Just like the Internet was not “just like TV, but better”, the shift that is coming is not “just like Web 2.0 but better”.  A fundamental shift is occurring.  Do you see it?

Activities on the Internet are shifting from (1) broadcast to (2) Web 2.0 conversations to (3) cooperation (taking action together).  Greater than at any point in the history of the Internet cooperative behaviors are taking place- where people are not just talking with each other, but an even greater amount of collective action is happening…. and in this, what is significant is not the large system collective action (as an example, political campaigns like the Obama campaign) but the small scale activities.  What is unique about these new small scale activities, compared to grass roots activities of the past?  This is not just grass roots happening, but the fact that these small scale activities are producing real business impact.  Small groups of entrepreneurs around the world are connecting together, getting real work done, and creating better economic outcomes.

For myself, I have been doing this round the world with working with software developers world-wide- and other business people both in Austin as well as at considerable distance.  Constraints- whether they be financial,  skills, or resource limitations are being more easily overcome than at any point in the history of the world.  Cooperation, not just conversation is the new, coming language of the Internet.  We see this already in open source software projects and in the remix of certain parts of the music industry… but cooperation is not going to stop there.  Although risk abound, a new language and new practices for cooperating world-wide is emerging.  We’ll keep around Web 2.0 just like we have kept around our old TV’s… but it is time to make space for the cooperation-economy, and realize that it is not going to be “just like Web 2.0 but  better.”

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

Update on my book:  one section of 10 or so pages remains to be done.  It is a major section- about how the Enterprise Tribe and social networking will effect the Individual.  I am looking forward to getting your feedback about this, and please do continue to share your stories with me- they have been extremely effective in helping flesh out the book and the concepts that we are developing…. Now back to Rule #2, finishing what I write.

“…the most significant factor was the state of a nation’s Social Technology. The rule of law, the existance of property rights, a well organized banking system, economic transparency, a lack of corruption, and other social and institutional factors played a far greater role in determining national economic success than did any other category of factors. Even countries with few resources and incompetent governments did reasonably well if they had a strong, well-developed Social Technologies. On the flip side, no countries with poor Social Technologies performed well, no matter how well endowed they were with resources or how disciplined their macroeconomic policies were.”

What community leaders of all stripes (local, state, government) should see in this statement is that the opportunity for using social networking technologies can have an even more profound effect for amplifying more general social technologies for supporting entrepreneurs. Clearly community leaders that embrace the adoption of these new tools for supporting their entrepreneurs will win. The entrepreneurs (and communities!) whose leaders ignore these trends will lose out.

Thank you to my colleague Greg Hennessy for bringing Beinhocker’s work to my attention.

The trends that Clay has spotted in his talk and his book are the general idea behind the specific focus of the Rise of the Enterprise Tribe that you have been reading about at this blog. Collective action of coordinated entrepreneurs are supporting the group getting better in the entrepreneur community of practice called the Enterprise Tribe.

As you have heard here at this blog, the shift towards the superempowered individual and the attitudinal shift towards work will drive entrepreneurs to create businesses that follow their passions.  No matter where the economy takes the US in the short term, this long term outlook of aligning individuals with their passions in their work bodes well for the future.

What is needed most, though, are structures to support these entrepreneurs.  In the coming days and weeks I will be blogging about new initiatives that we will be doing to create large scale efforts of supporting entrepreneurs.  Get in contact (through email or comments on this blog) if you are interested in being a part of these efforts in your community.

“O.K., but how are loosely organized workers going to replace and compete with companies like Dell? Can hundreds of I-build/support-PCs-in-my-bedroom companies make it in Austin? What other things are these people going to do?”

This is a good question, and there is no simple answer. No, I am not recommending that a number of loosely connected entrepreneurs try to go head to head in the computer assembly business with Dell. What is needed, is creating whole new types of connections and organizations of companies, to create and release whole new levels of value through innovation. A very timely article just came in from Fast Company, called The World’s Most Innovative Companies:

[P&G created the] Connect Develop program, which allows outside developers to get their concepts and designs into P&G’s product pipeline. An applicator developed by Cardinal Health (now Catalent), for example, helped P&G launch Olay Regenerist Eye Derma-Pods, now its top-selling skin-care item. Today, 42% of P&G products have an externally sourced component. And this giant is growing: Revenues rose 8%, to $78 billion, last fiscal year, while profits climbed 14%, to $11 billion.

P&G is showing that it has learned the need for leveraging a knowledge ecology around its business- they are leveraging the brains outside of their corporate walls…. with profits climbing.

