NESTA Connect

Connecting Dots and Valuing Networks

“More people, sharing more resources, in new ways, is the history of civilisation.”

The above quote comes from Howard Rheingold's 2002 book Smart Mobs and its sets a suitably grand tone for this post that I‘ve been chewing over for a while. I’ve always been interested in new way of connecting & networking & relationship building and recently have been spurred on to write this post by 3 unrelated events, described briefly below:

1. Amplified08 – A ‘network of networks’ event that brought together 250 people and 40+ creative and technology led networks from across the UK. A self organised conference that is anticipated to be the first of many, that sparked lots of commentary and excitement. See here for various blogs and here for the huge volume of comments on twitter.
2. V-Jam – A Virgin Atlantic innovation workshop to explore the future of air travel and in particular the role that social media can play. The event brought together a diverse group including lots of their customers, suppliers, partners, and various other interested parties. Again, this sparked much commentary on blogs here and on twitter here.
3. Learning Dreams – A small gathering hosted by Tessy Britton to hear about a successful scheme that has been running in Minnesota for over a decade, led by Dr Jerry Stein, which has been successful in building a more joined up education system in the state.

In each case many people were very excited by the events themselves (myself included) and the opportunities that the events and networks presented. However in each case there was also a significant minority asking the valid question ‘well what was the point of that?’. To be more precise, what I think they meant by this was ‘what real transactions occurred on the day?’ or ‘what commercial/social value was created?’. However I think this is possibly the right question at the wrong time, and misses the immediate value of networking.

Conversations first, then relationships, then transactions

There is a sequence of activities that occur in networks that can seldom be bypassed. Namely you start with lots of conversations, some of which will lead to a smaller number of some kind of relationships. Eventually, and almost certainly long after the first time people met, some transactions may follow that create value, be it commercial or social.

Therefore to judge an event by the number of transactions on the day misses the point. I think you can only observe the conversations and relationships that were created. Over the longer term you may be able to analyse the transactions that followed but this is still very hard.

• In the case of Amplified08, the number of conversations sparked before, during and after the event, leads me to conclude that a host of new relationships were formed and transactions will follow. On that point alone I judge it a huge success. Whether Amplified exists as a network in 12 months time is not the point and whether it could have been managed a bit better is undoubtedly true but not what’s important.

• Regarding V-Jam, I think the event represented a big shift in the way Virgin engage with their customers, suppliers, and various other partners and interested parties. It also sparked a host of conversations and should be perceived as a success. I am fairly confident that this will lead to an array of new projects and transactions but it’s too early to specify what these will be.

• In the case of Learning Dreams, Jerry Stein (the lead protagonist) almost innately felt compelled to connect up all the disparate education organisations and services. But it started with him going door to door to chat to excluded students and their parents, and the value/transactions followed later. He has been very successful and it is a model that is being copied elsewhere including in Britain. 

Our Big Hairy Audacious Goal for Britain

I kick started proceedings at Amplified (see qik video here - apologies for the terrible audio) setting the following big hairy audacious goal:

"to make Britain the most connected country on the planet"

Now I know how difficult that is and had my doubts about saying it out loud (it’s not very British to be so bold is it but then again I’m not very British - I’m happy to explain my gene pool separately to anyone who is interested). However I am certain of the value that it would create for Britain. If we could achieve this goal, or even get anywhere close. I actually think that Britain is already something of a hub in the global economy culturally, economically, geographically and financially, and so it is realistic.

However, the value of networks is, by definition, highly distributed, and therefore it is seldom in any one person or organisations interest to support them. This is where public institutions like Nesta may have a role to play in connecting the dots, people and networks for the wider societal and economic good.

Connecting the Dots - a mathematical interlude

The theme at Davos this year, I'm reliably informed, is ‘Connecting the dots’ which is interesting but who know what those clever and influential people will talk about. But allow me to start with some simple maths that might help. Here are 47 dots connected in 3 different ways.

There are lots of different ways in which they could be connected but there appear to be 3 main different ways as follows:

a) hub and spoke - to me looks like the Britain's motorway or high speed rail network

b) multi hub - to looks like the global energy network (oil and gas)

c) distributed - looks like the network upon which the internet is based

In fact, this chart comes from this classic paper, that was very influential in determining how the internet infrastructure should be distributed to maximise safety.

Anyway, looking at these 3 different ways of connecting, and thinking much more widely than just internet technology, I think we've got too much a) and b) and not enough c). The problem is, c) has lots of supposedly random links that are often considered redundant and costly.

Towards a Distributed Innovation Ecosystem

For innovation to flourish in a country or a place, requires the contribution of many actors, from universities, to corporates, to small companies, to public sector institutions etc. However looking at the supposed innovation ecosystem in most countries, there is a at best a multihub network where universities, governments and corporates have undue power.

I would argue that good ideas come from anywhere and we need a much more distributed (along the lines of picture c above) economic and social landscape to allow these to flourish. This has numerous implications for intellectual property regimes and other structures which are more than enough for another blog post so I won’ t go into that here.

