Tag: social currency

Using Social Currency To Fight Terrorism

On January 8, 2010

Given the events of the last several weeks, it’s time to for the aviation industry to get serious with Social Media. This article demonstrates how an alternate currency can be used to severely reduce or eliminate terrorist risk in commercial aviation. Think I’m kidding, read on.

Obviously an airline will not let you board an airplane if you don’t have the financial currency sufficient to buy ticket. Why should an airline let you board an airplane if you do not have social currency sufficient to fulfill your social obligations while in the air?

People with extreme social currency deficiencies are routinely stripped of their rights by a jury of peers and isolated from society for a period of time (where they would not board an airplane anyway). While there are many systems in place to manage the various degrees of social currency deficiency, none appear to be able to identify a terrorist without also violating the rights of non-terrorists.

Human Writes

However, many people are willing to share information about themselves to associates with whom an economic benefit is shared or exchanged. This happens a billion times per week on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter – why not among fellow passengers? After all everyone is already connected by 6 degrees.

What would a terrorist’s Facebook profile say about them? Do they have a lot of referrals on linkedin? Do they post great work on Flikr? Is their community orchestra featured on My Space? Are their posts popular on twitter?

Should a social currency credit score become imperative to social transactions as the financial credit score is for financial transactions?

Banks and Insurance companies already rely on a highly invasive “Credit Score” to establish financial risk profile as a means of protecting their selves and their other clients. Why wouldn’t an airline use a social credit score to establish a social risk profile as a means of protecting their selves and the lives of their other clients?

Ruse and lose

Sure, the bad guys can adapt to social media as they have adapted to all other measures. The problem is that the greater the size and scope of their social media ruse, the more difficult it is to maintain the ruse. A threshold score could be set to nearly eliminate this possibility. Those folks can then simply opt into the full body scan.

The Paradigm Shift

As the saying goes, the attacker needs to be successful only once, while the defender needs to be successful every time. The concept of a Social media credit score flips this paradigm on it’s head. The attacker’s social credit score needs to be successful every time. The defender needs to be successful only once.

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The Social Media Paradox

By Admin

On December 2, 2009

In General Information

The very nature of the traditional corporation is called to question by the Social Media Paradox:

Definition (by me):

Social Media Paradox: The degree to which the act of engaging in the social media paradigm reduces one’s ability to engage in the pre-social media paradigm; and vice versa.

Success in social media requires humility, authenticity and commitment to the medium. Like a tattoo, that impression defines the person and is not easily removed – after all, everyone’s got to have some skin in the game.

Social media rewards people for doing what they are best at and saying what they feel to be most true. Furthermore, brands need to trust their employees to represent them – this means that they need to give up control of the message. The more they try to control the message, the less effective they are in a social medium.

Sounds like a great idea, but is it practical?

Many people still need to work for a living often find ourselves at the mercy of corporations for an actual paycheck. Social Media provides a free source of reference material on a new candidate. If a person is seen as edgy, ‘counter culture’, or defiant by any number of risk averse HR gatekeepers, one’s “old-paradigm” employability can be affected. The subtle irony that the those who best understand the medium can make themselves unemployable as a result.

The opposite is also true:

Read More

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Is the Credit Score Obsolete?

By Admin

On November 12, 2009

In General Information

The Ingenesist Project prides itself in making certain predictions that often seem to manifest in some small way every day. One of our most enduring suggestions is that social media will begin to replace failing institutions of government and industry.

OK, that’s pretty far out, or is it?

The Wall street Journal reported recently that new bond issues – sort of like collateralized debt obligations – are being developed without consideration for the credit rating of the assets forming the bond. The justification is that credit rating did not predict or help avoid the last crisis, so what good are they?

Now here is the twist – a surprisingly “Social Media” style solution is proposed – and accepted by the market. The bankers put their personal and corporate reputations on the line. If you trust the banker, you can trust their bond.

Is the Credit Score Obsolete?

This sets up an interesting new game now that many bad banks are gone and public sentiment is turned against them. The new game is playing out in interesting ways.

