Co-Creation and Regional Clusters

[J Maloney]

Hi –

 

Worthwhile presentation and chapter on the importance (and use) of value networks for regional economic growth, intellectual capital (knowledge) clusters and sustainable innovation networks.

 

Intellectual Capital Creation in Regions: A Knowledge System Approach (Recommended)

 

Presentation : http://tinyurl.com/292vqt

 

Chapter : http://tinyurl.com/293sts

 

It is encouraging to see value networks quickly emerging as the principal lingua franca and visualization method for diverse economic subsystems, innovation networks, distributed knowledge clusters and strategies for regional growth and prosperity.

 

 

Kudos to Tom Hill, Director of Learning and KM, at Genentech, for forwarding this along.

 

-j

http://xri.net/=jheuristic

 

 

 

[Jay Deragon]

People don’t often discuss innovation rather we experience it. The experience of an innovative product or service usually is something that satisfies a need. People and organizations have lots of needs whether they be emotional, intellectual, spiritual or physical.

The quest for fulfilling needs is a major influence over human behavior.

So What is Innovation?

The classic definitions of innovation include:

1. the act of introducing something new:
2. a new idea, method or device.
3. the successful exploitation of new ideas
4. change that creates a new dimension of performance
5. the process of making improvements by introducing something new

In economics, business and government policy,- something new - must be substantially different, not an insignificant change. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. Innovations are intended to make someone better off, and the succession of many innovations grows the whole economy.

The term innovation may refer to both radical and incremental changes to products, processes or services. The often unspoken goal of innovation is to solve a problem. Innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, technology, sociology, and engineering. Since innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy, the factors that lead to innovation are also considered to be critical to policy makers. The primary factors include:

1. Business model innovation involves changing the way business is done in terms of capturing value .
2. Marketing innovation is the development of new marketing methods with improvement in product design or packaging, product promotion or pricing.
3. Organizational innovation involves the creation or alteration of business structures, practices, and models, and may therefore include process, marketing and business model innovation.
4. Process innovation involves the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method.

How Important is Innovation to Business

The McKinsey Quarterly recent edition says “Innovation has become a primary force in determining company growth, performance, and valuation. Unfortunately, a wide gap exists between executives’ aspirations to innovate and their ability to execute.”

The execution gap McKinsey refers can be described as an inability to effectively communicate, engage and rally people around a new idea or even to obtain buy in to a new idea. Fundamentally engaging and creating agreements to execute is an issue of communications and a businesses connectivity with its people; suppliers, employees and customers, their entire market.

For business innovation can mean the difference between first place and last place in the marketplace.

Where Does Innovation Start?

Piers Gibbon writes about “The Innovative Conversation” The title was inspired by the researchers who have shown that “rich conversations”¹ have more value in business than “dehydrated, ritualized”¹ presentations. That “Connections and Conversations … provide the fuel for innovation” ² and companies need “to create a climate … where everyone feels the responsibility and desire to contribute to the organizations innovation performance.”

For businesses who have recognized that innovation requires access to the diverse opinions and experiences of all its people. This happens when its people are brave enough to expect and reward honest talk and real emotions

In an early post titled “Systemic Changes to the Web” we wrote: “Innovation inevitably spawns further innovation throughout the supply chain of interconnected elements that fuel Web usage patterns, and the social Web facilitates systemic changes which are fueled through such innovation. The social Web brings more influential human elements with global reach than any previous technological development in the history of the Web. Combine the influence of the human elements with the economic power of relationship driven commerce and you have a scenario that will create further changes unforeseen, unpredictable, and unimaginable.”

These changes are profound and create historical shifts that open opportunities for those who prepare and embrace the factors that enable a successful transition from the old economy to the new.

Innovation starts with a conversation. The social web provides the means for scalable conversations, one to one to millions. So again, do conversations create innovation?

What say you?

Jay Deragon
Managing Partner Strategy
www.linktoyourworld.com
Join Link To Your World on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6601130238
Relationship Economy.. With Whom and What: http://www.relationship-economy.com
My Linkedin Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jayderagon
My Facebook Profile: http://profile.to/jayderagon/
Fax  1-615-826-3356
Phone: 1-615-306-8606

 

 

[Charles Ehin]

Jay, you ask, “Do conversations create innovation?” Not all conversations create innovation, but as I’ve suggested before “The more an institution supports the principles of self-organization openly, the more innate individual attention, social capital, and tacit knowledge sharing it will generate leading to increased innovation and expansion of core competencies.”  So, the more conversations you are able to have the more opportunities you create for innovation to take place. Cheers--Charlie

[Randa...@cancer.org]

Jay this is an exceptional question.
While attending the UVA Network Roundtable a number of presenters provided
presentations focused on the restructuring of work space around creating
interactively. I recognize that you are asking about the internet and the
scale of 1:1,000,000 but looking even more finite, are companies set up to
promote conversation more innovative?

Network analysis after network analysis shows significant signals that
developing a culture of interconnectivity is central to having an culture
of innovation and idea sharing. The serendipitous hallway conversations
that spark million dollar ideas have to be enabled through design and
cultural coercion. Are conversation the fuel to innovation? Certainly a
component of the fuel yes. Imperative is an environment to encourage and
embrace combustion.

Randal Moss
American Cancer Society
Futuring and Innovation Center
404-329-7573 Skype: Randalcmoss
http://www.relayforlife.org/relay/




"Jay Deragon"
<jay.deragon@gmai
l.com> To
Sent by: <Value-N...@googlegroups.com>
Value-Networks@go cc
oglegroups.com

Subject
Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?

01/16/2008 09:56
AM


Please respond to
Value-Networks@go
oglegroups.com






Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?People don’t often discuss innovation

rather we experience it. The experience of an innovative product or service
usually is something that satisfies a need. People and organizations have
lots of needs whether they be emotional, intellectual, spiritual or
physical.


The quest for fulfilling needs is a major influence over human behavior.


So What is Innovation?


The classic definitions of innovation include:

1. the act of introducing something new:
2. a new idea, method or device.
3. the successful exploitation of new ideas
4. change that creates a new dimension of performance
5. the process of making improvements by introducing something new

In economics, business and government policy,- something new - must be
substantially different, not an insignificant change. In economics the
change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. Innovations
are intended to make someone better off, and the succession of many
innovations grows the whole economy.


The term innovation may refer to both radical and incremental changes to
products, processes or services. The often unspoken goal of innovation is
to solve a problem. Innovation is an important topic in the study of
economics, business, technology, sociology, and engineering. Since
innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy, the factors
that lead to innovation are also considered to be critical to policy
makers. The primary factors include:

1. Business model innovation involves changing the way business is done

in terms of capturing value .

2. Marketing innovation is the development of new marketing methods with

improvement in product design or packaging, product promotion or
pricing.

3. Organizational innovation involves the creation or alteration of

business structures, practices, and models, and may therefore include
process, marketing and business model innovation.

4. Process innovation involves the implementation of a new or

[Charles Ehin]

Randal, I agree. Organizational contexts are very important.--Charlie

 

Charles (Kalev) Ehin, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Management
The Gore School of Business
Westminster College, Salt Lake City
kal...@msn.com
www.UnManagement.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Randa...@cancer.org

To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com

[David Hawthorne]

Conversations invariably create innovations… just not adoptions…and just not the adaptations we might prefer.  –David Hawthorne

 

---

From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Charles Ehin
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:21 PM
To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?

 

Jay, you ask, “Do conversations create innovation?” Not all conversations create innovation, but as I’ve suggested before “The more an institution supports the principles of self-organization openly, the more innate individual attention, social capital, and tacit knowledge sharing it will generate leading to increased innovation and expansion of core competencies.”  So, the more conversations you are able to have the more opportunities you create for innovation to take place. Cheers--Charlie

<BR

[Bala Pillai]

Jay,

I am not sure whether conversations create innovations. I am more sure that insufficient conversation stifles innovation.


cheers../bala
Bala Pillai
APIC Mind Colonies
http://www.ryze.com/go/bala

[J Maloney]

Hi Randall --

Nice to hear from you.

This is an interesting discussion. There is a lot to add from and entirely practical perspective.

In applied VNA, an important property is called a flow-path.

In traditional ONA/SNA this is often called a knowledge pathway.

What if there was a practical, easy, low-cost way to remove friction, delay and transaction costs from flow-paths and knowledge pathways? What if emergence, self-organization, collective intelligence and context could be made even more fluid and natural?

That would really be something!

That is the motive behind the rise of living social networks. To drive productive conversations that Bala, Charles, Jay, and others agree is a good thing, new methods are needed. Now!

The urgency is because, as you have all noticed and remarked, the nature of work and prosperity is changing fast and fundamentally.

Verna Allee will cover this exact theme in a rare, small group, low-cost setting on Friday in SF.

Strategic Applications of Role and Identity: Mobile Work Practices at Knoll and Telenor’s WoW Strategy

“Allee describes the results of Knoll’s myth-busting survey of mobile workers using role-based value network analysis and its implications for the future of work. Telenor’s Way of Work program plays heavily on identity and evolving network connections to tap the intelligence of its global workforce.”

It is hard to overemphasis  how important this is to knowledge work.