The opportunity for entrepreneurs in the future is not just in “sourcing of components” but also the sourcing of new ideas, and creating even higher value add activities than what they might have previously done at former employers. Over this past weekend, I had the opportunity to talk with a P&G executive- who is actively exploring how to enhance P&G’s marketing programs- by identifying companies that are (1) sourcing of ideas, (2) placements of advertising or (3) media outlets… with one unique strategy: engage companies that are one or two of these types, but not companies that are trying to be all three (which by the way, allows smaller companies to play a part in P&G’s go-forward marketing strategies).  For the sake of this blog post, the key thing to glean from this article is that what I am talking about- moving to ecology strategies of organizing work- is already happening. This article about P&G confirms that this is already happening.
As a community (whether that community is Austin, or Texas, or the US, or the world), we need to support the timely transition from employee/former employee to entrepreneur, and supporting companies like Dell transition from command-and-control strategies to “ecology” strategies as quickly and smoothly as possible.  No, this won’t be easy, but the reality of massive layoffs are not creating many other choices…. but in the end, it is my belief that this transition will lead to healthier workplaces, with more direct control over one’s own work, resulting in people actually doing what they love.

First and foremost, I recognize that this is a business decision, that Dell is making in order to survive…. Yet recognize, how is it that Dell has had to make such a drastic decision- when there could have been other options previous to this choice?

What options? This is where the opportunity to transition from a “knowledge economy to a knowledge ecology” is happening… if not by strategists at Dell, certainly by some of the disaffected workers that are losing their jobs today. Some number of these former employees are going to recognize the false illusion of the stability of the “job” of the past, and start transitioning to becoming entrepreneurs- making their own employment. And in the end, this will benefit both Dell and Dell’s former employers- for the ecology of work will become much more resilient…. (right now, as an example, 900 workers hitting the unemployment lines at the exact same time. This will make finding the next job for each one of them very, very difficult. Moreover, many of these workers will not have yet developed the skills to become entrepreneurs yet )

And to the former employees that just lost their jobs… make sure that you wake up when you read the word opportunity in the line above “We believe we have a $3 billion opportunity to drive both productivity and efficiency“. When a former employer looks at cutting your job as an opportunity, it is time to change your outlook on the idea of a job.
What needs to happen is we, the Austin community, need to start working together at a level that we have not done before- and fight the recession that we are in head on. I am hopeful, that although this economic downturn will be very hard on the workers that are displaced, that through the shattering of the idea of long term employment, better entrepreneurial outcomes will come for all.

Moreover, it is time to stop coddling companies like Dell. From the article above:

Dell also received almost $280 million in incentives from the state of North Carolina to build the plant, which is not operating at full capacity.

This is a shame…. If you remember that over 50% of the jobs created in the US last year were created in firms of 10 people or less. It is time that US economic policies start promoting our entrepreneurs to create resilient business ecologies. $280 million dollars would have gone a long way to create opportunity for entrepreneurs, whether through the programs that we are doing through Bootstrap Austin or Door64 here in Central Texas. 900 people lost their jobs today. Let’s do something to ensure that we support our entrepreneurs into the future to create resilience in our job marketplace, and to fight this recession that we are in.

To take advantage of the conceptual shifts that I have written about my forthcoming book, a number of Austin entrepreneur support organizations are meeting together at the University of Texas’ IC2 Institute. I will be facilitating the session, following the design of some of the meetings that we used while I was in Chile- focused on facilitating dialogue between entrepreneurs. Here is a map to the location.

Please sign up here and join us in making Austin’s community of entrepreneurs stronger.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

We are seeing a new class of worker emerge. This worker is taking advantage of Conceptual Shift #1- the Superempowerment of the Individual. Passion is what is driving “superempowerment”. It is also what is driving a massive shift in how work is being done- and this will force a major change among individuals and companies into the future.

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2008/01/18/seth-godin-speaking-about-conceptual-shift-3-an-attitudinal-shift-towards-work/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2008/01/17/meet-the-man-that-created-an-economic-miricle/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2008/01/17/meet-the-man-that-created-an-economic-miricle/#comments Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:02:08 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2008/01/17/meet-the-man-that-created-an-economic-miricle/ Over the holiday weekend, I had the honor of meeting a man that has catalyzed an economic miracle for a part of Chihuahua, Mexico. Spencer MacCallum discovered the work of Juan Quezada, and over 30 years took the little town of Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico creating “the fairy tale of Mata Ortiz”.

