The Ingenesist Project

The Next Economic Paradigm

Tag: new value

Shutting OFF The Lights On Big Data

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On May 2, 2014

In General Information

Big Data, Bigger Data, Not Neutrality, Mega-Mergers, Election Deform – BIG (fill in the blank)  spells BIG trouble for LITTLE (rest of us).  We don’t stand a chance against the tsunami of surveillance that is barreling our way.  Big Data is becoming it’s own feedback loop and, like shoving a microphone into a stack of tweeters, the noise is deafening.

Nature tells us many things about how an organism responds to externalities.  For example, when a stand of trees encounters an insect infestation, they work in symbiosis with fungi and micro-organisms to amazingly communicate signals across distance and across species to develop compounds to arrest the attack.  Nature collaborates in magnificent ways with often astonishing results – survival of the collaborators.

The entire human organism is in this position today, we cannot attack our own do-loop without also attacking ourselves.  We must adapt a new one.   We must address the perils ahead by organizing ourselves in a radically different manner.  When threatened by inundation, we must also become fluid, mix with the tide, and change its composition from within.

The following presentation was delivered at Seattle University in April 2014.  This presentation demonstrates why – and most importantly –  how we need to re-visualize society, especially our own place in it.  We need to reorganize ourselves as a species to face these powerful new forces that ultimately threaten to smother the knowledge, creativity, and wisdom from our one and only planet.

Our objective with this video is to communicate to all other New Value Movement applications that there is a new form of organization that we can all adapt in order to integrate ourselves in collaboration outside of BIG Data.

Only 20 minutes – be prepared for a mind bender!

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How To Overhaul GDP

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On June 20, 2012

In General Information

Self-imposed exile, or land of opportunity?

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) refers to the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period.  Simon Kuznets first developed the concept of the GDP for a US Congress report in 1934.  He immediately said not to use it as a measure for welfare. He later elaborated:

“Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns, and between the short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.”

Sheer Madness at best

Today, the concept of Gross Domestic Product is vastly flawed to the point where the tail now wags the dog.  GDP now determines what we produce, who produces it, where it is produced, when and how it is produced.  Further, GDP snuffs out vast amounts of intangible value simply because it cannot be measured as GDP.

Global Policy is not enough

Recently, The G-20 meetings resolved to a very interesting point; to redefine GDP by a new set of metrics.  This will be a long hard journey if done solely in the political domain.   However, if we can make a business case for it, the entrepreneurs will jump on board.  Then, and only then, can the landscape change as rapidly and drastically as will be required to turn civilization around equitably and peacefully.

Corporate Policy is not enough

The irony is that those who perpetrate GDP metrics may be those who would benefit the most from dumping it.  In the following article from FastCompany, How Intangible Corporate Culture Creates Tangible Profits, companies who learn to transform intangible assets to tangible value become more competitive over companies that do not.  The article cites Southwest Airlines as the first airline to strip down all “tangible” amenities, yet they succeed by replacing them with intangible value such as superior customer experience.

Policy, Corporations, Culture and Entrepreneurs need to act as one:

Interestingly, the FastCompany article talks a great deal about culture.  They also use the terms; “information, knowledge, innovation, and wisdom” liberally throughout the text.  This is very inspiring to us at The Ingenesist Project because we use similar language to design and deploy business methods in industries as diverse as Aviation, Construction, and Philanthropy that readily convert between tangible and intangible value.

For Example:

  • The objective of Zertify is to replace the competitive incentives among communities and replace them with a knowledge inventory that matches mentors to protégé.  Teachers and students do not compete, they collaborate in order to be successful.
  • The Value Game creates an environment where one acting in the best interest of their collaborator, acts in their own best interest of value creation.
  • Our Exoquant algorithm provides a direct relatedness between information, knowledge, innovation, and wisdom.

The New Value Movement

When we talk about the New Value Movement, we are trying to specify a new class of business methods that can literally “manufacture” the things that people actually need without any distinction between tangible and intangible.  People need a game that they can win playing by the same set of rules. People need food as much as the need love – there is no walled garden of human needs, except the planet we share.

Then we can measure what people actually produce with it

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The New Value Tool

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On June 5, 2012

In General Information

The New Value Tool is a repetitive simulation of The Value Game (described here, here, and here) that may be used to determine in advance the true value that may be created when people interact with each other around a shared asset.

The Social Charter

This should not be too difficult to envision since The Value Game plays out daily in the modern corporation where workers acting in the best interest of the corporation (the shared asset) interact with each other in various departments to preserve the asset rather than consume the asset – this is how corporations create social value; through the employment of people and the social utility of their products.