Enterprise 2.0 Presence and Identity:

The Rise of Living Social Networks

See: http://www.vncluster.com/SFO.htm 

There is no other practice or technique that can more rapidly advance knowledge worker effectiveness than more fluid, well-conceived flow-paths. 

Cheers,

-j

-----Original Message-----

From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Randa...@cancer.org

Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 12:24 PM

To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?

Jay this is an exceptional question.

[Laurence Lock Lee]

When I think of innovation from a network perspective, conversations
always play a part. Its just the style of conversation will differ.
Using a working definition of innovation as "ideas that get
implemented" we can see three phases of conversations as we move
through exploration, engagement and finally exploitation. The
exploration conversations by their very nature are likely to be free
ranging, often exciting, often mind opening as the participants begin
to explore the world of possibility. The engagement phase, I think is
the most critical, is often the most overlooked. This is the brokerage
activity of linking idea sources to potential exploiters. The
conversations at this phase are likely to be more focussed, with
brokers promoting the benefits of a new idea, product or service and
the potential exploiters drilling in, looking for potential flaws or
unseen risks. Engagement conversatins could play an important role in
shaping a new initiative toward market success. The exploitation phase
is all about implementation. The connversations are likely to be more
about keeping to the plan and not straying from the implementation
objective. The conversations with external stakeholders are more about
"why this is good for you", rather than "why you might want this".
While I have painted this as a linear process, I accept that
conversations will bounce back and forward around what I call the "3Es
of innovation".

....I have a short paper on this on our web site www.optimice.com.au/publications
if anyone is interested...

Good to see the list active again.....

Laurence Lock Lee

On Jan 17, 7:23 am, Randal.M...@cancer.org wrote:
> Jay this is an exceptional question.
> While attending the UVA Network Roundtable a number of presenters provided
> presentations focused on the restructuring of work space around creating
> interactively. I recognize that you are asking about the internet and the
> scale of 1:1,000,000 but looking even more finite, are companies set up to
> promote conversation more innovative?
>
> Network analysis after network analysis shows significant signals that
> developing a culture of interconnectivity is central to having an culture
> of innovation and idea sharing. The serendipitous hallway conversations
> that spark million dollar ideas have to be enabled through design and
> cultural coercion. Are conversation the fuel to innovation? Certainly a
> component of the fuel yes. Imperative is an environment to encourage and
> embrace combustion.
>
> Randal Moss
> American Cancer Society
> Futuring and Innovation Center

> 404-329-7573  Skype: Randalcmosshttp://www.relayforlife.org/relay/

[jheuristic]

Hi --

Discussion on co-creation, conversation and innovation are
encouraging.

For those prefering a more conventional conference than clusters, see:

http://www.roundtable.com/codev/

W/Peter Gloor, Verna Allee, Cheryl Perkins, Henry Chesbrough, etc.

For more intimate, authentic conversations, see you Friday in SF!

http://www.vncluster.com/SFO.htm


-j

[Verna Allee]

A value network take on what you describe can be found in the Annexes
to the Final Report IST-RTD Impact Evaluation that was recently posted
on www.value-networks.com. The value network part of the Annexes (pp
87-174) describes four archetypal value network patterns (pp 171-174)
that emerge at different stages of innovation. Particularly
interesting is how some of the same roles are activated in different
ways at different stages. Here are the URLs for the report:

http://www.value-networks.com/caseStudies/EU%20Innovation%20System.pdf

http://www.value-networks.com/caseStudies/EU%20Innovation%20System%20-Annexes.pdf

Verna

> >              404...         Skype: Randalcmosshttp://www.relayforlife.org/relay/

> > Phone:              1-6...       - Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Winograd, Morley]

There are actually four stages as Verna points out in conversations. The first one is a conversation on "being", about values and vision and compatibility between the participants. The second stage is a conversation around possibilities which is what Laurence called "Exploration." Its about, "Given that we share similar values and dreams, what opportunities does that open up for us to work on together." The third stage is a conversation about opportunity, or engagement if you wish. Given that we have all these possibilities, which specific opportunities should we work on first or prioritize. And then finally comes a conversation for action, a work I like a lot more than 'Exploitation." Its about what will we do next about the opportunities we have settled on. The problem with most conversations, particularly in business and markets, is that they tend to leap to the final stage, action, without spending the time needed on the earlier ones, particularly the very first on "how we want to be with each other." Studies have shown that the more time spent lining up values and vision the shorter amount of time is required at all later stages of the conversation. Done right, action portion usually takes about five minutes.
Morley Winograd

-----Original Message-----
From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Verna Allee
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 4:47 PM
To: Value Networks
Subject: Re: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?

[Verna Allee]

Randal, At Telenor, one of the strategic drivers for the Way of Work
(WoW) initiative is opening innovation pathways. This initiative is
introducing collaborative technologies and behaviors, communities,
organizational network analysis and value network philosophies. One of
the aspects of value networks that I point out to people is that the
intangible exchanges tend to follow human relationships. An
Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) validates that the pathways are
open. If people are not in conversation then the odds of achieving
mission critical intangible exchanges are pretty low. We are very
supportive of the work at the UVA Round Table and other centers that
are attempting to apply network analysis to business and economic
issues. VNA considerably expands the network analysis questions that
can be asked in this regard, however, and there are some important
distinctions. It is critical to use the right method with the right
questions.
Verna

On Jan 16, 12:28 pm, "Charles Ehin" <kal...@msn.com> wrote:
> Randal, I agree. Organizational contexts are very important.--Charlie
>
> Charles (Kalev) Ehin, Ph.D.
> Emeritus Professor of Management
> The Gore School of Business
> Westminster College, Salt Lake City

> kal...@msn.com<mailto:kal...@msn.com>www.UnManagement.com<http://www.unmanagement.com/>

>
>
>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Randal.M...@cancer.org<mailto:Randal.M...@cancer.org>
>   To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com<mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com>
>   Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 1:23 PM
>   Subject: Re: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?
>
>   Jay this is an exceptional question.
>   While attending the UVA Network Roundtable a number of presenters provided
>   presentations focused on the restructuring of work space around creating
>   interactively. I recognize that you are asking about the internet and the
>   scale of 1:1,000,000 but looking even more finite, are companies set up to
>   promote conversation more innovative?
>
>   Network analysis after network analysis shows significant signals that
>   developing a culture of interconnectivity is central to having an culture
>   of innovation and idea sharing. The serendipitous hallway conversations
>   that spark million dollar ideas have to be enabled through design and
>   cultural coercion. Are conversation the fuel to innovation? Certainly a
>   component of the fuel yes. Imperative is an environment to encourage and
>   embrace combustion.
>
>   Randal Moss
>   American Cancer Society
>   Futuring and Innovation Center 

>                404...         Skype: Randalcmoss
>  http://www.relayforlife.org/relay/<http://www.relayforlife.org/relay/>
>
>                "Jay Deragon"                                                
>                <jay.deragon@gmai<mailto:jay.deragon@gmai>                                            
>                l.com>                                                     To
>                Sent by:                  <Value-N...@googlegroups.com<mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com>>  
>                Value-Networks@go<mailto:Value-Networks@go>                                          cc

>                oglegroups.com                                                
>                                                                      Subject
>                                          Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?  
>                01/16/2008 09:56                                              
>                AM                                                            
>
>                Please respond to                                            

>                Value-Networks@go<mailto:Value-Networks@go>                                            

>  www.linktoyourworld.com<http://www.linktoyourworld.com/>

>   Join Link To Your World on Facebook:

>  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6601130238<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6601130238>

>   Relationship Economy.. With Whom and What:

>  http://www.relationship-economy.com<http://www.relationship-economy.com/>
>   My Linkedin Profile:http://www.linkedin.com/in/jayderagon<http://www.linkedin.com/in/jayderagon>
>   My Facebook Profile:http://profile.to/jayderagon/<http://profile.to/jayderagon/>
>   Fax  1-615-826-3356

[Verna Allee]

I like the idea of conversation for action. In the EU project we found
that in many cases the conversation for action usually includes an
experimentation phase (referred to as Market Validation in that study)
where people test out ideas and refine them into workable models or
pilots before full implementation.

What I find particularly interesting is that a lot of network research
at the moment seems to be focused on different kinds of network
typologies, trying to describe different kinds of networks, not only
in terms of structure but more importantly in terms of purpose and
outcomes. Particularly in the public service arena there has been some
good work on this, I believe.

Verna


On Jan 16, 6:10 pm, "Winograd, Morley" <winog...@marshall.usc.edu>
wrote:

> There are actually four stages as Verna points out in conversations. The first one is a conversation on "being", about values and vision and compatibility between the participants. The second stage is a conversation around possibilities which is what Laurence called "Exploration." Its about, "Given that we share similar values and dreams, what opportunities does that open up for us to work on together." The third stage is a conversation about opportunity, or engagement if you wish. Given that we have all these possibilities, which specific opportunities should we work on first or prioritize. And then finally comes a conversation for action, a work I like a lot more than 'Exploitation." Its about what will we do next about the opportunities we have settled on. The problem with most conversations, particularly in business and markets, is that they tend to leap to the final stage, action, without spending the time needed on the earlier ones, particularly the very first on "how we want to be with each other." Studies have shown that the more time spent lining up values and vision the shorter amount of time is required at all later stages of the conversation. Done right, action portion usually takes about five minutes.
> Morley Winograd
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Verna Allee
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 4:47 PM
> To: Value Networks
> Subject: Re: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?
>
> A value network take on what you describe can be found in the Annexes
> to the Final Report IST-RTD Impact Evaluation that was recently posted

> onwww.value-networks.com. The value network part of the Annexes (pp

> 87-174) describes four archetypal value network patterns (pp 171-174)
> that emerge at different stages of innovation. Particularly
> interesting is how some of the same roles are activated in different
> ways at different stages. Here are the URLs for the report:
>
> http://www.value-networks.com/caseStudies/EU%20Innovation%20System.pdf
>

> http://www.value-networks.com/caseStudies/EU%20Innovation%20System%20...

> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -

[Matt Moore]

I like Laurie's distinction between three types of
innovation-related conversation at different stages in
the innovation life cycle.

Another point to be made (and I'm riffing at random
here) is the inherent uncertainty in both these
activities (innovation & conversation). Conversation
can be a difficult, painful activity as well as a
joyous one. And innovation is more of a frustrating,
stop-start activity than many accounts admit. They
require tenacity & finesse.

There's a very interesting article on 3 financial
tools that can hinder innovation in this month's HBR -
which includes a brief but insightful critique of the
stage-gating process used within many organisations.

Theodore Zeldin's definition of a conversation as
where both parties leave with more than they came in
with is an important one. Not all conversations lead
to innovation and not all interactions are conversations...

____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

[Jay Deragon]

The social web has and will continue to attract lots of attention from
individuals and institutions alike.
There is an abundance of suppliers offering “free networks” for people and
institutions to easily and quickly set up and start their own network. New
networks are proliferating the landscape targeting literally every market
segment one could conceive.

In our own discussions with major corporations there seems to be a
prevailing mindset to run and set up a network for numerous reasons. On the
other side of the market of “Nay Sayers” are attitudes reflected in
statements like “I don’t buy the hype, we already have a blog, our people
already use Wiki’s or we’re already on Facebook and Linkedin.

It is not about the networks, the blogs or Wikis it is more about “what and
how” the tools are used, the methods are more important than the means.
People are attracted by the methods and not necessarily the technology.

The Distinction is One of Tools vs. Methods

Stowe Boyd of Collaboration Loop writes: Collaborative tools are geared
toward the sharing of information by groups, while social tools aren’t
primarily: instead, social tools are oriented toward supporting the
interactions of individuals in social networks, and the shaping of culture
that arises from the impact of these tools on our social context.

A simple example makes the basic case. Consider a classic sort of
collaboration tool: a web-based repository of office documents, managed
through a meta-data and search user interface. Various organizational groups
upload documents into various folders, like Marketing or Finance, and
various sorts of access controls are put into place, so that only authorized
users can view, edit, or delete documents in the folders.

Contrast this highly functional and relatively unsocial application with the
social analogue, where the social interactions of those creating and
manipulating the information within documents, or their equivalents, is
primary. In this social architecture, the social interactions — users making
changes to wiki pages, or cross-linking from one blog to another — become
the primary element of organization, not a functional architecture
proscribed by the application. The choices made by individuals, individually
and collectively, impose a form of order, and then set the context for
future interactions.

Social tools are not inherently more basic than collaborative ones — people
do need to mange documents, share powerpoints, and access information in
databases. However, the emergence of social tools suggests that
information-first architectures will be losing ground to more socially
oriented solutions.

So the traditional three C’s — collaboration, communication, and
coordination — may be trumped by a new C: connectedness. The primary thrust
of social technologies is to help individuals find and maintain social
relationships, and through them find meaning and purpose. Along the way,
coordinating meetings, collaborating on documents or projects, and
communicating through email or instant messaging all seem like supports for
the social connections that define our world.

What About Methods?

A wise man once said “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, show the
man how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime“.

Simply launching a social network, a blog or whatever social media flavor of
the day is not enough to build sustaining relationship, thus markets.
Knowing how, the methods, to engage in meaningful conversations and to hear
current conversations is more powerful than the technology that enables the
conversations.

Note Stowe Boyd’s comment: “So the traditional three C’s — collaboration,
communication, and coordination — may be trumped by a new C: connectedness.”
Connectedness is more of a human attribute driven by emotions and intellect
that suggest there is indeed a “connection”, one to one to millions.
Conversations help establish a discernment of “connectedness”. Until and
unless people can “connect” subsequent conversations and outcomes will
likely be disconnected.

Business cultures and traditional media methods have created a disconnect
with peoples hearts, minds and spirits. The social web is a means of
connecting peoples hearts, minds and spirits discerned through the
conversational content exchanged over a “network”. That is the essence of
what can be done with the social web and the power of social media.

For businesses to successfully use the social web they must go beyond the
technology and learn how to connect with people.

What say you?

Jay Deragon
Managing Partner Strategy
www.linktoyourworld.com
Join Link To Your World on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6601130238
Relationship Economy.. With Whom and What:
http://www.relationship-economy.com
My Linkedin Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jayderagon
My Facebook Profile: http://profile.to/jayderagon/
Fax 1-615-826-3356

Phone: 1-615-306-8606

[J Maloney]

Hi --

 

This thread is very encouraging. Caution: long reply.

 

Matt said, "Not all interactions are conversations." Hallelujah!

 

Peter Senge rants, "The quality of conversations in most organizations stinks.”

 

Most things passed off as conversation aren't. Discussion is not conversation. Storytelling, narrative, selling, negotiation are not conversation. Presentations and good ol' fashioned BS are not conversation. Debate and persuasion are definitely not conversation. All very important, just not conversation.

 

Discussion, for example, comes from the Latin discussus -- to "strike asunder, break up," "smash apart" and to "scatter, disperse." For example, traditionally, whenever the boss calls you in to 'discuss' something, watch out, since it's about to hit the fan…

 

Conversation is very scarce and precious. For a decade, for example, your clusters have had one modality: authentic conversation. Participants find it remarkable. They are relieved of all the pretense of the day to day chatter. The tone is authentic. By definition, and by design, the outcome is unknown. The conversation cuts its own path. It is complex and agile. Unlike presentations, It depends on variation. Conversation drives excellence and innovation.

 

Sadly, conversation is not seen as real work. Specifically, today for innovation, the ever-uptight IBM now admonishes people  during Sunday TV football games to, "Stop Talking, and Start Doing." www.ibm.com/do Pathetic. Even top graduate B-schools STILL train acolytes on the ‘bias to action.’ Disastrous.

 

Take heed of Morley’s important remark, “The problem with most conversations, particularly in business and markets, is that they tend to leap to the final stage, action, without spending the time needed on the earlier ones, particularly the very first on "how we want to be with each other."

 

Specifically, the Latin root of conversation is conversationem, " the act of living with, to live with, keep company with," literally, "turn about with," (dance) and also the "manner of conducting oneself in the world." Back in the day, circa 1500s, conversation was used a synonym for "sexual intercourse."  So, one could say, what the clusters have know for a decade, conversation is fun, not everyone knows how to do it right but the more you do it the better you get and occasionally there is a productive outcome!

 

Honestly, conversation is real work. Sadly, it is not conducted at the workplace. Conversation inhabits cafes, clusters and yakitori bars. For individual development, for example, the fastest path to reaching the next level is diverse, authentic conversation. Clever people know this and you find them at a lot of clusters!

 

From a purely practical standpoint, spending a lot of time in conversation about a new project or venture, staging, scoping the effort, greatly increases the probability of a successful outcome. If you think you have allocated enough time for conversation around a project, double it. You will save a LOT more at the back end, the ‘action’ phase. Value network analysis is highly instrumental in facilitating these front-end conversations. People discover their initial approach was usually dramatically wrong with tons of unnecessary stuff.

 

The antithesis of conversation – the dreaded vendor or association conference, for example, should be avoided. Commercial conference modalities are specifically engineered to avoid conversation. They are designed entirely for telling, often by severe blowhards.  

 

Conversation, per se, is not only the path to innovation -- it’s how to prosper in the knowledge economy. See:

 

http://value-networks.googlegroups.com/web/Conversation.pdf

 

 

 -j

[jheuristic]

Hi Jay --

Stowe Boyd was a sponsor of your London Cluster examination in 2004 of
'Social Tools for the Enterprise.' It was the first event of its type
and played a part in the social network application revolution.

http://www.kmcluster.com/lon/LON_Summer_2004.htm

Your question is rather ordinary. Of course connections and
relationships are more important than tools.

It is encouraging to see a new political and societal orthodoxy
emerge, the ethics of connections. History has shown societies that
are 'well connected' (vis-à-vis democracy at the moment), do not start
wars.

Economics, an important branch of sociology, shows political
integration (connection) readily follows economic integration
(connection.) For example, the purpose of the Euro is to avoid a
future, oft seen headline, "War in Europe."

It is the ethics of connection that leads to peace and prosperity.

Cheers,

-j

[Allan Crawford]

A
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

-----Original Message-----
From: "J Maloney" <jheur...@gmail.com>

Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:08:54
To:<Value-N...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Conversations and Innovation?

[Patti Anklam]

Morley,

Thanks for bringing the conversation framework into the discussion. I learned these in the early 90's as

• relatedness (hence the title of my blog)
• possibility
• opportunity
• action
• [breakdown]
• acknowledgment
• closure

The conversation for breakdown provides structure to get things back into action when disruptions, stalls, problems arise.

