly useful, productive, or even healthy.  Such unnecessary innovation wastes human effort and natural resources while mass marketing of unnecessary innovation wastes the time and bandwidth of those for whom the product is irrelevant (yes, Spam).  Economies of scale will become liabilities of scale in an Social Capital driven Innovation Economy.

Few realize that advertising can become a highly useful component of the Innovation Economy.  In many professional societies, practitioners look forward to hearing from vendors, educators, and fellow practitioners for trends, news, and developments that can strengthen their community.  Bad products are rejected quickly and good ones are elevated quickly. This is how the great innovations are found. This is where the early adopters congregate. This is where brand loyalty is unyielding. This is where wealth is created.  This is efficiency that society wants and needs.

The Ingenesist Project starts the discussion by specifying the creation of a knowledge inventory in society.  This simple exercise enables communities of practice to form around a set of knowledge attributes.  Advertisers can quickly identify target markets and support the operating costs of these communities in exchange for the bandwidth of the members.   The community will look forward to learning about the advances in the field of their interest and ad copy will become far more useful and efficient to deliver in greater detail.

When communities of practice merge with other communities in the innovation process, the message of the advertiser can be carried far and clear as people share ideas and coordinate activity.  Feedback to the vender is highly qualified thereby creating a virtuous circle of innovation.  In the age of social media, highly targeted advertising is simply more efficient than “bending the herd” in a TV era mass market model.

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Social Media Frequent Flyer Miles

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On December 22, 2008

In General Information

The Internet is a lot like a commercial airplane – it is very useful in transporting us to distant lands but the real work must happen on the ground.  The organization of society at both ends of an Internet destination must be developed if real wealth is to be created. Social Media needs to develop this component at this critical juncture of human history when vast amounts of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are being sent to the shores of despair upon Unemployment Air Line.

Computer enabled society:

The great opportunity of our generation in the fair, sustainable, and equitable creation of wealth through innovation in a computer-enabled, open-sourced, and democratic society that can organize its own knowledge in the form of a financial instrument.  The great danger, of course, is if we miss our flight and engender a computer simulated society where it is easier to interact with online community than our own neighbors.  It’s like getting on an airplane for the fine view, good food, and interesting conversation.  Social capital is by far the most powerful force of change and social media must now touch the ground in a meaningful, systemic, repeatable, and scalable manner.

The analogy continues:

The earliest days of aviation were a novelty at best.  Some commercial enterprise emerged in the form of barnstorming, carrying the mail, light cargo, aerial photography, and warfare. Likewise, the evolution of the internet brought us on-line gaming, e-mail, e-commerce, assorted photography, and hacking, etc.  It was not until the invention of municipal airports that the airplane became a true time machine by increasing human productivity and allowing us to see history that would otherwise be unavailable traveling by sea.  The true value of both commercial aviation and social media over “sail mail” is precisely through the increase in human productivity to transfer information to the ground.

Three Web Applications:

First, social media needs to develop a knowledge inventory system by geographic areas.  Second, Social Media needs a search engine at a local level that combines knowledge assets to form “strategic” social networks that can execute a specific business plan at reduced risk; cooking the “secret sauce”.  Third; an Innovation Bank must “pull” knowledge surplus and “pull” knowledge deficits together from diverse communities.  These three applications will provide everyone with the tools needed to create wealth in their communities.

Social Media has the potential to become the airport of the Internet Transportation System.  Nothing meaningful can happen until the rubber meets the tarmac.  So, let’s start building runways.

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Social Media; An Alternate Universe of Wealth Creation

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On December 21, 2008

In General Information

The Known Universe

Computer enabled society has been called an “alternate universe“.  If Social Media intends to make serious money, perhaps it should act like one as well.  In finance, Risk is also often called an alternate universe.

Beneath the surface of this little 4 letter word resides a complex network of financial instruments that do far more to channel and direct the flow of money than any commercial trend, marketing campaign, or hot new web app.

Risk is actually a very simple thing to understand.  All you need to do is answer all three of the following simple questions:

1. Can I identify the peril?
2. What is the probability that the peril will get me?
3. If it does get me, what are the consequences?