Spencer spoke of how Mata Ortiz went from a poverty stricken dust bowl to now a hopeful place of over 500 potters among the town’s 2500 citizens. Moreover, the town has galvanized together an industry that anyone of the town’s members are invited to be a part of. Juan Quezada’s artistic influence has been an open door to the whole town- giving others the skills to pull themselves out of poverty. And the pottery that they are creating is not the run of the mill stuff that you might have seen in some random flee market- many of Juan’s art pieces go for over $4,000 USD when sold in Mata Ortiz- or much, much more when sold in the US market.

What I found so profoundly interesting is this community created social capital with each other- building their own “business ecosystem”, and with this pulled each other out of poverty. And even more so- great acknowledgment goes to Spencer MacCallum in recognizing what this community had to offer to the world- and how he catalyzed this community out of poverty.

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2008/01/17/meet-the-man-that-created-an-economic-miricle/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/18/knowledge-ecologies-between-academia-and-industry/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/18/knowledge-ecologies-between-academia-and-industry/#comments Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:37:40 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/12/18/knowledge-ecologies-between-academia-and-industry/ In the following article in the NY Times, the rapid development of knowledge ecologies can be seen happening between industry and academia.  Large corporate labs are on the way out.  University research is being brought closer to industry through new relationships- that are looking much more like the ecologies that we have been talking about.

In the bygone days of innovation, large corporations — like RCA, Xerox and the old AT&T — maintained internal laboratories like Bell Labs. These corporate labs were essentially research universities embedded in private companies, and their employees published academic papers, spoke at conferences and even gave away valuable breakthroughs. Bell Labs, for instance, created the world’s first transistor after World War II — and never earned a dollar from the innovation.Almost no corporate labs based on the Bell or Xerox model remain, victims of cost-cutting and a new appreciation by corporate leaders that commercial innovations may flow best when scientists and engineers stick to business problems.

The one item that I believe the New York Times misses in this article, however, is the role of how smaller organizations and even individuals will fill out the ecology, bringing many of the technologies  to market much faster than large industry can.  NY Times writer Pascal Zackary hints at this when he says: “Will these partnerships produce products you won’t get from two people in a garage?” Mr. Birgeneau asks. “We don’t know that yet. It is an important question.”  Yet, it will take not just industry and academia… but also startups and skunkworks to bring these technologies to market in an efficient, time-realistic manner.

This article is further evidence of the shift from a Knowledge Economy to a Knowledge Ecology.

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/18/knowledge-ecologies-between-academia-and-industry/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/06/knowledge-ecologies-in-action-at-nintendo/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/06/knowledge-ecologies-in-action-at-nintendo/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 22:41:20 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/12/06/knowledge-ecologies-in-action-at-nintendo/ Several friends have asked me “What do I mean by a shift between a Knowledge Economy to a Knowledge Ecology?”  In the Knowledge Economy the Internet was being used to just make labor more efficient.  In an Knowledge Ecology the best ideas come from many different places… and when they are implemented, they can dominate their industries.  Prove it you say?  Here is an exceptional interview from the product team behind the Nintendo Wii.  The Wii has come to dominate the game console market place, which is especially evident when I speak with friends that have kids.  From the interview:

Why do you think we were able to engage in that kind of argument?

Shiota: Above all, I think it must have been because Nintendo is always trying to do something new and different. This message has been spread not only within Nintendo, but to other companies as well. As a result, our development partners have naturally tended to present us with new technologies and ideas. It was this background of going against the norm that gave birth to Wii.

This is my emphasis- business partners presenting Nintendo with new technologies and ideas… not just the fairly predictable 10% improvement that most companies rely on.  Knowledge Ecologies are going to dominate successful products and services into the future as we can see happening with Nintendo!

Thanks goes to Jeff Sexton for sharing this link with me.  I greatly appreciate how the readership of this blog contributes to the Knowledge Ecology forming around this set of topics!

Tags: innovation, enterprise2.0, ExponentialEntrepreneurship

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/06/knowledge-ecologies-in-action-at-nintendo/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/06/marketing-to-millennials/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/06/marketing-to-millennials/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:24:56 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/12/06/marketing-to-millennials/ I about fell out of my seat laughing when I saw the following billboard, as I was surfing across the net, checking out John Erik Metcalf’s blog.  As Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads predicted back in 2003, older generations just don’t get this younger generation, the Millennials, just yet.  Roy states:

AOL and Yahoo.com are the Kerouac and Salinger of the new generation that will soon pry the torch from the hands of Boomers reluctant to let it go. Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley have become Tupac Shakur and Eminem, and the Baby Boomers’ reaction to them is much like their own parents’ reaction to Chuck and Elvis. But instead of saying, “Take a bath, cut your hair and get a job,” we’re saying, “Pull those pants up, spin that cap around and wash your mouth out with soap.”