Acknowledgment and closure are really important for building and retaining social capital, as these ensure that we give people credit for their ideas and know when it's time to put one cycle to rest to get energy for the next.

When any conversation feels uncomfortable, it's helpful to do a bit of diagnosis to determine what conversation you should be having, or if you have missed a conversation (i.e. trying to get people into action before they've established relatedness).  Great stuff.

/patti

http://www.pattianklam.com

Blog: Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

(978)456-4175

-----Original Message-----

From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com [

mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Winograd, Morley

Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 9:10 PM

To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com

Subject: RE: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?

[Winograd, Morley]

Agree completely with your entire list and comments. What’s the URL for your blog?

Morley

 

---

[Don Steiny]

Hi Patti,

What do you think of the idea that conversations are ex-post and explain
action rather than generate it? In this sense values are explanations
and not causes. Empirical work tends to support this idea. I tend to
agree with Keith Johnstone that there is a status element of every human
transaction so the discomfort may be signal from the adaptive
unconscious that some sort of confusion or danger is happening. We tell
stories of agreement to explain this.

-DOn

> Agree completely with your entire list and comments. What’s the URL
> for your blog?
>
> Morley
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:* Value-N...@googlegroups.com
> [mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Patti Anklam
> *Sent:* Friday, January 18, 2008 8:30 AM
> *To:* Value-N...@googlegroups.com
> *Subject:* RE: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?

>
> Morley,
>
> Thanks for bringing the conversation framework into the discussion. I
> learned these in the early 90's as
>

> * relatedness (hence the title of my blog)
> * possibility
> * opportunity
> * action
> * [breakdown]
> * acknowledgment
> * closure

>
> The conversation for breakdown provides structure to get things back
> into action when disruptions, stalls, problems arise.
>
> Acknowledgment and closure are really important for building and
> retaining social capital, as these ensure that we give people credit
> for their ideas and know when it's time to put one cycle to rest to
> get energy for the next.
>
> When any conversation feels uncomfortable, it's helpful to do a bit of
> diagnosis to determine what conversation you should be having, or if
> you have missed a conversation (i.e. trying to get people into action
> before they've established relatedness). Great stuff.
>
> /patti
>

> http://www.pattianklam.com <http://www.pattianklam.com/>

>
> Blog: Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

> <http://www.byeday.net/weblog/networkblog.html>

[Matt Moore]

Don, I'm glad someone's brought up Keith Johnstone.
The frameworks that Morley and Patti mention have much
value in that they can make us more aware of what we
are doing in our conversations. But the map is not the
territory and the actual experience of a conversation
is often improvised (and yes involves status - but
status is not always simple or clear or static) rather
than structured. In facilitation there is always a
tension between structure and improvisation.

Discomfort is an interesting thing. It's definitely
worth being aware of. But it's also not something to
always be avoided/resolved (eh, J Heuristic?). You
could say there is no innovation without discomfort
(innovation as oyster's pearl is you want a metaphor).

I've been conversing with Johnnie Moore about this
recently and the outputs will appear in a form you
don't often find in the business world:
http://www.johnniemoore.com/blog/archives/001928.php

Matt

____________________________________________________________________________________

[Don Steiny]

Matt,

Very glad you are into Johnstone. I am thinking of something at another
level, really. If you look at Doug McAdam's work on the folks in Freedom
Summer. In it he showed that it was the relationships, not the values
that predicted participation. Harrison White (and some of the Critical
Theory folks) suggest that we create a rhetoric of possible explanations
for experience and select explanations form a list. The list is socially
enforced, the kind of teaching that Johnstone learned to work around.
But it is deeper than that, and we need a shared reality to collaborate.
I think another source of discomfort is when realities do not match. We
don't know why, but we get a feeling that something is wrong, we become
uncomfortable.

Of course, if we do not exercise and then we start, we are uncomfortable
at first, but the positive payback is huge. Being uncomfortable is not a
Bad Thing to be avoided, but I think most people do avoid it.

-Don

[Dr. Edna Pasher]

Matt,
About poetry:
In my first career, many years ago, I was a literatutre teacher.
I love poetry and believe it has the power to capture the essence of life often more than statistical research.
In a world where authenticity is rare - poetry can inspire us in our exploration journey to re-find it.
I sometimes use it in my work now and find the response is strong.
I believe we should explore how we can weave the arts into our lives, at work too...
Edna

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Moore [mailto:laalg...@yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: ש 19/01/2008 02:32
To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
Cc:
Subject: Re: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?

[Matt Moore]

Edna,

Thanks for the reply. I love poetry because it
reenchants language. It can make the ordinary
extraordinary. And it can convey emotion in a very
satisfying way. I think the arts (note use of lower
case) are aspects of human experience that have a
place in the workplace.

Now how do I relate this back to value networks? So
VNA looks at the flow of intangibles. And intangibles
can be slippery, tricky things. I think there's a
whole area of arts-based techniques that could be
applied to discussing the intangibles that a VNA
throws up. What do other people think?

Matt
http://engineerswithoutfears.blogspot.com/

--- "Dr. Edna Pasher" <ed...@pasher.co.il> wrote:

> Matt,
> About poetry:
> In my first career, many years ago, I was a
> literatutre teacher.
> I love poetry and believe it has the power to
> capture the essence of life often more than
> statistical research.
> In a world where authenticity is rare - poetry can
> inspire us in our exploration journey to re-find it.
> I sometimes use it in my work now and find the
> response is strong.
> I believe we should explore how we can weave the
> arts into our lives, at work too...
> Edna

____________________________________________________________________________________

[Verna Allee]

Hmm, be interesting to explore how many value network weavers are also
poets at heart? I had several poems published in the mid 1980's. I had
to give it up because poetry began to take over my life and it is a
horrifically exacting discipline to do it well.

Verna

>         > >              (97...       

>               ___________________________________________________________________________­_________

>         Never miss a thing.  Make Yahoo your home page.
>        http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>
>
>

>  winmail.dat
> 14KDownload- Hide quoted text -

[Dr. Edna Pasher]

Verna, Why don`t you share some of your poems with us here? It could take our conversation to new adventures with unexpected value!!! Edna

[David Hawthorne]

As a writer (or, rather, as someone who enjoys words in many forms) I recall
specifically the moment when I decided that I could not favor one form over
the other. I felt I had fled to a beach in a tiny San Martinho do Porto, in
Portugal. I had always been in love with the ocean as a diver and a sailor,
but for two-years I had been marooned inland, in Heidelberg, with only the
Neckar river to soothe me. Then this feeling of completion washed over me
and I realized that, for me, rivers flowed like prose and oceans like
poetry.

We have multiple ways of being, and each one is essential. The hard thing is
tracking with them, and understanding how one informs the other.

-David Hawthorne

[Patti Anklam]

Good conversation for relatedness going on here.

Don, I think that conversations that are ex-post fall into the domain of
"assessment" which although useful, are not necessarily generative, whereas
the conversations listed all have a creative aspect.

It's interesting that and Matt both picked up on my use of the word
'discomfort.' It wasn't the right word, and I see that immediately in
Matt's reminder that discomfort is often the prelude to breaking through an
old filter and the source of discovery. In the formal framework, what I
really meant was when there is a breakdown, when a situation is flat out not
working, stopped, chaotic, that it is then time to ask the coaching
questions, one of which is to probe for what conversation might have been
missing.

Morley, blog reference below.

/patti
Blog: http://www.byeday.net/weblog/networkblog.html
http://www.pattianklam.com
(978)456-4175

-----Original Message-----
From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Matt Moore
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 7:32 PM
To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Do Conversations Fuel Innovation?

[J Maloney]

Hi –

There are great parallels between poetry, value networks, VNA and
complexity. The lowest common denominator? Simplicity.

It evokes a couple important quotes from French author/aviator - Antoine
Jean-Baptiste Marie Roger de Saint Exupéry:

F: “Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à
ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher.”

E: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when
there is nothing left to take away.”

This belief is critical to VNA. It aids the enterprise, particularly
Enterprise IT, to avoid the insidious and pervasive “kitchen sink syndrome.”
See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_syndrome

A lot of the work of VN/A is simply taking away superfluous artifacts,
removing flow paths barriers, crafting frictionless interoperability…

Concerning VNA visualization,

F: “On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les
yeux.”

E: “We see best with our heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.”

With a value networks perspective much of the false pretence and deception
of hierarchy, bureaucracy, function and process simple falls away,
dramatically subsumed by the authenticity of value.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry is the author of the novella The Little Prince. It
is in 160 languages and there are 50 million in print. It is among the top
20 books ever written. There is a permanent exhibit and tribute to Antoine
at the Pantheon in Paris. Recommended.

-j

=jheuristic

[Don Steiny]

Patti,

We are talking about different things. Have you read "Blink," the
swinging rope experiment? Or Timothy Wilson's "Strangers to
Ourselves?" Or Harrison White's "Identity and Control?" Basically, all
of them say, from different empirical perspectives, that our experience
is of accountings. Our experience IS assessment. Most of what business
professionals do is try to block action. They explain things in a set
of canned explanations that hide what is going on. The reference to
Johnstone was about getting to action. I do not think we plan things
and then do them, I think we do things and then explain them, but
unconsciously.