The Insurance industry is absolutely gigantic – too important to fail – yet it produces nothing that can be held in the palm of one’s hand.  Insurance lives and breathes in an alternate universe of information.  Any place where these three questions cannot be fully and completely managed, you will find an insurance product.  Where there is no insurance product, there is no capitalism.

Here is how it works:  suppose there are 10 identical cabins in the woods.  Each cabin is worth exactly 1000 dollars.  There is a 100 percent probability that 1 of cabins will burn down every year, but nobody knows which.   Therefore, each cabin owner needs to have 1000 dollars sitting in a savings account in case their cabin burns that year.  Together, 10,000 dollars sits in a bank not being invested in productive enterprise.  Along comes an insurance company to reorganize the assets by offering to replace any cabin if all 10 cabins agree to pay 100 dollar per year premium (plus an admin fee). Now each of the cabin owners can pay 100 dollars per year and release 9000 dollars to the economy as productive capital.

Insurance opens the floodgates of wealth creation; bankers lend, investors invest, and entrepreneurs innovate where risks are reduced to zero; all bets are hedged.  But there is a trick; the peril must be identified (fire), the probability must be known (10%), and the consequences must be quantified ($1000).  This only works if the assets are pooled in identical lots that have the same probability of loss and suffer the same fate.  This is valuable information and it’s worth a whole lot of money.

Social Media is poised to open the floodgates of wealth creation in a similar way – by connecting local communities, neighborhoods, peers, and colleagues with computer enabled society.  Today, it is often easier, cheaper, and safer to make friends online than in person, but nothing tangible can really happen until the rubber meets the road;  people need to congregate.   The Ingenesist Project suggests that the 3 dimensions of human capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital can be identified, normalized, quantified and pooled into risk sharing cooperatives through social media as a means of eliminating innovation risk.

The trick is for society to organize itself in a slightly different way – this is where Social Media needs to position itself with the next generation of applications.  If so, the business model for social media will become hugely important to an innovation economy – too important to fail.

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Options, Options, What Are My Options?

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On December 20, 2008

In General Information

In finance, an option is the right, without the obligation, of taking a financial position some time in the future.  As with any financial term, options are associated with “code speak” such as: volatility, exercise, strike, call, put, etc., glazing over many an eye.  At the same time, people want, buy, and trade options all day long in everyday life without even knowing it.  Options have value; otherwise people would not want them.

The ROI model of valuation fails when applied to social media.  The number of hits per ad dollar just does not translate to brand loyalty or scale into rivers of cash flow.  There is little surprise that corporations have great difficulty socializing because they simply don’t exist, except as a folder labeled “ROI” in the filing cabinet of an attorney in Bermuda.  In fact, losing control of the message makes for an expensive funeral in that same filing cabinet.  The Social Media industry is trying to live in the ROI structure and struggling to create revenue.

The cardinal rule of business is to collect assets and shed liabilities.  A “right” is an asset while an “obligation” is a liability.  An option is an asset without the liability, to make a decision some time in the future.  As such, options favor long term planning and strategic nurturing rather than short term profit taking of the ROI model. Asian countries and corporations set a good example of buying options in the future through product quality, education, and economic patience.  American corporations should do the same if they hope to benefit from social media.

People do not want ROI, they want options.  They want the option to separate peers from mentors from friends from family.  They want the option to experience before buying.  People want the option to meet their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.  They want the option to be anonymous or public in their interaction.  They want the option to collaborate and support others.  They want the option to overcome physical barriers.

People want to meet new people, get new ideas, and hold the option to act on those new ideas or collect on past ideas shared with others.  If they exercise an option and discover another along the way, they want the option to pursue many options to meet a changing market. If they create something in one market, they want the option to apply it to adapt it and access other markets.  If they help someone else up the ladder, they want an option to access what that person, in turn, has created from their help. If they make a friend, they want the option of meeting their new friend’s friends.

Likewise, when people are in trouble, they will turn to their collection of options and start exercising them as society has for millenia.  The great financial transformation will occur when on-line society gets threaded into the fabric of off-line society through the trade of options.  This is the area that needs to develop so that all the pieces can fall into place.  This may in fact become the lasting legacy of the financial meltdown.

Options can be the traded like money throughout and across on-line and off-line social networks if there were a way to keep track of them.  While The Ingenesist Project specifies promising strategies for trading options in a social network with varying levels of practicality, we can say with great confidence that it this next paradigm of economic development will never happen with an ROI mentality.

