Tag: social network

New Economies; May The Best Street Win

On September 7, 2011

The great dream for new economies movement is that Wall Street has finally met its match from the vast interconnected social systems that now dominate communication, organization, and commerce.

The problem is that no matter what the New Economies Movement comes up with, Wall Street will capitalize it, commoditize it, securitize it, and sell it back to us for the price of our communities. Then they’ll build derivatives and options around it and wrap it all up in a nice hedge fund that transfers all risk back to us. The Street always wins.

So why can’t we do what Wall Street does?

At Social Flights we believe that we can provide 10,000 jobs across the United States by letting people sell options on aircraft seats.

How would this work?

The Hub and Spoke system consists of about 30 major airports in the US that act as hubs. The rest are spokes and many smaller cities are barely served at all. So unless you are flying between two hubs, you will always have to catch a connection, waste time, and incur social expenses.

For the price of a typical airport lounge bar tab, a traveler can buy an option to fly a private jet non-stop between their destinations. An option is the right without the obligation to take a position in the future. The option would be convertible, transferrable, and may even be exercised on a wide variety of schedules.

Calling all unemployed entrepreneurs

Suppose that I saw a listing on Social Flights for a private jet flight from Boise Idaho to Colorado Springs taking place in three weeks and costing 300 dollars. Since I know a lot of people in both cities, I can either use the ticket myself, or I have 3 weeks to sell it for, say, 500 dollars.

This is a bargain because there are no non-stop flights between these two cities and airline prices tend to increase as the departure date approaches. The private jet can do the trip in two hours whereas the commercial airline would take 8 or more hours. I could buy an option on that flight for, say 30 dollars and resell the ticket for a $170.00 profit. If I cannot sell the ticket, then I can use the ticket, convert it to another option, or lose my 30 dollars (just like the bar tab).

I am a Capitalist

In effect, I am rewarded for my size and quality of my social network. I am rewarded for my ability to research in the Internet to find likely prospects who would seek to travel at a time savings. I am rewarded for my knowledge, associations, professional skills, and ability to analyze data and organize people. I am rewarded for finding arbitrage opportunities in an inefficient industry. I buy low and sell high – I am a Capitalist

While this may not seem like a large impact, if 5000 – 10,000 people make their living trading Social Options, the market will shift. If Social Options can be created for aviation inventory, they can be created for all inventory. For the exact same effect as a Groupon, people can trade options on goods and services while hedging against Wall Street and restoring community Values.

Don’t just change the game, change the street that it is played on….

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The Raw Material of Social Org Games

By Admin

On July 14, 2011

In General Information

Fibonacci Trust Curve

Trust Scarcity?

This article is a loose argument related to trust scarcity in social organization games. Rewarding trust in a social game is a difficult thing to do unless certain agreements and institutions are in place.

The Social Value Game

Social Flights will be introducing some game mechanics to provide incentive for people to interact with each other to form specific flight plans This will also include vendors and operators who would support their travel intentions with goods and services.

We want to dis-aggregate the incentives from a specific flight; in other words, a player does not necessarily have to be on the flight in order to receive a benefit from organizing it.

As the game develops, all players will simply keep an eye out for travel opportunities for trusted others in their social media experience. By helping their social circles to find travel opportunities, they will receive rewards which they can use when their own “perfect flight” begins to form.

Technology is not yet here, but getting close…

I would like to think that the technology has arrived which will allow people to form flights in social media, unfortunately, this is not the case. The problem is that big data has become big business. Social media platforms are funded with Data Dollars – that is, organizations who capture, combine, sell, or otherwise exploit personal data and trends in exchange for money.

Spiral of trust

When a person states their intention to fly to a distant place, this creates immensely valuable data. Such information is highly specific and even quite intimate because people share their hopes, dreams, and aspirations when they meet, travel, learn together. For this reason, Social Flights game data will be scarce, remain private, anonymized, or normalized so that it can remain in play indefinitely. There needs to be a great deal of trust in that network and, in fact, a disincentive to casting a broad public net.

Trust as Raw Material:

Social Flights has an internal social network that allows people to communicate anonymously
Travel Tribe Leaders are trusted members in a community who operates with trust, integrity, and respect
Game mechanics can dis-aggregate intentions from specific flights
Game data will normalize outcomes into “probabilities” that mask mask social data as numerical data for future games
New Social Media applications allow users to form travel circles of trusted persons with whom they are willing to share flight plan intentions

It is fairly easy to see that no single social network device will serve every requirement of a social economy – nor should their be. Instead, the integration of several devices which identify, create, and deploy trust as the raw material, will allow people to go wherever they want to go and build whatever they want to build together.

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Control The Information And Control The Game

By Admin

On May 9, 2011

In General Information

Social media is progressing in a direction where the SM application controls your information – not you. This is a game that you cannot win unless they let you win. Social Flights changes the rules by letting you control your own information. As such, we are growing in popularity among entrepreneurs who are looking for a game they can win playing by a new set of rules.

Social Flights is comprised of 2 components; Social Flights Corporate and Social Flights Travel Tribes. The corporate application provides vertical integration while the Travel Tribes provide horizontal integration. Each is hugely dependent on the other, but the travel tribe is where the value is.

Vertical Integration involves information technology; the collection and formation of system data. This is the information that helps groups stay in contact with each other giving the origin community a portal into the destination community (and vice versa) for a given flight. This helps airplane operators schedule flights, and it helps communities become attractive to entrepreneurs and other communities.

