Tag: tangible

The Fertilizer Economy

On March 15, 2009

The bad, the good, and the ugly

The bad news is that United States has a global comparative advantage in producing bullshit. The good news is that we may actually be able to till it into fertilizer for the Innovation economy.

America’s financial crisis was caused by money created from money which was in turn a derivative of wild-eyed speculation in assorted proxies for real productivity, including real estate. Stock prices were supported by imperfect information in a Tickle-Me-Elmo culture while broker fees are embedded in every conceivable transaction.

America has become a world leader in hype, marketing, lawsuits, and fantasy. None of these industries actually produce anything yet nobody can say they are not immensely creative, induce sweeping social movements, and their propagation demands extraordinary intellectual resources, flexibility, and adaptability.

The Theory of Comparative Advantage

It is not efficient for, say, Ghana to produce rice and Vietnam to produce cocoa. If they each produce their natural endowments and then trade the differences, fewer resources are expended to produce more goods. This theory is the basis of global free trade and the efficiencies are irrefutable so globalization is here to stay.

Meanwhile, the literature on the subject of innovation agrees that innovation is maximized as a function of endowments in social capital, creative capital and intellectual capital. Silicon Valley is widely held as the poster child for emerging from the deep social movements of the 1960’s attracting an inflow of diverse people where high tolerance, creative art and music were abundant in close proximity to intellectual centers of Stanford and Berkeley.

Comparative Advantage for Innovation:

By the theory of comparative advantage, if a country does not possess a comparative advantage in intellectual capital, creative capital, and social capital, they would not hold a comparative advantage in an innovation economy.

For example; China has a huge endowment of intellectual capital and throughout history they have been an inspired creative force. However, the current government thwarts social capital. Therefore, whereas China has a comparative advantage in a manufacturing economy, they would not necessarily have a comparative advantage in an innovation economy.

Many other countries have endowments of intellectual capital as well as democratic governments, but cultural norms may still constrain diversity related to gender roles, social classes, lifestyle tolerance, or the acceptance of “outsiders”. As such, they may have comparative advantage in a knowledge economy, but the relative deficiency in creative capital would inhibit a comparative advantage in an innovation economy just as quickly.

The Fertilizer Economy:

That said, the United States has a vast abundance and tremendous economies of scale in social capital, intellectual capital, and creative capital in comparison to any other country in the world. The problem is that these assets are sequestered behind the corporate veil, suppressed from true wealth creation by the priorities of a financial system built to produce nothing except analyst expectations. Like sugar calories, lots of energy is delivered, but sustainable health is not.

The harvest in the wind

The brokers, speculators, and marketers are not bad people – in fact, they are brilliant. They are simply stuck with the wrong set of incentives. The Ingenesist Project dramatically changes the incentives and promises a far better allocation of intellectual capital, social capital, and creative capital. By making such assets tangible outside the construct of the Wall Street, the comparative advantage of the United States in an innovation economy will be astonishing.

Where there is fertilizer in the wind, Wall Street will lead. Where there is a harvest in the wind, Wall Street will follow.

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Who Owns Your Content?

By Admin

On February 21, 2009

In General Information

The epiphany:

Something very interesting happened when Facebook changed their terms of service. People who use the Facebook platform (for free) organized themselves using the (free) platform to threaten the core validity of the same (free) platform. This could not happen in any other industry.

Saving face?

Ownership is largely characterized by the ability of one party to restrict the access of another party. Judging by the results of this uprising, it seems that for all practical purposes, the users own their content and their impressions no matter what the TOS says. This is a very strong argument for the tangibility of social, creative, and intellectual capital.

Ownership Economics:

The fact that people own and care for their content is what makes Facebook work. Ownership is an extremely powerful force that drives intense participation and innovation. People will attend to their property, improve it, make it valuable, and create value for themselves and those around them. Really, when was the last time you washed a rented car?

Historical perspective:

Most history books present the Homestead Act of 1862 as the product of a wise and benevolent government seeking to reward worthy citizens of a great young nation for populating the vast Western territories. But that is not really true. Most of the land was already occupied by squatters who arrived disheveled, found a nice spot, built their small cabin, and farmed or hunted to sustain themselves. They could not be evicted or charged with trespassing because a “jury of their peers” was also composed of squatters.