And here is the oh-so-laughable billboard that some out of touch boomer must have been responsible for:

As I mentioned in a recent post about the  the book that I am writing… tectonic shift #3:  An Attitudinal Shift…  The Millennials have shifted attitudes… both to marketing and ways of work.  Trying to placate Millennials and shift their attitudes, especially with messages like this Pullem Up billboard is not going to work.  The same is true about the ways Millennials work.  They are showing the rest of us the future… and leading the way that things will become.  No, I am not going to start wearing baggy pants anytime soon… but I do embrace Millennial attitudes on rejecting pretense, and I do embrace their focus of choosing work that supports their values, versus just working to get a paycheck.  This fundamental shift is echoing through the way work is, and is going to be done in the future. Employers (and billboard advertisers!!!) need to stop trying to placate or change Millennials’ attitudes… Instead, I suggest looking to what Roy Williams says:

1. Pretend that it won’t affect your business. (Let me know how this works out for you.)
2. Search for a Rosetta Stone that will give you a window into the minds of these barbarians at the gate, so that in the future at least you’ll know how to do business with them.

The way work gets done is changing.  Figure out how to work with these changes- and your business will benefit.

Tags: millennials, business, marketing

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/12/06/marketing-to-millennials/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/30/stay-hungry-stay-foolish/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/30/stay-hungry-stay-foolish/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:27:49 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/11/30/stay-hungry-stay-foolish/ A friend of mine that I use to work with at NeXT, Inc. just forwarded the following Youtube video. Working with Steve Jobs at the start of my career has forever positively warped my sense of what is possible in the world. Steve says “Follow your heart, even when it leads you off of the well-worn path”. Also “If you live your life like today is your last day, some day you will be right.” Thank you Steve. Thinking like this changes the world. Here is Steve Jobs’ commencement speech to the recent graduates of Stanford.

Entrepreneurship is not just about building great products.  Steve says “You can’t connect the dots looking forward”. You must follow your heart.  Thanks to Kedar Mhaswade for helping Conrad Geiger at Sun find this video.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: entrepreneurship

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/30/stay-hungry-stay-foolish/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/29/urgent-focus-small-business-growth-and-tightened-credit/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/29/urgent-focus-small-business-growth-and-tightened-credit/#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:37:40 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/11/29/urgent-focus-small-business-growth-and-tightened-credit/ Recently there has been a bunch of press about the growing threat of recession coming to the US.  Today’s front page article of the New York Times tells a story that all of us as entrepreneurs need to start preparing for called “As Lenders Tighten Flow of Credit, Growth at Risk“

From the article there are two important paragraphs to note:

Credit flowing to American companies is drying up at a pace not seen in decades, threatening the creation of jobs and the expansion of businesses, while intensifying worries that the economy may be headed for recession.

The article goes on to focus on small business, and how small business is getting hit the worst.  So why is this important? Small business is where all of our growth and job creation is coming from. From the NY Times article:

In recent months, smaller companies have been adding jobs even as larger firms have been shedding workers, according to the ADP National Employment Report, which tracks changes at companies with payrolls overseen by ADP. From May to October, 276,000 of the 378,000 jobs added were at companies with fewer than 50 employees, the report found.

It is the entrepreneurs that are building startup and small businesses that are contributing to the greatest growth of the US economy.  Programs that are being structured by the government should take this in account- and support small business- versus focusing on solutions for large, slow moving corporations that typically are the benefactors of the pork coming out of Washington DC.

So what can entrepreneurs do in lieu of dealing with a drying up of financial capital other than make sure that they voice their vote strongly in the coming election?  Although I will go over this in a coming blog post and also in my forthcoming book, given today’s news, it is worth mentioning here sooner as well.  Even though financial capital might not be as available, social capital can be utilized to continue to build businesses.  Social capital, called “human capital” in Paul Hawkin’s book called Natural Capitalism can be a somewhat replacement in lieu of financial capital.  Creating social capital is what we have been doing in Bootstrap Austin and other entrepreneurial social networks that I have been building.  To get an idea of how this is happening…  think back to times when farmers helped each other raise barns together… these farmers were creating social capital with each other (”I help you, you help me”).  As many stories from my family members can attest, they had no access to financial capital… but they could help each other, and survive the worst of recessions.  It appears that the US is entering into a time that once again that entrepreneurs building social capital together will be the way that we are going to be building our businesses, as financial capital runs and hides during the storm.  Thanks goes to David Armistead for one of the conversations that helped me clarify some of the distinctions in this capital transformation.

