A Networked World

Innovation summit - a paradox

A while back we had a jobs summit that produced one good, original idea, a national cycleway from the top of the North to the bottom of the South. Incidentally a great way to lay a national fibre backbone. Since watered down to regional cycle bits of ways that would eventually be connected. Mhmm. Thhpbpbpppttt!

So yesterday they gave it another go, calling together 100 'entrepreneurs' to brainstorm new ideas for lifting the country out of the economic mire. Blue sky thinkers focus minds, spirits in quest for brainwaves.

Boooorrrriiinnnggg.

But in any case, this ain't how it happens. A summit, by definition takes the top people, innovation, by definition, breaks top people. Paradox. What we got was a bunch of oppertunists (that IS what an entrepreneur is yes?) wanting to stay on the bandwagon, and more power to them; but we need to be looking somewhere else.

On top of that the world has changed, the successful people from before 2007 are the very ones who are failing now, some of them spectacularly. To assume they are the people we should be asking for ideas doesn't hold water. And if an angry shouting, sorry, marketing campaign, free air travel for rich people and possum shooting are top of the list, we are sunk.

So what should we be doing? The first thing is to try to tap into the permanent floating innovation pool that is the internet and find ways to attract ideas to our economy.

Here's an idea. A publicly owned, Open, venture capital Kiva, using community funds from the Government. It goes like this

1. The tax department sends out a letter to everyone with a tax file number. It includes a password and a URL. Use all three to login to a website for Open Business plans These people are the investors (their taxes will be the seed funds so they get a say) My mate in the UK Ross Gardler has the model and has built the software, we could tweak it a bit. - the link is not direct to his site for reason that will be obvious)
2. Anyone from anywhere who thinks they have a good idea can propose it. It can be as complete or as vague as you like. (Johnnie would be in favour of that)
3. The posting serves as proof of ownership unless someone can show prior art. Simplified IP as far as we can get.
4. Anyone can critique the idea and offer suggestions.
5. Anyone can offer resources, additional funding, services, bid for roles in the business etc, attach their CV's
6. Any proposer can take the business private at any stage by putting up the money.
7. Any tax file holder can vote on whether its a good idea and at the end of the month the government hands over $50k to the top 10.
8. The money goes into an account (any bank) and must be managed through an online accounting engine such as Xero to which anyone has read access until either the company goes broke or repays the $50k (which part of OPEN didn't you get?)
9. No GST (VAT) on any of the transactions through that account while the balance is below $50k or for the first year, whichever is first.
10. Nobody gets more than one chunk of change in any one year unless they repay their original investment - if they flip the company for a profit, good on them, if they make a fortune and want to try again, good on them. Success should not be a barrier.
11. All proposers are rated according to the success of their previous ideas on the site. Failure doesn't preclude more funding next year, but it is recorded.

It would cost us $6 million a year to float 120 companies whose ideas, pretty much by definition, would not get funded by anyone else. It woudl also act as an audition service for peopel without to engage with other business people and generate their own businesses.

It really saddens me to see people with 20 and 30 years' experience in business, so-called middle management and higher, complaining because they can't get a job. With all that experience, how come they aren't creating new businesses for themselves? God knows there are plenty of them around. Maybe if we had a marketplace for business ideas, with potential funding attached, in which anyone could play, not just those already successful, some new stuff might happen.

Hell, if these people can do it, why the hell can't we?

Update, here's another reason why senior people are the wrong ones to have leading the process. I comes from the Matthew may document linked from Johnnie's post. One of the thinkign omitations he identifies is Stifling

... years ago I played a dirty trick on a group of managers at a fairly large organization. Through my consulting work, I had discovered that a particular set of individuals of the command-and-control type were causing some fairly serious issues: some extremely lucrative opportunities were being dismissed, each at a high “lost opportunity” cost.

Root cause? these individuals to a person would not allow their subordinates to have ideas. they had various ways of shooting ideas down. (read a great manifesto here called “100 ways to kill a concept: why Most ideas get shot down”) this group of managers took issue with my report. luckily, an upcoming off-site presented me with the opportunity to prove it to them.

At the off-site, there were about 75 people of varying degrees of seniority, ranging from field 
supervisors to senior execs. I gave the assignment, one of those group priority exercises 
whereby you rank a list of items individually and then as a group and compare (sort of a “wisdom 
of crowds” exercise to show that “we” is smarter than “me”).