Problems arose when squatters could not borrow money to improve the land because they did not hold a title to it. Legitimate landowners could not value their property if the land next door was untitled. Border disputes resulted in gun battles. Stealing was rampant. The children of squatters could not inherit the land without proper title. There was little incentive to produce anything beyond sustenance. When services and capital projects were required to support the increasing population, there was no tax base. Not unlike Facebook, this new frontier could not be monetized.

Wisdom in Government; not always an oxymoron:

Perhaps the greatest moment in government came with the realization that it is impossible to change the behavior of people, rather, the best strategy would be to accommodate what they are going to do anyway. So they legalized the squatters and gave them deed to their land. The occupants could sell or capitalize as they wished. Investment capital flooded the region and entrepreneurs improved the land and created enterprises. The government could then collect taxes proportional to the productivity of the citizens. The result was the development of the Western States as economic powerhouse that we know today.

Use it or lose it:

A very similar opportunity is presenting itself to Facebook and now the road to monetization should be crystal clear. They should go out of their way to create terms of service that protects the rights of each and every member to own and control their content in its entirety, forever.

Next, Facebook should develop applications that allow advertisers to bid for impressions directly with the users compensating them for their time. Users will build profiles that attract those seeking opinion, knowledge, feedback, wisdom AND SALES related to their products. Users should be able to control every aspect of their content including any means that they can dream up to legally create revenue from their social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital. Facebook should develop a knowledge inventory of what users know and make it available to others like a “Public Library or knowledge assets”. Then they should develop applications to match knowledge surplus to knowledge deficit, etc. Let the trading begin.

The answer in their face:

If smart people can make money using Facebook just by doing what they are going to do anyway, they will flood the system with the most tangible forces in nature; social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital. If Facebook can’t figure out how to monetize the asset staring them in their face, they will soon encounter a more powerful competitor – their own users.

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The Great Convergence

By Admin

On December 8, 2008

In General Information

Hey Kids, It’s 3D:

The objective of this article is to discuss the Great Convergence of computer enabled society. Social media must not be allowed to converge to a single apex – rather, it must converge to 3 distinct and tangible dimensions.

The factors of production for the industrial economy are land, labor, and capital. If you lose one, you can’t use the other two to build an SUV, for example. The factors of production for an innovation economy are social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital. All production in the new economic paradigm will result from the allocation of a “secret sauce” of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital. Again, if you lose one, you can’t use the other two to build anything meaningful.

The congregation of congregations:

In order to find The Great Convergence, we simply need to examine Social Media to discover where social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital tend to congregate.

One of the more obvious illustrations appears to be playing out between LinkedIn, Facebook, and Myspace. Many people use Linkedin for professional contacts (intellectual Capital), other people use Facebook for friends, family and more diverse associations (Social Capital), while many others use MySpace to post videos of their rock band, Artwork, or to discover the latest Mash up (Creative Capital). Of course there are many more social networks, lots of cross talk, different demographics, rants and raves, etc. I intentionally leave this analysis sparse as these conditions simply reflect the nature of The Great Convergence.

The Next Economic Paradigm:

We need to watch The Great Convergence with laser focus and deep personal interest because it will be extremely important for the development of what comes after the knowledge economy. Whatever form this next economic paradigm takes, globally and locally, will depend upon The Great Convergence. The Innovation Economy is the only wrench left in the toolbox for resolving the vast global problems that we face today.

The Innovation Economy must end global warming, restore financial accountability, enact sustainable enterprise, and institute renewable energy – or not. This is a huge burden to ask of the next “greatest generation”. It is clearly in everyone’s best interest to identify, encourage, and support The Great Convergence to form in 3D, before the old single-apex game “resets” and starts all over again, perhaps for the last time.

[The Ingenesist Project discusses this concept at length and identified various predictions, methods, and scenarios, including specifications for an Innovation Economy.]

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Business Plans of the Innovation Economy

By Admin

On December 3, 2008

In General Information

There is no shortage of money in the world but there is plenty of risk. Most business failures are due to knowledge deficits such as the inexperienced management team, a poor assessment of market conditions, underestimating the amount of money needed, underestimating a competitor, loss of a key employee, poor understanding of the technology, etc. These are knowledge problems not financial problems, yet they can sink the most promising companies.

To solve the knowledge problems is to decrease the risk of innovating. To decrease the risk of innovating will decrease the cost of venture capital. Decreased cost of money to innovate will induce innovation economics.

