Collaborative Age value production system | The Fourth Revolution Blog

In Truth, are You a Freelancer or an Entrepreneur?

Am I a freelancer or an entrepreneur? Contrary to what I thought I am probably in the first category. And before that realization I had some difficult moments – I should not believe I am an entrepreneur while I am just an elaborate freelancer. And that might just be good news that I just get this realization now.

I had this realization listening to Seth Godin in a Skillshare class on entrepreneurship. This issue is actually explained at length in Seth’s post “The Difference Between a Freelancer and an Entrepreneur”.

Seth Godin goes on to explain:

If you’re a freelancer:
- Ensure a steady stream of work
- Create an environment where you don’t go crazy and melt because of overwork
- Consistently increase the quality of your work and generate a waiting list for your time (and increase your prices) (at the same time).
- Scaling will be limited, linear and occur through the hiring of a limited number of additional partners
If you’re an entrepreneur:
- you look for an exponential scaling of your business, so:
- Relentlessly hire people to delegate work to
- Give yourself a promotion so you are constantly doing work you’re unable to hire anyone else to do
- Build an organization that has the cash flow to permit you to do those two things…

The business I am building in consulting, focusing on high-end specialized consulting, without an army of junior consultants, will not scale exponentially. It does not mean that it cannot influence deeply and leave an imprint in the world. It means I should not be frustrated for lack of (exponential) growth but focus on developing the contents and depth of intellectual property, and grow linearly by recruiting a number of partners.

This difference between (elaborate) freelancer and entrepreneur is fundamental. When I look around I realize how many people call themselves entrepreneurs when they are freelancers. It’s trendy to be an entrepreneur but in truth there are not so many around.

Maybe someday I will venture into real entrepreneurship, building a product that has the capability to scale. Now, I focus on developing my business brand with a better understanding of what it entails in terms of business model. And with more excitement than ever.

Why You Should Focus on Your Life’s ‘Body of Work’

Pamela Slim, the author of Escape From Cubicle Nation, just released an other book, Body of Work: Finding the Thread That Ties Your Story Together.

She takes an interesting view on the fact that we actually create a Body of Work in our lifetimes, that ties together all our experiences – even if they do not seem connected. In hindsight, the sum of our experiences will make sense. Why not reinforce this meaning voluntarily from now on?

Pamela writes: “Viewing your life as a body of work is not a short-term game. You want to focus on meaning, skill development, professional network development, craft and mastery. There is no one right answer for everyone.”

The book is full of examples of people that change radically their careers and lives and still find a way to bring everything back into their body of work – and expand it further, meaningfully, by opening themselves to new encounters and experiences.

You are in charge of creating your Body of Work. Take this responsibility and create this incredible story you will be able to tie up together in hindsight. Like we already mentioned in this blog, Life is Not about Finding Yourself, Life is about Creating Yourself!

What is Perfectionism and How to Overcome It

Some would say I am a recovering perfectionist (while I do not really feel that way). I can certainly be very detailed-oriented but can now also let go and ship to the world even if I know it is not perfect. What maybe I did not understand well was the mechanism of perfectionism.

I found a great summary of this issue in an excellent book I read recently. “Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, live perfectly, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame. Perfectionism is self-destructive simply because there is no such thing as perfect” – so writes Brene Brown in the Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are (she is an academic researcher on blame and became a best-selling author on the topic of becoming what we really are).

What she points out is that perfectionism is in fact an addiction that aims to protect us from the outside world – and thus could be compared to alcohol or drugs somehow. Overcoming perfectionism also requires the same tools and habit-forming activities than other addictions, and possibly external help as well.

Being careful in what you are doing is fine. But if you overextend it because you fear what people might think of you, and then you don’t come out to the world, you might suffer from an addiction to perfectionism. Heal yourself!

Why Quantity is not Quality for Reports and Presentations

I often experience that a thick-looking report, or presentation, benefits from a positive first impression, in particular in traditional corporate settings – notwithstanding the quality of its contents. This is wrong!

Pamela Slim in her latest book ‘Body of Work‘ mentions that “There is a conspiracy cooked up by marketing wonks, consultants, and executives to pay for words by the pound, and to question the intelligence of a corporate “professional” who does not create complex and obtuse presentations. They are wrong. Your instinct to keep things clean and simple is right.” She quotes an experience where she sat for a few hours through a powerpoint presentation in a corporate setting without being able to understand what it actually was about.