-Don

[Stewart L. Levine]

I appreciate the comments...especially about poetry, art, simplicity and
The Little Prince. I have about 400 unpublished poems that were a daily
Practice for about four years. I found them to be a very economical way of
expressing what was rolling around in my head.

On conversations I remember in my studies with Fernando Flores in the 80's
the idea that although it was important to speculate and explore in
conversation it was his thesis that conversation that did not lead to action

was in some way frustrating. My work around agreements for results is
informed by that thesis.

Stewart

Stewart L. Levine, Esq., Resolutionary

Author: Getting to Resolution
The Book of Agreement
The Cycle of Resolution in The Change Handbook
NEW: Collaboration 2.0
www.happyabout.info/collaboration2.0.php

www.ResolutionWorks.com
510-777-1166 510-814-1010 cell

If you knew the secret history
of those you would like to punish
you would find a sorrow and suffering
enough to disarm, all your hostility

[Don Steiny]

John,

How would you know if it was supervenient or not? I am personally
suspicious of things that interoperate too well. The problems with
Cybernetics, Systems Theory and functionalism in general are a red flag.

-Don

[Don Steiny]

Stewart

>
> On conversations I remember in my studies with Fernando Flores in the 80's
> the idea that although it was important to speculate and explore in
> conversation it was his thesis that conversation that did not lead to action
>
>

For those of you not familiar with Keith Johnstone, he is one of the
founders of modern improv. He has a great part in his book where he
said the people would create perfect plays in conversation and never do
them. When he ran meetings he had the people act out the parts.

In my view we act and then explain our actions. Homeostasis is
necessary for survival and the is social homeostasis. Our simple
explanations of things often explain things in terms of causes that
can't really cause things "corporations have ruined the environment."
Though it is obviously true in one view, from another is hard to pin
down. Heck, human intentions is almost impossible to prove. I think
Hume's view was right in this case, that cause and effect are not
essences of things, but rather based on our neural machinery and by
observation. We predict that the n+1th object will fall when we drop it,
it does so we explain this by cause and effect, something causes the
object to drop. That is way tougher with humans. People do not act in
predictable ways. Therefore, IMHO, if I see simple cause and effect in
anything social, I am immediately suspicious. Many such things are
normative. I am asked by those around me to accept this story about
cause and effect and, in general, why not? "Bush like about WMD." How
could I now that one way or another? What would it mean? So and so is
a liberal or a conservative. What is happening here? I think that
people are far too complicated to be described in binary terms or
attributive terms in general. I think that this is laziness, it is a
way to dismissing things so we don't have to think about them.

So I am skeptical that simplifying things is always the best path.

-Don

-Don

[jheuristic]

Hi Don,

" So I am skeptical that simplifying things is always the best path."

And so you should be! Thanks for rasing the red flag!

This has nothing to do with simplification.

This is a common, and as you point out, grave mistake.

Simplicity is NOT simplification. Simplicity is NOT simplistic.

Simplicity is, well, quite simply, clarity of expression. Simplicity
is specifically the absence of affectation or pretense.

Simplicity is a property of value networks, VNA and complexity.

-j

[Sandy Klausner]

Hi all,

Somewhat of a newbie to this forum, but couldn't the issue just be
boiled down to the ability to "manage" network complexity through a
well-developed meta-architecture?

Sandy Klausner

[jheuristic]

Hi Sandy --

Welcome to the value networks discussion. Nice to hear from you after
so long...

In short, no.

Also important to excise two dangerous codewords in any complexity (or
value network) discussion:

'manage' = command and control;

'architecture' = fixed structure.

Complexity and value networks cannot be managed or architected by
definition.

Network complexity can be understood by the cooperation and
competition of individual agents (roles). Coherent properties are
acheived by many roles acting interdependently. Favorable outcomes
originate from roles making individual and independent decisions based
on specific AND stochastic links and exchanges. These exchanges and
links in turn can create new roles, lines and exchanges, producing
properties of emergence and self-organization.

Unlike a 'managed architecture,' the history of a complex network is
irreversable. The future is not predictable but probabilistic. Order
is never predetermined. Schema are interpreted and evolutionary, never
ordained.

-j

[Don Steiny]

John,

There are many definitions, so it'sall good. There are some network
folks, Mark Granovetter, Harrison White and his students (and me, of
course) that tend to think of roles are locations in structure. Roles
are an alternative to agency, as they are socially constructed and an
individual cannot change them. Economic theory is agent based, and
larger structures are the result of individual agents, but roles (in our
tradition) are structure that constrains the behavior of individual
agents. In this view the main activities of society is to constrain
action and encourage people to conform to the socially determined
roles. There is a part of network theory now that is the mathematical
properties of networks, and there is another part where networks are
used as a way of describing and understanding the patterns of constraint.

-Don

[Verna Allee]

Hello Don,
yes, the people you mention have made enormous contributions to
network analysis and indeed the most common understanding of roles in
networks is the structural roles. in fact most of the description of
networks to date is in terms of structure. Classic network analysts
only occasionally attempt to understand the network itself as a goods
or outcome producing entity.

Value network analysis departs from classic social network analysis in
that it describes roles in part in terms of their value contributions,
not just structure. Structural position is one interesting attribute
of a node, but value network analysis is asking a very different set
of questions than traditional social network analysis that go far
beyond structural attributes.

Since you are already a student of network analysis I believe you
would find it of value to do a deep dive into the "how to" guides on
the value-network.com open site. Value network analysis has a very
specific question about value dynamics that is at the heart of the
analysis: How do we convert our assets into value contributions into
the network? (See the article on value conversion on the articles
page, published this month in the Journal of Intellctual Capital).

An important thrust in Mark Granovetter's work is toward what he terms
socioeconomics - the application of network analysis to business and
economic issues. He is one of the few "classic" network analysts that
are asking value related questions. One of the reasons people are so
enthusiastic about value network analysis is that it provides an
expanded set of tools, methods and questions that improve the odds of
actually achieving socioeconomic breakthroughs with network analysis.
Do take a closer look.

Verna

> >> Sandy Klausner- Hide quoted text -

[Verna Allee]

Well said John,
The are many people trying to develop typologies of networks and it is
very easy to fall in the trap of categorizing one type of network as a
"managed" network. I am afraid I find that term an oxymoran. If it is
managed, then it is an organization, such as an association. Someone
might "manage" a list of people in a network but that is not the same
thing at all as actually managing the network. I am of the opinion at
the moment that real networks cannot be managed or adminstered - they
can only be served.

Closer to my way of thinking is Brint Milward at teh University of
ARizona who has looked at managing IN networks. He points out that
some networks are effectively served by what he calls a "lead agency."
that is a particular organization that plays a convening, funding or
informational role that is essential to the success of the network.
Verna

Verna

[J Maloney]

Hi --

I would add that SNA is most often perspective and retrospective, while
value networks are deliberately prospective.

Network patterns of constrain are important and often the SNA focus.

Network patterns of opportunity (value) are prospective and the focus of
VNA.

-j

-----Original Message-----
From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Verna Allee
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 6:58 PM
To: Value Networks

[Verna Allee]

Anyone for simplexity? Those few essential principles or heuristics
that help us be successful in complex environments.

[Snowden Dave]

The origin of the word "manage" is from an Italian word meaning the ability to rise a horse and dressage

To say that architecture represents a fixed structure flies in the face architectural practice

Yes, one form of management is command and control, and there are contexts where such an approach is legitimate, its just not universally so.

However most things need to be managed 

You can architect any network both during the design phase and in operation.  The type of transactions you permit, the way they are represented, when you encourage nodes that emerge.  I could do on.   

In general in any complex system we can manage the modulators, the attractor/barrier conditions that are in play at any one time.   We may not always be able to determine them precisely, and we can never fully determine their outcome or consequences, but we can manage them.

Ecologies (like networks) can be managed, its just not the same way you manage an engine.

There is a whole body of work in IT and social systems which allows the creation of management processes and architectures that are appropriate to complex system.

Now Sandy may or may not be referencing this type of thinking, however "management" and "architecture"remain both important words bot complexity and general, and networks specficially

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[Sandy Klausner]

Dave,

I browsed your SenseMaker Suite site and have a better understanding of your perspective ...

Yes, you have articulated what I mean by "manage" and "architecture."

Our key focus is really meta-architecture or put another way the architecture of systems embodied in a new Internet infrastructure that will enable collective intelligence to achieve Net-scale. I could go on here, but a much more productive way to understand our perspective is to study Cubicon and the means that this revolutionary technology can bring concrete value to conversations.

Sandy

[Don Steiny]

Verna,

> Hello Don,
> yes, the people you mention have made enormous contributions to
> network analysis and indeed the most common understanding of roles in
> networks is the structural roles. in fact most of the description of
> networks to date is in terms of structure. Classic network analysts
> only occasionally attempt to understand the network itself as a goods
> or outcome producing entity.
>

I think you are taking too literal a view of networks, the primary
issue is anti-essentialism. There are people who study networks as
object, like Barabasi and Watts, but the folks from the Harvard group,
White and his students, were interested in ways of talking about things
like "persons" as emergent properties of patterns of relationships.
Roles have a central place in sociology and White and his students found
ways make this more empirically measurable. There was never any idea
that networks were things that could or could not produce things or that
the exist except as a descriptive tool.
>
>

> An important thrust in Mark Granovetter's work is toward what he terms
> socioeconomics - the application of network analysis to business and
> economic issues.

