NESTA Connect

Collaborative Models in the Film Industry

I love film festivals, and the London Film Festival is one of my favourites.

This year, NESTA is sponsoring a London Film Festival Fringe event, called Power to the Pixel. Director Liz Rosenthal describes the event as looking “ahead to where the power of the internet and digital platforms can offer new opportunities for those creators and companies that can no longer effectively function within the old film business model”.

Of course, there are plenty of traditional film businesses trying to understand these opportunities also.

Showcased at Power to the Pixel were some of the most innovative creative and business tools from around the world. Here are some of them:

PlaceVine – brings content creators and brand owners together to create sponsored content. Check out Shane Meadows Somers Town for an example. Would you guess that his short film was fully funded by Eurostar?

M dot Strange – talked about how to make a $70 million (style) feature film in your bedroom, and then show the world how to do it for yourself via YouTube. He uses his social network of admirers as zombie extras who then virally market the movie. And then they subtitled it into 17 languages. For free.

Wreck a Movie – gives film-makers a platform to crowd-source their own production using social networks. Timo Vuorensola explained how he and some friends went from space cadets in Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning to selling war bonds to fund animated feature that satirises Moon-based Nazis in Iron Sky.

All of the talks will be up on the Power to the Pixel website soon.

Embracing Chaos & Connectivity

I recently watched an excellent documentary on BBC4 called 'high anxieties: the mathematics of chaos' (still available on iplayer) which essentially tells 3 interwoven histories over the last 100 years or so, namely:

1. Chaos theories in mathematics
2. Economic theories and models
3. Climate change theories and models

To cut a long story short, the main message is that  we have repeatedly make the mistake of believing that the world behaves like a big pinball machine with predictable causes and effects. However in reality, mathematics and science include inbuilt chaotic behaviour which we generally choose to ignore as it's too unsettling.

More specifically, what the 3 histories show us is the following:

• The is potential for chaotic behaviour almost everywhere
• the more connected a system is, The more likely that chaotic behaviour occurs that system (be it mathematical, economic, climate etc)
• The more you drive/push/grow a system, the more likely chaotic behaviour will occur.

Now I can't see our global connectivity decreasing any time soon; in fact I think it can only increase. Therefore assuming chaos is generally something we strive to avoid/manage in economics or our climate, this suggests to me that we need to rethink our attitude to relentless growth.

Ever the optimist I believe we need to embrace this ambiguity and chaos, not ignore it, and be more wary of certainty. Perhaps we should learn to live with ambiguity from unexpected sources such as artists, the slow movement and mathmeticians. But then again i'm not certain.

What is the right size to thrive in a recession?

One of my favourite observations of the last couple of days comes from James Cherkoff who runs his own small business who asks:

"What do I say the next time my commercial bank asks for a solid business plan?"

Pot calling kettle, and all that. Anyway, the current crisis really demonstrates how everything and everybody is linked to everything else. And in particular that trust (between large financial institutions) is the bedrock upon which the 21st century networked economy is all about.

So our economic fate is increasingly intertwined with others and we are experiencing our first real networked global recession as Charlie Leadbeater says. This obviously means we have to find £400bn pounds when our banks get too creative, but it also creates plentiful opportunities if we know how to embrace them. So, ever the optimist, I am wondering whether, can we turn this to our advantage given the diversity and connectedness of the UK.

Desperation is the father of necessity (with necessity being the mother of invention) and it may well be the smaller agile businesses who can find the bigger opportunities in the next 12 months, though obviously the corporates ought to find it easier to whether the storm i.e. Small is Beautiful but Big is Powerful.

The crisis is a fascinating reminder for large swathes of the population (and estate agents) in how markets can go down as well as up, but more importantly is possibly a once in a generation opportunity to really radically redesign and rethink our politics, economics, and society for the better.

Over-Specialisation Nation!

Is it is possible to become too specialised?