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/29/urgent-focus-small-business-growth-and-tightened-credit/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/29/superempowerment-at-your-doorstep/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/29/superempowerment-at-your-doorstep/#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:05:51 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/11/29/superempowerment-at-your-doorstep/ The following New York Times article “Personal Assistants on Call, Just Not in the Next Office” is further evidence of a growing trend of entrepreneurs hiring, at a few hours at a time, personal assistants to lower the “80 percent of their time on the trivial 20 percent of tasks”. As I mentioned in a previous post about the Superempowerment of the Individual we are at a time that entrepreneurs that allow themselves to get bogged down in the minutia won’t be focused on their true strategic value… These entrepreneurs should be embracing support at very affordable prices, allowing them to live easier, while still building their businesses. And this is not just about offshore resources. Local Austin companies are providing these types of services as well. It is great to see support to be now in reach of the individual entrepreneur or employee, at a level that has never been present before. Expect access to these types of services to expand, as our economy shifts from being a knowledge economy to an knowledge ecology, with further specialization of services that are available on an hourly basis, at an inexpensive price, as needed.

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/29/superempowerment-at-your-doorstep/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/13/meet-your-future-employee/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/13/meet-your-future-employee/#comments Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:21:53 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/11/13/meet-your-future-employee/ Here are signs of the Attitudinal Shift that I mentioned in this previous post:

Meet Your Future Employee
And the up-and-coming generation puts a premium on work/life balance, having seen firsthand the toll working around-the-clock took on its parents. As a result, they tend to shy away from jobs that demand the 40-hour-plus workweeks typical of IT.

The businesses that figure out how to leverage the trends that the Millennials are expressing will thrive. Those businesses that fight these trends will suffer. What is your business doing to prepare for this shift?

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/13/meet-your-future-employee/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/12/a-preview-of-exponential-entrepreneurship/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/12/a-preview-of-exponential-entrepreneurship/#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:36:46 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/11/12/a-preview-of-exponential-entrepreneurship/ Here is a quick preview of the conceptual shifts that I am wring about in my forthcoming book Exponential Entrepreneurship: Building Business Ecologies for the 21st Century.  Marla my editor has been kicking butt (mainly mine and taking names  as we refine the trends that I see shifting the way work is being done.  Please share your feedback with me as well- whether through this blog as a comment or a private email to me- let me know how you see these shifts driving the way work is happening.  Jumping right in- there are four trends that I am trending as well as predicting:

1. The Superempowerment of the Individual: we’re entering a time that not only is it cheaper to build a business because the cost of doing so has gone way down, but also, a true shift to knowledge work is empowering entrepreneurs at a level that has never been seen before on this planet
2. Shifting from a Knowledge Economy to a Knowledge Ecology:  Talking about the Knowledge Economy is oh-so-1999.  Knowledge Economy companies used their old industrial mindsets to drive knowledge work.  Yet work changed, and now many of these old world companies are getting their lunch eaten by swift forward thinking competitors that know how to leverage human minds.  What is emerging is a Knowledge Ecology of providers of open knowledge flows.  Most interestingly, this shows us how even one individual, if he or she is prepared, can create their place in the ecology and thrive.
3. An Attitudinal Shift:  The Millennials (sometimes called Generation Y- individuals that are in their early twenties) are driving a new relationship with work… where work serves living (not the other way around).  Although many companies try to placate these new workers “helping them fit in” what entrepreneurs and companies need to see is that the Millennials are driving a new paradigm of work- that will dominate the way that all work gets done within this decade.
4. Superconductivity:  Social networking technology and word of mouth combined with these new attitudes are drastically shifting how ideas, technology, and life are perceived and adopted.  The world is in motion, and it is moving faster.  Some will see these changes as chaotic;  If you understand the underlying dynamics that are lowering the barriers between people, superconductivity can be leveraged for benefit.

How are you adapting to these trends? what do you see happening?  Let me know.

Blogged with Flock

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/12/a-preview-of-exponential-entrepreneurship/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/12/web-20-tv-interview/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/12/web-20-tv-interview/#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:49:02 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/11/12/web-20-tv-interview/ Web2.0 TV interviewed me about what I thought about how “Web2.0″ is shaping the Internet.  My interviewer was very nice- and you will see that I went ahead and prompted him a little bit about how the Web2.0 phenomena is not just about a new way of building web applications (which was the focus of many of the other interviews that had been done that day) … but is truly a revolution in the way work is being done, and the way that startup companies are being built. 