The bank does not want to put their reputation in the hands of a 3rd party credit rating agency.
Investor wants to put their money into the hands of the person who actually hangs if the deal goes bad.
“Inside Information” has become so systematized; the banker knows things long before the rating agency.
A system had been built to “game” the credit agencies…lose the game and lose the risk?
Avoid government vetting regulation in favor of “social network” vetting.
Tactical advantage over corrupt competitors
It’s easier for everyone to understand – including the banker, investor, and bond asset.

This is a profound shift in thinking from only a few years ago and almost seems like a return to a bygone era; remember the old days when the banker was actually a member of the community where the bank invested their money?

There are some lessons to take home. If don’t need credit ratings for corporate bond issues, do they need credit ratings for people? What if all of these institutions adopt a social network based credit score? What would that look like? Social media by and large rewards high integrity and punishes low integrity. The value of social media includes a component of risk reduction. You would think that Banks, Insurance, and even homeland security would be all over this game.

Innovating Disruption:

What happens if your credit rating is divorced from your finances? What good is your social security number? How does this effect all the downstream users of credit ratings like insurance, employers, credit card companies, social security payments – if any? Much of what we’ll associate with the innovation economy is the disruption, if not outright destruction, of an impossibly unstable system of finance.

Is the Credit Score Obsolete?

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Social Currency; History Matters

By Admin

On November 3, 2009

In General Information

History often provides clarity in the present. I was searching the term “Social Currency” and I found these two posts on a forum from all the way back in 2001. The authors are quite explicit in their expectations of social currency in their present and deep into the future.

A framework for the future:

I find such framework to be useful in grounding my own opinions, expectations, and aspirations in the social media space. The authors here are quite intimate in their views and we would all be remiss in not searching the hidden layers of our consciousness on the subject. Enjoy.

(I left all the links in hoping that this would suffice for credits back to the source http://everything2.com/title/social%2520currency)

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Social Currency 101

By Admin

On October 31, 2009

In General Information

Here is a very great video by Scott Stratten explaining social currency.

It is short, it is basic, and it states what should be obvious to everyone. It also states what many of us should repeat to ourselves every single day. It is one of those explanations that has a new and different meaning every time you watch it – if you let it.

I swiped this video because I’ll will be posting a series of articles and interpretations on the subject of social currency and it’s a great place to start. The reasons for organizing social currency are becoming more obvious everyday – as institutional and corporate currencies leave gaps in our communities, people will need to fill these voids with social currencies. Our job as Social Media Practitioners (because nobody else is going to do it) is to develop, construct, and deploy social institutions that support a real time, close proximity markets to exist trading social currency (ref: The Ingenesist Project).

Scott Stratten is the President of Un-Marketing and spends way too much time on Twitter.

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Counting Eyeballs

By Admin

On October 26, 2009

In General Information

The Advertising Industry has some serious problems. Ad agencies are having a difficult time understanding the modern advertising space with the limited, if not worthless, paradigm carried over from the days of radio; the CPM.

CPM stands for Cost Per Mille

CPM means: how much does it cost to penetrate 1000 heads?… or 2000 eyeballs, I suppose. They count the penetrated heads, like an act of war – the body count, the bullet shells, the napalm canisters…and that is the basis of their decisions. As Dr. Phil would say “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

The CPM is however, a great way to kill off creativity, highlighting the flashy crap while burying the good stuff. Maybe it works well in the counter insurgency of Afghanistan, but it does not work in social media space. What happens after the mommy blogger gets a look at that Spiderman drinking cup that melts in the dishwasher? Imagine the blog post about that cool new GM retro rod that smells like formaldehyde to the undertaker enduring their midlife crisis.

What’s the CPM for the blogger?: zero. Can advertisers compete?: no. Should they stop?: yes.

