Discovery Network

[Tiberius]

This is general talk about the Discovery Network concept.
https://sites.google.com/site/multitudeinnovation/home/discovery-network

[Tiberius]

Here's a short explanation of "Discovery Network", which was also
included in the official text on the Multitude Innovation website.

A DN is a non-based collaborative network, in principle, capable of
putting an idea on the market in the form of a material product or a
service. The key word here is "non-based", which means that activities
happen on an independent platform, something like a wiki. A DN has the
interesting property to interface/link to other DNs, to "polymerize"
into a super-DN. Wikis also can interlink. A "non-based network"
stands in opposition to a "based network", which is like Ning for
example, a unique platform hosting many communities/social networks.

To understand the DN's structure think of a tornado. We can
distinguish two structures. The active core and a large surrounding,
circling/spiraling mass. The active core is formed of members, which
are individuals that put value into the venture, make things happen,
make the project go forward. The surrounding mass, which can represent
over 90% of the DN, is a very essential part of the organization. It
is made of passive members or observers. These are individuals that
are just gravitating around the project for various reasons, mostly
extracting information. But they represent the interface between the
core and the rest of the world, and from time to time they can
contribute by spreading the word, by proposing ideas, by participating
in discussion, or by adding tangible value to the project and becoming
members in doing so. This mass around the core also provides energy,
determination, motivation, stabilizes, injects accountability, etc.

Aha! Becoming a member... A member is anyone who adds value to a
project, an individual or any kind of organization, including another
DN. Value is bought in by members. If the DN uses one gram of
something you provide, that's value in, you are getting a % of the pie
worth that gram, and you become a full rights member. That's it. There
are no other categories. As a member, you are part of the decision
making process. Passive members or observers are not included in the
decision making process, and have no shares. Shares are offered to a
new member in exchange of something real (someone offers his lab for
testing, or a piece of software already written), or a potential
(someone offers to take a given task, promising to deliver in a fixed
amount of time). The value is decided through negotiation. See the
Value Sharing Mechanism document.
https://docs0.google.com/document/edit?id=1Ux3LG6g9zObMYKJO_A_c1NL7pNLP6exEOF1na5Atc88&hl=en#

If you deliver value, your member status can never be taken away from
you, unless you become inactive in the decision making process, in
which case you become a phantom member, and you can regain the member
status as soon as you get active again.

Shares can be inherited, without the access to the decision making
process.

Decision making is democratic, one member, one vote.

There is no financial system inside the DN. Every member entity
delivers through its own means. Collaboration, borrowing, exchanges or
sharing of resources within the DN are encouraged, but are not
formally managed by the DN. Members arrange these exchanges among
themselves, as they could do the same with external entities. The DN
is NOT formally concerned with how something is delivered. It ONLY
coordinates outputs from members to assemble it, keeps records for
everyone's shares, and makes sure that profits are well redistributed.
But because members are in proximity, they will collaborate
informally. The DN's infrastructure provides all the tools necessary
to facilitate these exchanges. This reduces extra bureaucracy and
makes the DN compatible with the old economy, while offering a
promising path into the new economy.

It is strongly encouraged to work with open standards and commons, and
to create commons, but this is not mandatory. We believe that those
who will use the DN framework of collaboration will soon realize that
open knowledge and knowhow is much more profitable, especially as the
super-DN is spreading larger. (Open collaborative networks are
attractive in nature and are disarming those who want to run alone.
Dumping innovation into the commons means that no one can patent it
anymore. The close, secretive, protective and defense-oriented
corporation looses its potential to extract value from that particular
technology, one it becomes public domain. If it wants a piece of the
market it MUST join the DN. Moreover, why would that corporation
working on a similar product, with no patent on it, compete with the
DN, when it can join the DN and make profits. After all, the DN is
open... IP makes absolutely no sense in this new context. We believe
the migration towards open knowledge and knowhow will happen
naturally, but we don't want to force it on people.)

Relations between members are cemented by the following agreement.
https://docs0.google.com/document/edit?id=1w4dzjBGKr8G5yIRZAhmP82orOyFar-F8wgZoeYteiBQ&hl=en#


On Oct 27, 12:58 am, Tiberius <tiberius.brastavice...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

The Value Exchange Mechanism already proposed takes care of major and discrete contributions to a venture. We also need a mechanism to account for value which is created through an ongoing process of collaboration. For example when members/owners work together on some aspect of their venture, doing paper work, engaging in communication/negotiations with other parties, taking care of business... We want to avoid free riding, we want to motivate every member to participate in these very important but somewhat boring activities. If there is no incentive some members will try to pass their share of the work on others. Following our philosophy of always trying to solve a problem by creating positive incentives, we need to find a way to reward this kind of activities. 