Our mindset needs to change from ‘what’ to ‘who’

We have seen the cost and speed of accessing information plummet over recent years, decades, centuries. I believe that in the not to distant future we can essentially assume that access to all information will be freely available to all (who have internet access - I‘m well aware of the 5bn who don‘t). And I do mean all.

Now much of this information will be classed as misinformation and much of it will infringe all kinds of peoples intellectual property so I’m not suggesting this is a universally good thing. However I think that if this happens, then it will require a major shift in the way individuals and organisations perceive themselves and create value.

Currently we identify ourselves (as individuals or members of organisations and institutions) based on our knowledge. It’s just what we do. However if access to all information is freely available then it is never more so a question of ’who you know, not what you know’. And by this I really don’t mean some kind of closed old boy network. In fact is quite the opposite. It’s very much an open and global network.

In future we will create value not on the basis of our knowledge, but on the basis of how we can leverage our relationships or social networks to capitalise on the information that we all have access to. This will not be easy but I would argue that those unable to make the shift will be left behind.

What’s Next? – Network Value

To try to assess the value of networks or events such as Amplified, V-Jam or Learning Dreams based on the transactions that occurred on a particular day is to miss the point and value of networking. There are a variety of ways we can connect the dot, people and networks and I would argue that we must strive to maintain diversity and distribution in the networks we create, and foster, so as not to further entrench existing silos.

I’ve heard somebody say recently, and I can’t remember who I’m afraid, that 20 years ago companies couldn’t quantify the value of their brand, which they now can through a variety of methods. It’s called ‘Brand Value’ and it tends to be the biggest number on the balance sheet for companies like Coke. What needs to happen now is a similar shift from knowing that networks are important, to being able to quantify the value of our networks – our ‘Network Value’. There have been fledgling attempts at this over the years e.g. the net promoter score but I’m aware of some of the concerns with this and needless to say our understanding of how to calculate ‘Network Value’ this needs to get much more sophisticated.

And Finally…

I’m not sure quite how to summarise all of the above but needless to say it’s important to me, and the work we do at Nesta Connect. As always I’d be really interested in the thoughts or feedback of others.

Needless to say I think networks are increasingly crucial and we should set ourselves as big hairy audacious goal to make the UK the most connected place on the planet (whilst being aware and welcoming that other countries will have, or may already have, the same objective).

So as connectivity continues to grow exponentially, it up to us to understand what this means socially, economically and politically; to continue to build networked organisational models that better share risk and reward, and to share what we are learning.

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.

The talkoot of the town (& bothy)

I’ve recently learned of the Finnish word ‘talkoot’ (from these guys) which is described as follows:

Talkoot is the cultural equivalent of common work in a village community, although adopted to the conditions of Finland, where traditionally many families lived in isolated farms, often miles away from the nearest village.

A talkoot is per definition voluntary, and the work is unpaid. The voluntary nature might be imaginary, due to social pressure, especially in small communities; and one's honor and reputation may be severely damaged if one doesn't show up — or proves to be a poor worker.

Learning this new word immediately reminded me of when I used to live in Edinburgh, and when we had many a great trip to bothies (such as the one in the above below). Bothies are described as simple shelters in remote country (usually means at least 2 hours walk from the nearest road and certainly no electricity or plumbing) for the use and benefit of all who love wild and lonely places.

Bothies appear to me to have a lot in common with the isolated Finnish farms where the idea of Talkoot arose. There is an implicit understanding in bothies that you temporarily share the space with anybody else who may be there, and collectively work together to gather firewood, make food, clean up etc. (As an interesting aside, Euan McIntosh also used bothies as a powerful analogy of social networks back in May at Nesta’s innovation edge conference, but I won’t go into that again here.)

But why, you might well ask, am I talking about talkoot and bothies on a blog about collaborative innovation? Well as Peter Drucker says (via Euan Semple):

In a knowledge economy there are no such things as conscripts - there are only volunteers. The trouble is we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.

Organisations based on hierarchical command and control structures have proven to be very efficient for mechanistic or specific tasks but generally terrible at stimulating innovation and creativity. So in seeking to create these new organisations in a world increasingly based on ideas and relationships, which required an environment that encourages voluntary and spontaneous contributions, perhaps we have something to learn from the spontaneous and voluntary nature of both bothies and talkoot.

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.

Artificial dualities, digital yoga and the embodied web

I call it artificial.  Clay Shirky calls it "an accident of history".  We're talking about the distinction made between online & offline.  The other common terms for this pair is virtual & real or (dare I even say it) cyberspace & meatspace.  Whatever the language used however, the problem I have is not with the words per se but with the split itself.

Differentiate then integrate.  For any innovation in whatever field to really become pervasive, it pretty much has to follow this simple three word formula.  If you're reading this blog, more likely than not, you've lived through the period where the internet and web technologies have differentiated and now we are in the first real phase of integration.  If you're not sure what differentiate means, the simple test is to remember life before Facebook.  If you're not sure what integrate means, the test for that is to remember life without email. See!

This is why Clay talks of making a distinction between online and offline as an accident of history.  No ten year old uses this language because their digital life is conditioned so early.  Show me the person today who considers a phone call a virtual experience.  But back in the day, holding and speaking into a piece of metal resulting in the voice of your grandmother who lives in Idaho must have been a pretty ethereal experience.