Sometimes, providing a long presentation is also a way to hide from the fear of having a real candid conversation about the issue at hand, making sure that the allocated time is spent looking at a content that has been carefully polished, and avoiding questions and debate.

While substantial evidence backups might need to be gathered separately (as an appendix), I believe that the presentation or report message needs to be clear and crisp and should ideally be delivered in less than 25% of time allocated for that particular discussion – or at the minimum leave time to elicit proper discussion while the material is presented.

The value lies in the confrontation of ideas and in the discussion. The quality of the presentation or the report is to act as a sound trigger for that discussion. Never judge the quality of their content separately from the discussion – and possibly the decision – that it will trigger.

How to Thrive Personally through the Upcoming Societal Changes

‘Middle class’ disappears as a result of the Fourth Revolution. We have also described the society issues we are facing with the disappearance of ‘middle class’ and how we can resolve them. In this post we will examine the consequences of this event from an individual perspective.

While society needs to find solutions to deal with the increased inequality which will necessarily happen as a result of the Fourth Revolution, what should an individual do to be more certain to be part of the people who will benefit from the change?

“Choose to commoditize your labor or choose yourself to be a creator, an innovator, an artist, an investor, a marketer, and an entrepreneur. I say “and” rather than “or” because you have to be all of the above. Not just one” says James Altucher in his book ‘Choose Yourself‘.

Choose to be creative. It is a skill that can be trained and developed, and you should start now. On the long term, developing your creativity and being able to show it to the world is the key to your success in the Collaborative Age.

Why the Disappearance of ‘Middle Class’ is Linked to the Fourth Revolution

There are more and more converging papers, posts and books about the disappearance of the ‘middle class’. The ‘middle class’ actually is quite a specific concept linked to the Industrial Age – it did not exist before: employees of corporations with a significant buying power and certainty in future revenue and position, that could hence spend in a number of consumption goods and invest in property, own their own house…

It seems quite visible from the available statistics that in effect, the wealth of the ‘middle class’ is diminishing; that less and less people can be described as being part of this group (as shown by the graph above); and that the very characteristics that described it – job security, relatively good buying power etc – seem to be disappearing.

As many authors today, I believe it is a structural change brought about by the Fourth Revolution – and not just the result of increased inequality that would be due by globalization (low salaries elsewhere…). It is due by a shift in value creation. The relatively repetitive and often bureaucratic work of the middle class is increasingly being taken up by automatic systems and soon by robots. Value concentrates in the creative work that gives life to these systems and tools.

This will pose a number of problems to our societies:

the consumption economy is in great part based on the buying power of the middle class
value creation will concentrate on a smaller percentage of the people, which will require a revamp of the redistribution policies to maintain social harmony.

This shift is probably the most critical societal shift created by the Fourth Revolution. Are you ready for it?

Want to Change the Culture? Change the Conversation!

“If you seek to change the culture (or a tiny tribal element of the culture), your timeframe and what you measure have to be focused on the conversation” – says Seth Godin.

This is quite a powerful statement that can apply to a variety of organizational situations – in particular when it comes to organizational transformations.

Changing the conversation means in particular:

changing the words (and what they convey)
changing the conversation’s topics and dynamics
changing the conversation’s participants

Looking at it this way, organizational transformations take another shape and seem less daunting.

Change the conversation. And you’ll change the world!

Inspiration for this post from Seth Godin’s blog post The tribe or the Person?

How Holacracy responds to the challenges of the Fourth Revolution organization

Breaking news in January: Zappos, the famous online shoe store, gets away from traditional management organization to embrace Holacracy, a new organizational model without middle managers! This experiment is noted in many press articles as an experimental transformation.

Holacracy is an organizational framework for organizations with a strong purpose and that can be described as working in loose project teams, with distributed authority. This new experiment will be very interesting to follow, as Zappos has already a very strong, decentralized company culture that might make this model successful in that particular context. Read (or at least consider) the (very long and comprehensive) constitution of holacracy!

What is extremely interesting is how many companies do experiment more and more with new organizational models that promote self-responsibility of the employees and encourage creativity. At the same time, these models get rid of the middle-class of intermediate management, or at least sort-of (in holacracy there are still some people more in charge than others apparently: ‘partners’, ‘lead links’, ‘core members’, but it is not linked to direct power and authority).

Let’s observe this experiment and learn further how the organizations will change in the Collaborative Age!