This specifc exercise required you to rank 25 items with which you’ve crashed on the moon in relation to how important they were to your survival. NASA had compiled the correct ranking, so there was a clear answer. I did the exercise with a twist. at each table I put a ringer. I gave the lowest-ranking person the answer. it was their job to convince the command-control types they knew the right answer.

During the group exercise, not a single correct answer got heard.

After debriefng the exercise in the regular way, I had each person to whom I had given the correct
answer stand up. I announced that these individuals had offered the right answer, but their ideas 
had been stifled, mostly due to their source and stature and seniority, or lack thereof.

That's why. Getting people who have a vested interest in the status quo the right to decide about how much that status quo is disrupted is stupid on its face.

The Obama machine has tentacles

Ahem

The Obama organisation has done an almost complete census of America in its preparation for this moment, it knows who you are and where you live and what matters to you, and it has literally millions of people prepared to step up again and work for the team they helped elect and that, in new ways, they own.

Obama has, at the flick of a switch, a parallel administration for the nation that has seen how he works and has every reason to trust what he says and asks them to do. If the Republicans think that is going away, it will be the final miscalculation that should see them disintegrate as they deserve.

The media pundits are already trying to deny that this election has been a watershed, but I have the feeling that he will continue as he has started, ignoring their carping, naming it for what it is, then methodically, firmly, clearly laying out the problem, canvassing the solutions and explain them both directly and through his community of organisers and workers and then make it happen.

11 days into his term, he just kicked that machine into life.More Sticks: the Obama E-Mail List Springs into Action.

Last year, America lost 2.6 million jobs. This week, some of our biggest companies announced plans to cut tens of thousands more. The economic crisis is deepening, but President Obama and members of Congress have proposed a recovery plan that will put more than 3 million Americans back to work. You can learn more about how the plan will help your community by organizing an Economic Recovery House Meeting:

Join thousands of people across the country who are coming together to watch a special video about the recovery plan. Invite your friends and neighbors to watch the video with you and have a conversation about your community's economic situation.

The economic crisis can seem overwhelming and complex, but you can help the people you know connect the recovery plan to their lives and learn more about why it's so important.

Sign up to host an Economic Recovery House Meeting the weekend of Friday, February 6th: The President's plan passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday. But if it's going to move forward, we need to avoid the usual partisan games.

That's why supporters are opening their homes to talk with neighbors and friends about how the plan will work -- and what it means for their community.

Just LOOK at those highlighted words, my god are they powerful.

The Republicans didn't know what hit them in November, they still haven't figured it out. They are about to be hit again.

With luck Obama will drive them like a stake through the heart of much that is wrong with the US, and by extension, the rest of us.

I need your help

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for the link to Paul Zak who has a key post on trust and relationships and social capital based on their opposites; How to Run a Con.

The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others--this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action.

At some level we all know this pretty explicitly, I was talking with my SIL a few months ago, having asked my daughter and him what their plans were for dealing with the approaching meltdown.

We talked about what I'm working on and he talked about making himself useful to his community which I completely support. But quite without thinking I added, "don't forget to ask them to help you". There is no stronger social bonding stimulus than being needed.

We saw it years ago when I was involved in getting Netday started in NZ and we went to a whole bunch of techies to ask for their help in wiring up schools. Many of them expressed their relief and gratitude because they don't do painting and building jungle gymns and running cake stalls. Finally here was someone asking them to do something that they knew how to do and were good at.

The fact that they were giving away the very skills that they earned their living from was irrelevant, partly because the schools they were helping out were never going to be able to afford them anyway, but most importantly, they had been excluded from their communities because those communities didn't value their skills enough to ask them to donate them.

How many other people do we exclude that way? How many dreadful troubles do we endure because we isolate people by showing them that we don't need them?

Since NetDay I've learned a whole new coping skill, not only does asking for help not diminish me, after all it just adds to the resources I have to get anything done, it helps me become part of the community I live in.

A few months ago I needed to shift my shed 15 metres across the garden. Once I'd built the platform, the shift itself would have been a nightmare, except that I dropped into the neighbours, rounded up half a dozen fit young blokes who picked it up in one, carried it to the new location and had it done in 20 minutes.

