Group items tagged

Social software is whatever software or online network that enables users to interact and share knowledge in a social dimension, emphasizing the human potential instead of the technology that makes the exchange possible

reshaping the way in which collaboration happens

new generation organizations.

Cooperatives have been around in one form or another throughout human history, but modern models began popping up about 150 years ago. Today’s co-ops are collaboratively owned by their members, who also control the enterprise collaboratively by democratic vote. This means that decisions made in cooperatives are balanced between the pursuit of profit, and the needs of members and their communities. Most co-ops also follow the Seven Cooperative Principles, a unique set of guidelines that help maintain their member-driven nature.

Restraining corporate power requires changing the way we think about business. This means changing who owns, controls, and benefits from it. Profits, for instance, can flow to workers, consumers, or the community—not just to outside investors

The range is vast: from small worker- and community-owned firms to state pension funds, many of which are flexing their ownership muscle to force changes in corporate policy and target investment to meet public needs. What follows are seven of the best current models.

form a new kind of living systems organization, and lay down infrastructures that we intend will lead us towards a desired socioeconomic paradigm and human operation system

cultural design, systems intelligence, and coordinated creative action at scale

world builders

Believe it or not, the next economic paradigm will arise from the integration of the tools being developed in the current stage of human development

Knowledge The Knowledge age emerged from the integration of tools developed during the information age. The Internet vastly accelerated the amount of information available from which knowledge could be applied as factors of production in physical systems from weather prediction, space travel, medicine, and new ways for people to organize their selves. Innovation The innovation age will emerge from the integration of tools developed by the knowledge age.  So called “social media” is creating thousands of platforms upon which people reorganize themselves around interests, affinities, relationship, and commerce.  As these tools integrate; that is, when the output of one tool becomes the input of another tool (and vice versa), a new economic paradigm will emerge. Wisdom Keep in mind that the agrarian economy and all previous stages are still with us today. Keep in mind that elements of future economies also exist today.  Keep in mind that the US dollar has not always been the currency of trade nor should we expect that it will always be with us in the future. We can assume that the productivity inherent in people and communities is not dependent on the currency, rather, currency is dependent on it.  Time is the only scarce resource and everyone has an equal amount of it.  As such, time is the only true currency.

intuitive, touchable, and an extension of oneself

kids ages 12 and under are predicting that the future of media and technology lies in better integrating digital experiences with real-world places and activities.

suggesting that more intuitive, human-like interactions with devices, such as those provided by fluid interfaces or robots, are a key area for development.

 value networks, a new way to produce and to distribute value. This section focuses on the second one. We are taking an iterative approach to solve the value accounting problem and to design and implement a sound value system, which allows individuals and small organizations to collaboratively create and distribute value. The main role of the value accounting system is to track different types of contributions, like personal, social, built and natural capital, and to compute a revenue share for all contributors, based on individual contribution. But in order to make value networks self-organize into creative and productive entities we need more than a sound value system. We are in fact developing the entire infrastructure of value networks, which includes communication, coordination and collaboration tools, a reputation system, a role system, an incentive system, a feedback system, a service system, a materials management system, a project/tasks management system, etc. All these components interact with each other and form a humane and empowering environment, in which contributing member can express their passions, exchange and collaborate to create value. We are not just dreaming about this. SENSORICA, which is sustaining a continuous growth in value and in potential since its inception, is a living proof of our model. 

For decades our understanding of economic production has been that individuals order their productive activities in one of two ways: either as employees in firms, following the directions of managers, or as individuals in markets, following price signals. This dichotomy was first identified in the early work of Nobel laureate Ronald Coase, and was developed most explicitly in the work of neo-institutional economist Oliver Williamson. In the past three or four years, public attention has focused on a fifteen-year-old social-economic phenomenon in the software development world. This phenomenon, called free software or open source software, involves thousands or even tens of thousands of programmers contributing to large and small scale project, where the central organizing principle is that the software remains free of most constraints on copying and use common to proprietary materials. No one "owns" the software in the traditional sense of being able to command how it is used or developed, or to control its disposition. The result is the emergence of a vibrant, innovative and productive collaboration, whose participants are not organized in firms and do not choose their projects in response to price signals.