Wish More Luck? Go and Meet People!

“If you never meet anybody you won’t have Luck” says Philippe Gabilliet, an eclectic French business school professor who lately specialized about researching about luck.

His point is that luck is a choice; and that luck is created, or triggered, through more or less random meetings with other people. If you don’t go out and meet other people, you won’t have any luck. Ever.

Think about how powerful this assertion actually is. Luck created by encounters – just like creativity.

Isn’t luck some form or some result of creativity?

Anyway, don’t stay stuck in your comfort zone of people. Go out and meet others – as many as you can. And you will create tremendous luck for yourself. Ready to start?

How Mobile Ubiquity Changes Radically Business Models, Right Now

Calling a taxi has always been a nightmare in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: operators that did not understand my english, drivers that couldn’t find the address or got lost on the way, negotiation with those that do not want to use their taxi meter… Last time I went friends made me discover a mobile app, “MyTeksi”.

MyTeksi home screen — The home screen of the app. Remark the “+RM 0” field which allows you to raise the stakes if you can’t get a taxi through an additional tip

It is actually a pair of apps: one for clients, one for drivers. Both figure out the location of the devices, and you can book a taxi instantly, as well as see whether available taxis are around on the map. The economic model is that the drivers pay a small sum of money (less than 50 cents USD) for each successful booking, while the client pay the normal additional booking fee to the driver, who commits to use the taximeter. The app gives you the name of the driver, tracks the actual journey, and send you a summary email, which is a great selling point for lone women’s safety.

The feature I like particularly is the possibility to add a “tip” if you can’t get a taxi in the midst of peak hour (or raining). You can actually raise the stakes live until you get a taxi happy to pick you up! Real time bargaining in action!

This app business model is completely disruptive, by-passing the traditional centralized taxi booking systems and companies. It is based on the widespread availability of smart-phones even for taxi-drivers. Actually, it was brainstormed as part of a Harvard MBA homework business case by two Malaysian students (here is a good link to the story). In addition, the interface is simple and very well thought.

The app is now spreading to neighbouring countries, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore. It will be interesting to see how successful it will be in developing countries, and not just in emerging countries.

What I find particularly interesting is that it pushes back the decision to the drivers instead of the centralized taxi booking system, leaving them with the choice to adhere to the system or not, or even to have several booking systems working for them.

Once again, the Fourth Revolution gets rid of centralized institutions. It also shows how widespread smartphones are (would all taxi drivers have one in developed countries? really?). Expect to see many more ground-breaking mobile applications coming up that will shake established business models!

How to Better Understand the Hardware Movement Through a Novel: Read ‘Makers’ by Cory Doctorow

I had an excellent read with ‘Makers’ by Cory Doctorow. Cory Doctorow hovers generally somewhere between science-fiction author and defender of free collaborative work over internet. His fiction books are never too far from what could happen in our societies.

In this semi-fiction book, Cory Doctorow imagines what will happen in the world when the capability of 3D-printing and of toying around with all the available electronics will allow decentralized goods production. This leads to severe battles between large companies that can be regarded as real institutions and a loose network of creators.

Of course as always Cory Doctorow tends to support the idea of networks of disinterested creators in the vein of open-source. Still this book explains very well what could happen in a few years’ time if the hardware movement continues its development up to the point of upending significant existing organizations.

Apart from its entertaining aspect I recommend this book to better understand the current transformations of the world. And amazingly this book was originally published in 2009!

I also strongly recommend “Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow, his best seller so far, about how the state could implement a deep surveillance bordering to a police state. Quite premonitory in view of the NSA scandals.

Welcome to the Era of the Hardware Movement

The Hardware Movement – creating hardware in a decentralized, low risk and low series way, is starting to get some real grip. This post “The Long Tail of Hardware” exposes some latest thoughts on this topic.

self_replicating_printer — This printer is able to produce most of its own parts and replicate!

While funding for hardware startups does increase significantly, it has not yet reached the point where it becomes a global sensation and where former manufacturing institutions get in trouble from the competition. Still, 3D printing redefines our world quicker than we imagine. I have seen 3D printer in the offices of most of my engineering clients for prototyping. It seems that an ecosystem of garage hardware developers is developing. The tipping point could be close.

There are some legal implications of course, and open-source hardware is a concept that is maturing with a variety of licensing arrangements.

This movement needs to be watched as it may take the world by storm, although it might take a few additional years.

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