With a computer enabled knowledge inventory in the correct format and a Percentile Search Engine that returns probabilities on strategic combination of assets, the business plan of the innovation economy becomes very simple; The Innovation Bank does one thing very well over and over again – it matches correct knowledge surplus with the correct knowledge deficit at any point in time for any strategic reason. This process is then repeated over and over in infinite different combination.

The first business structure is made up from two single knowledge transactions arranged in parallel – like a parallel circuit. This arrangement represents a brainstorming session between two or more people.

The Percentile Search Engine matches the person with the knowledge supply to a person with the knowledge demand. The transaction can be as simple as a conversation, sketch on a napkin, or white board flow chart. Each time the cycle goes around the new ideas of one person ignites a new ideas in the other person. Each time the transaction occurs, there is a net increase of new knowledge. The conclusion is usually some tangible action, system, or method. The conversation stops when no new knowledge can be created in either person – or when people just get tired (rate of change approaches zero).

The entrepreneur is very interested in the outcome of these conversations and uses the Percentile Search Engine to select, regulate, modify, adjust, analyze, and record the transactions. The Percentile Search Engine is used again to select diverse participants for the parallel business structure with the intention of producing a specific outcome.

The second business structure is made up from two single knowledge transactions arranged in series – like a series circuit. This arrangement represents the product development cycle.

Again, the Percentile Search Engine matches the person with the knowledge supply to a person with the knowledge demand. The transaction is a simple conversation and the outcome is a prototype process, system, or method. Each step in the series is an improvement to the method. Each time the transaction occurs, there is a net increase of new knowledge. The conclusion is the development of the system, business plan, or method. The conversation stops when the product is ready for another iteration or the market. The Percentile Search Engine is used again to select diverse participants to continue the series business structure with the intention of producing a specific outcome.

The entrepreneur is very interested in the outcome of these iterations and uses the Percentile Search Engine to select, regulate, modify, adjust, analyze, and record the transactions.

Now if we mix the parallel and series circuits, we form what looks like a neural network of parallel and series networks. Now, we are squarely in the regime of “designer” Social Networks. Participants are paid in micro-royalties instead of wages. By definition, a relatively small input produces a very large output – if it can be captured. This will be the source of wealth creation from the new corporations of the Innovation Economy.

We determined in an earlier chapter that information, knowledge and innovation are related as mathematical derivatives. The accounting system will identify innovation by measuring the rate of change of knowledge transfer within a social network. Any number of current methods, systems, or innovation consultants can deal with this. Similarly, in order to identify high rates of change of knowledge in a social network, the accounting system will measure high rates of change of information. This too is quite simple using common systems, methods, consultants and tools. No new infrastructure is required with the exception of the knowledge inventory, percentile search engine, and innovation bank.

The entrepreneur can now do what they do best; identify assets operating at low productivity and reallocate them to areas of high productivity by running them through an innovation system. Remember, most businesses fail due to knowledge deficits. To reduce or eliminate these risks will make the fact or innovation predictable and therefore negotiable.

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A System of Innovation

By Admin

On December 2, 2008

In General Information

We have established that Innovation and wealth creation are profoundly related and that one cannot be sustained without the other. A huge problem is becoming apparent because Money lives in a complex, global and highly integrated system where billions of dollars can circle the globe daily at the speed of light. Meanwhile, innovation does not live in an equally diverse, integrated and global system.

Instead, innovation lives in the patent system which is extremely slow, prohibitively expensive and full of secret language and legal strategy – certainly not accessible to most people who actually do the innovating. In the immediate financial crisis where we are printing money at an astonishing rate, we must increase the speed, quantity, and quality of innovation at a comparable rate in order to preserve the balance. We need an Innovation System to balance the Financial system.

Everyone knows that innovation happens in places like Silicon Valley, Corporations, a bunch of research labs, someplace in Japan, and of course the proverbial “Steve’s Garage”; but these places do not behave like a system, they are not integrated and they often compete rather than cooperate. Everyone knows what money is – but innovation is treated like some sort of mystery potion related to supreme knowledge among the gifted few.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Remember in the last chapter, the billions upon billions of tiny ideas are basically crowd sourced. These ideas are combined into larger advances and that process continues until, say, an IPod rolls off the assembly line. We readily call the IPod the innovation, but not the billions of tiny ideas.