Blogged with Flock

Tags: enterprise2.0, entrepreneurship

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/12/web-20-tv-interview/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/05/business-implications-of-googles-opensocial/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/05/business-implications-of-googles-opensocial/#comments Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:51:11 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/11/05/business-implications-of-googles-opensocial/ Dee Copland recently posted a question on the Bootstrap-Austin mailing list asking about the implications of Google’s OpenSocial to social networking and small and medium size business. Following is my reply to her and the network.

The implication for small and medium (and large!) business of platforms like Google’s OpenSocial are going to be quite profound.  We are starting to see the beginnings of a whole new method of business and work based around social networking technology.  The biggest present example of this was built by Facebook when they opened up their APIs so that third party software developers could build applications that leveraged off of a user’s “social graph”. Social graph is a fancy term for saying the people that you are connected to through a social network… but the implications are profound for this method of organizing people…  Anytime a technology has been introduced throughout the millennia that helps organize people or helps solve resource constraint problems (that is, helps get resources (people and stuff) to where they are needed) major shifts in wealth production have happened. I expect that this is the very same thing that is happening now… first led by Facebook.

Facebook opened up their platform to get many more innovative applications built around their social networking site.  Although many of the applications were of the type where “my vampire bites your mummie” some of the apps have been truly innovative- one of my favorites was an application that helps a user manage his  resources- you have to be his “friend” through Facebook to get access to his resources.  This frees up this guy from having to turn on and off access to his resources… if you are listed as his friend, you are in.  If you are not listed as his friend, you have no access… Even if this entrepreneur only saves a few hours a month by not having to update who has access to his stuff, imagine- that is time and money saved by him.

Facebook is being likened to the early stages of what AOL did with its set of services- people used AOL in the yester-years of the Internet mainly because it gave them one place to “start” on the net.  AOL essentially packaged some of the best of the net and users benefited because of this.  The implied problem here is that just like in the AOL situation, many companies could be locked out by AOL- for AOL had control of the network.  Facebook has not shown that it wants to lock out anyone… but the fact of the matter is that Facebook, like AOL has control.  This is much like the debate of having toll roads versus public roads- who has control of thoroughfares.

So what is the implication of Google’s strategy?  There are two moves that I think are particularly interesting- one from a strategic business perspective on who you might look to align your application strategy with, and also what this move represents to you in a long term business perspective.

First, why did Google do this?  Many people found the fact that they had to keep all of their information stored on Facebook as a problem- only one network holder the key to the whole network.  Google is disrupting Facebook’s closed strategy with an open strategy- so that social networking innovation is not stuck on one vendor.  Google has shown is prowess in effectively competing in open networks (namely the Internet).  This move allows consolidation among many of the social networks out there, and also keeps networks into the future more open. Facebook today still has the dominate position.  What this move by Google represents- is Google’s flattening of the playing field for the future.

So what does this mean for your business?  Two things- one of them is strategic, the other is tactical.  First strategically, this means that there should be no particular vendor lock in on one social network (namely Facebook) if you participate in the OpenSocial platform.  No particular vendor lock in to me means that there is a better chance at much, much, much more innovation in the social networking space than what has already happened to date on top of Facebook alone- although I predict that we don’t see this till many more regular users start using these other social networks.  Secondly on a tactical level, this means that software developers won’t have to learn proprietary programming languages (like Facebook’s) for every social network that they are working with.  Essentially this means that less code will have to be written, and software developers will have less languages to learn to build applications.

But the real implication of this move to you and all of us as entrepreneurs is a clarion call from the future telling us how we will be working together in the future.  Waves of applications are going to arise and new types of organizations will form around entrepreneurs finding each other and working together.  This is the part where it gets exciting.  Social networking is not for sharing your photos online.  Businesses (and entrepreneurs) that ignore social networking as just a fad are going to get marginalized, while those of us that use this technology as a way to organize our work will find new levels of success.  Google’s strategy of “opening up” these networks will ensure that much greater innovation happens in a shorter timeframe, without the limiting effects of just one vendor (e.g. Facebook) getting in the way.

