Dispatches from the Frontier

Recommended reading: In addition to

Recommended reading:  In addition to The Logic of Failure, I've been recommending Somebodies and Nobodies by Robert Fuller.  In his chapter on "Deconstructing the Somebody Mystique," Fuller quotes Martin Hellman, a discoverer of public key encryption:

The way to get to the top of the heap in terms of developing original research is to be a fool, because only fools keep trying.  You have idea number 1, you get excited, and it flops.  Then you have ideas 2, you get excited, and it flops.  Then you have idea number 99, you get excited, and it flops.  Only a fool would be excited by the 100th idea, but it might take 100 ideas before one really pays off.  Unless you're foolish enough to be continually excited, you won't have the motivation, you won't have the energy to carry it through.  God rewards fools.

Entrepreneurial somebodies are people who have persisted as nobodies.  The very best are those that continuously risk becoming nobody again.

Don Park calls for hierarchy

Don Park calls for hierarchy in Blogland.  Ray Ozzie disagrees.  Ozzie believes that a mix between recurring and random feeds better serves him and his company, Groove Networks.  I believe that Duncan Watts covers this very issue in his latest book, Six Degrees, in the section on how multiscale networks help to cope with ambiguity.

Thank you, Don Greer, for

Thank you, Don Greer, for pointing out Dietrich Drner's classic, The Logic of Failure.  There may be tendencies in human cognition that make it difficult for us to make good decisions in complex situations.  Nevertheless, by recognizing those inhibiting factors, there is the possibility for improvement.  Don, like Drner, believes that computer-aided simulations combined with experience-based human feedback, can help us learn to make better decisions.

The biology of business values.

The biology of business values.  Are we genetically pre-disposed to place the accumulation of personal power above "ecologizing" values?  If so, is there anything we can do about it?

In Smarter, Simpler, Social Lee

In Smarter, Simpler, Social Lee Bryant surveys social software, social capital, emergence, network analysis, weblogging, and complex adaptive systems.  All are topics near and dear to my heart and mind, but two paragraphs, in particular, stand out (emphasis added):

A greater problem, however, is that although we can build very effective communication and online interaction tools to support existing communities, and occasionally a new virtual community might even coalesce around these tools, we cannot generally create a community with software.  In Meg Pickard’s words: "If I wanted to start up a standing-on-one-leg-in-the-rain community, would you join? Not unless you were already interested in standing on one leg..." In the real world, communities sometimes come together around a river, a road, some shops or in a business perhaps even a fire escape where smokers gather; but artificially created physical communities, like 1960’s housing projects, are less likely to stimulate the same generative communal interaction, despite the best intentions of the planners.

Instead of imposing centralised one-size-fits-all software and then using a combination of coercion and marketing to encourage people to use it, we should be building smaller, more modular and adaptable software services around the very people who will use them, and they should be simple to use, ideally transparent to the user. If we are to exploit the potential of online communication to develop social capital in networks and organisations, then these online applications should aim to augment our social interaction and support our connections with others rather than replace them. In addition to building large, structured online environments where people come together to work, share knowledge and communicate, we need to equip users with the tools required to interact on their own terms, and allow the emergent properties of highly-connected social networks to come into play.

The truth speaks loudly to me, a chastened community planner.

Duncan Work responds to questions

Duncan Work responds to questions that others and I have raised about the Global Trust Exchange.

Thank you, Mitch Hobish, for

Thank you, Mitch Hobish, for pointing to the blurb on BlogMatcher from Netsurfer Digest:

BlogMatcher finds blogs that appear to be similar to a blog you supply it with.  The comparison engine works on the principle that two blogs that link to the same sites share some sort of topical commonality.  You put in the URL of the reference blog you want to match, and BlogMatcher does the rest.  It applies a scoring formula to the links that blogs have in common - links share among many blogs have a lower score than more uncommon links.  The results are a list of blogs that, in most cases, appear to discuss similar topics to the reference blog.  This is not unlike the page rank algorithm used by Google, but probably simpler, and limited to the 12,706 or so blogs in the database at press time.