A System of Innovation

Our accounting system is used to keep track of money, it is not designed to keep track of billions of tiny ideas. So it calls human knowledge “intangible” while the IPod is “tangible”. Somewhere along the line our culture reinforces this idea. The truth is that knowledge is not intangible – knowledge is simply invisible. This is a much easier problem to solve.

Intellectual Capital, social capital, and creative capital are locked up inside corporations sitting behind processes, job descriptions, and insulated from tangibility by multiple levels of management. The command and control system arose from the industrial revolution, and with the help of Wall Street, is responsible for great innovation advances leading humanity to a global gross domestic product of 65 trillion dollars. However, the volume of innovation under this system is no longer sufficient to sustain the debt that it has also created.

Today, the phenomenon of Social Networks is showing us that human knowledge is desperately trying to become visible, and predictably, innovation in this area is increases at a remarkable rate! The challenge now is to marry the phenomenon of social media to the financial system just like corporations are married to the financial system through Wall Street.

In market economics there are five components that are essential for a market to work properly; first, there is a currency of trade; like Dollars, or Euros, or Yen. Second, there is always an inventory so we can find pieces, count them, and build stuff. Third, there are financial and government institutions that are supposed to protect property rights to keep the game fair so that the people that own things don’t get ripped off. Fourth, we have entrepreneurs to do the fuzzy math, they interact with the system, they fill in the grey areas, and they manage risk. Finally, there is a business plan so that the entrepreneur can do what they do best – buy low, add value, sell high and pocket the difference. That’s how a market works. It’s quite simple.

Now listen carefully, these five elements are tightly connected and must be present in some way at every transaction. If any one of these elements is missing, disconnected, or corrupted, the system will fail. This is the underlying cause of the financial crisis, the system became disconnected.

We need to make “knowledge” look like money, walk like money, and talk like money and some real interesting things should happen.

The next several modules will go step by step through the five elements of market economics and we’ll uncover as best as we can those same five elements as they exist today in our knowledge economy. Then we’ll connect the dots, fill in the blanks – and out pops the innovation economy!!!

After that, we’ll discover the new business methods of the innovation economy. And finally, we will talk about the thousands of new “corporations” that will arise. Literally, every business that we know of can be made more efficient in an environment where knowledge is tangible and a great deal of new wealth creation will occur.

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Social Media; The Opportunity of a Century

By Admin

On December 1, 2008

In General Information

The Perfect Storm:

We are at an historic time in human history; one that may never repeat itself again. The current financial crisis may provide just enough disruption for a completely new economic paradigm to emerge; the Innovation Economy. We cannot squander this moment arguing over common logon for our Twitter and Facebook profiles; a far greater integration is required from Social Media.

Advertising is not the correct revenue model.

It is astonishing that Social Media, in general, has not figured out how to make money. Social Media IS money. All wealth on Earth was created from the social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital of people – wealth creation is already crowd sourced. Now, there is an opportunity for Social Media to harness this engine of economic growth and wealth creation – if they could only see it.

The problem is simple: Globalization is proceeding as if economic growth can occur before technological change. Some time in the past, we got these two things up mixed. It does not take money to make money; it takes innovation to make money. Technological change MUST ALWAYS happen before real economic growth can occur. Anything else is a transfer of wealth, not the creation of wealth. All that is unsustainable today – the economy, the environment, natural resources, energy – is due to this itsy bitsy anomaly of current market economics. Today, we can easily correct this little flaw with almost a flip of a switch – but the window of opportunity will be short – and we need to be clever.

The idea that human knowledge is tangible and behaves individually and collectively like a financial instrument is still considered impossible. The ability to place a market value on the social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital of a team, community, or geographic population of people – let alone a social network – has never been accomplished. This idea remains the Holy Grail of finance and one that Social Media is uniquely positioned to capture. If the finance industry can invent “tangible derivatives” out of thin air paper, then we ought to be able to do the same with knowledge assets that live and breathe tangibly all around us.

If it looks like money, it will behave like money, guaranteed:

First, we need to build a knowledge inventory system that includes everyone; and which can be anonymously codified and amalgamated with logic in machine readable format (the Universal Decimal Classification System is a good candidate). Second, we need to sample our inventory in a community using the proverbial “Bell Curve”. Third, we need to develop a search engine that returns the probability that a strategic combination of knowledge assets can execute a given objective. Fourth, we need an innovation Bank that will “pull” knowledge surplus and “pull” knowledge deficits together from diverse communities. (Please see the IEc101 at https://ingenesist.com)

This should not sound too weird; it is the same game that Wall Street plays. The switch is flipped when we engage our innovation system with the financial system.