I know Mark very well and had dinner with just a few nights ago. He
calls it "economic sociology," not socioeconomics. Read his paper "why
I am not a network analyst." His argument is way more subtle than
that. It is a criticism of the standard economic view of rational
choice (in any form). I can't recall any paper that Mark has written
that does any network analysis and I doubt there is one.

> He is one of the few "classic" network analysts that
> are asking value related questions. One of the reasons people are so
> enthusiastic about value network analysis is that it provides an
> expanded set of tools, methods and questions that improve the odds of
> actually achieving socioeconomic breakthroughs with network analysis.
> Do take a closer look.
>
>

I have read though it. I missed the peer reviewed empirical studies
that showed the benefits of this method.

-Don

[Patti Anklam]

Don,

These references sound like good starting points for me to inquire and
learn. Thanks,

/patti

[J Maloney]

Hi Don --

 

Give Mark my regards. We are on a company board together but haven't touched based in a while.

 

You and Verna are saying the same thing about SNA. We need more people like Mark, Verna and you to step up and tell the real story of SNA.

 

Some important corrections to your post –

 

1.    For better or worse Mark is an exponent of SNA; (see papers below)

2.    Mark may call his current work “social economics;” but he has may wide use of socioeconomics (see papers below)

 

 

Let's allow Mark himself to describe the limits and problems of SNA.

 

"Network analysts have nevertheless suffered from two failures of vision. One is that in many cases, they have pursued

the details of social network analysis without interest in the larger problems of social theory that prompted attention to social networks in the first place. Thus, much social network analysis has studied the quantitative properties of social networks for

their own sake, and engaged in highly specialized and narrow work which at times seems almost sectarian. I have complained of this tendency on at least two occasions, in a 1979 article, and in my keynote address to the annual social networks convention in 1990 [Granovetter 1990]. The other tendency, of which I have myself sometimes been guilty, is to devalue concern with the larger cultural, political and institutional framework within which social networks are embedded."  - Mark Granovetter, "Introduction for the French Reader," Sociologica 2 (2007): 1-8.

 

Take heed. Many here agree strongly with Mark’s remark, “…SNA is highly specialized and narrow work which at times seems almost sectarian…”

 

The limitations of SNA is a major reason VN/A was invented!

 

 

BTW, according to Wikipedia: "Mark Granovetter and Barry Wellman are among the former students of White who have elaborated and popularized social network analysis." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network  

 

You may wish to hope over to Wikipedia and change it if you are uncomfortable w/the description.

 

---

A very quick search on Google Scholar for Mark and SNA produce these papers.

 

Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness - all 4 versions »

M Granovetter - The Sociology of Economic Life, 2001 - books.google.com

Page 58. Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness

Mark Granovetter Introd uction: The Problem of Embeddedness ...

Cited by 6767 - Related Articles - Web Search

 

The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited - all 8 versions »

M Granovetter - Sociological Theory, 1983 - JSTOR

... A major empirical effort in the field of social network analysis will be required

to support this aspect of Grano- vetter's theoretical approach. ... ...

Cited by 1030 - Related Articles - Web Search - Library Search

 

[CITATION] The Theory Gap in Social Network Analysis

M Granovetter - Perspectives on social network research, 1979

Cited by 36 - Related Articles - Web Search

 

The impact of social structure on economic outcomes - all 3 versions »

M Granovetter - Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2005 - atypon-link.com

... But the important point here 1 For detailed technical exposition of social

network analysis, see Wasserman and Faust (1994). 34 ...

Cited by 91 - Related Articles - Web Search

 

[PDF] A Theoretical Agenda for Economic Sociology - all 12 versions »

M Granovetter - The New Economic Sociology: Developments in an Emerging …, 2002 - santafe.edu

Page 1. A Theoretical Agenda for Economic Sociology. Mark Granovetter.

6/1/00 1 A Theoretical Agenda for Economic Sociology To appear ...

Cited by 99 - Related Articles - View as HTML - Web Search

 

[DOC] The Making of an Industry: Electricity in the United States

M Granovetter, P McGuire - The Laws of the Markets, 1998 - stanford.edu

... 8 Following-up upon this initial insight, Chi-nien Chung (1997) has developed a

social network analysis that supports these deduced patterns showing the high ...

Cited by 53 - Related Articles - View as HTML - Web Search

 

Polanyi Symposium: a conversation on embeddedness - all 2 versions »

G Krippner, M Granovetter, F Block, N Biggart, T … - Socio-Economic Review, 2004 - SASE

... Though these trades are carried out in a very impersonal way, through machines and

so on, they show that one needs a social network analysis to understand how ...

Cited by 9 - Related Articles - Web Search

 

[PDF] The Myth of Social Network Analysis as a Special Method in the Social Sciences - all 3 versions »

M Granovetter - Connections, 1990 - insna.org

Page 1. 13 Articles The Myth of Social Network Analysis as a Special Method

in the Social Sciences Keynote Address: Sunbelt Social ...

Related Articles - View as HTML - Web Search

 

[PDF] On the Social Structure of Markets: A Survey of Some Sociological Arguments

M Granovetter - uni-saarland.de

... Burt (1992a) introduces the concept of structural holes in the social network

analysis. He ... Baker’s social network analysis of option markets. ...

Related Articles - View as HTML - Web Search

 

---

A very quick search on Google Scholar for Mark and socioeconomics produce these papers.

 

The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited - all 8 versions »

M Granovetter - Sociological Theory, 1983 - JSTOR

... that the social structure faced by children of lower socio- economic backgrounds

does ... why such an argument should apply only to lower socioeconomic groups; it ...

Cited by 1030 - Related Articles - Web Search - Library Search

 

[DOC] The Making of an Industry: Electricity in the United States

M Granovetter, P McGuire - The Laws of the Markets, 1998 - stanford.edu

... To understand the outcome, one must analyze socioeconomic and institutional links

among self-designated competitors, since an industry only becomes a social ...

Cited by 53 - Related Articles - View as HTML - Web Search

 

[Untitled] - all 2 versions »

M Granovetter - Theory and Society, 1982 - JSTOR

... What cannot be understood from this account is by what mechanisms these correlations

have their effects, or what broader historical and socioeconomic. ...

Web Search

 

The Micro-Structure of School Desegregation

M GRANOVETTER - School Desegregation Research: New Directions in Situational …, 1986 - books.google.com

... 81 Page 93. 82 MARK GRANOVETTER such as academic achievement and later socioeconomic

success, school social structure plays an important mediating role. ...

Cited by 15 - Related Articles - Web Search

 

[PDF] sm a 11 prig}

… , H Friedmann, G Gold, M Granovetter, SR Hiltz, L … - insna.org

Page 1. CONNECTIONS 0 VOLUME III, NUMBER 3 MEMBERSHIP FORMS : Personal Institutional

BACK ISSUES ORDER FORM Barry Wellman for INSNA 1980 ISSN 0226-1766 ...

Related Articles - View as HTML - Web Search

 

Evolutionary Epistemology and Human Values [and Comments and Reply] - all 3 versions »

… Dickemann, RC Dunnell, M Granovetter, W Irons, GA … - Current Anthropology, 1981 - JSTOR

... Many of these critiques have been born of a reaction to extreme conditions of mental

or socioeconomic disorder and the inequities of power and privilege that ...

Cited by 4 - Related Articles - Web Search

 

Book reviews - all 2 versions »

… , LA Coser, MS Kimmel, R Jacoby, M Granovetter - Theory and Society, 1982 - Springer

Page 1. BOOK REVIEWS 239 Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion (New

York: Simon & Schuster, Touchstone Books, 1979). The White ...

Web Search

 

 

Cordially,

 

-j

 

[Sandy Klausner]

John,

Management is a key aspect of the Cubicon environment. Management
also means control. The key to management control in a 'live' system
are appropriate interfaces with appopriate properties that are tuned
to produce the desired result. These controls are defined and
evaluated in CubeStudio. CubeStudio allows the Cubist to design,
test, and implement multimodal intellligence management services by
exposing semantic data- and control-flow concepts in a versatile,
responsive iconic desktop development and navigation environment.

Sandy

[Snowden Dave]

Well you know introduce another question.  My view is that semantic analysis has natural limits (and too many IT companies go beyond it) to meaning.  As a result "manage" and "architecture" need to go beyond IT, although they necessarily include it.  So I can see that Cubicon (and other similar products) have a part to play, within the above referenced limits.  So if you modified "concrete value" to "some value" I think the claim would be more sustainable

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[John Bordeaux]

Actually, I think the product offering (Cubicon) described at
coretalk.net relies heavily on the claim to provide 'concrete' value,
not just some value. The marketing is clear and absolute. The
language that jumps off the page to me is:

"[Cubicon's] knowledge representation is visible to and universally
interpretable by any process..." Complexity is "addressed...by
utilizing an automated multi-dimensional imagery of systems
architecture that augments text with dynamic color icons and even
sound."

I will look into this product further, but the terms "universally
interpretable" set off alarms for me at first blush.

[Sandy Klausner]

John,

Yes, "universally interpretable" meaning within well-defined
community context and down through silicon synthesis.