The horizontal integration is where information originates and terminates. The Travel Tribe disseminates information on the ground at both the origin and destination. What happens in a Travel Tribe, stays in a Travel tribe.

The most important aspect of data and information control is the ability to restrict it from communities who are not part of the transaction. Nobody else can know where you are going except you and the airplane operator – that’s what makes the game private. Nobody needs to know how much you are paying for a hotel room or travel service except you and the service provider – that’s what makes the game valuable. Nobody needs to know what you are doing on the ground except you and your friends – that’s what makes the game social.

A Value Game depends on the control of information. If someone else controls the information – they control the Value and there can be no game. They also control the use of information and the information technology. Don’t take this point likely; whoever controls the use of the information also controls the technology (vertical integration), not the other way around. Technology is deployed to the game – the game is not deployed to the technology. So, if you control the game, then you control the usage and the deployment of the technology; i.e., you control the value.

(Diagram credit and reference: Seven Faces of Information Literacy in Higher Education by Christine Bruce)

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The Reality of Social Networking

By Admin

On April 6, 2011

In General Information

Nothing Economic can happen until people get together and build something, period.

Social Network services are not that. Social media gives people the impression that they are getting stuff done – but they are not. Nothing economic is happening on Linkedin or Facebook or Twitter. Rather, the impact of these services is derived only from what people accomplish in reality.

Yet so many social media services sell advertising. The objective of an advertising site is to keep you in your seat where you can view more advertising. The objective of advertising as an industry is to influence you to do something other than what you already want to do. Each of these things impacts people’s activities, and therefore, much of the crap that people share on social network services.

Race to the bottom

This self–depreciating cycle does not actually create very much nor does it arrive at anywhere interesting or important. The content that keep people coming back to Social Networks is produced by a relatively few number of entertainers – people who separate themselves from consumption of the medium and instead produce content for consumption by the medium – instead of “For” the medium. Again, the objective is to keep people in their seats watching more advertising.

Did I mention that nothing economic can happen until people get together and build something?

We are in the middle of creating a different type of social network in Social Flights. We are billing it as “The Social Network where people actually do stuff” because the objective is to get people out into their community looking for other people who can help them build something. We’re still experimenting so please be patient if it still seems a little clunky.

The Last Mile of Social Media

The idea is to form travel communities in relatively small geographical areas and enable them to share an airplane to anywhere where there is another travel community. We call the The Last Mile of Social Media – empowering neighborhoods not Hollywoods.

There is no advertising on social flights; however, local vendors are encouraged to place discount coupons in direct response to a community travel objective. There is no airline schedule because the objective is for people to share an asset – the airplane. This means that the passengers tell the plane where to fly and when, not the airline.

In the end, Social Flights rewards people, venders, and aircraft operators for interacting with their communities in real life and real time – instead of their computer screens in virtual time. Now, the social network, laptop, or mobile device becomes a real productivity tool.

Back to economics:

Most logical people will ask “where do I get the money to travel to new places with new people? The answer is simple: “That is precisely why you need to travel to new places to meet new people”

Nothing economic can happen until people get together and build something, for real.

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Foursquare Economics

By Admin

On March 18, 2010

In General Information

The Next Economic Paradigm is arriving and the first entries include Foursquare. Few people understand the significance of this new class of social media applications. Foursquare contains many (but not yet all) of the components of the Innovation Economy that we have been discussing for several years at Ingenesist.com, Conversationalcurreny.com, and Relationship-economy.com.

Here is what Foursquare does have:

Geolocation: Sure, social media has been great sport for chatting with your buddies across the world, but nothing really happens until the rubber meets the road. people need to be in the same location in order to “build something” together. We call this The Last Mile of Social Media

Mayor of Popcorn: As silly as this may sound, badging it is a highly sophisticated feature that we have called the “knowledge Inventory“. In order to build anything, there must be an inventory of parts. “Knowledge” is not the exception as the crude and archaic resume system would have people believe.

Knowledge is an asset and it will perform as an asset if it is characterized in the form of a quantity and a quality. “Mayor of Popcorn”, believe it or not, is in the correct form.

Vetting Mechanism: Vendors are an equal part of the social network and will soon provide their coupons, specials, and other economic incentives on Foursquare because advertising any other way is dead meat. Vendors will live in a system that is in their best interest to practice high integrity rather than low integrity while favoring mom and pop operations that live in the community. We call this “Social Vetting” as it lives beyond law and government – let the market be the judge.

Here is what they do not have (yet): Currency

The attraction of foursquare is the promise of fun and fancy crowd play. The incentive is to be seen as connected, mobile, and plugged-in. As such, people will be implicitly attracted to you like bees to a flower. In actuality, this game takes Social Media right to the edge of becoming a new financial system that can compete with, and challenge, the almighty dollar. No kidding.

Remember that currency is a social agreement. History shows that people will trade seashells, tulip bulbs, paper notes, and little copper disks as a device to store and exchange value. All value is expressed in terms of human incentives of some kind. Well here we have it. Now let the entrepreneurs play.

That is a huge, huge, huge matter.

The dollar represents productivity….well, so does Foursquare. What will entrepreneurs do in this environment? How will entrepreneurs organize communities around “things-o-do” – or even – “things-that-must-be done”?