Go where the money is:

Social Media is perfectly positioned to develop these features in their products and in our communities. We first must understand that innovation is predictable. We may not be able to say exactly where the innovation will lead, but we can be sure that if we place a group of strategically diversified persons in a room, innovation will happen. If the fact of innovation is predictable, risks related to the invented can be pooled, morphed, or diversified. If risk can be diversified, it can be hedged to zero. If innovation has zero risk, Wall Street will salivate to issue “innovation bonds” to finance diverse communities of practice. If innovation capital is inexpensive and accessible, a great amount of innovation will occur. The anomaly of capital markets can be reversed, and the result will be sustainable economic growth.

Naturally, the compensation structure will be in the form of dividends, both financial and in social welfare. New corporations will emerge and the old corporations will become more efficient. What is invented will tend to reflect social priorities rather than today’s short term Wall Street priorities. America must innovate at an intense and sustained rate in order to compensate for the imbalance of debt economics that has been created in its absence. Social Media can be, and must be, the infrastructure upon which an Innovation Economy is built. Again, this opportunity is staring us straight in the eye. This is the conversation that must be having today if we will meet the challenges of tomorrow.

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Social Media; The Central Bank for Knowledge Assets?

By Admin

On November 20, 2008

In General Information

It is very interesting to watch Social Media follow familiar trajectories as earlier paradigms in finance. I see many social media platforms struggling to make human knowledge tangible in their respective markets. The challenge is so simple, yet so complex. Let the litmus test for knowledge tangibility be as follows; “Can you buy groceries with it?”

The Romans Empire had a similar problem; how to sack Europe and bring home the booty. The only thing most people had at the time were sheep, fish, and wine. So the emperor created a coin that represented a peasant’s productivity in raising sheep, catching fish, and making wine – and it was a lot easier to collect taxes. The conquest of a continent has far more to do with the social acceptance of the currency than the actual pillaging – pillaging, after all, would be counter productive in a social network.

Today the dollar also represents human productivity – except a ‘necessary flaw’ was introduced to finance innovation leading to fantastic worldwide economic growth from which many people benefit greatly. Now, this flaw threatens to topple the whole system. Money still represents productivity, except it now represents future productivity allocated to paying debt. As long as innovation increases fast enough to outpace debt, everything is OK. Problems happen when debt exceeds our structural ability to innovate.

We do not need to restructure the financial system – we need to restructure the innovation system. The human race is exceedingly fortunate that the end game for debt economics will happen at the exact moment in history that the technology required to start a new game of sustainable innovation economics has arrived. If done correctly, Social Media (computer enabled society) can become the most important human invention since to the printing press.

Today, human knowledge, in the form of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital, is captured and hidden inside corporations. Each corporation has its own business plan, lexicon, culture, organization, structure, and processes by which human knowledge is exchanged in the creation of a “product”. Outside the corporation, however, true knowledge assets are either invisible, incomplete, or only appear as a proxy of the corporation. This leads to stagnation, silos, mis-allocation, vulnerability to external shock, and greatly limits the diversity needed for sustainable innovation.

In the 1700’s Banks printed their own currency – these were called “bank notes” because they were little notes that declared who had a surplus and who had a deficit of money relative to the bank. People would trade these notes in society to purchase things, buy feed or seed, and to keep track of things. Everyone had a job to do and the general flow of these notes is what “incorporated” townships. Unfortunately, such banking also lead to industrial stagnation, silos of wealth, and lack of diversification leading to corruption, bank failures, and ‘bottle necks’ in the flow of capital.

Barely 150 years ago, the U.S. government established a central banking system with common currency, common practices, common accounting, and common regulation. The system became much more efficient, diversified, and accessible across the landscape. The industrial revolution, manufacturing revolution, lots of wars, the era of information, and the Internet Industries were all financed through a central banking system. Human productivity increased at a tremendous rate and the relative wealth that we enjoy today is a tangible result of innovation.

