From the monthly archives:

February 2010

Building Better Problems

by Dan Robles

The solution to any problem is entirely dependent on how the problem is defined. Likewise, redefining the problem, exposes huge opportunities for new solutions.

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Should Educators Command an Equity Position in Students?

by Dan Robles

The idea that a mentor may take an equity position in a protege is not new – it happens in families and extended families as elders are fully aware that the children will provide for the family in the future. The connection is not to hard to grasp that it’s in everyone’s best interest to help the kids – all of the kids. This is the social contract.

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The Interesting Thing About Interest Rates

by Dan Robles

The problem is that risk can never be negative, therefore interest rates can never be negative – that is called “breaking he buck”. Risk is a measure of volatility, or, “deviations from what is considered normal”. While there is certainly good deviations and bad deviations, there can never be a “negative” deviation from normal – it is a mathematical impossibility, a glitch.

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What is the Secret Sauce of Innovation?

by Dan Robles

Most studies on Innovation study the to 99th percentile human in the hope of discovering the “secret sauce” of wealth creation. One such study identifies 5 discovery skills and conclude that the top innovators are also in the top percentile for all these skills. What a surprise that the top university would conclude that they – and people like them – were the secret sauce of all wealth creation.

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The Investment Banker Vs. The Innovation Banker

by Dan Robles

Together with the financial banking, these two system engage in the dance of the virtuous circle of innovation enterprise. Apart, they collapse into the swirling cesspool of eternal debt and infinite interest (pun intended).

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Social Currency And The Innovation Bank

by Dan Robles

If we consider the structure of conversations and compare that to both the structure of social networks AND the structure of our financial system, we see a huge opportunity to develop an alternate financial system that can capitalize and securitize knowledge assets in social media.

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The New Definition of Innovation

by Dan Robles

The existing definition of innovation is insufficient for use as a way to identify innovation in the present. There is no way to build an innovation economy upon a flawed definition and unpredictable value of innovative activity.

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A Community of Knowledge Assets

by Dan Robles

Our culture organizes itself around winners and losers. Corporations reflect this competitive nature to the core of their Capitalist doctrine. Sports analogies abound across the enterprise straight through to the HR department always on the lookout for the most amount of superstar for the least amount of money.

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Breaking The Monopoly on Money

by Dan Robles

Many people doubt that the dollar has more than a decade or so of steam left as the interest on debts mythically exceeds the total amount of money on Earth (at least in my world). Yet banks march on, heading straight for the cliff.

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Social Media as a Vetting Mechanism

by Dan Robles

Where the vetting mechanism fails, the system fails. This has happened in countless instances from the current financial crisis to nearly every product, market, environmental calamity, or political failure in recorded history – the referees who were supposed to keep their eye on the ball, did not. Likewise, where a vetting mechanism is effective, the system is efficient.

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Video: The Calculus of Global Outsourcing

by Dan Robles

Modern Globalization is a system – it must be analyzed like a system. Data, Information, knowledge, and Innovation are profoundly related in a system. If you take away one of the components, the others become worthless.

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Video; Will Social Capitalism Replace the Corporation?

by Dan Robles

There is very little about a corporation that cannot be duplicated in social media. This calls into question the nature of social media vs. the nature of corporations. Here we uncover a third pillar to the US economic recovery; Social Capitalism.

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Video: America; A Next Developed Country

by Dan Robles

Now that the factories are gone and the rest of the World has copied all of our tricks (while not copying our mistakes) it is time to move on. What is that next watershed economic paradigm? Who is going to figure this one out? The ones who do will define the new meaning of “A Most Developed Country”

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Video: Dollar Vs. Rallod; A Mirror Image Economy

by Dan Robles

Therefore, debt and innovation are blood brothers or mirror images of the other – they are both “currencies” (means of storing value) backed by future productivity. We can build a new economy around this concept which effectively weeds out the bad parts and keeps the good parts of the institutions and infrastructure that are already in place.

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Video: Intellectual Property in the Social Media Cloud

by Dan Robles

Or maybe the last thing that Wall Street wants is for Engineers, Architects, designers, and creative people to get “royalties” on their work. That is What Wall Street does, they collect the royalties of the creative people in America….until now. Social media is a social contract, IP is our currency.

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Video; You Can’t Make a Bet Without Odds

by Dan Robles

The simple truth is that humans have not evolved to the point where they will organize themselves as knowledge assets in a financial system – they still need to use a proxy for their productivity controlled by a master, a corporation, an idealism. It’s called money, politics, and fear.

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Video: Taxonomy for Community Knowledge Inventory

by Dan Robles

ny taxonomy that is used to classify information is a candidate for the classification of knowledge. This is because knowledge is related to information in a differential equation that also includes data and innovation (another blog post).

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