People are not stupid and they do not work for free. Yet, the entire web advertising model tries to get them to walk through a rat maze of links and pages just to hit more banner ads (impressions). Advertisers keep doing it, ad after ad, page after page, year after year. They wonder why the rat don’t hunt. The most important thing to a rat is food, family, and friends. There must be a tangible economic incentive for people to do what you want them to do. Even after that, not all impressions are equal, or favorable, or lead to sales – but every one is valuable to your product and your brand if you know who I am.

Foresight is 20/20

It is always very expensive to change people’s behavior and the best management policy is to accommodate what people are going to do anyway. If I want to drive a retro rod, help me do enjoy my friends with it – don’t pull the emergency brake. If I want to spend time with my family, don’t interrupt me. If I want to walk in the park, don’t whack me on the head with a billboard. That’s not a great way to start a conversation.

Open letter to Pitchmeisters

Dear CPM mongers, I have learned to ignore you. Like the paint blots on a Monet, I have learned to see the image despite your distortions. Your “fear” pitch is comical to me. The buy-me-love pitch is goofy. The lifestyle-threat angle sounds as ridiculous as an old like Archie Bunker re-run. The most fun I can have is using my ability to walk away leaving you talking to yourself like a deranged chimpanzee at the zoo.

Measure what I measure

Help me do what I’m going to do anyway even if I still ignore you – all data is data. If you want to understand me, measure what I measure; health, happiness, productivity, laughter, family, friends, hope, vision, safety, music art, quality of life. Help me make friends, empower my community, and care for my family. Don’t try to take these away from me – you will lose.

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Dollar Pressures Force Talk of New Currency

By Admin

On October 2, 2009

In General Information

I am heavily quoting an article below from the DOW JONES NEWSWIRES written By Tom Barkley because this situation leads us into a discussion about alternate currencies in which Conversational Currency is applicable.

We predict that the structure for an innovation economy will be built on a platform of Social Media where conversational Currency is the currency of trade. We admit that this is a far cry from a declaration of government foreign or domestic, sorry about that. We also admit this is a far cry from what Corporations, Banks, Insurance Companies and traditional media barons would espouse, Ooops.

The best management policy is to accommodate what people are already doing. People are ADOPTING Social Media in a frenzy of applications which were not even predicted by those who developed the platforms – this is a reality, not a fantasy or a blip in the radar screen. Social Media will have an extraordinary role in the value of currency – if people don’t like it, they won’t trade it; Game over. The next Global Currency will be represented by human productivity traded in social media. The most productive country will hold the most currency – this is a game that the US can still win.

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)–U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke waded into the international debate over the fate of the dollar Thursday, pledging to do his part to avoid what he sees as a longer-term risk to the dollar’s status as the world’s predominant reserve currency.

[China and Russia have been the major drivers behind calls for an alternative reserve currency, blaming the U.S. for the global crisis and worried that its growing debt load could pose a further threat to stability. That view gained some additional force this week when World Bank President Robert Zoellick predicted that the dollar would face increasing as a reserve currency and its status would depend on how well the U.S. can manage its debt.]

Here is the Social Media Pitch:

[The G-20’s plan to reinforce country measures to address imbalances through peer reviews “would perhaps strengthen the mechanism” for enforcement, he said.]

Social Currency?

At the end of the day PEER REVIEW will be the global vetting mechanism that supports the value of a currency. What part of Social Currency are we not understanding here?

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You Can’t Eat Gold

By Admin

On September 3, 2009

In General Information

The following is a question and answer that I responded to on a Linkedin economics forum. This question still occurs in so many forms when it is also abundantly obvious that Social Media is driving so much value in so many directions. The irony is that the question is asked within the currency that it fails to recognize.

Art credit

Question:

Fiat money is the cause or always the main cause of financial crisis. Reverting back to gold standard can give stability. How can this be implemented?

Answer:

It cannot. Everyone agrees that money needs to be backed by something tangible. However, gold has a host of problems as well that are discussed extensively on-line and cannot be ignored.

A successful and stable currency must be backed by the productivity of the [citizens of a country] users. So these two words should be interchangeable; i.e., a country spends productivity to fight a war. A country spends productivity to fund universal health care, etc.