Sandy

On Jan 20, 2008, at 10:51 AM, John Bordeaux wrote:

Actually, I think the product offering (Cubicon) described at
coretalk.net relies heavily on the claim to provide 'concrete' value,
not just some value. The marketing is clear and absolute. The
language that jumps off the page to me is:

"[Cubicon's] knowledge representation is visible to and universally
interpretable by any process..." Complexity is "addressed...by
utilizing an automated multi-dimensional imagery of systems
architecture that augments text with dynamic color icons and even
sound."

I will look into this product further, but the terms "universally
interpretable" set off alarms for me at first blush.

On Jan 20, 2008 1:22 PM, Snowden Dave <dave.snowden@cognitive-

[Charles Ehin]

Well put, John. We definitely don't want to get into "management" or "architecture."

Charlie

----- Original Message -----

From: jheuristic

To: Value Networks

Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 6:55 PM

Subject: Re: The Poetry of Value / Conversations Creating Value

[Snowden Dave]

Speak for yourself Charles!

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[Charles Ehin]

I knew I'd get your attention, Dave. Charlie

[Don Steiny]

John,

Mark has long been associated with SNA, though he does not do it
himself, he is familiar with it, especially through the projects of the
students. I think it is the board of advisers of the same company I am
on the board of advisers of. The one for saving family histories. I
mentioned that paper as an argument that SNA was not Mark's thing. I
completely know where Mark is coming from. We interact sometimes daily
and I have gotten to be good friends with many of his friends like
Harrison, Ivan and so on. Though there are some people that take SNA in
the narrow view, by far most have heeded Mark's caution. I discussed
value networks briefly with Mark the other day. Barry wrote that, and if
you talk to him about it he is a big proponent of the relational view
and sees social networks in the broader context of sociology. To put it
another way, social network analysis, in the sense of the founders of
the field, has always been part of a broader sociological context. If
you read the papers you cite, which I have, many times, you will see
that there is no social network analysis in any of them. You have a
background in computer science and you know well that it is not unusual
fore people with mild Aspergers to be drawn to the puzzle like quality
of algorithms and to do things that are not socially interesting, but
are interesting as patterns and such. Social network studies have
attracted many people like that, but it is not the core of the field.

-Don

-Don

>
> Hi Don --
>
> Give Mark my regards. We are on a company board together but haven't
> touched based in a while.
>
> You and Verna are saying the same thing about SNA. We need more people
> like Mark, Verna and you to step up and tell the real story of SNA.
>
> Some important corrections to your post –
>
> 1. For better or worse Mark is an exponent of SNA; (see papers below)
>
> 2. Mark may call his current work “social economics;” but he has may

> wide use of /socioeconomics/ (see papers below)

>
> Let's allow Mark himself to describe the limits and problems of SNA.
>

> "/Network analysts have nevertheless suffered from two failures of
> vision. One is that in many cases, they have pursued/
>
> /the details of social network analysis without interest in the larger

> problems of social theory that prompted attention to social networks
> in the first place. Thus, much social network analysis has studied the

> quantitative properties of social networks for/
>
> /their own sake, and engaged in highly specialized and narrow work

> which at times seems almost sectarian. I have complained of this
> tendency on at least two occasions, in a 1979 article, and in my
> keynote address to the annual social networks convention in 1990
> [Granovetter 1990]. The other tendency, of which I have myself
> sometimes been guilty, is to devalue concern with the larger cultural,
> political and institutional framework within which social networks are

> embedded/." - *Mark Granovetter*, "/Introduction for the French
> Reader/," *Sociologica 2* (2007): 1-8.
>
> Take heed. Many here agree strongly with Mark’s remark, “…/SNA is

> highly specialized and narrow work which at times seems almost

> sectarian…/”
>
> _The limitations of SNA is a major reason VN/A was invented!_
>
> _ _
>
> BTW, according to Wikipedia: "*/Mark Granovetter/*/ and Barry Wellman

> are among the former students of White who have elaborated and

> popularized social network analysis/."

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
>
> You may wish to hope over to Wikipedia and change it if you are
> uncomfortable w/the description.
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A very quick search on *Google Scholar* for Mark and *SNA* produce

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A very quick search on *Google Scholar* for Mark and *socioeconomics
> *produce these papers.

[Verna Allee]

I agree with you completely that in a networked environment (and
complex systems) there are a number of things that can be managed. I
am also comfortable with your statement that there are processes and
conditions that can be managed in complex systems. You qualifier
though (below) is very important, because people do tend to use the
terms manage and control as if they are interchangeable.

"We
> may not always be able to determine them precisely, and we can never
> fully determine their outcome or consequences, but we can manage them."

I do find your statement that you can architect any network during the
design phase and operation is a bit troubling though. By any network
are referring to both technology-based and human-based networks? Just
wanted a clarification before I go further with my response.

Could you please define more closely what you mean by architecture in
this context? What specific architectural elements are your referring
to.

Also could you provide specific examples of ecologies that are
managed? I just want to be sure I really understand what you are
saying.

Verna


On Jan 19, 9:44 pm, Snowden Dave <dave.snow...@cognitive-edge.com>
wrote:

[Snowden Dave]

Thanks Verna, and you are right to emphasise the qualification in respect of what can be known about complex systems.

In respect of architecture, this is a word which has (rather like ontology) been hijacked by the IT industry in recent years and to a degree misused so I can understand (but disagree) with John's original reaction.

As it happens I am working with some architects at the moment on a series of projects.  One of those is to create a narrative database in which we store hundreds of thousands of fragments (pictures, stories, drawings) from the history of architecture to create a semi-structured knowledge base to inform future projects.

Architects have to create spaces in which people can live.  This includes highly structured and controlled spaces (the entry and exist points for an underground systems for example, where one of the design specs is that suicide  by jumping in front of trains would be impossible) co-exist within the same space as more ad hoc and informal areas.  If you look at Darling Harbour in Sydney, you will see that office environments (structured) start to fluidly move into ad hoc social systems as you reach the ground floors.

Good IT architecture and systems architecture follows the same principles.  Some things are rigidly structured and ordered, others have boundary conditions defined and physically or otherwise enforced.  I would argue for example and a good IT department would pull in its firewalls and controls to its core data leaving email and social collaboration to take place within a social computing environment, but with a boundary stipulation of only URL references to data, so passing it around.  That way I have security and freedom at the same time.

All of this is architecture.

In respect of managing an ecology - go to any national park.  Where visitors can go and when is controlled.   We are reintroducing beaver in Scotland (some of us think we should also reintroduce wolves to restore natural perdition to the deer population and hikers who are not fit enough ....

All of these are managed, and controlled.  I would defend the control word as well by the way, its the subject and nature of management and control that we should be paying attention to, not saying that neither management or control are necessary when they clearly are.

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[Charles Ehin]

Dave, I have no argument as to what you suggest and make quite explicit. However, at the end you state, “I would defend the control word as well by the way, its the subject and nature of management and control that we should be paying attention to, not saying that neither management or control are necessary when they clearly are.” My question is, “Who determines who/ what should be managed and controlled?” or “How do we decide who/what should be managed and controlled and what methods should be used?”

Believe me these are not “trick” questions on my part. I think these are queries that many of us have been pondering about for years and continue to seek answers to. Let’s use the environment as an example. How do we go about managing our ecosystems? Even using our most current scientific information and models can we really control biological systems and networks? So far, from my perspective, the evidence shows that we have been and continue to be very poor “stewards “of our environment.   

There is no question that such things as machines need to be controlled. However, managing and controlling self-organizing biological entities is another matter. For example, how comfortable are any of us in being managed and controlled by another person or persons?

On a lighter note, snow has been falling in northern Utah since 10:00 pm yesterday. I’m waiting for it to stop so I can go out and play—shovel!

Cheers--Charlie

----- Original Message -----

From: Snowden Dave

To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 11:40 PM

Subject: Re: The Poetry of Value / Conversations Creating Value

[christia...@telenet.be]

Hello all,

There's some very important points being discussed in this great
thread. Unfortunately I missed the start of the discussion, and now
I'm not sure where to pick up things.

I would like to start with Jay's statement that Innovation refers to
'something new - substantially different, not an insignificant
change'. Farther on he mentions that Innovation may refer to 'both
radical and incremental changes to products, processes or services'.
There are many schools and methods of innovation management around.
One of these is TRIZ (a Russian acronym for Theoria Resheneyva
Isobretatelskehuh Zadach or the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving).
TRIZ is a Russian-origin innovation management approach which
originated from the study of the world's leading patents.

Without going into the details of TRIZ, it is important to understand
that it is at opposites with NIH thinking: TRIZ recognizes that every
solution to a problem has already been found/applied elsewhere,
although possibly in another context, industry, or even scientific
discipline... TRIZ is an Open Innovation approach, and it is very
much relying on KM, although most of the TRIZ practitioners don't
realize this. More on TRIZ can be found here: http://www.triz-journal.com

Now, TRIZ uses distinct levels of Innovation. In our practice, we
have named and defined these levels as follows:
1. 'Actling' - A simple, easily found and almost standard solution...
2. 'Knowling' - A solution found within the sector or industry
3. 'Borderling' - A solution found in another sector or industry
4. 'Researchling' - A solution found in another discipline of science
5. Invention - An 'invention' is a new, so far inexistent concept/
creation


It appears that it is the innovation at level 3 and above that
constitutes potential competitive advantage. That is the reason why
traditional best practice approaches do not lead to lasting
competitive advantage. Please note that True Invention represents
only a fraction of a % of all innovation...

