The Next Economic Paradigm

Tag: expert

How Knowledge Assets Live In Community

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.

Social media has every industry trying to understand the concept of community.  Nature and our environment continues to demonstrate to humanity that there is far more cooperation going on than competition. There is tragedy looming at both ends of our political spectrum and some people are realizing that we are all in this together.

Twitter shows us that everyone is an expert at something and nobody is an expert at everything.  Corporations must understand that someone not performing adequately cannot be treated as flotsam subject to jettison at the next layoff or outsourcing opportunity.  They soon see that their customers disappear as well – because they are the same.  Communities, people, social networks, and their integrated knowledge assets are the mis-allocated asset being squandered by losing management teams, not land, labor or capital.

Like most valuable assets, there is a perfectly legitimate market for everyone in a community – nobody need be excluded, marginalized or laid off. Social Media is turning the tables on the hierarchy.  Old winners who don’t play by the new rules quickly become the new losers. Maybe we ought to run our economy like a community instead of losing so badly at trying to decimate our competition; each other.

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Fattest Cat Bets Against Dollar (and what we can do about it)

In 2006 John Paulson (of no relation to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ) bet that the sub-prime mortgage market would tank and housing prices would fall on a national scale, according to a new book The Greatest Trade Ever by Greg Zuckerman. He cleaned up with 4 billion dollars in personal gains, 20 Billion for his firm.

Wonder where your money went?

“John Paulson took it,” wrote Peter Cohen of BloggingStocks. Want to know what Paulson is buying this year? Gold. Betting against the dollar is his latest ploy and so far seems to be working. Ummmm…this means that the rest of us are basically screwed, again.

Paulson’s investing lessons:

1. Don’t Rely on Experts
2. Bubble Trouble
3. Focus on Debt Markets
4. Master New investments
5. Insurance Pays
6. Experience Counts
7. Don’t Fall In Love
8. Luck Helps

Hey Kids, let’s learn from the master:

1. Don’t rely on Experts: They are the crooks. The Mexican Peso crisis was not caused by foreigners; it was caused by Mexican elite running away from their own currency and sparking a wider run. See Johnny Run….

2. Bubble Trouble: Further evidence is seen in speculative bubbles appearing in mundane fixed assets like land, minerals, and alternate currencies around the world.

3. Focus on Debt: If you have cash, you’ll lose it to inflation. But if you have debt, you’ll lose that too. If you have too much debt and you’ll go bankrupt. If you have too much cash and you’ll become equally broke. The trick is to hold just as much cash as you hold debt and when it’s all over, you’ll be no better or no worse off.

4. Master new investments: In the old system, if I trade a dollar for an apple, I lose the dollar but gain an apple. In the next economic paradigm, I share an idea but I still retain the idea; and currency multiplies – master the new investment!

5. Insurance Pays if you know how to play; if you can identify the peril, you know the probability that it will get you, and you know the consequences of the loss – you can “play” insurance. People must reorganize around an “insurance system” enabled by social networks that can influence these factors.

6. Experience Counts; While corporations are laying off older people, social media is capturing them in a knowledge inventory. We must develop, produce, and access this knowledge inventory.

7. Don’t Fall in Love: This means diversify and don’t be afraid to try new things. Innovation is the art of putting many different ideas, concepts or objects together and yielding new wealth creation. What better mechanism than social media.

8. Luck helps: Social media is like a cloud. Nobody can control and the only way to engage with it is to talk to the cloud. After a while the cloud will deliver rain, and your garden will grow. John Paulson calls this luck, we call it inevitable.

We, the people, need to introduce a new economic paradigm – nobody will do it for us. We may lose the dollar as a currency but we must not lose our personal ability to produce and trade our ideas, plans, and actions for the things that our families need to grow. Wealth is created by sharing. The Next Economic Paradigm shows us how we, as a society, can reorganize ourselves around an economy built upon social media. Sounds far out but it can be done today if we move quickly to understand the power – near absolute – that people can have in social media. If John Paulson were really smart, he would bet on us not against us.

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Entrepreneurs or Social Media Riff Raff ?

I am noticing a recent backlash at the social media experts that are not actually experts.  In one such rant, a real social media expert proposes a few simple questions that can help separate the good from the not-so-good.

A few simple things:

  • Proof of experience and demonstrated results.
  • Business leadership, not necessarily thought leadership.
  • Dig deep into a consultant’s background and social media presence. Is he or she simply good at promoting him- or herself?

Bad Apples?

The chief complaint is that the bad ones are destroying the reputations of the good ones.  It is no mystery that any fair and competitive market has a vetting mechanism and the hallmark of protectionism is in promoting the absence of such vetting… “except my own”.

Subjectivity or objectivity:

The Real Expert certainly means well, however, they are reflecting on the profession in their own image.  This is entirely valid and correct, in fact, the CEO of the hiring firm is likely doing the same thing, saying to themselves: “Obviously, a social media consultant who is very good at promoting themselves would also be very good at promoting my company”. As such, the consultant that self-promotes is ironically casting the less selfish image.

A few not so simple things:

  • There is a dire shortage of social media consultants relative to the “adoption” rates needed to solve real problems.
  • Prices increase as demand increases and supply stays low.
  • There is too much social media work for the existing “good ones” to possibly do in their lifetimes.

What every expert should know:

  • Social Media is about engagement and sharing, inclusiveness, and empowerment.
  • Social media success is a function of critical mass – the more people doing it; the more social media consultants will be needed.
  • There are as many different levels of expertise as there are levels of need for such expertise.  The ability to match the correct knowledge surplus to the correct knowledge deficit is the hallmark of an expert.
  • A social media expert for a construction company is a lot different than a social media expert for an advertising agency – and it is unlikely that either would think of the other to be an expert.
  • The world needs lots and lots of social media experts covering a wide range of disciplines real fast – no holes.

Will the Real Social Media Expert please stand up?

Where are the social media experts who are devising the curriculum, certification, structure and ascension plan for all the emerging consultants?  After all, social media expertise is in itself the art and science of bringing mass quantities of people around a common goal, concern, message, or product, – quickly and efficiently using modern tools of mass influence – etc.  What expert(s) is bringing together ALL social media “experts” under a vetting mechanism that serves market efficiencies not subjective efficiencies?

A kettle and a stove walk into a bar…

In other words, if they are so good, why haven’t they organized themselves?.  The CEO says, “If they cannot organize their own “Social Network” industry, how can they organize mine?” Until then, the Riff Raff are entrepreneurs too and an essential ingredient in the development of innovations that will become standards that act in the best interest of the market, not necessarily in the best interest of the “real” Social Media expert.

Besides, who else would the Underdog go after?

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