The cause of financial crisis is when the money becomes divorced from the productivity. Debt is a transaction that exchanges current productivity for future productivity – assuming that productivity will increase at least by the so-called ‘risk’. CDOs and other exotic financial instruments further obscure true productivity until money becomes driven irrationality and emotions completely separated from productivity.

If people lose trust in the currency, they will no longer trade it – they will find something else. Your hope is that they will find Gold.

Note clearly that innovation is also a transaction that exchanges current productivity with future productivity (due to the innovation). As such, a currency backed by innovation is of the same species as a currency backed by debt. Therefore, the entire financial system does not need to be torn down and rebuilt to serve a new non-debt backed currency.

The answer to your question is to look toward the places where extraordinary innovation is occurring today, right now. It is clear that social media is developing this new currency. The problem now is fairly simple; making human knowledge tangible. This is where the innovation is. Here are some resources of people working on this problem:

http://ingenesist.com

http://relationship-economy.com

http://conversationalcurrency.com

Our deepest concern should be to feed the Goose what’s been so good to the Gander all these years. Of course one argument in favor of gold is it’s scarcity. However, it is difficult to imagine that in an era of scarcity of so many resources, the basis of a currency ought to be more scarcity. Knowledge, conversation, and innovation are scarce relative to the problems that they must be deployed to solve. We’re in this together.

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Social Media and Flip-floponomics

By Admin

On August 28, 2009

In General Information

Flip-floponomics is a term that I just coined with this post which means:

1.    A traditional business method flipped on it’s back to reveal a new business method
2.    A mirror image of a previously accepted economic paradigm
3.    sing. n; flip-floponom; A phenomenon of flip-floponomics.

Let’s demonstrate how this works.

Flip-floponom A:

Twitter has announced that they will mine user generated data and process it into business intelligence which they will sell to corporations for a whole lot of money. As such, corporations who were unable to figure out how to charge people a whole lot of money money to “watch” social media can now be charged a whole lot of money to “watch” social media

Flip-floponom B:

YouTube can’t make money on ads because viewers don’t care. But with user generated content such as Jill and Kevin’s wedding (with 12 million views), Chris Brown landed a land slide of sales for the song “Forever”. The audience is now the Brands positioning themselves to be “user-generated”.

The Mother of all Flip-flopona:

Before flip-floponomics: entrepreneurs assumed that they had the knowledge to execute a business plan and they went to the bank to borrow money.

After Flip-floponomics: entrepreneurs assumed they had the money to execute a business plan and they go to social media to borrow the knowledge.

Next economic paradigm:

With the continuing integration of social media, every single business transaction has the potential to be re-invented in the mirror image if itself using the principles of flip-floponomics. The opportunities for future entrepreneurs who figure out this class of business activity can be described as nothing short of astonishing.

Image Credit Picasso

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Listening For What People are Listening For

By Admin

On August 20, 2009

In General Information

Communities organize themselves:

Most people do not listen completely in conversations because they are too busy planning their response to what they think the other person is going to say. Often what seems like astute response is a template that may fit a moment but can kill a conversation. The successful conversation occurs when all participants speak to what the others are listening for. Not an easy trick.

I Heard the Ocean

When I first got into this social media stuff, I had a lot to say. Then I figured out that nobody was listening; I learned a lot since then. As soon as I started to listen, people started listening back. Today these people are my heroes, I hang on their every word, their generosity is roughly 70% of my social media world – where did they come from and where can I find more people like them?

Well, that’s all I have to say about that, so let’s listen to Janet Fouts. Part of her quote is a product pitch, but that illustrates an important point in Innovation Economics; conversation is currency and this currency has value:

“Before you dive into social media for any reason, listening should be your first step. What are people talking about and where are they doing it? Is there buzz out there about you or your product that you didn’t know about? Who should you be connecting to? Has there been a recent event you want to find out more about?