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The Balance Sheet for Knowledge Assets

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On November 6, 2008

In General Information

Innovation economics has a way of forcing us to look at the mirror image of conventional wisdom.  This article will look at knowledge assets as they might appear on an accounting balance sheet.  You may be surprised at what happens at the bottom line.

Wall Street will often reward a company that has a large backlog of orders. This can appear in the eyes of most observers as an asset. After all, who would not want a backlog of orders?  However, in the world of social media, a huge backlog causes a serious problem – it represents commitments made that have not yet been delivered. An unfulfilled promise in a social network is a liability and not an asset.  By extension, a backlog in an innovation economy is a liability and not an asset (note: climate change).

Applying conventional wisdom to an innovation economy, we find that most companies have an excellent inventory of the “liability” but a poor inventory of the “asset” that will execute those promises. All of their plans, specifications, blueprints, job descriptions, policies and procedures, etc., are liabilities in an innovation economy because these define the promise that is unfulfilled, not the asset that will fulfill them.

Until recently, companies assumed that the right knowledge assets will always be available – an assumption that for a long time has limited the level of productivity that humans can achieve, specifically, the sustainability of natural resources. The absence of a knowledge inventory limits the complexity of problems that humans can solve much like industry was limited to custom machinery before Eli Whitney demonstrated the concept of interchangeable parts less than 200 years ago.

Further, if the product line is expected to have a life cycle of more than a few years, the knowledge inventory must extend beyond the doors of the company and into the surrounding community.  Therefore, the knowledge inventory must take on the taxonomy of the community, not the taxonomy of the corporation such as skill codes, levels, titles, etc. The requirement is now clearly in the domain of social networks.  Yet, I still hear grumblings in the blog sphere that social networks cannot be monetized – nothing should be further from the truth.

So, let’s talk about the bottom line.  For example, Boeing announced today that their greatest future challenge would be the availability of engineers. Boeing has a market capitalization of $34B and a $300B backlog.  Money has a 10:1 multiplier as it travels through and economy.  For a balanced accounting statement, what would be the real value of a social network that can capture the correct knowledge inventory to support Boeing; 34B, 300B, or 3T?

In general, valid estimates of the bottom line can vary by 2 orders of magnitude depending on the point of view of Wall Street, corporate management, or the social network community.  Who would be the better steward?

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Social Enterprise; Rating Systems

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On October 31, 2008

In General Information

There is an ongoing discussion about the rating system for articles posted to a business oriented social network site that I belong to.  While am not part of the discussion, my one and only post to that site had been rated very low despite the fact that I am recognized internationally in the subject matter of that particular article.  I stopped posting articles to rated sites because the rating systems are flawed at the core of logic – Frankly, it’s too risky.  As the creativity, originality, or controversy of the post increases, the disincentives to sharing it also increases.  I don’t want my customers googling me to see this rating without also being able to google my reviewer.  No sour grapes – I’d wear a D+ from Stephen Hawking as a badge of honor.

The objective of any business/social network in today’s world should be to make human knowledge more tangible outside the construct of the corporation, such that it emulates a financial instrument – at the end of the day, it’s about the money.  Otherwise Social Networking amounts to active recreation – like guitar hero, or tubing; fun but somewhat trivial.

ALL financial instruments, without exception, are described in terms of a quantity and a quality.  ALL quantity and quality measures for financial instruments are statistical in nature – that is, they fall on some kind of “bell curve”.  This is true for EVERYTHING from a stock valuation to credit score to marketing demographics to health/home/life/car/business insurance, baseball players, GPA,  etc. – the bell curve is ubiquitous.  Whoever is not minimally familiar with the simplest basic concepts of a Normal  Distribution, et al, is at a severe and unfortunate disadvantage in the innovation economy. This is how the world of money is organized, this is what money is, this is what Wall Street does – for better or worse, like it or not….it is what is.