much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing is the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode "commons-based peer-production," to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based models of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.

this mode has systematic advantages over markets and managerial hierarchies when the object of production is information or culture, and where the capital investment necessary for production-computers and communications capabilities-is widely distributed instead of concentrated. In particular, this mode of production is better than firms and markets for two reasons. First, it is better at identifying and assigning human capital to information and cultural production processes. In this regard, peer-production has an advantage in what I call "information opportunity cost." That is, it loses less information about who the best person for a given job might be than do either of the other two organizational modes. Second, there are substantial increasing returns to allow very larger clusters of potential contributors to interact with very large clusters of information resources in search of new projects and collaboration enterprises. Removing property and contract as the organizing principles of collaboration substantially reduces transaction costs involved in allowing these large clusters of potential contributors to review and select which resources to work on, for which projects, and with which collaborators. This results in allocation gains, that increase more than proportionately with the increase in the number of individuals and resources that are part of the system. The article concludes with an overview of how these models use a variety of technological and social strategies to overcome the collective action problems usually solved in managerial and market-based systems by property and contract.

The gamification of social networking and location based services as exemplified by Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR are probably the most recognizable with badges, mayorships and rewards offered for check-ins.  Game mechanics has also been applied to engage people, change behaviours and innovate in many different fields including innovation management, health, training, employee performance, and even social issues.

engage stakeholders, improve performance and drive innovation

The gamification of innovation and enterprise architecture is a natural extension of design thinking as it is a human-centric and engaging means of harnessing the power of the collective to drive innovation and change.  I believe that game mechanics are going to have a huge impact on the way organizations engage stakeholders, innovate and evolve, and we are just now on the leading edge of that trend

increasing number of enterprise companies adopt a freemium model in recent months.

put the right elements in place to encourage it.

employees learning and mastering the software they were using to do their jobs.

The process by which a firm adopts and implements technological innovations is influenced by the technological context, the organizational context, and the environmental context (Tornatzky and Fleisher 1990). The technological context includes the internal and external technologies that are relevant to the firm. Technologies may include both equipment as well as processes. The organizational context refers to the characteristics and resources of the firm, including the firm’s size, degree of centralization, degree of formalization, managerial structure, human resources, amount of slack resources, and linkages among employees. The environmental context includes the size and structure of the industry, the firm’s competitors, the macroeconomic context, and the regulatory environment (Tornatzky and Fleisher 1990). These three elements present “both constraints and opportunities for technological innovation” (Tornatzky and Fleisher 1990, p. 154). Thus, these three elements influence the way a firm sees the need for, searches for, and adopts new technology.

the definition of ‘hackers’ are “having to do with technical adeptness & a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits,” and so ring true for anyone pursuing mastery in their chosen creative expression… musicians, artists, athletes, scientists, etc)

It seems to be the same disposition among the communities of people talking about intentional lifestyle design – those that want “work” and “life” to not suggest two worlds out of alignment, but rather are working to create a consistent underlying culture that allows each person to bring their gifts and strengths forward regardless of social context.

Culture hackers want to define the social agreements and communication protocols most likely to lead to human fulfillment, creativity and happiness…. then build the new socioeconomic systems upon that life-enhancing infrastructure.

A number of other sections in the site follow-on naturally from a consideration of resilience. Two useful tools for resilience-building in complex socio-ecological systems are structured scenarios and adaptation and adaptive management. People use scenarios to envision alternative futures and the pathways by which they might be reached. By envisioning a range of alternative futures and actions that might achieve or avoid certain outcomes, communities can identify and choose resilience-building policies. Active adaptive management can be used as an approach that views policy as a set of experiments designed to reveal processes that build or sustain resilience. It requires, and facilitates, a social context with flexible and open institutions and multi-level governance systems that allows for social learning.

The resilience perspective embraces the dynamic character of communities and human-ecosystem interactions and sees multiple potential pathways within them. It provides a powerful way of understanding how a community’s positive response to change can be strengthened and supported.

A high level of social capital means that they have access to good information and communication networks in times of difficulty, and can call upon a wide range of resources