Setting up listening tools from free to paid versions can give you a tremendous amount of information and help you find even more things to talk about. I’ll give working examples of listening tools, outline a strategy for effective listening and give you some ideas to use this information in a real world setting.

This short 30 minute session will include links to both free and paid listening tools and creative scenarios for use.

You will learn how to:

Set up a set of listening tools to cover multiple platforms
Identify the right listening tools for your own needs
Identify the best networks for you to participate on
Evaluate what you find
Creative ways to engage and communicate your message
Find new topics to populate your blog and online discussions
Evaluate how effective your social media campaign is

Thanks Janet, Now here is a hint at the product pitch at Conversational Currency:

“In a few months, events such as Janet’s may need not be funded by the participant. Rather, our sponsors will support events for those most worthy of participating. Why would sponsors do such a thing? Maybe they too are learning to listen, after all, roughly 70% of the US economy is consumer spending. Will roughly 70% of ad budget be allocated on listening?”

What does all this mean? keep listening!

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Humility R Us

By Admin

On July 28, 2009

In General Information

Many companies are flocking to Social Media as the great new tool for pitching products. The results have been mixed; there are winners and there are losers. At first, there was no clear path toward certain success but now the differences are becoming increasingly clear. Humility is rewarded and arrogance is punished.

If “Nice guys finish last,” is the mantra of the old world, then “The last will be first,” is the motto of the new. To understand why humility works in social media, we need to understand what humility is.

Cashing the Reality Check

Humility does not mean looking down on oneself or thinking ill of oneself. It really means not thinking of oneself very much at all. The humble are free to forget themselves because they are secure. So when they mess up, the humble don’t have to cover up. They have nothing to hide.

All this is simply a way of saying that the humble are in touch with reality. If the definition of insanity is being out of touch with reality, then in the old world, “nice guys finish last” illusion is clearly insane.

Strength in numbers

Since the humble are secure, they are strong. And since they have nothing to prove, they don’t have to flaunt their strength or use it to dominate others. Humility leads to meekness. And meekness is not weakness. Rather, it is strength under control, power used to build up rather than tear down.

You can’t buy happiness

Back in the early 90’s, I worked on an ad campaign in Hollywood. The producer told everyone; “The objective of this commercial was to steal the thing that people love about their self, and sell it back to them for the price of the product”.

The marketing message has been for many years much along those lines. Make people believe that they need something that they don’t. Make people believe that they can buy happiness, love, and community. Make people believe that reality is something that can be escaped.

Rising Tides float all ships

The great brand messages, the successful blogs, and the viral communications in social media all have one thing in common. They provide true and real value to the most people. They produce correct and practical insight for the most people. They empower the most people to help their selves. They amplify the priorities of the most communities. They help the most people to be successful in their clear and present reality.

Soul Searching

Ironically, it will take great introspection in the hearts of many corporate brands that follow the old rules of marketing. These corporations need to look backwards into their own corporate philosophy and business plan to re-identify what they represent and how they represent it. This new identity must reach into R&D to define what innovations are developed and what features they provide. This cannot and will not be easy for most.

Since the humble are secure, they are strong. Likewise, when Brands are humble, they too are strong and they don’t have to flaunt their strength or use it to dominate others. The power of social media is to build up rather than tear down.

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What is the Current of Currency?

By Admin

On July 26, 2009

In General Information

There is not much more ‘federal’ about the “Federal Reserve” than there is about Federal Express. Except, the Fed is a private company for whom the US government is the “Legal Tender”; literally and figuratively.

We could analyze this cozy relationship or we can realize that the value of any currency is a social agreement among people who trade it for goods and services. There is nothing keeping each and every one of us from “legally tending” a currency in communities to exchange for goods and services – as long as there is a social agreement.

The Semantic Web:

The word “currency” has several meanings. It can mean a “medium of exchange” such as “bank currency”; or it can mean a placement in time such as a “current edition”; or it can mean the flow of something such as the “river’s current”. Money is, in fact, all three; it is exchanged, it changes with time, and it moves things. Therefore, anything that does these three things can be used as currency.