Yeah… I am thinking about this space a lot these days.  I would really like to hear your input on this. I am going to post this email on my blog here… Please anyone that would like to give me personal feedback (or debate it with me), post it back to my blog (or email me privately).  Or given that we have some really kick ass examples of these apps emerging, make sure to keep your eye on the entrepreneurs of our local tribe Bootstrap Austin.  Oh… and if you have examples of your kick-ass app that you would like to share with the readership of my blog on this subject, please make sure that you post a comment on the blog post as well.

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/11/05/business-implications-of-googles-opensocial/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/25/entrepreneurs-organizing-signs-of-the-future/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/25/entrepreneurs-organizing-signs-of-the-future/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:58:32 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/10/25/entrepreneurs-organizing-signs-of-the-future/ Here is a small example of how entrepreneurs are organizing, leveraging social software and social networking to shift the previous power structures that venture capitalist have held over entrepreneurs.  It is a funny read, especially if you have ever been in a funded startup.  (Four of the seven startups in my career have been funded;  In two of them, I wish that we had had this type outlet for the general messiness that we dealt with.)  From Inc magazine, talking about the website TheFunded.com:

What effect will these sites have? Will they empower entrepreneurs at the expense of VCs? “I’m doubtful that the imbalance in power will ever disappear completely,” says Noam Wasserman, a Harvard Business School professor who studies the interactions between founders and investors. “But these kinds of efforts are shifting things.” The sites remind founders to investigate their potential investors thoroughly, he says.

Thank you to Jeff Sexton, copywriter extraordinaire, for sharing this link with me.  To all of you- please keep these links coming!  I greatly appreciate it!

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/25/entrepreneurs-organizing-signs-of-the-future/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/25/yes-changing-the-world/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/25/yes-changing-the-world/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:06:28 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/10/25/yes-changing-the-world/ As I have recently come back to Austin after sequestering myself away for writing my forthcoming book, I have been out networking a lot again- and getting questions of “what are you up to”. Sometimes I just give short answers… but a number of y’all are asking, and so when Naomi asked for details earlier today, instead of just giving the short perhaps somewhat flippant answer that I might when processing emails, this is what I shared. Spoiler alert: this starts to speak to the grand vision that I see that I appreciate many of you listening to over the last four years. Thank you. I appreciate now and into the future your feedback. Below is the letter- I hope to share more through this blog and over drinks with y’all in the coming days, weeks, months. Please let me know what you think.
Naomi,

Good to see you too. I am just about to be out of town for a few days for a speaking engagement in Philadelphia and then in New York City- so let me quickly answer your question here, and then follow up with you as you have questions.

In 2003 I launched Enterprise Teaming, llc as an entrepreneur-focused organization to build networks of entrepreneurs who build their businesses through leveraging the network. I am applying my deep knowledge of social networking theory with my passion for being an entrepreneur, and supporting entrepreneurs. My 15 year goal, now in its fourth year, is that the network support/ drive 10,000 $1 million businesses to success…. with a model that at some point can be leveraged across multiple levels of entrepreneurs (into the poor, and also leveraged by large companies as well.) As I have led emerging trends in the past ( using the Internet in ‘89, object-oriented programming since ‘89, building Internet apps since ‘94, building Dell’s eCommerce engine in my living room in ‘96, building profile driven commerce in ‘99, affective computing - computers that can read emotion in ‘01, leveraging Linux as a platform in 2002, and now leveraging social networks to support a new style of doing work to support the US’s shift to being an Entrepreneurial Capitalistic society - from the Industrial Capitalistic society that we are leaving behind)… I am now focused on this emerging shift towards leveraging social networks to support entrepreneurs. It is all about having more entrepreneurs be successful in the ensuing chaos that the market is going to bring. Perhaps it is the 3.5 years of getting to work with Steve Jobs and amazing people at NeXT, but yes, I do believe that we can change the world.

In 2003, I had the opportunity to go to Chile to work with Chilean Senator Fernando Flores and others, building a network of entrepreneurs across Chile. Although I really love Chile, I went there first because they were receptive to trying out radically different models for working with entrepreneurs than is presently happening in Texas, even here in Austin. I left behind a group of entrepreneurs that I had started here… informally called the RDogs (referencing a counter-culture movie that several of us in the group particularly enjoyed). As an example, this is the group that founders Mason Hale and Matt Cohen met through, among other technologist and entrepreneurs. After a life changing experience in Chile, I came back to the US at the end of 2003, convinced that I was onto an idea about how the world was shifting towards entrepreneurship more than ever before… and how social networking software would be the underpinning of this tectonic shift. Because of the intensity that I came back with after having such a powerful experience, I quickly met Bijoy Goswami… and because of our shared passion for entrepreneurs, we combined the RDogs into Bootstrap Austin, and shared the work of building that organization from 20 people at the first meeting that I attended at the Gingerman, to the 650+ bootstrappers that are a part of the group today. (Bijoy recognized me for this with giving me the “Virtual Founder” award about a year and half later… Bootstrap Austin has always been a labor of love for us both, and I am certain will be into the future).