I propose to design a system of points, which all members accumulate based on their day-by-day activities adding value to the venture. At this stage I see it as a table of activities to which a number of points are assigned. Members have the responsibility to regularly attribute to themselves points, based on their on-going contributions. This system of points is public, therefore everyone's self-attribution is subjected to a peer-review process. Form time to time, points are transferred into ownership/equity shares, for all members at once. After this, everyone's points are reset to zero and the process enters another cycle. 

Non-members cannot participate in this process. But a non-member can become a member by offering to the group to take care of back-office activities for example, which is in fact real value brought into the venture. The amount of shares this person acquires varies with the amount of work that results in tangible value deposited into the venture, and with the in-flow of value created by the other members. 

Note that shares don't always increase as one person continues to add value! The pie is a unity, which must be split into a number of parts, in proportion with everyone's contribution. The value accumulated within the venture always increases, but the % shares per member are always normalized to unity. In other words, if someone joins the venture and starts poring value in faster then you do, your % of the pie will decrease, as it will do for every other member, and a portion of it goes to this new person adding value like crazy. BUT we need to understand that even though your % of the pie drops because someone else is contributing more than everyone else, you end up making more! It is very important to understand this! How can you make more when you have less %? The hard working person who makes your % decrease is actually increasing the overall value of the venture, which means that the potential for profit is increased. You end up having a smaller % of a greater value, which means a greater reward.     

[Ian Bentley]

A very interesting concept, Tiberius! I'm fascinated to see how this develops.

How will you weigh up the values of one person's contribution against another? As I see it, the challenge is how can we objectively allocate a comparative value to any particular activity?

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[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

Interesting question Ian. 

I think one solution is to build a catalog of tasks that are usually undertaken in everyday business and to attribute points (value) to each of these tasks. You may think that this is very tedious, BUT here's what I propose. Note that this catalog is generic, in the sense that it can be used by any existing Discovery Network, since we are talking about recurrent tasks. For example, a secretary performs practically the same type of activities if she works for a biotech company or for a dentist. It's about scheduling meetings, arranging trips, filtering and redirecting communication, printing and archiving documents, etc. Therefore, this catalog can take the form of a shared, open online tool. It is searchable, people can add more tasks, and, more importantly, everyone is able to assign a number of points to every task. All inputs for one particular task are averaged! As more and more people participate to this process the value of each task reaches a stable value, which reflects the average, popular evaluation. This online collaborative tool, the catalog, would be used as a reference by everyone who needs it. 

If a Discovery Network, or other type of organization that finds value in it, has some special needs, it can always apply correction factors to the catalog, in order to adapt it for their internal use. The important thing is that the bulk of what's needed will be already there.   

Another question I anticipate would be, how can we transpose the catalog from one local economy to another? I think the number of points allocated to each task represents relative human effort and the mix of skills involved. We are talking relative, which means, if we are fair and consider all humans equal in rights, that the relative weight will be the same anywhere on this planet. Then, to translate points accumulated into % of shares it's just a matter of agreement. 

Is anyone willing to collaborate to implement this idea? 

--
t!b!
http://www.google.com/profiles/tiberius.brastaviceanu

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

Here's a first draft of the "Back Office Catalog" concept 

https://docs1.google.com/document/d/17S7zFZTVxz2kjatlNZm07YytXNHR56a8g_ss3XDLKlI/edit?hl=en#heading=h.q0oszc-bjqisn  

--
t!b!
http://www.google.com/profiles/tiberius.brastaviceanu

[Marcos]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 2:50 PM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu
<tiberius.br...@gmail.com> wrote:
> planet. Then, to translate points accumulated into % of shares it's just a
> matter of agreement.
>
> Is anyone willing to collaborate to implement this idea?

I think they implemented something like this over at bettermeans.com.
Their open enterprise model talks about the percentage distribution
once a task is completed, if I remember right.

--mark

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

Marcos is right. The betermeans.com team developed something similar   http://bettermeans.com/front/how.html   see Contribution-Based Compensation. I included Shereef in this email. 