Here is the hint. The idea that innovation is the exclusive domain of corporations, academia, or government is now as obsolete as Twitter. Innovation is now related to knowledge as knowledge is related to information. Anything that increases the rate of change of knowledge in a community can now be defined as innovation in Foursquare.

Debt and innovation represent the exact same thing.

Innovation is a promise of future productivity. Debt is also a promise of future productivity. It is only a matter of time that all of the activity in this new generation of social media applications will resolve to, and aggregate around, a new form of currency that will compete with the dollar itself. Mark these words.

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1.3 Trillion Dollar Professional Contact Market

By Admin

On June 30, 2009

In General Information

“Hey, I know a guy who owes me a favor …”

It is only a matter of time until professional contacts will be for sale. The problem is that the ROI (return on investment model) is such a poor valuation tool for social media. Another valuation tool used in finance is called Real Options. An option is the right, without the obligation, to act on an opportunity at some time in the future. Social Networks, friends, family, and professional contacts behave much more along these lines.

Five Easy Pieces:

While the calculation for the value of an option is complex, the things we need to plug in are fairly simple in the context of social media:

1.    There must be an inventory of the assets
2.    The future date when the asset can be acquired must be known
3.    The cost of acquiring the asset must be known
4.    The value effects on the enterprise must be estimated
5.    The uncertainty related to the asset must be estimated

The term “asset” in social media space may include: Knowledge, skill, an undertaking of a new project, or the generation of a new idea, etc.

The Social Networking Manifesto:

The objective of the building a social network is to know where the knowledge assets are, how much they can help you, how much they cost to exercise, and the certainty that they will be applicable, available and useful when you need them. Conversely, the best way to increase the value of a social network is to be visible to others, tell people what you can do for them, tell people what you need from them, and establish a reputation for reliability.

Most importantly, everyone must have the right, without the obligation, to accept or decline the opportunity. This is what jump starts ‘supply and demand’ and makes a market a market

Let’s consider all options:

To estimate the value of an option to call on anyone in your network use a financial option calculator tool on the web and plugged in social media numbers. Let’s use Linkedin as the knowledge inventory; 40 million knowledge assets also hold options with their contacts. Say that the expiration date is 1 year (for tax reasons). Assume the market value of their skill is 100 dollars and that at some point in the next year, the value of their skill relative to yourself becomes 200 dollars. The right to buy the asset at the earlier price is worth a premium. Suppose that the volatility of the asset is 50% and the interest rate is 7%.

The value of the “call” is worth about $3.47 dollars. The Call is an option contract that gives the holder the right to buy a certain quantity of an underlying security from the writer of the option, at a specified price up to the specified expiration date.

The value of options in a network:

For the above scenario assuming all assets are equal in price of 100 dollars; if someone has 10,000 1st and 2nd level contacts on Linkedin, the value of their implied call option is about 34,700 dollars. If Linkedin were a stock market, the value of the social contracts that people have with each other is 34K x 40M = 1.3 Trillion Dollars market value for the contracts that people hold and trade.

This is not even the value of the transaction – only the right to have a transaction. The value of the social contract is in the conversations that they hold. Contracts are a financial instrument that can be traded, combined, diversified, and aggregated for real money. It’s only a matter of time.

The Ingenesist Project specifies the structure of an innovation economy where a knowledge inventory, a percentile search engine, and an innovation bank will facilitate and aggregate the 5 components of Option Valuation. Social media applications form the operating system for the market in options.

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Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match

By Admin

On June 22, 2009

In General Information

The $40 Billion Dollar Dowry

Every organization wants to attract the most qualified employees and match them to jobs for which they are best suited. The human resources department is responsible for matching a knowledge surplus to a knowledge deficit through the hiring process. Fortunately for them, there is no knowledge inventory in society and managers don’t necessarily know what they want.

Human resources, training, and labor relations managers and specialists held about 868,000 jobs in 2006. The following tabulation shows the distribution of jobs by occupational specialty:

Training and development specialists    210,000
Employment, recruitment, and placement specialists    197,000
Human resources managers    136,000
Compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialists    110,000
Human resources, training, and labor relations specialists, all other    214,000

An HR Generalist pulls an average income of about $50,000 per year; A Director earns up to $140,000 per year. The total HR national payroll is estimated at $40 Billion annually.

Commodity Management:

Human Resources creates the impression that people are merely commodities to be treated as expenses rather than assets; or at best, like office machines or vehicles, despite assurances to the contrary. The HR profession is built on the assumption that people cannot manage themselves, that human behavior is random and intangible, the independent variables for success are always known by management, and that the key words on a resume is the best predictor of a good match.

Innovation Economics; the science of incentives:

Social Media is providing systems for people to organize and manage their own career. True knowledge inventories are forming as social groups coalesce around standard taxonomies of professional practice outside the corporate construct. Knowledge assets are being vetted in communities of peers and the resume is being replaced by a Social Network Profile and “Search Engine Footprint” which more accurately predicts the quality and quantity of knowledge assets. In the near future, a predictive search engine will be able to predict the probability that various collections of knowledge assets can execute a specific business objective at a known cost. Scenarios can be tested and compensation will reflect true supply and demand.

Superior Value Comes in Many Different Packages:

So what happens when top management meets the new Human Resources Training and Content Development Manager who was sent by the Social Networks Search Engine to build the new corporate Blog and Social media strategy – sporting facial tattoos, a nose ring, and a black kilt, and dreadlocks? If the fact that a top manager is not comfortable with a person of a particular culture or lifestyle can be perceived as detrimental to the innovation capacity of the organization, that organization is threatening its own survival.