Now the Pied Piper has come to take the children to sea. The banking system needs to invent new, exotic, and increasingly risky financial instruments for trading your productivity in order to keep the game alive. Meanwhile, the tangibility of human knowledge is stuck in an 18th century banking system. There is no common knowledge inventory, there is no common accounting practice for skills and abilities, there is no way to measure social capital and creative capital – the system is too biased toward “intellectual capital” measured by Ivy League degrees and access to wealth. Knowledge assets are not tangible, organized, classified, or collected in a society in any structured way. “Can you buy groceries with it yet”?

With the emergence of Social Media, we have an extraordinary opportunity to make knowledge tangible outside the construct of a corporation much like banks notes became tangible outside the construct of a single township. There are vast and crushing problems in the world today. The only way out of this mess is to massively increase the rate of innovation in society. Like off-shore drilling – vast wealth in the form of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital lays hidden beneath thousands of layers of philosophical limestone. Social Media and the first amendment = drill baby, drill.

The only thing separating us from a debt economy and an innovation economy is social agreement. The philosophical chasm holding us back is about to be broken by The Ingenesist Project: In the current paradigm, money is backed by future productivity allocated to pay off today’s debt. In the social media paradigm; money will be backed by future productivity created by today’s innovation. At the end of the day money still represents productivity. The conquest of a continent has far more to do with the acceptance of the currency than the actual pillaging. Hey, why not buy groceries with it?

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Tangible Knowledge; Options and Contingencies

By Admin

On November 19, 2008

In General Information

In order for knowledge to become a tangible asset, we need to come to grips with the fact that human knowledge is fluid and mobile, whereas a condo or a piece of machinery is static. A machine can’t walk away if it does not like their management.

With knowledge assets, the typical “Return on Investment” (ROI) model breaks down. When assets have a mind of their own, there is no reliable way to calculate ROI without somehow corralling the asset inside some form of closed contract, a corporation, political system, social class, or by introducing barriers to exit, etc. In the modern financial system, human assets are held tangible by debt obligations – today many people go to work in servitude of debt, not in creation of new ideas.

An option* is the right, without the liability of obligation, to exercise a decision in the future. Human interaction accommodates this valuation model quite readily; it’s called free-will. Therefore the option valuation model is an adequate method to assess knowledge assets as a means of making them tangible.

The value of a financial option can be calculated if one knows the following 5 variables: The asset price, the strike price, the date of maturity, the risk free interest rate, and the volatility – or, the odds on the bet. By contrast, the ROI model requires us to know basically the same things; the cost today, the strike price (future sale price), the date of maturity, the risk free interest rate, and the probability of success – or variance of the expectation. The equation is just a little different.

Individually, human behavior often appears chaotic and irrational, but in aggregate, we know that human behavior is really quite predictable. If you put similar people together, you get similar ideas. If you put extremely different people together, you get extremely unpredictable ideas. If you put strategic combinations of people together, you should be able to predict the variance of the ideas. This is all the information we need to place a value on our bet. If human behavior is predictable, it is tangible.

Suppose we enter into a ROI venture and it fails miserably; the market was wrong or the product was wrong, or the people were wrong, etc. Even though the investment failed, the knowledge accumulated from the attempt can be exercised in many other projects in the future. While the Patent may turn out to be worthless, the knowledge gained by the team can be used over and over again. Each person gains a statistical data point in their experience set with which to assess comparable situations in the future. This is an option and this option has value. If the team were disbanded without somehow capturing the inventory of new knowledge assets, a very valuable set of options becomes squandered.

Some companies such as Google, try not to kill an idea, they morph the idea into something else. Free-range knowledge tangibility must achieve those same objectives. Today we see people building networks on Linkedin – this activity resembles the collection of options on future opportunities. People post on social media to see and be seen by other knowledge assets as a means of collecting more options for their careers or actions. People would not be doing it if there was no intrinsic value. The next big leap will happen when knowledge tangibility is married to the financial system through the direct valuation and capitalization of options. Did I mention there is an equation for that?

The Ingenesist Project specifies a method and system for knowledge inventory that would produce a variance for knowledge assets. The Percentile Search Engine would pull knowledge assets in combination that diversify variance into a highly predictable surplus assets and deficit assets. The Innovation Bank would match most worthy surplus to most worthy deficit. As such, the Innovation Economy itself is now a most worthy option for supporting a feeble financial system.

The ROI model is the mother of all squandered knowledge assets – the very same assets that are really purchased on a project, successful or not, are often willfully abandoned. All of the parameters of an option valuation model can now be met with social media and The Ingenesist Project integration methods. Free-range knowledge assets can then be directly financed toward business objectives. The idea of an innovation economy based on knowledge tangibility is well within our grasp technologically, culturally, and systematically.