The reality of our lives contain all experience, be that spent reading this post, slaying a demon on World of Warcraft or having a coffee with a new friend.  By using stark binary dualities as virtual and real, we are distinguishing one as having more substance than the other.  This is separation and perhaps a disservice - our world probably has enough of that.  Let us consign this particular accident of view to history and instead move to a far more interesting problem.

A relationship that I am finding much more useful to explore is that between the non-binary pair of web and place.  Or to use an equivalent spiritual pairing, mind and body.  As a culture which has become ever more dependent on the intellectual faculties of mind since the Renaissance (thank you M. Descartes), our disconnection between mind and body has become increasingly acute.  In fact, the information economy in which most of us live pretty much does not require our bodies at all, much of the time we may as well be brains in vats.

The Sanskrit word yoga means union, for through its practices body and mind, though never ever really apart, are invited back into intimate relationship.  This can take effort, it certainly takes patience and commitment but the results are well worth it since they are harmony, peace, learning and a strength that can move mountains.

(Please excuse any contradiction but) There is danger in the web remaining a web-only phenomenon.  So what we need now is a digital yoga - the reconnection between web and place.  I call this the Embodied Web. Enough brains in vats.  Let's get integrating.

Thankfully of course this is inevitable. Thankfully of course this is already happening.  Alternate reality games, geo-social networking tools like Brightkite and everyone born in affluent circumstances since 1992 are all early examples of this artificial boundary becoming more and more blurred.  You'll probably be alive to see it dissolve completely.  Be excited.

Dealing in more than one currency

I remember after a relatively lazy lunch some years ago, asking a friend of mine who worked at the Bank of England what this thing money really was.  After the initial look of alarm in his eyes, normal service resumed and, being a solid economist, a solid economist's answer is what I got.  Somewhat unsatisfied, I then perused the rather fun Bank museum but to no avail for my question remained: what currency truly motivates our actions?

While the term online transaction may conjure up images of frozen Paypal screens and shoes which looked good on screen but give you blisters on the street, let me use it to refer to the motivation behind interacting in online communities, be that the blogosphere, social networks or whatever.  The intention behind this transaction is rarely clearcut but there appears to be two main contributions.  One is the wish to share and connect.  The other is the desire to be seen.

Together these two factors constitute whuffie, the currency introduced in Cory Doctorow's cult hit Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. 

Tara Hart in an excellent recent post on this topic clarifies whuffie when she says that:

Whuffie has replaced money, providing a motivation for people to do useful and creative things. A person’s Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation, and Whuffie is lost and gained according to a person’s favorable or unfavorable actions. The question is, who determines which actions are favorable or unfavorable? In Down and Out, the answer is public opinion. Rudely pushing past someone on the sidewalk will definitely lose you points from them (and possibly bystanders who saw you), while composing a much-loved symphony will earn you Whuffie from everyone who enjoyed it.

But does working in this kudos or gift economy get you fed?  Tara says oh yes it does, and is confident that as the value of online communities continue to grow and evolve this can only be more and more the case.  In fact, she is so confident that November will see the publication of her new book on this very topic. 

In the next few years, I believe the ability to deal in multiple currencies in a consistent and integral way will become an increasingly key skill for fruitful 21st century living.  Money, time, carbon, whuffie and attention all have their value and their place, but to over-emphasise one to the exclusion of the others can limit our view and therefore our capacity for innovation.

PS Guess how much it costs to visit the Bank of England's museum? 

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?

TBL and events, dear boy, events

It all came and went in a bit of a blur in the end.

Sir Tim Berners Lee came to Nesta yesterday to talk about the Future of the Web, joined by Charlie Leadbeater (Author) and Andy Duncan (Channel 4). The webcast is available here. I think he's the most important person we've had at Nesta in the 18 months. Nobody else has done more for innovation or collaboration in my view. And yet he was so down to earth yet clearly very passionate about his subject even though he must talk about it publically nearly every day.

It also formed the launch of a project which we are supporting called the Web Science Research Initiative. It quite rightly seeks to study the web as a complex system in it's own right. It's at a vague but exciting stage right now and feel excited about the prospect of being part of it.

I didn't particularly enjoy the event in the end, mainly as I was somewhat preoccupied with observing other peoples thoughts via the twitter backchannel. For me, incorporating twitter was a partially successful experiment and one we can build on, but I'd rather be listening in future. I was however rather delighted to be able to ask a question on behalf of a chap in Iceland.

Others have criticised the panel and discussion format, however I think it's always a very tricky balance between the big themes and big name speakers (which draw people in) and the more detailed discussion and intimacy that we also want. In restricting Tim's talk, we aimed to give more time for discussion but in hindsight I think some people, myself included, would prefer to have just basked in the presence of a great innovator and heard more from him without interruption. However it was, as with everything else, an experiment, from which we will learn continue to play around with.

Tim said something about not underestimating the potential of humanity connected, and it is that very un-british, ambitious and optimistic note upon which I'd prefer to focus on.