The dramatic events of last week on the financial markets are one example how, I believe, specialisation can cause major problems. The ever increasing (so called) 'sophistication' of financial instruments have become so complicated that they can't be understood by enough people, certainly not the financial regulators, and therefore the products that end up having no bearing on genuine economic reality, leading to the recent bubble and subsequent credit crunch.

Similarly, I have long felt frustrated at specialists in academia or industry who are so narrowly focused on their narrow niches that it is practically impossible to understand what they say and what they are working on, and only a handful of other people can even question them let alone understand them.

Don't get me wrong. Without question we desperately need well trained and educated specialists who understand complex issues in great detail, be it financial or philosophical. The world is a complicated place, and I'm not for one moment advocating a retreat to creating renaissance men and women, however appealing a romantic notion that may be. It's simply not possible for individuals to be sufficiently knowledge about a breadth of issues or disciplines as it once was.

However I think when swathes of business and academia get so specialised and riddled with jargon that they become practically incomprehensible, then I think we've gone too far and need to take a step back. I think businesses, academia and governments need to create more space for specialists to interact with larger groups of people across traditional boundaries. This is what we try to do with our NESTA Connect programme. As I've said previously this space might be provided by talented people who span multiple disciplines themselves, or organisations that act as intermediaries.

This excessive specialisation is a global phenomenon, and yet the UK is interesting in that a) it has one of the most specialised education systems in the world, and yet b) the opportunities open to graduates of a particular discipline tend to be wider here compared with Germany, and possibly the rest of Europe, for example.

So in conclusion, I believe we should no longer tolerate the uber-specialist who talks to no-one but their immediate micro peer groups. Else we run the risk of losing the ability to discuss, debate and question other people, leading to the ludicrous situation that precipitated the recent crash in financial markets.

Video and final stab at social networks and cities

Readers of this blog or attendees at Nesta's recent events will have heard me, or others talk about the theme of 'social networks as the new cities'.

I don't intend restart this discussion again in detail but for anybody who is interested, find here a video of a talk I gave earlier in the summer at the NLab conference in Leicester, on this topic.

It's something of a stream of consciousness exploration of the subject but hopefully gives a flavour of my point of view. Namely that cities arn't just simply analogous to social networks, but rather some of the functions that cities provide (proximity, economies of scale, random interaction etc) are now increasingly being provided by social networks.

And most importantly, we are only just beginning to see the impact on our cities and places which will be profoundly impacted by the web, just as they have been historically by other disruptive technologies.

Anyway, enough on that, but as always I'd be interested in any thoughts and feedback as ever.

PS. Thanks again to Sue Thomas for curating the event and inviting me to attend.

Maps and hierarchies

Generalists and specialists are needed in all organisations and in most complex situations. However they couldn't be more different and work in different ways.

For instance, generalists create maps, like the wonderful London tube map, to make connections, chart routes or lines of enquiry. Whereas specialists build hierarchies, that tend to have more linear branch (or root) like structures, like the figure on the left.

If a node fails in a map, i.e. a station is closed, it often doesn't usually matter critically, at least if it's not on the periphery. There is still a different way to navigate around. Therefore generalists are interested in the bigger system rather than the individual components.

However if a node fails in a hierarchy, it can knock out the whole branch or even the whole system. Therefore, individual components or nodes are critical for the specialist.

As a general principal, as we become more connected and distributed I believe we need more maps at different levels. This is a complex business and there is still a long way to go to make these as useable as a tube map.

To some extent I think an output of our Connect projects is to map the respective spaces we are operating in. And it's worth considering both maps and hierarchies when facilitating collaboration.

As a map geek (let's face it - who isn't?) I'd love to get any links to useful or beautiful (or both) maps that we can learn from.

