Group items tagged

business

government

education

research

The old economic paradigm was a service economy built on the digital communications revolution that began in the early 1970′s.

financial capital has decoupled from productive capital

financial meltdown

major societal institutions have stalled

the funding models

no longer work properly

The new model is the Open Collaboration Paradigm

we will see a radical departure from old institutional models.

social capital is increasingly recognized

generating wealth for society

This will be a profoundly social economy, built on unprecedented capabilities to self-organize people and resources in the crowd.

Social media

connect ideas, people, and institutions

blur the inside/outside distinctions

Network connections

radical transparency will be the new norm

Another profound shift will occur in the realm of ownership

No longer

viable

to horde intellectual property

 Collaborative consumption will arise as a more robust business paradigm,

risk is distributed

implications for business

 Those who can leverage the wisdom of crowds for market research, product development, and efficient resource allocation will be more adept and agile in the face of rapid change.

Those who build walls around themselves will fail to tap into the flow of knowledge and resources running rampant in the crowd

governments will have to become more transparent and responsive to their citizens

information becomes more immersive and dynamic

Research has already begun to use open collaboration that goes beyond the halls of academia.

collaborative approach to research will become the norm,

The era of “user generated content” and “prosumption” — where consumers of goods and services co-create what they will consume — is now a decade along in its evolution.  We will increasingly see collaborative design and production of consumables across society.

In the education arena, we will see more curricula as shareware and an increased emphasis on multi-perspective teamwork as the necessary skills for engaging in collaborative projects.

Expert/amateur boundaries have already blurred to the point where individuals can acquire graduate-level knowledge through self-directed learning on the internet.

distance learning

 Lifetime learning

active pedagogy

So get ready for the new economic paradigm.

"Places to Intervene in a System," followed by nine items: 9.  Numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards). 8.  Material stocks and flows. 7.  Regulating negative feedback loops. 6.  Driving positive feedback loops. 5.  Information flows. 4.  The rules of the system (incentives, punishment, constraints). 3.  The power of self-organization. 2.  The goals of the system. 1.  The mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise.

an invitation to think more broadly about system change.

Numbers ("parameters" in systems jargon) determine how much of a discrepancy turns which faucet how fast.

some of which are physically locked in, but most of which are popular intervention points.

Probably ninety-five percent of our attention goes to numbers, but there's not a lot of power in them.

Not that parameters aren't important—they can be, especially in the short term and to the individual who's standing directly in the flow. But they rarely change behavior. If the system is chronically stagnant, parameter changes rarely kick-start it. If it's wildly variable, they don't usually stabilize it. If it's growing out of control, they don't brake it.

Spending more on police doesn't make crime go away.

Numbers become leverage points when they go into ranges that kick off one of the items higher on this list.

Probably the most common kind of critical number is the length of delay in a feedback loop.

A delay in a feedback process is critical relative to rates of change (growth, fluctuation, decay) in the system state that the feedback loop is trying to control.

Delays that are too short cause overreaction, oscillations amplified by the jumpiness of the response. Delays that are too long cause damped, sustained, or exploding oscillations, depending on how much too long. At the extreme they cause chaos. Delays in a system with a threshold, a danger point, a range past which irreversible damage can occur, cause overshoot and collapse.

delays are not often easily changeable

It's usually easier to slow down the change rate (positive feedback loops, higher on this list), so feedback delays won't cause so much trouble

Most systems have evolved or are designed to stay out of sensitive parameter ranges. Mostly, the numbers are not worth the sweat put into them.

The plumbing structure, the stocks and flows and their physical arrangement, can have an enormous effect on how a system operates.