Organization is one of our most potent social technologies. In a world where chaos, connectivity, and creativity have risen to new heights, increased attention on the topic is both natural and welcomed. Quite simply, if our civilization is set to pivot, getting better at it will help us realize a better future, sooner. My three … Continue reading The new threads of ‘Organization’
I’ve been working my way through this tome for a few weeks and have had a number of conversations around it. It’s by far the most valuable piece of work I’ve ever encountered on organizational design — and for me a critical model in ventures that are on the venturing frontier (early concept stage and/or … Continue reading Higlights from “Heart of Enterprise” — the Viable System Model
I’ve been wanting to post on this for a while now. It’s a snapshot of my latest understanding of the venturing process. It’s early draft and the writing below is pretty much stream of consciousness but I’m being drawn to just get it out:We’re in an interesting point in history where there is a transition … Continue reading A Venturing Model
Humanity is in a chaotic phase, evolving from a civilization born of the industrial revolution to a civilization emerging from the digital revolution. As the pace of this evolution increases, so does our effort to direct it. That effort is called social innovation and it too is evolving. From revolutions in music and media to … Continue reading The evolution of civilization and social innovation
Late last fall I had the opportunity to conduct an intensive review of the Vartana initiative on behalf of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. Vartana was an initiative to create a chartable bank in Canada dedicated to serving the voluntary sector. It held the promise of changing the availability of capital for the sector and … Continue reading Lessons in systemic entrepreneurship. The time is now.
As part of ChangeMedium I’ve been exploring ways to surface and accelerate research related to this emerging system of social technologies. The idea of creating a journal on the medium of change came up in our October event. What follows are some hunches about the evolution of academic publishing arising from that work. If you … Continue reading Hunches on the evolution of scholarly publishing
Owning equity in a for-profit venture is a powerful motivator – particularly in the early stages. It’s also one of the most contentious, negotiated parts of building a high-growth venture. This comes from our organizational conventions of control and scarcity – we need to control and amass resources to control and weild power and get … Continue reading Kudos for Equity
*** SESSION WIKI NOW LIVE *** Those who know me know that this is a persistent theme with me – and now provoked by @josephdee – maybe it’s time to take this into a more focused conversation with a few more folks. Premise: The way of the world is borked. The web (among other things) … Continue reading The convo I’d like to have: w + ppo + d >> our future
A new kind of venture capital for purposeful ventures is something I’ve been exploring for a number of years and was recently reenergized by some conversations at the OpenEverything retreat in September. I’m writing this now as I head to SoCap08 and looking forward to testing some of these ideas against other emerging models (e.g. … Continue reading Building Blocks for a new kind of Venture Capital
So what does ‘open’ mean for ‘venturing’ and venturing on ‘the frontiers’. From some prior definitions, venturing is process of creating and evolving a venture, where a venture is an agreement among people to do things in service of a purpose and according to a set of values. More simply it’s about the process of … Continue reading The influence of open in venturing.