One obvious failure of most Social network rating systems is the linear 1-5 “stars”.  If there were 6 stars then at least we could have a leg up on applying the most valuable mathematical tools available from the world of wealth and value creation (hence, Six Sigma).  Second – the bell curve is not linear and the reviewer needs to be aware of this. 6 stars would mean that a post falls (in some measure) between 97%-100% of all similar level posts ever read by the reviewer. 5 stars falls in the 85%-97% range; 4 stars, 50%-85%; 3 stars, 35%-50%; 2 stars, 3%-15%; 1 star 0-3%.

If Calculus isn’t your thing, consider this – the bell curve rating system makes the reviewer really think about who they are in the process, the responsibility they hold in the rating of others, and the implications of their ratings – too high, or too low.  It would be good to know how many articles the reviewer has read and rated, the average of their ratings, as well as their own rating on articles published (is this staring to sound like EBay? – it should, at 25B market cap, they’re not silly people).  Social accountability does wonders for market efficiency and wealth creation.

Social Networks are ideally suited for correctly rating their own knowledge inventories so that when their members go out in the new world trying to make a living, it is known to all that they have been vetted by a respected community.  This increases the value of the member and it increases the value of the community in the market. Communities that empower and release great talent to a market actually empower themselves; Harvard, GE, Frank Zappa.  This has happened at the local level since the stone ages.

What about our competitive instincts? There can only be one winner and the rest are losers, aren’t all good Capitalists supposed to decimate thy neighbor? Always remember, it is all about the perfect combination of average assets, not necessarily the single excessive asset that makes product most valuable in a market.  The market for Toyotas is far greater than the market for Ferraris, yet each are competitive in their respective market.  The studies of ‘beauty’ discovered a collection of perfectly average features – in the eye of the beholder, consistent with balance and harmony.  So we’ll need to drop the win-lose culture on this one and worry about competing with the real threats that lie before us.

Sure, most people will complain about such a system because it is too complicated, too math-ish, not the easy tweet (OMG CUL8R!). But this is the reality of how money is organized – and disorganized (did I mention Wall Street yet?). There is no exception, there is no rational alternative – the world does not care if people agree with the way things are or if they understand the math.

Fortunately, once people learn to roll over this metaphysical speed bump, the rest is real easy as a vast world of possibility for generating extreme wealth in social networks will unfold before our eyes!!  Knowledge tangibility is the Holy Grail of modern finance but Social Networks are at risk of squandering this unique and historical opportunity to paint this empty canvas in their own image.  Act now, please – this chance may never happen again.

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Social Enterprise; The Vetting Mechanism; #1

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On October 26, 2008

In General Information

I read many articles with rants like “all this social network stuff is cool – but show us the money”.  Innovation Economics offers a way to see new markets and new businesses that are currently hidden by “the old way” of doing things.   This article is part of a series called ‘Business Plans of the Innovation Economy” which will identify ways that Social Networks can command huge markets and drive vast revenues – if, and only if, they align themselves in a specific way….

Managers manage through experience. They observe a situation and compare it to prior situations they have encountered. Through a process of intuitive (statistical) analysis, they calculate the probability of success based on the success or failure of prior experience. This is the reason why managers are often older and also why youth correlates with inability to manage.  The depth and breadth of one’s experience is often called wisdom.

Today’s problems, business opportunities, technological change, and competitive strategies are so complex and so integrated across the globe that no single person can accumulate in a lifetime the experience needed to manage at what is called a Pareto Efficiency. A Pareto Efficiency, named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, is an economic condition where a one’s actions benefits at least one person while leaving no other person less better off.

The problem with the “top-down” management structure is that the “top” no longer has a statistically relevant sample of prior experiences from which to fully understand the probable future outcome of their actions – the consequence is that someone always gets screwed (Pareto Inefficient).

The concept of Pareto Efficiency may be what people are today inadvertently calling “sustainability”.  I recently saw the movie Syriana with George Clooney about the petroleum industry in the Middle East.  It was a convoluted mix of 5 different stories.  Each story had its hero doing what they thought was in the best interest of those they represent – “the common people”.   Yet the combination of actions carried out by these heroes was absolutely disastrous for all of them.  So no matter how benevolent one’s intentions are – and I believe that most corporate managers are acting in the highest integrity that they know – this systemic failure of knowledge will always hurt someone, continually adding to those already at the fringes.