I asked them for help, they felt good about giving it, they know I'm around to give a hand if they need it, and they will be ready to help again in the future.

Go on, monetise that, show me how that gets expressed in an economy that says if no money changes hands, nothing happens, then come and look at the extra 20 sqaure metres of garden they enabled me to create.

A new and improved Democratic Machine

My take on Obamas win missed something huge, mostly because, even though it is familiar, I don't breath US Politics. But Interceptor7 over at Kos does and he recognised the DNA of the Obama oprganisation. A new and improved Democratic Machine.

Back in the day, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley ran what is known as the Democratic Machine, and it went something like this.

What you did was build an army of loyal supporters that first got you elected and then helped you build your party and your city,and by doing so, accomplish great things. To get elected you need votes, and Daley's Democratic Machine generated and turned out voters like no one before or since.

In Chicago, Daley's ground game knew no equal. Party Aldermen and Committeemen in every precinct beat the streets to knock every door,ring every bell, and help voters get to the polls by car, foot, bus, taxi, train, or wheelchair if necessary.

Not only were they going to get your vote, they were going to get your mother-in-laws vote, your brothers vote,your grandma's vote, they were going to haul your dog down to the polls and get him to vote too. If your pootie didn't want to vote, she had better hide.

Now, I am not saying this in order to imply or endorse election fraud, what I want to emphasize is the size and scope of the Daley GOTV effort.

Our efforts in getting Barack elected President have followed the same model. This is exactly the kind of effort what won states like Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina. It is also the kind of effort that won both Daleys a total of fourteen mayoral elections.

The political acumen of the Daleys is not lost on Barack Obama.

After President-elect Obama's historic victory, pundits raved about his overwhelming ground game and how it will be studied for years. What didn't seem to be mentioned was that is was Obama who studied his mentors winning ways and them implemented them on a national level like no one before.

And as I suggested, that machine is still in place and with sites like change.gov and MyWhiteHouse.gov the tools exist to carry the process forward on a national scale.

If Obama can enable his machine not only to carry the message and make the case, but have a say in the agenda and influence the legislation, the US will have skipped straight from an oligarchy to a 21st century democracy in a single bound.

If anyone can, Obama can.

Obama

Yesterday's victory for Obama should have felt more like the triumph that it undoubtedly was, but as a denizen of lefty blogs, especially DailyKos, it was more like satisfaction that things had in fact worked out as they should.

It has been a huge privilege to watch the process from close to the centre of the action, to understand as it happened the implications of each step and the importance of each move; to know that, for example, not only did Obama have xx offices open in a state, but that each office supported tens or dozens of front-room sub-offices that did the actual  organisation of volunteers, that a state with 50 "offices" in fact had nearer 500, each of which supported maybe 150 or 200 workers.

Once you get the scale of what he had put together and the precision and strategic vision that underpinned it, the Republican bluster and bullshit looked exactly as it really was, empty of everything but fear and entitlement.

From the very beginning it was obvious that Obama had the goods and could deliver, but that he was also changing the game and as he steered calmly through the worst that the Clinton machine could toss at him, including the kitchen sink, then on to McCain, there were only two possibilities, that he would win big and going away, or that the Republcians would have to steal this one in the most egregious way and put an end to America's facade of democracy.

I still would not put it past them, Bush has two months and can cause a huge amount of damage now that he has nothing to lose, especiqally since he also faces the possibility that he will fetch up in a federal prison for his crimes. I don't hold much hope for that, but that will be the next big test, the cleaning of the stables.

I was in LA during the fiasco of the 2000 election and could hardly believe my ears and eyes that the nation had such an incompetent and corrupt electoral system, I was in Virginia when Obama launched his national career at the 2004 Democratic party convention and my mates said then that he was a future president - although even they didn't believe that he woudl be the next one. I was in DC for the 2004 election that even my very conservative workmate thought Kerry had won and then had stolen, so I have been amongst Americans at crucial electoral times in the last 8 years and the prognostications have not been good. Mostly because of the passivism that has greeted the successive coups in their nation, up to, and including the outright theft of about a trillion dollars by Wall Street in the last couple of months.

In that context, Barack Obama has worked a real miracle. And in his acceptance speech he has not let up from the relentless understanding of what needs to be done and how he is going to do it. Even his catechism of "Yes we can", in the mouth of any other American politician would have been a triumphal scream, was instead a sober and thoughtful dedication to the task. This guy really is good.