Obviously, corporations that fail to fulfill their social charter likewise fail to sustain value creation in a community.  Those that do, tend to thrive in the Internet Age. The objective of the New Value Platform is to enable communities to organize, as do corporations, except without the burden of corporate governance or the priorities of outside investors.

Drag, Drop, and Dream

The New Value Tool is simple to use; just drag and drop from the Zertify Personal Knowledge Inventory into The Value Game and see what the Exoquant dashboard tells you about your simulation. It may take some practice at first to see how to make the numbers move, but soon it will become intuitive which scenarios create lots of New Value – and will likely sustain themselves in practice.  Scenarios that do not, will likely fail in a particular community and ought not be ventured to practice.

Community Algorithm

Exoquant provides a very simple algorithm relating the creation of data, information, knowledge, innovation and wisdom that govern the Value Game.  However, the weighting of these elements is a component of the “fuzzy math” that entrepreneurs bring to the game.  The empirical data resulting from the application becomes property of the players (community) as their “Secret Sauce” of value creation in their own uniquely optimum economic game.

On the path to a Social Currency

The New Value Tool May become an important system for analyzing existing ventures for optimum social value creation as well as predicting how collections of knowledge assets in a community can optimize their social value in collaboration with each other.  Eventually, the predictability of the outcomes will improve while diversification of projects will eliminate risks such that a social currency can be capitalized and securitized.

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A Value Game For The Aerobics Instructor

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On June 1, 2012

In General Information

In yesterday’s post, we outlined The Value Game for University Outreach where the graduate was the shared asset and the school administration, the alumni association, the entrepreneurial community, and the wider community were the players. Now let’s presume that the shared asset is a small business owner specializing in aerobics instruction.

Using the same players:


A Value Game For The Aerobics Instructor

Suppose that a popular aerobics instructor has 20 students and charges 40 dollars for an 8 class sessions. The local health food store will place 10% coupon on store purchases against the 40 dollar tuition for the duration of the class. If the student bought 400 dollars worth of food from the health food store in 8 weeks, their tuition for the aerobics course would be free.  If they spend more, then the aerobics instructor is paid more.

The health food store already spends 10% of sales on advertising.  As such, the coupon is a superior incentive because it provides 100% ROI on the store’s ad spend.

Social Value Outcomes:

  • The health food store gains loyal repeat customers without advertising or spamming
  • The aerobics instructor earns an entrepreneurial wage making similar coupon arrangements with other health services, sporting goods stores, hotels chains, airlines, adventure tourism companies – anyone whose best interest it is to support her clients’ aspiration. They too benefit from loyal customers (anti-Groupon)
  • The Alumni Association would represent a network of clients, business owners, and database of persons likely to provide contacts, references, coupons, and advice to the aerobics instructor
  • The University can provide gym space, sponsorship, health education classes, and collect data such as; which coupons produce the highest yield for a given alumni product or service and player profile.

The Value Game Filters:

This particular value game automatically filters out the players that are not appropriate for the client.  In effect, the donut shop, tobacco store, or video game outlet would not likely benefit from playing this particular value game as their offering would reflect poorly on social values of the instructor and their coupons would not perform well enough vs. traditional advertising.  Instead, these products would find their own value game, if any.

Social Value Index (SVI)

The Social Value Index is a public statistic that compares the economic value (cost/benefit) of the socially integrated value game with the cost/benefit of the disaggregated advertising/spamming model which robs people of their time, passions, and quality of life.

Data as a shared asset

The SVI provides data that rewards this entrepreneur for doing what she is most passionate about; being knowledgeable and supportive of available health resources. The SVI rewards the store for enabling entrepreneurs in exchange for loyal repeat customers.  The Social Value Index rewards the network of alumni who align with their members (aerobics instructor) to deploy social currency to a community instead of spamvertising. The SVI rewards the University Outreach effort for organizing critical data, information, knowledge, innovation, and wisdom in the community.

At the end of the day: 

The Value Game is important because it allows entrepreneurial business plans that would not normally be viable under a purely monetary model, become highly viable when intangible Social Value (New Value) is added to the bottom line.

 

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The Facebook Basket of Goods

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On May 14, 2012

In General Information

Facebook does not produce anything.  Facebook sells personal information to advertisers. This is not to say that Facebook is not worth a lot of money, but it certainly deserves a little perspective.  In order for Facebook to be worth anything, people must be doing things, making things, and organizing things – otherwise, there would be no need for the utility that Facebook provides.

Consumer Value Index

In order for people to do things and make things, there needs to be basic infrastructure like energy, clean water, telecommunications, food,  roads, bridges, and airports.  There needs to be housing, education, and health care.  There needs to be an effective and fair legal system, equitable political representation, and civil decency.