The Networked Enterprise

The Networked Enterprise

In his recent book, The Networked Enterprise, Ken Thompson outlines how through taking advantage of Virtual Enterprise Networks, small enterprises can win and retain big customers…

"Imagine you have a magical Electron microscope which lets you see anything you like not in the physical world but in the economic world. You crank the magnification right up to maximum so you can see the very smallest atoms of economic activity. What do you find? You find me - the owner/manager of an ambitious knowledge-based small business.
Text me a question “What is your biggest strategic challenge?” It takes a minute because I really have to think about it and get my head out of the tyranny of operational urgencies and into the strategic space I so rarely inhabit. Eventually your cell phone beeps with my response “According to the A-list strategy gurus such as Harvard's Michael Porter my biggest challenge is gaining access to major enterprise customers who will stretch and improve me and my product or service. And you know what Porter is absolutely right”
I am a small fish - there are a lot of others just like me. For example, in the EU, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs or small fish) comprise approximately 99% of all firms and employ among them about 65 million people.

Now jump from the bottom of the economy way up to the top of the major supply chains. You meet me - the CEO of a Fortune 100 global enterprise. I am a Big Fish. Ping me the same question on my secure corporate Instant Messenger “What is your biggest strategic challenge?” This time the response comes back instantly “That's easy - its keeping my products and services ahead of the competition and avoiding the “Silver Bullet with a my name written on it” of unexpected competitive knock-out from left field that Andy Grove, author of “Only the Paranoid Survive”, warns about”.

Now fine tune the microscopes “multi-dimensional resolution” to move away from the micro to the macro. What do you see? You meet me - an Economic Development director in a major regional economy. I am a FISH FARMER - I try to create ecosystems where fish (Big and small) can thrive. Ask me the same question - “What is your biggest strategic challenge?” This time you have to use email as that's the currency of the organization I work for. Ten minutes passes, you grab a coffee and then you hear the familiar sound of a “you have email” notification and you read “The biggest challenge for us is developing our regional economy by joining the dots between the small indigenous local companies and global enterprises. The era of a big player locating here and bringing 10,000 jobs has gone - we must find a way to create these jobs through our local companies competing and winning in the global market with global customers”

The amazing three-way “Win-Win-Win” Opportunity is this: the small fish, Big Fish and Fish Farmers all want the same thing - they just don't know how to make it happen!
Sounds paradoxical? Not really."

[read the rest of Ken’s summary in the comments field below]

Users, Abusers, and Cross-Cutting Networks

I attended the launch of our latest report on User-Led Innovation yesterday. The event included contributions from a number of really interesting organisations/communities such as Sibelius, Swapits, and GBADev where it's the customers/consumers/users that do much of the innovation around their respective product ranges. What is interesting about all of these examples is how people are increasingly giving away their ideas for free, either to a) address a specific need, or b) for fun, or c) for kudos; or for some complex combination of all three.

The traditional approach to innovation is to protect your ideas and create economic value from them. And yet, as access to ideas or information becomes much easier, open and free, it is the networks or communities that will become the bedrock of innovative people and organisations, not the ideas themselves. And it will be our ability, as individuals or organisations, to innovate and create value through our networks and relationships, not so much our ideas.

However the great thing about networks is also their achilles heel. Namely that their value is widely distributed. This means that it is hardly ever in one person or organisation's interest to organise them. Also, organisations are often wary of facilitating communities as it can be easy to perceive them as abusing the brand or remit of the sponsoring organisation.

Therefore, if you accept some of the above, there is possibly a role for public sector support around more cross-cutting networks, or even a network of existing networks, as others typically don't have the time, money or incentive to set them up and run them. I think Nesta already does this to a small degree but how could and should we scale this up?

Our hopes and fears for the future of the web

Battle of the Brands

Noah Brier has recently set up a new site called Brand Tags that does what it says on the tin. If you ever wondered what others felt about Pepsi and a stack of other brands, you can find out by looking at its tag cloud.

More fun, though, is the Battle Mode - the idea that some brands are stronger than others. Thanks to his innovative use of web 2.0 technology, we have a collaborative (and user-generated) brand ranking.