Innovation starts with a problem. This can be a business problem
(such as losing marketshare), a people-issue (culture, competency,
etc.), a process-issue (productivity, quality, etc.), a product-
related issue (design, usability, etc.), a technical problem (tooling,
materials, etc.), or even a philosophical question (Why do we do
this?, There must be other ways to...).

The Innovation Process certainly benefits from a conversation. As
Randal rightly says, 'developing a culture of [conversation] is
central to having a culture of innovation and idea sharing'.
Conversations and storytelling are closely linked to KM. All are
required for innovation.

In recent conferences and presentations, Ives De Saeger (http://
processinnovation.blogspot.com) and myself have established the need
for KM in an Open Innovation context, and we have elaborated on the
link between levels of Innovation and corresponding KM requirements:
1. 'Actling' - 'If we only knew what Our Company
knows...' (paraphrasing a famous KM quote by former HP CEO Lew
Platt). This is the level of norms, standards, common knowledge,
reuse, etc.
2. 'Knowling' - 'If we only knew what Our Industry knows...' This
would require benchmarking, access to the knowledge of professional
associations, networks of expertise, certification, etc.
3. 'Borderling' - 'If we only knew what The Industrial World
knows...' Think multi-sectoral collaboration, cross-industry
technology databases, etc.
4. 'Researchling' - 'If we only knew what Academics & Science
know...' Cross-scientific collaboration, etc.


'Collaboration' appears several times in the above. Collaboration is
related to trust. And trust is related to conversations. How could
you trust someone that you have no conversations with? The
conversation is there to establish a relationship that goes beyond
communication - presentation - discussion into the inner feelings and
personal issues. Those are not shared with anyone, because it takes
trust. Trust that what is being shared will not be misinterpreted,
misused/abused, etc. This same trust that operates at the personal
(interpersonal) level also operates at the business, technical, or
scientific level.

So, if we want to drive level 3 & 4 innovation, then we need to be
able to have conversations beyond the borders of our company,
industry, scientific discipline, etc. Unfortunately, in many
companies still, employees get reprimanded for engaging into
conversation beyond even department borders, let alone company or
industry boundaries, because management is afraid of leaks, industrial
espionage, etc. Agree with John (and Peter Senge) that the level of
conversations needs to be improved, the conversations themselves
nurtured. This is also about culture. The culture of the Learning
Organization...

Social networks and the Web 2.0 may create the capability to scale
conversations to the required levels, but what is required here is not
a technology evolution, but a cultural revolution!


Christian De Neef,
Management Consultant
mobile: +32 47 729 4756
mail: christia...@telenet.be
profile: www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdn

[christia...@telenet.be]

Conversations and innovation are not linear. That's why good project
managers are poor at managing R&D. I agree that stage-gating may well
have killed many innovative ideas, because the ROI questions comes up
long before the idea is matured. For innovation to succeed there is
need to 'believe' much more than to 'calculate'!

[david....@gmail.com]

Christian,

Please excuse the somewhat abrupt style of following: written in
haste.

Thank you for sharing your work on Open Innovation.

Very valuable, also, to raise the contribution of TRIZ to innovation:
it is an outstanding creation by the late Genrich Altshuller. Hugely
insightful, yet apparently difficult to introduce into "design"
organisations..noting as well your comment about "culture".

Agree that levels 3/4 are source of competitive advantage, which can
be geared to avoiding the competition!

Agree that the link between conversation and trust/inner feelings is
key to open collaboration.

Agree that, if allowed, it's the informal networks in conjunction with
the formal/hierarchy that are the source of new ideas. (Well
documented in this group).

Agree that culture is the problem: we should consider abandoning the
word! People need to see the fuller picture, their role(s) within it,
the means to negotiate their own self interest, possess the energy to
contribute for the benefit of the whole.... This requires inspired
leadership, a diffusion of integrity, not just formal codes of
practice, of course, and coaching.

The Value Network Analysis tool is being used to represent business
models that, coincidentally, incorporate levels 3/4 in strategies.
Such information is to help power up performance. The experience will
be reported upon in due course.

Incidentally, I notice references to Six Sigma in the Triz Journal web
site you kindly provided. Possibly Six Sigma could benefit from Design
For Six Sigma (DFSS). DFSS incorporates TRIZ and QFD.

Regards

David Meggitt

www.meggittbird.net

> mail: christian.den...@telenet.be
> profile:www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdn

[Jay Deragon]

I hope the group doesn't mind me sharing the following:

Last year four individuals met on the social web. They started off as
connections within Linkedin attracted by the content of their profiles and
the quality of dialog expressed in numerous forums on Yahoo.

These parties then formed a virtual company, Link to Your World, LLC with
the aim of sharing their collective knowledge and experience with others.
Then the parties agreed to write a book that identified the factors each had
discovered as a result of participating, conversing and studying the impacts
of the social web.

Soon the original four expanded to dozens who identified with what the
others were conversing about. Some of the new connections agreed to
contribute to the work of producing a book aimed at providing individuals
and businesses a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic factors that
drive the social web.

The collective knowledge grew as all the parties exchanged ideas, thoughts
and practical examples of just how powerful the social web has become.
Remember none of these parties had yet met physically rather it was through
the ongoing conversations that the parties became united in mind and heart.

Within a five month period the collective parties had researched, written
and produced a book that is being released today. The book titled, "The
Emergence of The Relationship Economy", was reviewed by Doc Searls,
co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, who was kind enough to write the
forward to the book.

Part of his comments include "I never got around to writing that book,
although I've focused intensively on market relationships ever since meeting
Sayo. That focus is what led me to meeting and getting to know Scott Allen,
Jay Deragon and Carter Smith. And now it pleases me to say that these three
men together with Margaret Orem have written the book Sayo assigned me to
write. They have explored and unpacked what's most important and least
understood about markets, and have outlined in fine detail the economy that
will grow out of relationships in what Cluetrain called the "networked"
marketplace."

The Emergence of The Relationship Economy is having an especially profound
effect on businesses and individuals. While individual factors are
self-evident, the collective factors are the basis for individual
conclusions for strategic opportunities that can be gained from the new
economy.

The book provides the knowledge, tools, and suggested skills necessary for
improved comprehension of the strategic issues required to succeed in The
Relationship Economy. It covers an emerging opportunity for the global
community of users/consumers /citizens, consumer brands,media, corporations,
non-governmental organizations, and governments to play a critical role in
forging this new carbon-neutral economy: The Relationship Economy.

This book details an emergence of a new economy driven by factors that are
affecting massive changes to the way people work, play, and live.

This book is a foundational resource for individuals and entities to use as
each begins to plan for participation in the accelerated changes brought on
my technological advances of the World Wide Web, now known as the social
web. The goal of the book is to enable all parties to gain perspective,
knowledge, and insight as to the dynamics of technology, the impact of
changes brought on by the social Web, and what factors should be considered
for the purposes of planning for success or survival.

To get an early copy go here..

We hope the book brings you many returns.

It has been and continues to be a very powerful virtual experience. What say
you?

[Snowden Dave]

Apologies for not replying earlier Charles - fully occupied in DC for a week with an accreditation course and several meetings.  I am just catching up on email before flying down to Tampa.

I am not 100% sure what you are getting at on the question of "who controls/manages" 

My earlier point was that you can manage an ecology, but not in terms of outcomes only in terms of attractor and boundary conditions.  Within political constraints national parks in the main make a good job of this.  

In respect of our custody of the planet we are as a species doing a bad job, but then we have no governance structure with the range or authority to act.  If the US was a little less business centric (and Europe is not immune to issues here) then we might stand a better chance however ...

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[Cindy Gordon]

Thanks Jay - look forward to reading this book - how do we get a copy -
was not a link to source -- on Amazon?

A new book is also just out that Dave Snowden contributed to,Dr. Bill
Ives, Heidi Collins, Steve Barth etc.... with other CEO's and moi on
the Future of On Demand Software called Why Buy the Cow - out now on
amazon - was a commissioned project we led (researched, wrote, senior
editor) for the CEO of Webex, recently acquired by Cisco -- project was
for Subrah Iyar, CEO, -- a good section on the relationship economy and
also Web 2.0 ....global case studies from leading SaaS (Software as a
Service) ...we are just getting out press release -just released on Jan
14th

Jay I can send u a copy to read if you like and vice versa or just link
me to buy a copy - delighted to review - I know Scott he is special....

Congrats.

All the best

Cindy Gordon Ph.D.
CEO
Helix Commerce
647 477-6254

www.helixcommerce.com
www.helixtalent.com
www.2bevirtual.com

[Charles Ehin]

Thanks for the response, Dave. I hope all went well in DC.

[Jay Deragon]

Thank you for your note and offer.

I am attaching the book for your review. Comments welcome

The link to purchase the print edition, out in two weeks, is
http://happyabout.info/RelationshipEconomy.php

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cindy Gordon" <ci...@helixcommerce.com>
To: <Value-N...@googlegroups.com>