Don’t Shoot The Fiddler

The story of Fiddler on the roof centers on Tevye, the father of five daughters, and his attempts to maintain his family and religious traditions while outside influences encroach upon their lives. He must cope with both the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters—each one’s choice of husband moves farther away from the customs of her faith. The story resolves with a slow acceptance of the new world and creeping redefinition of what love is and what love can be.

In an Innovation Economy, the perfect match is no longer determined by those inside the construct of tradition, rather, it is determined by those entrepreneurs on the outside redefining tradition – and earning 40 billion dollars.

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The New Economic Paradigm; Part 6: The Business Plan

By Admin

On April 10, 2009

In General Information

The objective of this series is to contain what we know about social networks within the construct of the financial system. The intention is for knowledge to behave, and thereby trade like a financial instrument. In prior articles, we discovered the currency, the inventory, the institutions, and the entrepreneurs of the next economic paradigm. This module will construct the business plan:

A business plan is the blue print for the construction of enterprise.

Like the construction of any tangible asset, an inventory of parts is assembled in strategic proportions. The ability to accomplish this gives the enterprise a strategic and competitive advantage in a market.

Business failures are knowledge failures

Most enterprises will emphasize design, or service, or performance or price in their proprietary secret sauce of market success. The question becomes, what quantities and qualities of strategic components allow the new enterprise to create a positive economic outcome.

Most business failure are due to knowledge deficits such as the inexperienced management team, a poor assessment of market conditions, under estimating the amount of money needed, under estimating a competitor, loss of a key employee, or the poor understanding of the technology, etc. These are knowledge problems not financial problems.

Prediction is the quality of knowledge:

To solve the knowledge problems is to decrease the risk of innovating and increase the predictability of innovations. To decrease the risk will decrease the cost, and increase the availability, of venture capital. To increase the predictability would increase entrepreneurial activity.

The Unit Business Plan:

The business plan of the innovation economy is very simple; it starts with the single transaction between two people. The lender provides information and the borrower combines the information with their existing knowledge to create more knowledge. This single transaction has a value of 1 unit of currency and we call it a unit business transaction:

The Parallel Circuit:

Now we will assemble these single transactions in many combinations. When we combine two unit transactions in a parallel circuit. This represents a brain storming session between two people.

The Percentile Search Engine matches the person with the most worthy knowledge supply to a person with the most worthy knowledge demand. The transaction is a simple conversation and the outcome is a prototype process, system, method, or iteration.

The Series Circuit:

The next transaction type is modeled as two unit business transactions occurring in a series circuit. This represents a product development cycle.

Each cycle of these transactions is an improvement to the business objective. Each time the transaction occurs there is a net increase of new knowledge and therefore an increase in value. New options are created. The conversation stops when the product is ready for the market, cancellation, or next physical iteration.

The transaction is recorded as an event between two known persons of known knowledge inventories. The transaction is stored in the intellect of the participants and becomes their property in the form of a knowledge asset represented by the things they create with their knowledge.

The Social Network:

Now if we combine the parallel transaction with the series transaction we have what now looks like a network. In practice, we know that strong networks of people freely exchanging ideas make organizations better, smarter, and more efficient. Networks are where knowledge and community wisdom is stored. A network is fault tolerant, if one person leaves, the network survives. For a relatively small input into a network, we can produce a large output of new knowledge – we have a learning organization.

However, in society, these interactions are largely accidental; people meet at Church, Starbucks, and Social Events or by word of mouth. Other times, these interactions are concentrated inside a single community of very similar people such as a technical conference, group meeting, or lunch buddies and are often not well diversified. More recently, interaction is self selecting through social media devices such as Twitter, Linkedin, Craigslist, Biznik, and Meetup, etc.

What if the social interactions could be made less random and more intentional?

Suppose interactions be designed with a specific purpose by the entrepreneur as a means toward producing a unique outcome. The Innovation Bank will combine people of complementary knowledge assets in a calculated manner in order to arrive at specific business approaches and applications.

What if Innovation could be made less random and more intentional?

The Multiplier Effect:

A special case business plan is called the Multiplier Effect. In effect, building a network of applications from a network of knowledge assets.

Suppose that a company owns composite material technology for use on aircraft. Since the company specializes in airplanes, they have no intention of pursuing other applications such as recreational equipment, energy production, or health care products.

The Innovation Bank:

Suppose that the company could deposit this asset in a bank and collect interest. The Search Engine can scan the business landscape to find persons or organizations with a worthy knowledge deficit in the area of your technology. The originator holds the option to see what those other companies invent and hold the right to use their new ideas in an aircraft application.

Contracts manage those options. Those contracts are social contracts and they can be traded. They are a form of currency – or stored value.

In the event of a cyclic downturn, instead of “laying off” knowledge assets, people can work in tangential industries where they will continue developing – literally putting “Knowledge in the Bank” – to be called back to their original company when market conditions improve. A mobile knowledge asset increases in value and continually becomes smarter and more productive over time. This is not socialism, this is not capitalism, this is Ingenesism – from the root word: Ingenuity.

Market Efficiencies:

With an innovation Bank, a company can reduce their Research and Development costs and create additional revenue in a tangential innovation market. Millions of people are being layed off work from corporations – billions upon billions of dollars of innovation potential is being squandered. With reduced cost and risk of innovation, The new American corporations will specialize in inventing, networking, and applying new ideas as their primary revenue source.