Shereef, we are talking about a tool and its associated method to valuate back office tasks on a on going bases, and to transfer that into equity. We call this tool The Back Office Catalog.    

https://docs1.google.com/document/d/17S7zFZTVxz2kjatlNZm07YytXNHR56a8g_ss3XDLKlI/edit?hl=en#heading=h.q0oszc-bjqisn     

If I understand it properly, the bettermeans.com method doesn't rely on a REFERENCE, like a Back Office Catalog. This put's a big load on members, because they have to rate everyone's work very often, and the essence of this repetitive activity is not deposited anywhere, to become a REFERENCE. The idea is that once you go through the rating process a few times you realize that there is a pattern, that some activities are rated the same by you and by other members. Moreover, every venture running on bettermeans.com platform will replicate the same rating activity. Thus the rating process becomes redundant. One can reduce this load if on moves the rating process into a common space, where average ratings for common tasks accumulate and stabilize AND become a REFERENCE. Progressively, members begin to trust the REFERENCE and spend less and less time rating. Actually the REFERENCE is our Back Office Catalog, which can also be used on other platforms. 

Once you have a REFERENCE in place you can delegate rating (move the valuation process) to the person who does the work, because the rating becomes less subjective, freeing members completely from this task. The entire system moves towards self-management, which good. As mentioned in our description, REFERENCE-based self-rating is peer-reviewed, and you can also put an automated honesty/reputation mechanism on top of that. If you don't have a REFERENCE, self-rating becomes almost impossible to implement, because it's mostly subjective and hard to track back.  

I would like to get Shereef's opinion on this. Together, can we build a better system? Perhaps Shereef thinks his system is sufficient, based on this experience...   

--
t!b!
http://www.google.com/profiles/tiberius.brastaviceanu

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

An old email from myself to some collaborators that I am moving into this forum (Tibi). 

 

date Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:43 AM subject About *.innovation mailed-by gmail.com

hide details 9/27/10

Hi Ian and Roii,

Here's my short analysis of *.innovation so far. Roii and you, Ian,
have had very similar ideas. I call this "based" networked innovation.
I would call the Discovery Network concept "debased" networked
innovation, to make the difference more clear. I think both systems
will work in the end, both will coexist, and I would personally like
to be part of both.

"based" means that ventures are all based within a unique network,
SICU INNOVATION or Crowdsourciiing. The network provides something
essential for these ventures like funding, valuation processes (your
mavens, connectors and salesman), perhaps a brand, etc. In exchange,
the network exerts some control over these ventures, and there is also
a form of taxation within this system, where a part of the profits
generated go to the network. If the network is fair and democratic
that's fine, otherwise it could become another monster milking people
for their ingenuity and hard work. So there must be strong rules and
incentives in place to regulate these networks (SICU INNOVATION and
Crowdsourciiing), also called incubators by Roii.

"debased" means the opposite. A Discovery Network is independent,
which doesn't meant that it is alone, or not connected to anything
else. Anyone can set up a Discovery Network. There is no incubator or
mother-network. But these DN's have the property to interface with
each others and polymerize into super-networks. So the DN will create
their own ecosystem, which I believe will provide everything needed
like the incubator of the mother,base-network does, but in a more
organic way. No one controls this ecosystem! The super-network
inherits the same principles from the the Discovery Network, it will
be a value-based structure, as opposed to a power-based structure.

When it comes to complexity and being perceived as totally new, I
would say that the Discovery Network comes more natural. In the end
it's just a bunch of entities (individuals and independent
organizations) bound by a collaboration agreement. It is very simple
in the sense that every member continues to do exactly what they were
doing before by providing their essential contribution to the group,
the Discovery Network. Everyone takes care of its business, including
financing. There is absolutely nothing new there. Individuals and
independent entities are already part of collaboration networks, and
being par of a Discovery Network doesn't interfere at all with their
internal processes, the Discovery Network exerts absolutely no
pressure. What it is asked from every member entity is to provide an
essential service which is already the specialty of that particular
member, and to coordinate the output with other members part of the
collaborative venture. That's IT. The Discovery Network doesn't care
how the task/service is carried out, where the money to finance it
came from, etc.

Another thing is the interface with the general financial and
economical system in place. The Discovery Network perfectly plugs into
the old economy, members can be classical organizations operating
within the old system. Moreover, a Discovery Network perfectly plugs
into the new economy, the member can be another network, making use of
crowdfunding, using social media for marketing, etc. This is a very
important feature. As we transition from the old economy to the new
one, your system NEEDS to be able to operate and draw resources from
both economies! This is capital! The Discovery Network operates ONLY
between member entities, considering them as black boxes. The only
thing relevant is what comes out of them. The Discovery Network
connects and coordinates output from different black boxes, in order
to achieve added value. The fact that the Discovery Network doesn't
penetrate inside its members is a key feature. This is what makes it
the perfect organization in a transition period.

--
t!b!
http://www.google.com/profiles/tiberius.brastaviceanu

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

A discussion on efforts ---> value ----> rewards, in the context of a network of networks. See doc attached.