By casting the economic development

By casting the economic development dialog in terms of local versus distributed, the constraints and opportunities inherent in emerging modular process networks are neglected.

According to the Journal of

According to the Journal of Economic Geography, the study of the links between economic activity and place has taken a "relational turn."  If so, it's most welcome, if belated.  (Oft-cited Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter has noted the "recent" turn with apparent bemusement, since he figures he's been working on relational economic geography for 25 years.)

In a paper in the journal's April 2003 issue, Harald Bathelt and Johannes Glückler argue, "Economic actors and their action and interaction should be at the core...of economic geography and not space and spatial categories."  They go on to propose an emphasis on organization, evolution, innovation, and interaction.  They believe that the tide has turned in favor of a socially constructed, actor-centered, and process-oriented geography.

A host of authoritieshave underscored

A host of authorities have underscored the importance of effective personal networks to the process of entrepreneurship.  However, there is much to learn regarding the dynamics of such networks.  In a paper titled Entrepreneurship in a Network Perspective, Bengt Johannisson notes some of the problems associated with such inquiry:

1. On the one hand, networks are very often taken for granted and, therefore, not fully appreciated.
   
2. On the other hand, an entrepreneur may be well aware of the value of the personal network, but may be reluctant to confess dependence.
   
3. There is a problem with attribution.  We tend to internalize success and externalize failure.  Consequently, the value of connections made through a network are very quickly internalized, and the value of the network is, as a consequence, understated.
   
4. Networks represent risk as well as opportunity.  It has become popular to emphasize the social capital that emerges from the reciprocal relationships across personal networks, there is also potential liability.  One can learn from a network, but there is also the risk of exposing proprietary knowledge.

So, while effective networks are deemed essential to entrepreneurial success, there is evidence that they are undervalued by individual entrepreneurs.  It would seem, therefore, that entrepreneurial networks are a "public good" in the same general category as education.  No surprise, then, that most networking efforts in recent years have been initiated by public or quasi-public organizations such as local economic development agencies.  However, most, in my view, have been largely ineffective.  I suspect that a lack of credibility and trust are the culprits.

Our own experiences with Pioneer Entrepreneurs have lead to a greater appreciation of the challenges, as well as the potential impact, of cultivating more effective personal networks.  Centralized approaches have limited appeal.  Consequently, our emphasis is on developing tools and methodologies that focus on individual members: grow the network from the individual outward rather than creating ready-made networks for an individual to join.  A challenging road, but one that we believe holds more promise.

Thanks Micah Alpernfor pointing me

Thanks Micah Alpern for pointing me toward an interesting conversation regarding my friend Duncan Work's efforts to launch the global trust exchange.  My own experience with Pioneer Entrepreneurs confirms the observation made by another friend, Laura Black, whose research has shown how people collaborate purposefully.

Building social capital is costly.  Consequently, people invest in building relationships selectively.  Trust is essential, but it is often the result of repeated interaction over time.  Consequently, trust can't be declared, it must be earned.  It seems to me that we have a limited capacity to trust, because we have a limited capacity to make the investment necessary to develop trust.

I suspect that it will be very difficult to cultivate generalized reciprocity in a context as broad as the GTX.  Nevertheless, I hope that Duncan is right, and I am wrong.

If you are interested in

If you are interested in the relationship between geography and innovation, check out a recent paper by Meric Gertler.  It's in an academic journal, but it is readable, nonetheless.

My colleagues and I are

My colleagues and I are big fans of Groove Workspace, but there's an interesting new collaboration tool on the block: Kubi Software.  I haven't had the opportunity to look at Kubi closely, but it's major distinguishing feature is its tight integration with popular business email applications such as Microsoft Outlook.  In fact, Kubi touts its software as "collaborative email."  The ubiquity of email is certainly very appealing, but I've come to appreciate the value of presence, particularly in the context of a specific, purposeful shared space.

Thank you Jeroen Bekker for the pointer.