Collaborative Age | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Why Overcoming our Fear of Freedom is Key to Success in the Collaborative Age

Seth Godin states in his excellent post ‘the Fear of Freedom‘ that: “We live in an extraordinary moment, with countless degrees of freedom. The instant and effortless connection to a billion people changes everything, but instead, we’re paralyzed with fear, a fear so widespread that you might not even notice it. We have more choices, more options and more resources than any generation, ever”

Our individual freedom has never been so great, never since the Agricultural Age have we had so many hours of leisure and never have we had so many resources at the touch of the fingers. It will only increase with the Fourth Revolution into the Collaborative Age. What do we do of this freedom? What do we do of that knowledge? What do we do of these possibilities?

Most of us have not found the answer yet. Most of us are paralyzed and even dream to come back the 1950’s where life seemed much simpler and straightforward – albeit with much less possibilities than today for the average person.

The ability to overcome our fear of freedom is key to our success in the world that opens to us. Going beyond our habits, connecting beyond our circles, broadcasting on the web, reaching out to the world with our own voice. That is what will distinguish those that will succeed in the new world.

Do you fear freedom, uncertainty? Let’s practice freedom. It is possible to do it in small doses, and it is necessary.

When do you start practicing your freedom?

How the Rate of Evolution Increases Dramatically Right Now

We have mentioned several times in our book and posts how information generation is evolving exponentially. Another statistics: “According to a calculation Hal Varian, an economist at Google, and I made, total worldwide information has been increasing at the rate of 66 percent per year for many decades.” – says Kevin Kelly in ‘What Technology Wants‘. Refer to the the exponential deception to really understand what that means!

“Compare that explosion to the rate of increase in even the most prevalent manufactured stuff —such as concrete or paper— which averages only 7 percent annually over decades” Kevin Kelly continues.

But the most astonishing is not that. The most astonishing is that we seem to evolve much quicker as well: “Today, according to research on the mutations in our DNA, our genes are evolving 100 times faster than in preagricultural times“. Evolution is also quicker!

We are part of the system that evolves, and our evolution pace also quickens – although not as quickly as the world around us.

Why ‘Relationship Capital’ Becomes Essential for Organizations

“The modern company becomes a relationship organization and thus needs to develop a relationship capital” says the French futurist Denis Ettighoffer,

“The methods whereby ideas and related value are created in the Collaborative Economy have nothing to do with the traditional productivity enhancement methods. In the networked organization, the relationship logic replaces departmental and functional logic“.

Furthermore, “The continuous expansion of knowledge creates a rupture in the way wealth is apprehended. What creates value is not any more the physical side of work but the creative and networked component of the activity of each human contributor. Getting access to the adequate ideas and knowledge becomes as vital as getting access to rare materials or even to capital, because knowledge allows to replace physical resources that might be missing“.

Relationship capital is not yet measured consistently, although it is certainly what makes the value of the most well-known start-ups of the Fourth Revolution. In the future we can expect that this component will become one of the most important performance measurement for organizations.

When do you start focusing on developing your relationship capital?

Source: very interesting article (in French) on ParisTech Review on ‘the Company of the future‘. Translation by Fourth Revolution Blog.

How Employee Engagement though Empathy is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage

Hugh McLeod at Gapingvoid says: “Employee engagement is the ultimate competitive advantage. Unlike other advantages that can be bought and sold, this one is a bit trickier. It has to be inspired“.

And true enough I lived through a number of instances where employees where fully engaged in the organization – often through decisive acts of leadership from its leaders, and that really made a difference.

Where Hugh makes a point though is that engagement is not just about leadership and inspiration. It is about creating empathy between the participants to the adventure. And thereby creating stories, the stories of the adventures of this group of people.

“Stories in business are especially powerful because they can unite everyone on a common mission. Tell everyone the story of how you got to where you are – and they’ll likely take over the rest. After all, the best books ask us to imagine our own endings…”

What about creating your own ending to the project you are on, together as a group full of mutual empathy?

How the Collaborative Age Requires Global Political Action

I very much enjoyed reading the popular book ‘Capital in the 21st Century‘ by the French economist Thomas Picketty. Of course, I really enjoy the historical approach as I believe that historical perspective can give us really valuable insights into the major changes in our societies – that is quite a similar approach to the approach in followed in my book, although of course I had less time to dwell and research into historical economics series!

I really recommend this book for learning about inequality changes throughout the Industrial Age, and in particular in the 20th century. The book clearly demonstrates that our societies are facing today a particular political challenge regarding both rewarding success and entrepreneurship, and minimizing inequality, in particular when it comes to inter-generational inequality.

