more WIKINOMICS

It’s interesting to read the private sector anecdotes in Wikinomics, within a course on digital media. They also belong in any strategic management course/primer – whether for the public or private sector.

As a former stockholder of Goldcorp shares I hate and love the Rob McEwen anecdote. It is revealing enough to force me to look beyond my pocketbook (yes yes I obviously had the shares BEFORE Rob came on the scene) and delight in the brilliance of his stroke of genius. The case of Lego, IBM, BMW, and especially PandG each reveal ground-shaking (counter-intuitive) approaches to traditional market wisdom.

So, what does this all mean for the lens through which I am reading this? What reverberations or potential, is there for creating social change?

A few thoughts;
1)    choose any of the private sector anecdotes and let me match it up against an HIV-AIDS campaign – what links the two? A double dividend.

In 2005, I was the campaign manager for a global campaign on children and AIDS. We came up with top tier messaging based on programmatic goals, and generated visuals for the campaign, which were meant to be tailored to regional, national and local needs.

Enter UNICEF Norway.

They focused their campaign on the striking fact that children and AIDS don’t belong in the same sentence. They translated that idea into campaign imagery that profiled other things that didn’t belong in the same sentence. They juxtaposed personalities in 2-shot photos, to punctuate the point. Imagine one of the country’s main religious figures (known for his traditional views on women and the church, and gay marriage) having his photo taken, holding hands with Norway’s most famous gay florist and tv-personality. Two unlikely characters in one photo, uniting against one unacceptable alliance – children and AIDS.

The innovative approaches, by LEGO or PandG as in the case of UNICEF Norway, is part of the attraction. The approach took the value of the content one step further — by creating a buzz around the approach itself. The buzz you can create can generate visibility due to novelty.

Tapscott would surely say that the change he is talking about is a structural, not whimsical, change…and is here to last.

2)    At the risk of being over prescriptive with their typologies for my own interests, and committing the top-down error, allow me to indulge the temptation I also felt when reading the typologies in Groundswell, with a few words on the WIKINOMICS typologies. If the question is, which of these is most conducive to the work of leveraging social media for creating social change, what kinds of lessons can I draw?

– peer pioneers; offer a particular challenge. Since mine is still a top-down organization with clear ‘human-rights based’ guiding principles, there is by necessity an editor’s gatekeeping function to our ‘open’ platforms. That said, peer pioneers tapping into forums not directly linked to us, but sympathetic to our worldview could be one permutation of peer pioneers for social change. Another potential leveraging of this category is by giving tools/guidance and through competitions tap into the creativity of potential collaborators (I am thinking of an experiment we undertook in Uruguay with and through the national marketing association, providing them with a ‘human rights 101’ primer and having hem come up with catchy ads that capture the spirit of what those rights reprensent.)

– ideagoras; is the treasure trove of interests now represented in a changed development landscape. What does the private sector have to say about providing child survival or child rights? Beyond the multilateral agencies, what NGOs are doing innovative work worth scaling up? How can foundations play a role in making that happen? As we build civil societies and engage with them – how can they improve on what’s been done to date? And how can we ramp up their participation using the technology at hand, to have them answer questions in search of solutions?

– prosumers; at the risk of using a sterile term I dislike, how might we ensure that ‘beneficiaries’ (those we help/serve) are more than recipients but active participants in programmes that reach them, and are part of a feedback loop to adapt service delivery? there are inherent challenges in the ‘listening’ side of this equation (ask an adolescent his opinion and you’re sure to get an earful), but a challenge worth taking up. Small steps on this curve have included using outlets like MTV to reach our adolescent audience. No self-respecting young person is going to listen to a stodgy multilateral – but let MTV Latin America reach out and provide a discussion platform, and you’ll find out how many young people face bullying, violence (physical/sexual), hear them talk about HIV/AIDS, and most of all provide peer coaching and solutions for one another.

– the new alexandrians — would be the programmatic gurus, specialists in their fields, beyond traditional child rights areas, but include specialists in macroeconomics and other domains that might not fit as neatly into what has formed our traditional understanding of ‘expertise’. How do we create forums for these people to connect and exchange ideas?

Of course, the best solution is to put the question out – and see what the collaborators out there, all four types, come back with. Thereby beginning to answer the more important question — how do we use the technology and emerging collaborative spirit, to awaken, energize or connect, interests with a growing multitude of, as Tapscott calls them, hyperempowered citizens??  We welcome them on the scene. I just hope we can keep up with them!

WIKINOMICS

Though I don’t buy the whole thesis as laid out, I do appreciate the revolutionary nature of what Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams describe early on in their book, Wikinomics.