Debt or Human Potential

Facebook adds value to the human productivity potential that already exists.  It is precisely that invisible human potential that seems to be worth most of the money that Facebook commands.  When we estimate a value of 100 Billion dollars for Facebook –  an astonishing 99 times their advertising revenue – we estimate that the market believes that intangible value exceeds tangible value by a factor of 100:1; versus, say, Apple at 16:1 or Google at 20:1

Nothing economic happens until people get together to make something

Charles Munger, CFO of Berkshire Hathaway uttered these deeply foreboding words at a conference at Seattle University in reference to the Enron debacle;

“it’s bad enough when we lose the accounting profession, but dear God help us if we lose the Engineers”.

Suppose a team of 10 engineers designs a bridge that spans a body of water cutting 1 hour off the alternate route for 14,000 people per day (connecting 2 small towns).  Over the 75-year life of that bridge, those 10 engineers are responsible for 380 Million hours of increased productivity. At 25 dollars per hour per person whose time is saved, 10 engineers create nearly 10 billion dollars of NEW VALUE.  As such, only 100 engineers could create the same amount of New Value as Facebook is worth in an IPO.

You are worth what is measured

We need to ask ourselves what is more efficient; making things that act as a proxy for the things that we are trying to sell, or measuring the real value of things that we make.  Perhaps Facebook would be worth 10 Trillion dollars on such a balance sheet.  Maybe Facebook would be worth nothing if true value were in fact measurable. Who knows?

Well, that’s exactly the problem – nobody knows.

Facebook acts as a proxy for human productivity, just like money is a proxy for productivity, but with no intrinsic value itself.  Perhaps this explains their Wall Street convertibility.  However, if we backed Facebook with New Value of human potential, rather than a basket of debt-able goods, perhaps we would not have a financial crisis to deal with, just a value crisis.

I wonder what Charlie Munger would say

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New Value And The Future Of Money

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On April 25, 2012

In General Information

The 3rd Annual Future of Money and Technology Summit was held in San Francisco on April 23rd, 2012.  This was my 3rd appearance at the Summit and I must say that #3 was one of the most profound experiences that I have had a conference.  FOM&T is possibly one of the most important conferences of its kind.

Lunatic Fringe

Several years ago, many ideas that are now becoming mainstream were fringe topics at best.  At one time, the very idea that intangibles may in fact be immensely tangible, drew razor shards of broken glass from the KM community toward anyone who ventured toward such a claim.  Then, modern events such as Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street demonstrated a direct challenge to very tangible “guns and money” brought by new ways of organizing communities around intangible assets.

The fringe questions of today become mainstream questions tomorrow

Now, what happens if we turn that concept into a means of producing the things that people really need instead of producing things that people don’t really need? What happens when people interact around a shared asset – either tangible or intangible – will they work to preserve the asset or consume it?  What if an economy arose where the Earth is the shared asset?  What if an economy arose where the individual was a shared asset? what if Both happened?  What would that look like?

A Value Game

The New Value Movement Panel came together around those ideas.  When I set this panel up, I created a value game – each of the people has something to gain from the success of the others on the panel.  This  panel shared an intangible asset in the form of a conversation.

The outcome was movement – a new value movement. Please watch this video and contact me with your thoughts – I am deeply interested in your interpretation of what happened here.
Thank you.

I hope to see you all at the next Future of Money and Technology Summit

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The New Value Movement

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On April 5, 2012

In General Information

It’s time once again for The Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco on April 23, 2012.  Each year this community of visionaries dive deeper into the subject of alternate economics as the public narrative around the subject also increases.  This is truly an important event.  Please register here.

In full disclosure, the producers of FOM&T trusted me to assemble this panel to advance a theme that was initiated at Sibos Innotribe Sessions (Toronto 2011).  I elected to NOT appoint myself moderator – Dr. V is much more experienced in that role.   Instead, I will attempt to speak for the Ingenesist.  The word ingenesist is derived from the Latin word for engineer – an ingenesist is any person who creates real value through their social, creative, and intellectual abilities. For this reason, the panel is titled:

The New Value Movement

Past panels in this segment at FOM&T included discussions about non-quantifyable exchanges and intangible capital.  This panel introduces the New Value Movement where emergent ideas and associated web applications seek to allow non-quantifiable exchanges to become “quantifiable” and Intangible Capital to become “tangible”.

Like the Beatles once sang “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”, New Value refers to those things that cannot necessarily be produced through the allocation of classical factors such as land, labor, and capital. Rather, the next generation of entrepreneurs will allocate resources of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital in order to produce the things that society needs.