The world of imperfect information is therefore the enemy of sustainability.   Perfect information is when everyone associated with a business transaction has the exact same information as everyone else.  Perfect information is what makes markets efficient and decisions rational.  Agreement is perfectly mutual, supply and demand are perfectly aligned, all risks are perfectly predictable and cause and effect are perfectly transparent.

It follows that any business plan that simply improves information in a market can command revenues proportional to the degree at which market efficient is improved.  For example; Ebay owes its 50 Billion dollar market capitalization to the feedback system which supplies improved information in a market.  Carfax, The FAA, Craigslist, Democratic Government – all have vetting mechanisms that make their prospective markets more efficient.

Likewise, when the vetting mechanisms fail, the market fails.  I attended a lecture once with Charlie Munger, CFO of Berkshire Hathaway.  Regarding Enron, he said (paraphrase) “It’s tragic enough when the accounting profession goes bad, but God help us if we lose the engineers”.

This brings us back to management.  The business plan of the millennium will be the art and science of perfect information.  We know that no single human can accumulate enough experience, however, we also know that perfect information can reside in many people – it is simply a matter of finding the perfect group of people who collectively possess perfect information.

This relatively simple task is entirely and irrevocably the domain of Social Networks. Social Networks are sufficiently enabled by current technology to perform this essential and highly lucrative task – if and only if they align themselves accordingly.  Social Networks need to hold a complete and detailed inventory of resident knowledge.  Social Networks must cooperate to codify social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital so that computational methods can be used to assemble unique collection of persons holding unique collections of experiences. That unique set of knowledge assets must then be deployed precisely in the market, ideally targeting specific transactions.

If Real Estate Agents can command 6% of a gazillion dollar housing market and bankers can take another huge chunk – and not even do a very good job at providing perfect information – only to get bailed those at the fringes.  Social Networking have a moral, ethical, and entrepreneurial obligation to compete in the sustainability game.

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The Ingenesist Project

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On October 17, 2008

In General Information

The Ingenesist Project; Putting an End to Debt Economics

The U.S. National Debt is over 10 trillion dollars. Assuming deficit spending stops today, every man, woman, and child in the US is responsible for $33,500.00.

This means that $33,500.00 of every person’s productivity has already been spent. Obviously, the only way to pay the debt is to increase every person’s productivity by exactly $33,500.00.

The only sustainably way to increase human productivity is innovation. The Ingenesist Project is an open source economic development program that will meet this challenge head-on by inducing an Innovation Economy.

The Innovation Economy:

The Ingenesist Project has identified three relatively simple web applications which, when applied to Social Networks, will allow human intellect, social capital, and creativity to become tangible outside the construct of Wall Street, Corporations, and Government.

The Ingenesist Project will build a mirror economy trading rallods (‘dollar’ spelled backwards) in an innovation economy. Rallods will be backed by “innovation” whereas dollars are backed by “debt”, hence, a mirror economy.

The Ingenesist Project has a Patent Pending for an Innovation Banking System and will release all rights to the public domain. By definition, The Ingenesist Project holds 10 Trillion rallods – and counting – to spend on development.

The Ingenesist Project will generously award rallods on a reputation scale for posts to The Ingenesist Project public forum toward the design, development, and improvement of the three web application (did I mention TIP has 10 million million rallods to blow?).

The New ‘Stock’ Market

Countless “new-to-the-world” business plans and patentable methods, systems, and devices will result from the The Ingenesist Project.

Entrepreneurs are encouraged to patent, protect, or contain all intellectual property that they develop and become as wealthy as they possibly can under the condition that they pay royalties, equity, or options to their knowledge inventory.

The entrepreneur’s “Secret-Sauce”, however, must be shared with The Ingenesist Project in order to improve the Percentile Search Engine Algorithm for the benefit of the public domain.

Participants eventually be able to trade services among each other in Rallods.

Objective:

Deficit spending is unsustainable. The existing financial system has exceeded its ability to pay back the debt and is being consumed by the interest on this debt.

As the dollar crashes, society will need an alternate economy to trade upon – one whose currency is backed by something tangible – our own productivity!

The dollar may eventually peg at some exchange rate to the Rallod.

More Information:

Please review www.Ingenesist.com
Please review Articles in Sequence (18 short articles explain the concept)
Please review Patent Pending

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/qy3cxbstqg” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

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