Social media has an astonishing opportunity to integrate social, creative, and intellectual knowledge assets to trade that single most important part of the puzzle, tangible knowledge assets. I suspect that this outcome will depend on whether these new tools are treated to an ROI valuation model or on an options valuation model.

* Italic used for clarity

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The Tangibility of Knowledge

By Admin

On November 9, 2008

In General Information

Knowledge Tangibility should be the most important conversation in Social Media circles given the current financial situation in America.

I lived through financial devaluation in another country and the effects were crushing: after the run on the banks, there will be a run on Walmart. People will buy TVs, small appliances, shoes, and useful stuff that will hold more value tomorrow that they cost today. These items may become a de facto currency of trade. Americans will be astonished by how fast a devaluation event plays out; hours and days, not months or years. When things settle down, the government will retire the old dollar and introduce a new currency at an exchange of, say, 1 megabuck equals 1000 old dollars. Then the chips are cleared, assets are transferred, and the same game can start all over again.

The difference is that for the first time in history, there is a window of opportunity for social media technology to break this cycle. Please let me explain:

Suppose that a BMW costs $50,000 dollars and a KIA costs $10,000 dollars. These prices reflect the quantity and quality of the car in terms of availability and popular amenities such as, handling, road noise, comfort, status, etc. Suppose the government introduces a new currency called the “megabuck”. Suppose the government pegs the megabuck to cars saying that all cars will have a value of 30,000 megabucks. Since these cars are not equal, people will begin trading; the BMW will be bid up to 50,000 megabucks and the Kia will be bid down to 10,000 megabucks based on supply and demand – right back where they started.

Admittedly an oversimplification, but the point is does not matter what you call the currency – the most important thing is the quantity and quality of the asset. This brings us back to the idea of knowledge tangibility.

Suppose that, on average, 1 hour of human labor is worth 20 megabucks. As above, hard labor will be bid up while soft labor would be bid down. The same is not really true with knowledge because knowledge is invisible and it can’t be counted with bricks or bushels. There is no knowledge inventory in America’s communities. Therefore, there is no way to establish supply and demand for knowledge assets. People in a community do not know what other people in the community know. This is where social networks will make a huge difference.

Human knowledge, if formatted correctly, would make an excellent asset upon which to peg a currency. Today, accountants say that human knowledge is “intangible” but social media demonstrates otherwise; human knowledge is simply invisible – hidden inside corporations under the thumb of Wall Street. Social media demonstrates that knowledge assets are itching to be release to the public domain in a highly tangible manner. Believe it or not, we are now 95% of the way toward real knowledge tangibility today. We should be very excited about this because everything changes.

Like the example with the cars, we need to have a comprehensive inventory of the knowledge assets in our communities so that they can be strategically combined into productive organizations. This inventory must be formatted in terms of quantity and quality and include all knowledge living including social, creative, and intellectual capital. If done correctly, it will not matter what happens to the dollar or what currency is used as a scorecard, the value of human knowledge assets will remain intact.

Again, the value is in the asset, not the currency – it is in you, me, and our diverse communities who will favor community priorities rather than Wall Street priorities. This is how where we will find equity, sustainability, and fairness in a capitalist system.

The Ingenesist Project has specified exactly how to create knowledge tangibility in a capitalist model using 3 simple web applications for Social Networks; a Knowledge Inventory, a Percentile Search Engine, and an Innovation Bank. Please read the intro and the articles on page IEc101. If you agree, please pass it on. If you do not agree, please help us make it better. If you don’t understand, email me. This needs to happen fast and unfortunately nobody will do it for us – we must do it ourselves.

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The Balance Sheet for Knowledge Assets

By Admin

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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INGENESIST PROJECT: Submission to the 10^100

By Admin

On October 8, 2008

In General Information

INGENESIST PROJECT: Submission to the 10^100 Innovation Contest; www.project10tothe100.com

Single sentence:
The Ingenesist Project is an open source economic development program to induce the Innovation Economy utilizing Social Networks.

Tell us more (300 words)
The current financial system has reached the limits of its effectiveness. Interest on debt has exceeded the system’s ability to pay it off. But debt is simply a promissory note on future productivity – any caveman can tell us that the only way to increase productivity today is to innovate yesterday, not tomorrow.

