January 2008
The Archives
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01.28.08The ‘evil’ in exchanges.Exchanges are a hot topic in the social capital markets. They are appealing in the sense of the efficiency they promise. Efficiency is good - and it also has a dark side. This dark-side, which I'm considering the 'inherent evil' in exchanges, is their tendency to disconnect/dissociate the 'buyer' from the 'seller'. It comes out in things like the sub-prime mess and rogue traders.So how do we get the benefits of this 'masterpiece' of capitalism?By using exchanges to:create and deepen connections;increase the richness of information and communication in those relationships; andcraft and uphold agreements.To me that means looking as much ...
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01.28.08This biggering is buggering… a call for a new vision of ‘prosperity’.I attended a session for Sustainable Prosperity last week and was left with a pretty big realization that evolved for me into what blurted out in a strategy session for Windfall Ecology Centre on Friday as.."This BIGGERING is buggering..."Obviously, this is inspired by Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax", (see the specific quotes here), but it also refers to a growing realization that the thing that economy is based on - continuously increasing consumption - is reaching a breaking point. To be clear, this isn't a recession inspired 'people aren't going to consume as much anymore' statement, it's a 'if people ...
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01.21.08The definitive definitions of venturing!One of the surprising things that I came out of my latest exploration into the frontiers of venturing and venture investing is a set of definitions. I'm actually not one that likes to debate definitions ad infinitum but I found I needed to clarify things to be able to have meaningful conversations going forward. So here, is what I've come up with... for now (I'll keep updating this definitions as the evolve so feel free to check-back or link here for reference).Venture: An agreement among people to do things in service of a purpose and according to a set ...
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01.09.08Crowd sourcing in venturingJust saw this post tipping me to VenCorps which seems to be a venture fund using 'crowd sourcing'. I'm going to be interested to see how it goes and expect they will do well by essentially 'amping up the network'. My guess is that they will be better at dealing with ambiguity (related to progressing along stage of development) in ventures but I'm curious to see if it will help them deal with complexity (related to depth of systemic change). The thing that gives me a sense that they won't be as effective here is the military ...
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01.07.08Giddy-up: getting better on the frontier.Coming out of this first inquiry I'm left with new definitions for venture, venturing, and venturer and also a simplistic grouping that the process of venturing essentially requires agreement, action, and governance. It is important to note that these are a set of observations and interpretations that will continue to be evolved in practice. As such they represent a starting point for a concerted effort to 'get better at venturing and investing on the frontiers'.DEFINITIONSVenture: An agreement among people to do things in service of a purpose and according to a set of values. Venturing: The process of creating ...
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01.04.08Want, need, and enough.A brief twitter conversation with Tom at www.givemeaning.com on this subject had me feeling limited by the 140 character twitter limit... so here goes a quick mobile post. I've been conscious of the impact and role of consumption in our society for a while but www.storyofstuff.com and the movie Manufactured Landscapes from Mongrel Media have had me thinking a bit deeper lately. I think 'giving' has largely becoming another form of buying. Certainly giving has very little to do with need - unless ofcourse you turn to things like www.givemeaning.com :-). And the concept of enough is an abstract thing ...
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01.03.08Gettin’ it goin’ without goin’ under: cohesion and incipient instability.With requisite attention being held a natural propulsion will emerge. The act of managing and nurturing that propulsion is attended to with a focus on cohesion and being proactively aware of the emergence of incipient instability. These concepts are addressed in depth in Stafford Beer's viable system model (my reflections here on reading Heart of Enterprise) and are really about holding the tension between future (vision), and here and now (operations) [see last post for more on requisite attention]. Cohesion has a lot to do with articulating purpose as so well described by Collins and Porras in Building Your Company's ...
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