If we could fast forward and catapult ourselves into the year 2029 – I suspect their assertion would be right and that indeed “twenty years from now, we will look back at this period of the early 21st century as a critical turning point in economic and social history. We will understand that we entered a new age, one based on new principles, worldviews, and business models where the nature of the game was changed.”

To what do they attribute the difference? – to; 4 principles on which wikinomics is based; openness, peering, sharing and acting globally; and to the roar of a collaborative culture embodied in what Don Tapscott has described as ‘the Net Generation”.

From a humanitarian/development/human rights point of view — I can’t help but hope they’re right. I suppose, my final paper is an exploration to find out if they are. Could this world of collaborative culture, through social media, spell seismic change for social capital or social advocacy?

I have toyed in previous posts with their idea of the culture of community this cyber community creates, and tiptoed around the potential for change in spheres like diplomacy, or negotiation – concerned with my own polyanna-ish tones. But between Wikinomics and the Long Tail – I hope we’re onto something. (Tapscott claims this period we’re in rivals the 15th century renaissance!)

Could the “collaborate or perish” ethos extend to international relations? Labour relations? Gender relations? Could that ethos replace the Cold War, zero sum, dynamics that remain fundamental to the way so much of the world is run today?

Having grown up as a child in a bipolar world, the framework for my  worldview is one of; two giants/empires going head to head, or challenging each other through proxies. If one wins, the other loses. Zero sum. The economic parallel was (especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov.9, 1989) market forces would dictate the winners and losers of capitalism — again, win-loss, zero-sum.

But I ensconced myself in a world of like-minded ‘do gooders’ (as one ex colleague from my journalism days called us), where the collective thinking is enshrined in a framework of universal rights, typified by elements of the collaborative behaviour Tapscott describes.

Will the Net Generation organically grow with such a worldview?

Will the world post economic crisis of 2008/9 fundamentally change, based on a model that didn’t fully work and rewrite itself including collaborative (not to be mistaken for – socialist) elements?

Lots of questions. Let me finish this segment with one more – a fundamental one that Tapscott and Williams only partially address – what happens when the culture of generosity on which so much of this rests, tires? Or, demands a share in the spoils? The collaborators that fuel this culture of collaboration have other jobs that provide a source of income, which allows them the time to ‘play’, to ‘peer’, to ‘people’ – is that a sustainable model on which to build a new generation?

Bright lights – Long tail

Let me just say it – cause it’ll be obvious through all the fawning in this review…I loved Chris Anderson’s book, the Long Tail *– a bright light, among several, on our reading list.
WHY? (Nicco’s favourite question…!)

The theory of the long tail captures some of the ideas I’ve been struggling to put into words, about the potential impact of the democratization of tools, offered by access to internet and the open source culture.

He has several ways of describing this impact; the era of one-size fits all is replaced by one of a multitude of niches, 20th century being about hits and 21st century about nichs, top down messaging giving way to bottom up community of thought, shifting from the information age to the recommendation age, the end of spoon fed orthodoxy gives way to the rise of messy mosaics, the world of infinite variety. More directly, he talks about the long tail being an ‘infinite aisle’, or ‘culture unfiltered by economic scarcity’.

I find all of the juxtapositions or characterizations thought provoking (not only because they debunk classical economic theory and models which resonates with the revolutionary in me).

More seriously it resonates with my fundamental belief that we are indeed in the middle of something revolutionary.  Again he puts this quite succinctly in his troika of forces; the democratization of the tools of production, distribution and the connection between supply and demand.

WHY?

Because even though I’ve struggled in previous posts, in aptly verbalizing how this is true for the culture the internet is creating – I KNOW Chris’ comments on the impact of fragmentation are absolutely accurate, when I think of two ways my professional world has radically changed because of fragmentation.

Two LONG TAIL cases in point;

-    fragmentation and TV news and my career with the CBC – though the implosion of the newspaper industry is causing the headlines today, I lived the implosion of traditional TV news with the digital era and the fragmentation it caused via the cable explosion. Gone were the days of (for the US) the three major players – NBC, ABC, CBS — as the only ones on the field. In came CNN, with a vengeance and Peter Arnett during Gulf War I. In Canada, the cable networks scooped up many of the young promising journalists from the public broadcaster (CBC) and built a world of infinite choice and channels. At some point in the 90s, working at CBC was no longer a badge of honour, it was that you were either too scared to leave or part of the dead wood that even a budding cable channel wasn’t interested in.

-    fragmention in the development landscape – During the 1970s, 70% of resource flows from the US to developing countries originated from the US government, as ODA. Today, private capital (from civil society and the private sector) account for more than 80% of such flows. Welcome to the Long Tail as it applies to the development landscape. Today the head would still have the US government, as a single source of sizable contributions. But it is joined by mega foundations (Bill and Melinda Gates among the first in line), and followed by a veritable long long long tail of large, medium and tiny NGOs. Think local cub scout chapter for the micro version. Think Boy Scouts of America, for the macro version. Think church groups on missions of peace and friendship and proselytizing overseas – and you have a snapshot of today’s development landscape.