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The Global Financial Crisis; The End Game

By Admin

On February 18, 2009

In General Information

The year is 2024, no burning cities, no mass hysteria, no bread lines; the economy is on an exponential growth curve. It took a while, but the financial crisis of ended in an anticlimactic sort of way. Sure, lots of hedge fund bankers became unemployed, some went to jail, and many companies once deemed titans of industry have disappeared, but nobody seemed to notice much anymore.

Government debt has been eliminated and Wall Street has become the steward of what has become an Innovation Economy rising from the ashes of debt economics. The transition, in fact, was surprisingly smooth. Social Network applications such as Facebook, Linkedin, G+, and many more, developed a clever way to make knowledge tangible outside the construct of Wall Street and the traditional corporations and people began trading knowledge like currency.

When inflation hit, the dollar started to fall in value, people began trading a different currency called the rallod (dollar spelled backwards). The rallod was backed by future productivity resulting from innovation rather than future productivity supporting debt. When the dollar finally crashed, it pegged to the rallod and the economy began to grow again with an astonishing, yet peaceful, transfer of wealth and power to open sourced self-regulating communities; i.e., society in general. The vicious cycle of debt economics was reversed just in time. It’s still hard to believe what happened.

Today the engines of economic growth are tens of thousands of hot new start-ups that exist in the form of “Value Games” related to specific technology areas rather than the old corporation model. They automatically cluster around a technology and spin off other start-ups at an incredible rate in a strange nesting arrangement called the “tangential innovation” market. Most innovation is open sourced because the “Patent” (and protectionism in general) is no longer the center of the innovation finance universe, rather, the “secret sauce” of social, creative, and intellectual capital is the most valuable asset today.

About 15 years ago, something resembling the human genome project mapped all knowledge in the form of social, creative, and intellectual capital that exists in society to a very high granularity. An API standard was created to represent knowledge assets like packets of code that are processed by a community algorithm. The CV/resume is an old bar joke now. Thanks to a visionary government, 1st amendment protections were built into this inventory with anonymity laws and privatized TOU; creators own what they create.

An open source percentile search engine was created to enable entrepreneurs to build unique collections of knowledge assets and predict the probability that various combinations of these assets could successfully execute a business plan. High diversification induced hyper-innovation around technologies and the resulting innovations are spun out to be reabsorbed by different and diverse communities of practice in continuous iterations forming a virtuous vortex of new systems, methods, and solutions. Sketched out, these arrangements looked like electrical “integrated” circuits. Wealth creation is intense.

Since the knowledge inventory has mapped all knowledge and the Percentile Search Engine calculated probabilities and scenarios, the Innovation bank formed to make most worthy and optimal matches between knowledge surplus and knowledge deficit in a community. Since the probability of innovation success has become predictable, innovation risk is now diversified away. Innovation insurance products abound. With near-zero innovation risk the cost of venture capital has approached 5-7 % instead of 500-2000% of less than a decade ago. Banks now issue innovation bonds on the public market to finance innovation in society. For an investment of such high return and such little risk, participation is near universal. This created another virtuous circle; the more innovation that occurs, the more money is created. The more money that is created, the more innovation occurs.

Instead of having jobs, many people in a geographic area are pinged by the Percentile Search Engine which calculates the likelihood that their interaction together will increase the probability of successful execution of a business plan when combined with other knowledge assets. Instead of earning wages, people collect micro-royalties specified by contracts on capital asset sub-sections. These micro-royalties add up to substantial residual income enjoying a multiplier effect as their work continues downstream over their lifetime. The government funds social security through it’s own innovation ventures. Service workers such as police, teachers, fire fighters, nurses, local merchants, etc., are key beneficiaries because of their impact on the community is directly associated with productivity.

Many of the senior knowledge workers have determined that they can earn more money by taking an equity position in their students, and the students of their student. Unlike a decade ago, pyramid schemes in innovation economics are sustainable and generate astonishing profits. Mentors have entered the landscape in vast numbers and apprenticeships have become abundant. The income potential for the “creating creators” boggles the imagination. Again, a virtuous circle has formed between the mentor and the student. In aggregate, wisdom is being retained, refined, and transferred efficiently throughout social networks.

University “degrees” have disappeared in favor of unique combinations of knowledge assets that are continually SEO’d for best Percentile Search Engine Placement. People do not compete directly, rather, they compete with the Percentile Search Engine in the local market place by cooperating among each other. As owners of their knowledge assets, the entrepreneurial spirit is ubiquitous. No individual has either a monopoly or an identical knowledge set as anyone else. Everyone has perfect information about the knowledge assets in a market. People are pinged for different reasons at different times for different rates depending on supply and demand. Continuous education is a social event in itself, often mistaken for recreation!

Even the poorest areas of the planet are getting into the action because, by definition, the parts of an economy with the highest potential for technological change correspond to opportunities that return the highest dividends in an innovation economy. Arbitrage opportunities between master and oppressor have disappeared worldwide.

Like a neural network, the economic system of tangible knowledge is self-correcting, fault tolerant, and self-regulating. Governments across the globe tried to stop the social network driven innovation economy – but they eventually gave up. It was like trying to stop water; it flowed between the cracks and simply eroded the barriers. The most incredible outcome is that innovation now reflects long term social priorities instead of short term Wall Street priorities.