In the last 18 months he has shown us genuine strategic vision, tactical implementation of that vision, organisational focus, discipline and precision, awesome competence in a nation that has feasted far too long on bullshit and surely needs what he has to offer.

While he preaches hope, he also gets that hope alone is not a strategy, that is merely the driver of thought and research and ability to motivate that has to be turned into real, consistent, flexible, adaptable action. When people asked about his executive experience he just said, "watch how I run my campaign", and many, especially the right wing, laughed at him. They might remember that laughter now as he gently wipes the smirks off their faces.

Whether they got it or not, it was plain in the difference between the conventions, in the vacancy of the Republican campaign and its idiotic and egregiously corrupt vice presidential pick, in its failure to assemble a transition team, that they knew in their guts that they were already beaten, and they should figure out soon that the steamroller that just wiped them off the electoral map is not going to stop now that the day is over.

The Obama organisation has done an almost complete census of America in its preparation for this moment, it knows who you are and where you live and what matters to you, and it has literally millions of people prepared to step up again and work for the team they helped elect and that, in new ways, they own. Obama has, at the flick of a switch, a parallel administration for the nation that has seen how he works and has every reason to trust what he says and asks them to do. If the Republicans think that is going away, it will be the final miscalculation that should see them disintegrate as they deserve.

The media punidits are already trying to deny that this election has been a watershed, but I have the feeling that he will continue as he has started, ignoring their carping, naming it for what it is, then methodically, firmly, clearly laying out the problem, canvassing the solutions and explain them both directly and through his community of organisers and workers and then make it happen.

Those who think they have been in the driver's seat are about to discover that the passengers have not just revolted, but that they have climbed off the bus and are heading off in another direction, after taking the wheels

Meta

Just read this: Daily Kos: <UNTITLED DIARY>

 

This

Is an online community: Daily Kos: Thanks.

Excuse me a moment of pride, but I'm really proud of you guys.

When people talk about creating such things, is this really where they expect to end up? If not, they are wasting their time.

The End of Theory

There is something seductive about this idea: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."

So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right.

But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmological equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now. Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don't have to settle for wrong models. Indeed, they don't have to settle for models at all.

There's a little voice back here that says it has something to do with complexity turned inside out.

So far we have tended to think of complexity as an emergent property of many iterating simple actions that affect each other in ways that become massively unpredictable and to believe that we can manage this process by selectively tuning some of those small iterating modules.

Its a deconstructive approach that has worked pretty well for science and a lot of other stuff we do, but it doesn't deal, for example, with how we learn a handle language. So what happens if the google-isation of data has reached a point where we can take a language learning approach to almost anything.

We all live, with varying degrees of success, within highly complex sets of relationships, both within and the fact is that we deal directly with that complexity but just at a completely unconscious level, as soon as we try to explain how we do it we wind up with Derrida, nausea and hallucinations (all merely different aspects of the same thing)

What if Chris Anderson is even 51% right?

End of an Era

As of the end of May I'm back on the job market as my contract with the Stockholm Challenge has come to an end. Its been a hugely rewarding and enjoyable association and the connections I've made through it have been the making of my last decade of activities and a big chunk of my income.

Speaking of which, its time to look around for other things to do so if you know of anyone who desperately needs my particular brand of disruptive thinking and talking, allied with a pretty good line is building and supporting online relationships (the result of a quarter century of being a broadcaster where you have to make people you can't see and never meet feel comfortable with you), let me know.

Starting in the middle

I'm a huge fan of the Rise of the Stupid Network so maybe you can image what a great time I've had being able to hang out and chew the fat with this guy to myself for 24 hours on his way from Wellington to Tokyo. Even my dogs get him.

In the midst of all the yakking we came up with the idea that with blogs and facebook and whatever social networking tools, any (and one day every) conversation can start in the middle, just as you do with people you have known all your life.

And later this month I'm meeting up with Euan Semple (and hopefully Johnnie Moore) in London. Carbon debt to one side for a moment, what a cool life I have been led to by this Internet thing. I've met Euan once and never met Johnnie face to face, but I'll give you good odds that both those conversations also start in the middle.

I wonder where it goes from here. (See the next post)