The Long Tail – it’s real…on the internet and beyond. The message is as simple as it is stark — adapt or die. It was true for the CBC and the TV news biggies, it is true now of the newspaper industry, and it is true of the development world…did someone say UN reform?

*To read the article that started all this…click!

And as evidence that I can do critical fawning — here is a critical take on the LongTail, published in Slate.

groundswell — what the public sector can learn from private sector examples

This one is not my review — but it is a good one — and worth posting/sharing. Brought to you by communicopia — (a company that develops revolutionary branding, creative, and technology solutions for socially responsible companies and non-profits).

Groundswell – chp1-3

Having participated in way too many insufferable conversations driven by an unspoken thesis and undercurrent of ‘technology trumps content’ – it comes as relief to hear the authors of “Groundswell” issue a clarion call that to win in a world transformed by social technologies, it is critical to “concentrate on the relationships, not the technologies.”

The technologies are a conduit. Without a message, whether the message is ours or is created by the audience, there’s not much point.

My experience is that the technology is too often looked at as a magic bullet — (a case of fantasy trumps reality). And while authors Li and Bernoff clearly speak the bible according to Forrester Research Inc, I take comfort in hearing them repeat, time and again, that the technology is not what drives the groundswell.

So, what is the magic bullet? What is the easy answer? They offer first steps to a strategy, based on a clear headed assessment of what you are trying to achieve, who you are trying to reach, how you can use the groundswell your audience might create – and focus on listening as an important first element to be open to surprises the groundswell may deliver, that you might not have thought of.
They categorize the market in a way that is familiar to anyone who has done focus groups and/or marketing. And suggest an approach to reach out to their audience, defined as; creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives.

Their typology does raise the question – how do you make sure you hear from more than just the ‘joiners’, to avoid responding only to the squeaky wheels found in discussion groups, or amongst the taggers? (*it made me think of covering the Northern Ireland peace accords in 1998, and worries in the lead up to a referendum on a peace agreement, that it might not pass, based on polls. Concerns were unfounded – the silent majority overwhelmingly carried the day. And I learned a lot about the power of the silent majority – and how skewed a picture one can have, if the squeaky wheels are its only artists.).

While making a convincing empirical case that the groundswell is here (in the US and beyond), it is interesting to note how small a proportion of users access RSS feeds. I regard RSS as my most important tool to find my way through the morass and cutting through all the internet noise. Perhaps, as the book explores how to tap into the groundswell we’ll find out more about leveraging the power of RSS.

“Open source” as a platform for diplomacy in the 21st century

Bear with me – as I take another stab at drawing some parallels between classes, in my blog post.

This time, I’m applying some concepts from this week’s mpp reading (the Eric Raymond reading on “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” as much as the Tim OReilly reading on “What is Web 2.0″), to the discourse going on in my Diplomacy in the 21st century, class.  This may seem like a stretch – but I’m pretty sure it’s not. So I hope I can give my thoughts enough focus, even though they are a work in progress, because I think I’m on to something.

One paragraph of background to establish context;

In Nicholas Burns’ class we are reframing modern diplomacy in a narrative that reflects the complexity of an evolving world order. The new vision defies easy win-loss, good-guy bad-guy, dichotomous characterizations, typical of Cold War thinking and the ‘we-they’ Bush doctrine. A point of class discussion (and certainly not of agreement) is whether self-interest must be defined by more than strictly national goals in the modern era – particularly given the transnational issues we face, ie; global efforts at achieving a sustainable planet, or significant improvements in the human condition (poverty, environment, health and by extension security).

What does this have to do with the open source reading?
A lot.

If you buy the argument posited by those like Jonathan Moore (former US ambassador to the UN), that given global interdependence our mutual interests cannot survive unless the interests of others are protected as well – we are getting very close to diplomacy’s version of an ‘open source’ concept, ie; opening up the channels of consultation, decision-making and diplomacy in a way that better reflects a geopolitical bazaar (of ideas and interests), than a superpower cathedral.

Goodbye superpower brinksmanship. Hello collaborative diplomacy?

Seen through this lens, one can start building a case around the open-source generation Eric Raymond tells us about, those who’ve grown up sharing ideas (and surviving “the anarchist’s paradise” known as the internet), and as Tim OReilly puts it, those “harnessing collective intelligence”, as being uniquely placed for taking on our new geopolitical challenges.

John Zogby calls Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 “the First Globals,” a group he describes as “more networked and globally engaged than members of any similar age cohort in American history.”