Oil production has been replaced by superconducting wind turbines, global temperatures have stabilized, all cars are electric or “water leakers” (as the hydro’s are affectionately known), many diseases have been cured, and the list goes on. It is hard to believe this happened in only 12 years. Then again, the Internet had only been widely used 15 years prior to 2009. Did I mention, we’re finally sending a multinational expedition to Mars…

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Pride, Prejudice, and the Relationship Economy

By Admin

On January 3, 2009

In General Information

Fifteen years ago, I found myself at a remarkable crossroad of social networking. I had just delivered a paper on the NAFTA Mutual Recognition Document (MRD) for Engineering Professionals at an academic conference at a University in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico. Those were exciting times; the MRD was the first modern attempt to treat knowledge like a tangible financial instrument.

My paper was well received and after so much preparation, I decided to take a walk to unwind. It was a warm evening and I hiked briskly down a side street drifting deep into contemplation about the possibility of a great new international social network. Engineers from both developed and less-developed countries could build the infrastructure for real economic growth against the forces of oppression and cheap labor.

Soon, the pavement turned to dirt and I realized that I was very lost. I looked up through the haze of smoke and dust casting awkward shadows from a lonely street lamp through the tangle of power lines. Nearby, a group of Cholos sipped their Caguamas from various crouch positions. In the distance the sound of Mariachi music, dogs barking, a televised soccer match, and a crying baby droned on in a muted cacophony. The smell of Carne Asada combined oddly with musty earth, car exhaust, and a distant sewer vent. The world suddenly became surreal as my enthusiasm for social networking gave way to foreboding anxiety.

In the corner of my eye, I caught the shadow of a figure limping toward me from behind a brick wall long under construction. Old, torn and stained ranchero style clothing hung from the frame of the dark figure that approached. His boot heals were worn to the ground and his broad dark bandito mustache hung low contrasting with groomed hair. His weathered face, expressionless, relayed his many years of life in the parched desert.

My anxiety turned to terror as my worst fear appeared before my eyes. This dark stranger raised his hand to reveal the shiny barrel of a very large handgun. I was too scared to move. My mind raced as my heart screamed out “DEAR GOD, PLEASE DON’T LET IT END LIKE THIS”. Then, in a smooth reverent motion, the dark stranger held the pistol flat with both hands as if presenting a gift.

He calmly spoke in simple Spanish, “Would you like to buy my pistol?” After an long pause, I found myself stuttering back in my broken Spanish “You have a very nice gun sir, but I am not in the market for one today, thank you”. He returned the weapon to his pocket and offered a sincere salutation of good health to me and my family before walking back into the darkness. At that moment, he reminded me more of my late grandfather who I missed dearly rather than evil presence I so feared a mere 20 seconds earlier.

My heart raced as I retraced my steps back to Campus. Suddenly it occurred to me: If this old man thought that I had enough money to buy his gun, why didn’t he use the gun to take my money? I asked a local colleague about my experience to which his response was, “The old man saw that you looked respectable. He knew that you could be trusted with the responsibility of owning the weapon and not present a threat to his family, children or community (i.e., HIS social network)”

I realized that this poor dark stranger of the night paid me the highest professional compliment I have ever received. I can only hope to find in myself the humility to live up to his prejudice and to live down to my own.

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Social Enterprise; Rating Systems

By Admin

On October 31, 2008

In General Information

There is an ongoing discussion about the rating system for articles posted to a business oriented social network site that I belong to. While am not part of the discussion, my one and only post to that site had been rated very low despite the fact that I am recognized internationally in the subject matter of that particular article. I stopped posting articles to rated sites because the rating systems are flawed at the core of logic – Frankly, it’s too risky. As the creativity, originality, or controversy of the post increases, the disincentives to sharing it also increases. I don’t want my customers googling me to see this rating without also being able to google my reviewer. No sour grapes – I’d wear a D+ from Stephen Hawking as a badge of honor.

The objective of any business/social network in today’s world should be to make human knowledge more tangible outside the construct of the corporation, such that it emulates a financial instrument – at the end of the day, it’s about the money. Otherwise Social Networking amounts to active recreation – like guitar hero, or tubing; fun but somewhat trivial.

ALL financial instruments, without exception, are described in terms of a quantity and a quality. ALL quantity and quality measures for financial instruments are statistical in nature – that is, they fall on some kind of “bell curve”. This is true for EVERYTHING from a stock valuation to credit score to marketing demographics to health/home/life/car/business insurance, baseball players, GPA, etc. – the bell curve is ubiquitous. Whoever is not minimally familiar with the simplest basic concepts of a Normal Distribution, et al, is at a severe and unfortunate disadvantage in the innovation economy. This is how the world of money is organized, this is what money is, this is what Wall Street does – for better or worse, like it or not….it is what is.

One obvious failure of most Social network rating systems is the linear 1-5 “stars”. If there were 6 stars then at least we could have a leg up on applying the most valuable mathematical tools available from the world of wealth and value creation (hence, Six Sigma). Second – the bell curve is not linear and the reviewer needs to be aware of this. 6 stars would mean that a post falls (in some measure) between 97%-100% of all similar level posts ever read by the reviewer. 5 stars falls in the 85%-97% range; 4 stars, 50%-85%; 3 stars, 35%-50%; 2 stars, 3%-15%; 1 star 0-3%.