One point of the book which is particularly controversial is that the solution for Picketty is clearly some worldwide action on the tax structure. Today it is not possible any more for a single country to develop a tax system that would resist the tendency to inequality, as the financial system is so globalized (re-read our post on When will governments finally realize that the interconnected economy is already here?). There lies precisely one particular issue that I noted in the Fourth Revolution book – political action now needs to be global. We can hide between a super-power that tries to do all the work by itself (with some noticeable success even on the tax side, but limited to its citizens only).

Our political systems need to grow. Nations are outdated. Europe is necessary, and not even sufficient. Global policies must be put in place to be successful in our transition in the Collaborative Age.

We Can’t Find Anybody Else In Space (and Why It Matters)

Although loosely related to the Fourth Revolution, I want to share the link to this very interesting summary of the issues around the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, also called the Fermi Paradox – ‘Where is Everybody?’.

The issue is the following: we know there are zillions of other planets that should be able to support life out there (the low estimate in the article is 1 billion in our galaxy alone); that our own Earth is quite old by space standards, hence our technology probably not so advanced, so… why do we not see any sign of other life?

There comes the concept of the “Great Filter” – i.e. there would be some stage of technological advancement where civilizations get wiped out; a filter that almost no planet and species manages to overcome. Would we be the chosen ones (we would have overcome the filter in the past), or is that Great Filter somewhere in the future? Would there be a stage of civilization development where it inevitably destroys itself?

The question is not so innocuous as it seems. As we create highly connected technology, the chances of unexpected disruptions that could quickly spread to the entire system do increase. Would there be any chances we’d create such a situation in the Collaborative Age?

How Battery Technology is the Unrecognized Key Collaborative Age Enabler

We take for granted the small parts that power most of the devices we use – long lasting, rechargeable batteries. Still in some sort, battery technology is a key enabler of our modern way of life, and technology progress has been dramatic in that field. And more is to come as the total capacity of batteries increase and could change electrical power distribution overall.

Batteries power all our portable devices, giving us freedom of movement like never before. Our devices become increasingly long-lasting and powerful, allowing us to work, entertain ourselves, and communicate from wherever we are. In a way they enable the Fourth Revolution by removing the constraint of localization close to a wired network. In Africa they power mobile phones which are the only way to communicate effectively. Battery-powered cars also become increasingly a possible mainstream technology for moving around.

There is more: Industrial Age electricity generation technology did not involve storage of power which required to maintain at all times, equal production and consumption on power grids, leading to issues as daily consumption is highly variable depending on the time, weather and day of the week. This is today a limit to the development of ‘green’ power sources as wind and solar power is highly variable and somewhat unpredictable. Increasing their share on the grid leads to substantial issues for the grid managers – sometimes adding more windmills requires adding more fuel and coal power stations to have extra capacity to cater for peaks in demand and slumps in production!

tesla battery — Batteries in everything – the Tesla car battery

With ambitions to build megafactories for batteries, that may change as well. Elon Musk’s announced strategic move to build a ‘Gigafactory’ is controversial. But the fact that the idea to increase production capacity (one single factory to produce more battery capacity than the current total worldwide production!) to lower the cost of batteries is in the air – and, provided the availability of raw material follows, will change significantly the landscape of power generation as well.

Batteries – the small, discrete technology that is changing our world more than we would ever realize!

Why Giving the Right Impulse at the Right Moment is More Effective than Continuous Effort

When it comes to achieving results, it is more important to put the right effort at the right moment than to row continuously up to exhaustion.

That is what I learnt when I was lucky enough a few weeks ago to experience rafting in the Alps mountains. How does that work? You let yourself flow down a torrential river on some air filled rubber raft. As a beginner, you have to follow the orders of an experienced helmsman.

The way it worked was very instructive: most of the time we just let ourselves be taken by the flow (which was a very pleasurable moment); only at determined moments was decisive effort required to maneuver in rapids, in a concerted and quick effort. And even when it came to avoid an obstacle, the point was to strike an effective compromise between effort and letting oneself be pushed by the flow. And all in all, it was more effective to row powerfully at short, decisive moments, than try to row hard all along.

This event was a teambuilding with a client, and as such this was a great learning point for all sorts of organizational change: the point is not to try to try to constantly try to go against the flow, nor to exhaust oneself trying to resist the force of the organization’s natural evolution. The point is to identify the short moments of intense effort that are sufficient to bring the boat to the chosen safe trajectory. It is about knowing that you need to let go most of the time except well chosen, intense moments. Great learning!