Innovations such as trust networks, knowledge inventories, social games, and abundance capitalism will become increasingly important and hold great promise for hedging the inevitable constraints on fiat currency.

Dr. Amy Vanderbilt – moderator

Dr. V is the Founder and Chief Strategist at TrendPOV.com, next generation social omni-media that over 600 thousand executives call GPS for your business strategy.  Amy is an award-winning author, show host, executive coach, speaker, board member, and  commentator. She has distinguished herself in academia, private and public industry as well as government. (full bio here)

Patrick Murck

Speaking to the existing legal structures and foundations that would support the storage and exchange of New Value Enterprise is Patrick Murck.  Patrick is a Principal and Founder of Engage Strategy and Engage Legal.  Patrick helps clients innovate, operate and grow their business with a heightened focus on the legal and regulatory issues governing the use of virtual economies, gamification, alternative payment systems, and social loyalty and reward programs. (full bio here)

Joe Johnson

Speaking to the emergence of a new class of business methods is Joe Johnson, CEO and head coder of runaway startup called Connect.me.  Connect.Me is a new reputation and people discovery network creating a consolidated platform for social verification and trust in P2P and freelance economies. In 2011, Connect.Me won the prestigious Privacy Award from the European Identity Conference for its groundbreaking trust framework and business model. (full bio here)

My Role:

In Amy’s world of executives consulting, the ingenesist includes the designer new products.  In Patricks world, the ingenesist may be an innovator from Anytown USA trying to navigate the intricacies of law, money, and finance.  In Joe’s world, the ingenesist is the cloud of specialized skill holders looking for each other to create value together.  I often argue that all value not created directly by Mother Nature, was created by the ingenesist within all of us.

Please join us as Dr. Vanderbilt skillfully weaves the ideas, needs, and predictions of this extraordinary combination of panelists into a unique and more complete view of the great opportunities that await on the horizon of this unprecedented financial revolution.   
***
The Future of Money & Technology Summit brings together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution providers, service providers, and organizations who work with them at the convergence of cash and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving money ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.
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The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth

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On September 26, 2011

In General Information

Engineers are notoriously bad at organizing themselves – or maybe not. 

Engineers tend to stay to themselves and are rarely mentioned in the domains of media, politics, Hollywood, banking, medicine, or law.  Traditional engineering societies are weak and sparse.  Nobody even thinks about paying them royalties for the satellites that carry our smart phone signals.

Some say that Engineers can’t see the forest through the trees.  Others say that Engineers have little tolerance for banter, conjecture, diatribe and all the triviality of mixing with the rest of the world.  Yet, few can argue that Engineers are the ones we all need to show up every day to keep the water clean, the airplanes safe, the code logical, and the law enforceable.

Money is backed by productivity, otherwise, nobody would work for it – think about that for a moment. 

Why would anyone work for something that does not represent what he or she creates?   However, few people notice that productivity is the domain of engineering.  The machines that they create, the bridges that they build, the code they write, and the infrastructure they lay exists for the sole purpose of supporting human productivity.

Whose money is it?

So why are most engineers strangely silent in the emerging discussion about new economies, alternate currencies, and the New Value Movement?  Who are these people and why should we care about them?  I attended a lecture with Charlie Munger, CFO of Berkshire Hathaway who stated in reference to the Enron collapse “it’s bad enough when we lose the accounting profession, but dear God help us if we lose the Engineers”. Charlie cares.

We call them Geeks – but what is really going through their minds?   What would happen if they did organize – or are they already?  Where will they hide all the Value that bankers can’t find anymore? Or has the game already changed? Remember who inherited the hamlet of Hamelin.

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The True Economy, The True Value

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On August 31, 2011

In General Information

I am reading The New Capitalist Manifesto by Umair Haque in preparation for SIBOS 2011 where I will have an opportunity to join in a common conversation. I will be speaking on a panel called New Economies along with several other distinguished presenters (see Below).

New Economies = The Values

The most important thing about the discussion of new economies is the idea of Value.  It is essential that we define Value much more completely than just those things that can be articulated with money and shift to include all forms of Value in our entrepreneurship.  The Sun delivers value to the Earth. Parents deliver value to their children.  Communities deliver value to society.  A true accounting of all value is essential to the discussion of new economies.

The New Capitalist Manifesto is a hugely important book; Here are a few of my thoughts.

First; it provides a vital framework to begin accounting for what we call “True Value”; an accounting of real net value creation as opposed to borrowing, transferring, or destroying value that is not necessarily represented on a financial balance sheet.