If Calculus isn’t your thing, consider this – the bell curve rating system makes the reviewer really think about who they are in the process, the responsibility they hold in the rating of others, and the implications of their ratings – too high, or too low. It would be good to know how many articles the reviewer has read and rated, the average of their ratings, as well as their own rating on articles published (is this staring to sound like EBay? – it should, at 25B market cap, they’re not silly people). Social accountability does wonders for market efficiency and wealth creation.

Social Networks are ideally suited for correctly rating their own knowledge inventories so that when their members go out in the new world trying to make a living, it is known to all that they have been vetted by a respected community. This increases the value of the member and it increases the value of the community in the market. Communities that empower and release great talent to a market actually empower themselves; Harvard, GE, Frank Zappa. This has happened at the local level since the stone ages.

What about our competitive instincts? There can only be one winner and the rest are losers, aren’t all good Capitalists supposed to decimate thy neighbor? Always remember, it is all about the perfect combination of average assets, not necessarily the single excessive asset that makes product most valuable in a market. The market for Toyotas is far greater than the market for Ferraris, yet each are competitive in their respective market. The studies of ‘beauty’ discovered a collection of perfectly average features – in the eye of the beholder, consistent with balance and harmony. So we’ll need to drop the win-lose culture on this one and worry about competing with the real threats that lie before us.

Sure, most people will complain about such a system because it is too complicated, too math-ish, not the easy tweet (OMG CUL8R!). But this is the reality of how money is organized – and disorganized (did I mention Wall Street yet?). There is no exception, there is no rational alternative – the world does not care if people agree with the way things are or if they understand the math.

Fortunately, once people learn to roll over this metaphysical speed bump, the rest is real easy as a vast world of possibility for generating extreme wealth in social networks will unfold before our eyes!! Knowledge tangibility is the Holy Grail of modern finance but Social Networks are at risk of squandering this unique and historical opportunity to paint this empty canvas in their own image. Act now, please – this chance may never happen again.

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Social Enterprise; Innovation Clusters

By Admin

On October 29, 2008

In General Information

Innovation clusters are all the rage in regional economic development circles. Actually, they are “industrial clusters” because several companies in similar industries collocate in the same geographical area. The industrial cluster then attracts supporting industry and often causes the migration of educated and motivated people to the prospect of jobs. I suspect the ‘innovation’ moniker comes from the notion that newer industries locate near centers of venture capital, like planets forming from the dust of the cosmos.

There are, however, a few drawbacks to industry clusters; they are vulnerable to stagnation, silos, and external shocks. As companies become organized and technologies mature, patents and trade secrets take hold. As they ‘go public’, SEC regulation effectively places a gag order on everyone and sharing slows while stagnation sets in. Soon after, dozens of nimble companies consolidate into a single giant to achieve economies of scale. Finally, silos form under the weight of multiple layers of management. Then, something somewhere happens to shock the cluster; the end of the cold war leveled the So Cal aerospace cluster. 9/11 busted the Seattle Aerospace cluster. The dot.com bomb stunted Seattle, Silicon Valley, and Route 128. Hurricanes hit the petroleum cluster, stem cell and genetic engineering legislation stalled biotechnology, and corruption continues to shock financial institutions. At the end of the cycle, companies divest, people defect and a new planet starts to form someplace else.

While occasional cleansing, in a Schumpeterian sense, is good for industries, the extreme volatility takes a horrendous toll on that invisible turbine of the economic engine – social fabric. Families, friendships, professional networks are strained or collapse and those who dedicate their life to a career path – the pure innovator themselves – can be left marginalized by obsolescence.

The Calculus of Innovation Economics does not oppose industrial clusters; however, it does favor something called “technology clusters” in a business structure called the “tangential innovation” market. For example; composite materials technology is very useful in many applications like aircraft, medical devices, transportation, recreation, and even musical instruments. The airplane company has no intention of building cellos and the automobile company has no intention of building snow boards. As non-competing industries, they can readily share technology and people. The system is naturally diversified and inoculated against stagnation, shocks and silos; if one industry encounters hardship, people and capacity can shift easily to another industry preserving knowledge and expanding social networking benefit while the damaged industry heals or dies off. Corporations may not like this idea, but social networks should.

The science of Innovation Economics goes a step further by modeling the business structure of tangential innovation markets as an integrated financial system. Suppose and Originator Company has a promising new composite technology idea but is unable to meet the ROI requirements of their stockholders. Today, such innovation would be shelved. In an innovation economy, tangential markets are factored into the business case. The Percentile Search Engine can determine what other industries would be most worthy borrowers of your technology, if developed. The Innovation Bank can estimate the return on investment that can be expected through the tangential market as if it were another customer. The additional revenue projection would allow the originator to meet the ROI requirement prior to committing development funds. Intellectual Property can be managed with contracts enforced through social network vetting. The originator can hold an option to see further development conducted by tangential users effectively multiplying their R&D reach and further adding to the expected return.

Then something magical will happen. At some point, the value of the tangential innovation market would exceed the value of the origination market. The originator will begin to specialize in pure innovation as a primary product and airplane applications as the secondary product. As all industries in the technology cluster begin sharing technology among each other, R&D costs and risks are effectively spread across industries. As risk is diversified away, the cost of venture capital approaches single digit rates.

Then, another magical thing will happen. As the mixing of people and ideas accelerates, the definition of corporate boundaries will become more fluid. Ownership will exist in the form of contracts among entrepreneurs now defined by social networks, options, and derivatives in a diverse innovation enterprise.