Social Media space has awarded civilization with an extraordinary capacity to create, maintain, and design social agreements. Social agreements are founded on conversations between people. Conversation is the medium of exchange for the trade of goods and services long before the money is distributed (or not).

The Value of Value:

The value of the dollar is not changing, but the value of the social agreement is. Conversations about Land, Labor, and Capital are transcended by conversations about environment, health care, social justice, human rights, and global freedom. The social agreement that once supported the value of a dollar is now supporting something else. The value that the dollar once contained is being transferred someplace else. The people that once controlled the value of currency are being replaced other people. The social agreement is being replaced by another one.

To understand the new social agreement is to understand the currency of currency. To support the conversations that define the new social agreement is to support the value of social currency. To support the value of social currency is to support the value of money.

Humility: The New Economic Paradigm

In order to intersect the flow of money people need to be trading a conversational currency. In today’s economy, in order to find value, we need to ask someone else where it is. In order to create value, we need to tell someone else where it is. In order to stay “current” we must engage with others. In order to preserve value, we need to preserve the value in others.

Most importantly, especially for those who want to hold a great deal of money or power or control: in order to hold value, they must give it away. In order to hold power, they must empower others. In order to hold control, they must give up control to others.

Conversely, Humility is the new gold standard and the bad guys will always try to steal it. Does this sound familiar?

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The Value of Social Currency

By Admin

On July 9, 2009

In General Information

How big is this opportunity?

Roughly 10% of the US gross Domestic Product can be attributed directly to the process of evaluating or examining transactions. This represents a 1.4 Trillion Dollar of value in a system that may be better organized, captured, and preserved through social networks and the conversations that they produce.

Social vetting on a scale that would allow social networks to monetize would require that communities organize their knowledge assets specifically for deployment to a market. All that an entrepreneur needs to do is fill this need.

What happens if they don’t?

The true cost of vetting may be calculated by what happens in the absence of oversight, transparency, and disclosure. When the vetting process fails, so too does the industry. The continuing financial crisis of 2008 was fueled by a failure to regulate mortgage backed securities. The financial Crisis of 2002 arose from a failed accounting (CPA) profession.

The losses due to the absence of vetting mechanism exceeds by many times the cost of having a system in place. The financial crises of 2002 and 2008 have together wiped out nearly 20 Trillion dollars of value and incurred high volatility to financial systems due to failed vetting mechanisms. The people who held the knowledge about the impending doom had no effective medium to share.

Who vets KNOWLEDGE assets?

The flow of money lives and dies by the vetting mechanism. CarFax, Experian, Ebay, Google owe their existence to the ability to vet information – However, they do not vet knowledge. The ability to deliver the right knowledge asset to the right place, at the right time for the right price is tantamount to being able to “manufacturing innovation”, that is, to print money. Inversely, the ability to foresee the result of specific knowledge assets deployed to specific business conditions is the Holy Grail of entrepreneurs.

Social networks can carry out this very important function of the Innovation economy; organize, locate, and develop knowledge assets in a form which can emulate a financial instrument.

How are things changing?

Emerging ideas such as conversational currency, relationship economics, innovation economics,. nd new ways to value intangibles are appearing in research blogs across the web. Disruptions to Global finance, environmental policy, and the emergence of global currencies are setting the stage for a huge transformation in how society organizes itself. Traditional industries such as print media, advertising, and banking are failing. Nothing is sacred except change.

Where are these communities, and what do they want?

Many communities exist today in a variety of forms and functions such as communities of practice, fellowships, service organizations, professional societies, trades groups, affinity groups, etc. Increasingly they are moving to Social Media such as Facebook groups, Linkedin groups, Affinity groups, aggregation groups, and political action groups. Communities are using social media technology to engage the knowledge domain contained within them.

As such, they will soon have ability to foresee the result of specific knowledge assets deployed to specific business conditions. This is the Holy Grail of modern civilization.

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The Next Global Currency

By Admin

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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Out of Cache; Will Work For Bandwidth

By Admin

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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