Second; the new economy and emergent new accounting system will happen whether we like it or not.  There is little that people can actually do to avoid it. The new economy is a matter of survival – it will happen at the speed and drive of survival (hence “Capitalism”).   So make your choices now as these will define your future.

The third observation is that nobody is immune from the new economy.  The more one resists, the more it will persist.  The stronger that a country, corporation, or traditionalists hold to legacy ideas about linear value and forest-to-dump consumerism, the faster and more dramatic will be their demise.

So what does this have to do with Social Flights?

Social Flights is attempting to replace the horrific concrete wasteland of the command and control “Hub & Spoke” system with a Democracy.  Our premise is that people can self-organize around two points and efficiently share an airplane that flies directly between them from smaller airports.  In effect, we replace the infrastructure with cloud data to accomplish the same thing with a far superior customer experience, and therefor, greater true value.

Think about it; all of the world’s airlines are competing with each other in a race to the bottom around the Hub and Spoke system.  The two largest aircraft manufacturers are beating each other up around the strengths and limitations of the Hub and Spoke System. The whole system is limping along on razor thin margins. Yet, the vast majority of “true and complete” Value of travel is the human experience and the value of relationships, communities, and their actions together.  The only reason that Travel exists is being unceremoniously tossed out on the tarmac….

If you don’t listen to your customers, then at least listen to Umair Haque.

So, if you are a university, a corporation, government, or any institution dependent on physical infrastructure in order to match supply and demand while insulating yourself from competition, then you should be very concerned about the new economy.

New economies
Is money the only form of transaction value and wealth? What about social currencies? We will expose you to new thinking on new economies such as the trust economy, the intention economy, the relationship economy, the social economy and the ethical economy.

Already confirmed:

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Ideas Travel Where People Travel

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On January 28, 2011

In General Information

Good ideas travel easily and far along trade routes.  Ideas like irrigation, Apples, grapes and wine spread along the Silk Road. The paper and writing spread new ideas leading to increased literacy, the scrapping of old philosophy and the creation of new social orders. The printing press then led the way for today’s mighty publishing Industry.  But don’t forget a simple fact, travel is the substrate of the next economic paradigm.

Ideas: A Chain with many Weak Links

Seth Godin wrote a wonderful article about the publishing industry called The Domino Effect.  He observes that:

1. The middlemen (bookstores) have too much power to limit shelf space.

2.Authors are separated from their readers and don’t have the data to contact them directly.

3. Pricing is based static, slow, and largely irrelevant of content or any form of supply and demand which is of little benefit to the reader or the author.

4. Ideas from books travel much farther and faster than the book itself which does not translate into book sales.

Mr. Godin’s point is that given how important books are, the Chain has many weak links between the author and the audience. Publishing is due for an extraordinary disruption and Seth is going to change it with The Domino Project.  But how many other industries suffer from the same weak-chain syndrome?

Travel: A Plane with many Weak Links

Well, if Books and Travel spreads ideas along the Silk Road, then they must have a lot of other things in common.  If we apply Seth’s observations to the commercial airlines:

1. We see that Airports and airlines have tremendous power to limit gates, times, and availability of routes.

2.  Airlines have no idea why they are carrying all those people around.

3. Pricing is static, segmented, slow, and has very little to do with the actual supply and demand for travel.

4. Travelers are transporting ideas which move faster and more broadly than the aircraft itself and which does not translate into more airline tickets sold.

Where ideas spread; value is created

What is so powerful about ideas?  Most innovation gurus discount raw “ideas” as the useless drivel of idle minds. “Show me the money, not the ideas”, they bark.  If ideas are not innovation, then what are they?  If Ideas are not valuable, then what are they?

The Travel Economy

Travel technologies and applications are being sold for incredible sums of money.  Every airline merger is big news and every geolocation application is huge business.  Travel data is a lightening rod for everything from pricing to privacy.  Social Media applications are getting that migration routes are an excellent marker for “value flow” and therefore, cash flow.  Airline Travel is still the most favored mode political disruption because the links in the economic chain are so weak.  Travel is serious business.

The “New Value” Integration:

Every industry with weak links between production and end use are candidates for disruption in the great integration. Any idea that can strengthen the link in the chain between origin and the destination of an idea is a product of the great integration.  The Social Value creation process and astonishing opportunity will happen at the weak links between origin and destination of any product or service.

***

(Editors note: The above post is #2 in a series [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] introducing The Value Game to a new class of business methods.  The first real world application is Social Flights; a collaborative production / consumption game being deployed to the market.  If this works, the new business method class will be generalized throughout the economy to catalyze the convertibility of social currency.  Please join us at The Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco on february 28th 2011 where we will unveil the work to the technology community)

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