The knowledge inventory will house the assets rather than office cubicles. The ‘secret sauce’ of knowledge asset allocation becomes more tangible, safer, flexible, and liquid than any patent could ever be. Innovation will always be proportional to the rate of change of knowledge that the more diverse assets yields. The Percentile Search Engine will match surplus “secret sauce” to deficits of “secret sauce” much better than multiple layers of management in the past. The Innovation Bank will account for all transactions, obligations, and participation and distribute dividends (rather than hourly wages) to the owners of knowledge assets. The system will regulate itself through social vetting rather than supporting a cumbersome HR department.

New ideas will get developed in the technology cluster where they would never have been able to meet ROI in the industrial cluster. The innovation economy induces a multiplier effect on innovation by reducing risk, eliminating barriers to sharing ideas, and lowering the cost of capital.

While the boom bust cycle of Industrial Clusters has brought us a great distance in economic development, technology clusters in an Innovation Economy supported by social networks may turn out to be vastly more efficient at economic growth without the vulnerabilities of industry clusters.

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The Ingenesist Project – press release

By Admin

On October 21, 2008

In General Information

We have launched The Ingenesist Project. The Innovation Economy is an absolutely huge and necessary step forward for all of us. The current financial system is unstable and it will fail. At best, the innovation economy can increase human productivity sufficiently to support the debt load. At worst, there needs to be a system of trade in place for society in the event of a crash or devaluation so that people can purchase the necessities until the recovery can take hold. So yes, this is serious business.

Anyone following this blog please spread the word. I need to get people to the point where they will read the 18 articles – after which, hopefully, their outlook on the tangibility of knowledge in social networks will be permanently altered.

My challenge, of course, is to make a very difficult subject matter easy to explain and compelling enough to call people to action. Those 18 articles condense 400 years of financial industry development and history into a few pages. Yes, the analogy between social networks and finance holds well. This is not easy to explain, but the solution to the financial mess is right under our noses. It’s almost too simple to see.

The forum has been added to solicit threaded comments to the 18 articles. This is the backbone to the open source development. I hope to build future posts on the comments that arise – a feedback loop. We will identify the sub components, partners, strategies, and action items together. Participants will pay each other in a new currency.

I will soon simplify and interpret the preferred embodiments from the patent which will illuminate the countless new-to-this-world business opportunities that will become available to entrepreneurs in this environment.

As a demonstration; vetting mechanisms make markets more efficient. Ebay has the feedback score, Craigslist has the flagging feature – this is fact. Social networks are perfectly suited to act in this manner across the entire spectrum of commerce. This is a multi-billion dollar industry that can be very easily monetized in the innovation economy. I hope that others can see this too. There is a great deal of wealth to be generated for each other.

I would like to thank all of the people who advise this program. I soon hope to invite a Board of Directors and formalize the growing concern that is The Ingenesist Project. Anyone reding this, I am an open networker on Linked in – sent me a invite and I’ll respond.

*************************************************

For immediate release:

The Ingenesist Project; Putting an End to Debt Economics

(Seattle) The Ingenesist Project is an open source economic development program that will challenge America’s financial meltdown head-on by creating an innovation economy trading rallods (dollar spelled backwards) backed by innovation instead of dollars that are backed by debt.

“Deficit spending is unsustainable. When the dollar crashes, People will need an alternate economy to trade in – one whose currency is backed by something tangible; and there is there is nothing more tangible than the human imagination, including gold”, says originator, Dan Robles. “Capitalism likes competition; well today, Social Networks are the ultimate competitor”

The Ingenesist Project has identified three relatively simple web applications which, when applied to Social Networks, will allow human intellect, social capital, and creativity to become tangible outside the construct of Wall Street and Corporations.

By definition, the rallod is pegged to the national debt, as such, The Ingenesist Project has 10 trillion rallods (and counting) to distribute. Participants in the Ingenesist Project Development Forum will award these rallods to each other on a reputation scale for their work in design, development, and improvement of the three web application that will release society from the shackles of debt economics.

The forum is open to anyone and participants can earn millions of rallods for their work in developing these applications.

The New ‘Stock’ Market

The Ingenesist Project has a patent pending for an Innovation Banking System to finance social innovation and will release all rights to the public domain.

“This is one of the most important patents applications published in our time. Countless ‘new-to-the-world’ business plans and patentable methods, systems, and devices will result from the The Ingenesist Project”, says Robles “Everything changes from the University System to the prioritization of global resources. Wall Street will be come the steward instead of the master”

Entrepreneurs are encouraged to patent, protect, or contain all intellectual property that they develop in the new economy and become as wealthy as they possibly can under the condition that they pay royalties, equity, or options to their knowledge inventory.

The entrepreneur’s “Secret-Sauce”, however, must be shared with The Ingenesist Project in order to improve the Percentile Search Engine Algorithm for the benefit of the public domain.

The Rallod

The U.S. National Debt is over 10 trillion dollars. Assuming deficit spending stops today, every man, woman, and child in the US is responsible for $33,500.00.

This means that $33,500.00 of every person’s productivity has already been spent. Obviously, the only way to pay the debt is to increase every person’s productivity by exactly $33,500.00.

The only sustainably way to increase human productivity is innovation. If the dollars crashes and pegs to the Rallod – the innovation economy will replace the debt economy and those who build it will become the bankers of tomorrow.

More Information:

Please review www.Ingenesist.com

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