How the Fourth Revolutions Enhances the Power of Weak Ties

The Fourth Revolution value creation is all about releasing the power of weak ties. In our social environment we have strong and weak ties, depending on how frequently and tightly we maintain our relation to other people.

strong-weak social ties representation Apparently the statistics is that we maintain on average a dozen very close contacts, about 150 medium to strong ties, and about 500 to 1,500 weak ties. Identification of this structure of our social network is not new, for example this paper on ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’ in the American Journal of Sociology in 1973.

The paper is a bit lengthy but the conclusion is clear: “weak ties […] are seen indispensable to individuals’ opportunities and to their integration in communities; strong ties, breeding social cohesion, lead to overall fragmentation“.

Weak ties create opportunities. This is repeatedly demonstrated for example by people looking for new work as testified for example in this post “the power of loose ties“. Or by our common experience that often, opportunities come from people with whom we are only remotely connected.

The successful social networks that define the Fourth Revolution are all about making the usage of weak ties easier, quicker and more frequent. Think about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Their power lies not in the direct connections but in the “friends of our friends”.

The Collaborative Age is the Age where we leverage our weak ties.

More information? Link to a general discussion of Interpersonal ties and social networks structure on Wikipedia.

Why Management’s Job is to Build the Capability to Recover if Failures Occur

“Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur” – says Ed Catmull, president of Pixar. While it is possibly a bit stretched (why not prevent known risks if easy?), this value has a great value in the world of uncertainty we are leaving in.

freak train accident — Freak event – all resides in how senior leadership will now react!

This brings us to the need to have reserves to cater for unknown- unknowns, the fact that our environment is generally shaped by short events of major crisis, and many topics we have discussed at length in this blog.

This also indicates that it is essential that leaders of an organization are not completely swamped by the day-to-day operations but have spare capacity available to do this important job nobody else in the organization can do (because those generally in charge of Enterprise Risk Management do not have the level of authority to really consider disruptive events).

Senior leadership’s role is to be able to manage disruption in a positive way for their organization, when it happens, and this requires a lot of preparation. Because luck is not luck, it is just good preparation.

How Philanthropic Patronage Returns for Art and Science

This paper in the NY Times describes how ‘Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science‘. This can also be put in perspective with what happens in the field of health and development, for example with the Gates foundation, which is privately funded. Roles that had been taken by Governments during the Industrial Age seem to be now shifting to private individuals.

Orfeo_libretto_dedication — A dedication by Monteverdi to his patron – Orfeo (17th Century) (source – Wikipedia)

Patronage is actually not new. In the previous Agricultural Age, artists and creators needed the protection and funding of high-ranking individuals to develop their art and develop their initiatives – it was the widespread concept of patronage. This is why most artistic production is dedicated to the patron. It is only during the Industrial Age that this role was taken over by Government, with the creation of massive public research institutions and other direct and indirect public support mechanisms to artistic endeavors.

As we enter the Collaborative Age the trend would seem to reverse again with high wealth individuals entering again the field of art and science fostering while Governments are wrestling with huge deficits and can’t afford to continue this protection and support.

Is this trend temporary or will it be a characteristic of the Collaborative Age? I believe that with the shift in value creation and the disappearance of middle class this trend is possibly here to stay. Of course this poses all sorts of questions about possible conflicts of interests. Still patronage in the Agricultural Age supported the production of many great artwork and scientific advance, there is no reason why that could not continue.

Artists, scientists, you might want to seek funding in patronage rather than in Industrial Age governmental institutions!

Don’t Underestimate How Easy it is to Start a Business Today

The cost and effort to start a business has dramatically floundered in the past few years with the advent of the Fourth Revolution. I believe this fact is still not fully understood by the mainstream. It could comes up to the point where even Venture Capital, which was so important to the development of new technology start-ups in the 1990’s, might not be so relevant today in the field of innovation.

A typical start-up business plan framework from ‘Business Plan Generation’

Some relevant stories and posts by Vivek Wadhwa include Beat the GMAT, a 32,000$ start-up that was valued millions in a few months, or this Quartz post ‘Anyone, anywhere can now build the next WhatsApp or Oculus‘.

With the advent of cloud services, it is very cheap to have a professional level infrastructure at your disposal almost immediately and for a few thousand dollars a year, as I am also experiencing with my own ventures. It is also very cheap to develop mobile applications, websites and other web-based software based on existing free, open source basis. The importance of strong financial backing is thus delayed in the development process of new start-ups to the point where they can demonstrate revenue and whether their business model could be viable.

This of course removes lots of excuses not to start following your insights and ideas and create value to the world!

For more insight into business models I strongly recommend the Business Model Generation book, a collaborative book that created a framework that is now used throughout the start-up business community.

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