Anne Marie Slaughter, Dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, recently named Director of Policy Planning in the State Department, makes a similar argument in her Foreign Affairs article “America’s edge; power in the networked century”, based on the conviction that in our wired world, “the measure of power is connectedness.” She addresses the power and centrality of networks in diplomacy, as examples of connectivity that are neither directed or controlled, but managed and orchestrated.

When Eric Raymond, in his piece “the Cathedral and the Bazaar” refers to the Delphi effect, Linus’s law and the social context of open-source software – I can’t help but make a leap of logic to some of the debates going on around the competencies needed for effective diplomacy in the 21st century.

Memo to President Obama – as you prepare for your first international missions, keep in mind for your statescraft some of the open-source lessons of the digital world that helped propel you to office, or feel free to liberally apply from Eric’s list;

• The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.

• Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.

• Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.

Or from some of the watchwords penned by O’Reilly, who speaks of open source behaviour as generating an implicit “architecture of participation”, as a built-in ethic of cooperation, “in which the service acts primarily as an intelligent broker, connecting the edges to each other and harnessing the power of the users themselves”. The words were written to describe 2.0 behaviour on the web — but is it such a stretch to believe they also apply to diplomacy in a post super power world?

in progress

on social networks and online giving

i’m going to try to be more judicious about using this space for something other than assignments — and try to begin inching towards elements of a final paper. this article in Slate Magazine, about how/whether social networks can revolutionize online giving. while the article is about fundraising, i suspect some of it’s conclusions hold true for the potential of social change via social networking — or, at least, raise relevant questions.

the article is part of Slate’s special edition focused on philanthropy.

for reference

The Search refers to this blogpost by Paul Ford (dating back to July 2002), and to the reverberations it created. it’s about the world according to google — the world as we know it, the world they own and influence, and a world view where google is so integral, that we cannot imagine ‘a world without google’! thought it was worth posting as a reference — if only for the fun cartoon.

The Search – cowboys, Obama and the US hegemon

If nothing else, I’m hoping the title of this post is a grabber!

Let me try to pull some strands together, of my admittedly eclectic considerations of the readings for this post — chapters 4 to 6 of The Search, by John Battelle.

Perhaps this will only make sense by putting the reading into a context of other thinking I’m doing these days, only hours after President Obama’s address to the nation, which in turn I listened to with thoughts about the role of the US in global politics (yes yes, I’m taking Nicholas Burns’ class on Diplomacy in the 21st Century).

The Google story is a quintessentially american tale of two cowboys discovering the possibilities of, not the wild west, but the www. It is the new, new frontier. And they are fearlessly traveling it. Shaping it. Building it.

The story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin is quintessentially American in another way. It is the product of the kind of can-do, entrepreneurial spirit and innovation the US is built on – and frankly that the world has come to expect of the US (I am not American, so admit this fact with a certain bit of surprise) – where the power of possibility is limited only by one’s imagination.

In Bull Durham terms – and at the risk of mixing too many metaphors – the Google story has an ‘if you build it, they will come’ narrative.

More importantly, it has another important quintessentially American element to it. Good ideas have a chance of finding serious lift off here. In a recipe that combines a fearless appetite for adventure, discovery and innovation, there is always the hope for success.

Which brings me to why and how this resonates with the President’s address last night. In it, he emphasized that same recipe as a solution to the challenges and crises that beset the US. The President paints a picture of challenges, reform, renewal and possibility with education seen as a fundamental investment in creating excellence, serving as a means to restore (renew) America’s global leadership.

At a time of financial crisis, how does this transformational Presidency handle domestic challenges of historic proportion, while also tackling the geopolitics of the 21st century? It is tempting to say that he’ll need to tap into exactly the kind of energy, spirit of do-ability and possibility that served Larry Page and Sergey Brin so well, and that represent the best of the entrepreneurial spirit that is part of this country’s DNA.

In less esoteric terms, let me reflect on chapter 5 – “A billion dollars, one nickel at a time” – because it links to an idea we came across earlier this semester, about the internet ‘small is the new big’. A term I first heard used by Jeff Jarvis, in an interview on his website. The term was coined by Seth Godin – author, blogger, thinker, speech circuit star.

Whether it’s the Howard Dean’s pioneering use of the internet, Obama’s leveraging of new media for campaign fundraising or visibility purposes, or the ongoing story unfolding in The Search, as our internet cowboys match their innovation to a business model and strategy – this is a technology that turns conventional wisdom on its head, or – better said – this is the use of technology that is redefining the frontiers of conventional wisdom.

Small is the new big. Making millions from pennies. Reaching audiences directly (I keep thinking of the 21st century of the Gutenberg press). The spirit that feeds this – is a spirit of change, hope and possibility.

This is a course about media, politics and power – this post is about a bit of each!