In modern times, this means that the only way to sustainably create more money tomorrow is to innovate today. This is the flaw on Wall Street that Innovation Economics will correct.

Ingenesist has specified three simple web applications when applied to Social Networks, will allow Knowledge to become tangible outside of the organizational construct of a corporation, government, or academia. To develop these applications would unleash substantial innovation and wealth in society.

*The Knowledge Inventory
*The Percentile Search engine
*The Innovation Bank

Knowledge is an excellent tangible asset upon which to peg a currency – better than Gold, Silver, or Debt.

The factors of production for an Innovation Economy are Social Capital, Creative Capital, and Intellectual Capital. The knowledge Inventory classifies knowledge assets in social networks. The Percentile Search Engine assembles unique knowledge asset combinations and returns their probability of executing a given business objective. The Innovation Bank matches most worthy knowledge surplus to most worthy knowledge deficit. Finally, entrepreneurs elevate knowledge assets from lower states to higher states of productivity thereby creating wealth in communities.

By analogy; in the early 1800’s Eli Whitney performed a demonstration for members of Congress by disassembling 10 working muskets, scrambling the pieces and reassembled 10 working muskets. It may seem trivial to us today, but that simple feat astonished the world; it led to the industrial revolution, and unlocked a vast amount of innovation and wealth creation. Innovation Economics is the modern day equivalent.
What Problem does it solve (150 words)?

Technological change must always precede economy growth. We are going about the process of globalization as if economic growth can precede technological change. This simple reversal is the cause for much of what is unsustainable in the world today. Innovation Economics corrects this flaw.

To make knowledge assets tangible is the Holy Grail of financial accounting. The Ingenesist Project asserts that knowledge assets are not intangible, they are simply invisible – this is a much easier problem to solve. Innovation economics solves this problem.

True valuation of knowledge assets allows for direct capitalization of people and their social, creative, and intellectual capital. Networks of knowledge assets form a new type of corporation that is fault tolerant, self regulating, risk diversified, and responsive to social priorities. Wall Street becomes the steward instead of the master. The whole game changes.

If it becomes a reality, what happens (150 words)?
If Innovation Economics becomes a reality, Social Networks will become the driving force of economic growth because human knowledge (as social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital) can be capitalized directly. Creative knowledge workers would benefit most initially.

Eventually, publically traded Innovation Bonds backed by productivity gains will replace venture capital at vastly reduced risk and cost thereby unleashing an extraordinary amount of primary and tangential innovation creating a virtuous circle.

Areas of low productivity, such as poor communities and under-privileged populations will become targets for highest returns on innovation applications. Millions of new-to-the-world businesses will emerge and nearly all existing businesses will become more efficient where human knowledge is tangible and free to assemble itself in infinite, diverse, and strategic combinations.

If done correctly, eventually most people on Earth would benefit by freedom from the shackles of debt economics.

What are the initial steps to make it happen (150 words)?

Phase 1: The initial steps are: publish our research to a wider audience, prosecute our patent application (USPTO: 20070226361), release it to public property, and begin receiving public input.

Phase 2: Publish several animated videos which describe step-by-step the role that Social Networks must play to induce the Innovation Economy. Collect more input.

Phase 3: Create an open source development platform where ideas can be collected from the global community on how to develop the three web applications specified herein.

Phase 4: Develop and release common architecture web applications for The Knowledge Inventory, The Percentile Search Engine, and The Innovation Bank.

Phase 5: Exist indefinitely as an NGO to keep the game fair and build out emerging opportunities as needed.

What is the optimal Outcome and how is it measured (150 words)?
The intended outcome is for the innovation economy to arise from the knowledge economy as the next level of economic development. The optimal result would be an improved wider distribution of wealth and the transfer of corporate prioritization to communities regarding what gets innovated and what does not. Or likewise, which existing markets dynamics are disrupted and which are not. The optimal outcome would be the emergence of sustainable enterprise over forest-to-dump consumerism.

Metrics are inherent to the algorithm of the Percentile Search Engine as follows: innovation is proportional to the rate of change of knowledge with respect to time and knowledge is proportional to the rate of change of information with respect to time. Differential Calculus is the mathematical tool used to monitor all performance indicators of this system. In fact, all of the analytical methods of finance similarly apply to knowledge assets, by design.

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