Often times, because of my focus on the theory and the philosophical groundings of how to make a network a network (and not just a pretty website with a list of people on it- as many of the networks out there are) I have often times been called the “Chief Architect” or sometimes “Chief Fire Starter” of the Bootstrap Network, that although informal as most things are in Bootstrap Austin, titles that I particularly enjoy… but these are not titles describing my technology background that many of y’all that have known me for in the past (being the CTO’s CTO… ) mainly because I now spend my time not focused on the bits and bytes of technology (like web servers, programming languages, etc) but more of how philosophically humans interact, and humans create… which ties quite nicely into my lifelong interest in innovation…. what is happening now, though, is that I am now focusing this interest at a level that can be taken to tens of thousands of people and companies, not just the one big client (e.g. Dell) at a time. The future is all about entrepreneurs. This link to Intuit’s work says it best about the Future of Business).

So what is happening right now? With Bijoy and Bootstrap Austin, with my colleagues in Chile, with an entrepreneur network that we created in Mexico, with the DCI board that I was elected to earlier this year, with a handful of colleagues that have been doing innovative economic development across Texas, and with a book that I have written (coming out Jan 2008) called Exponential Entrepreneurship, and other collaborators as they come, I mean to build a network that shifts how work is done and how entrepreneurs succeed in their work, shifting the dynamics of what to this point has been the status quo. I will be building a larger network that will include many other communities in it- and of course this will be tied into Bootstrap Austin, and the Prueba el Mundo (network in Mexico), and the network in Chile. My focus for the next year will be more on the central Texas area, but there are a couple of knock-them-out-of-the-park projects that are happening that I expect to get to announce in the next 6 months that will profoundly effect entrepreneurship in general.

I will be blogging about this at my blog which is http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog
If you are interested, please follow it via RSS or you can sign up on the lower right hand side- and get emails. In fact, given that your question has been asked a lot of me recently, I will post my portion of this email. Thank you for the question- it is about time that I share this information.

It was good to see you. I am certain that there are opportunities in our work together. Please do let me know as you have comments on this- please feel free to also comment on the blog as many of the things that I am learning now from the feedback that I am getting on the blog are going straight into the book and the design of the entrepreneurial networks that we are building.

Please do keep me in the loop- thanks for the update on your work, and I look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Take care,
Kevin

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/25/yes-changing-the-world/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/23/social-networking-is-not-for-sharing-your-photos/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/23/social-networking-is-not-for-sharing-your-photos/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:34:37 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/10/23/social-networking-is-not-for-sharing-your-photos/ A recent set of articles from some of my favorite publications- the Wall Street Journal and from the Economist have me scratching my head and saying- how is it that such brilliant writers are totally missing the point of the phenomena happening with social networking…  WAKE UP!  First let’s see what they are saying… The Economist’s article “There’s less to Facebook and other social networks than meets the eye” states:

The first was its decision to let outsiders write programs and keep all the advertising revenues these might earn. This has led to all kinds of widgets, from the useful (comparing Facebookers’ music and film tastes, say) to the inane (biting each other to become virtual zombies). The entire internet industry reckons this was clever and is planning to copy it. This week MySpace said it would open its site to outside programmers. Google, which owns Orkut, a social network extremely popular in Brazil and parts of Asia, is expected to do the same soon. Facebook’s second masterstroke is its “mini-feed”, an event stream on user pages that keeps users abreast of what their friends are doing—uploading photos, adding a widget and so on.

Well they are half correct… but please wake up… although it might be “socially” helpful to “compare music and film taste” organizations and entrepreneurs AND THE BUSINESS PRESS needs to wake up to the real power of what is happening- social networking is allowing for completely new production models- ways of getting work done- to emerge.  I am surprised that as of yet business leading (and some of my favorite) publications don’t get it yet.  Here is a link to the Wall Street Journal, where they too, miss the point, comparing Geocities to Facebook.  Although the cautionary tale of Geocities getting bought by Yahoo might be helpful to understanding a bit of how a startup with promising technology was limited by the acquiring company (Yahoo), directly comparing Geocities to Facebook misses the big points of how Facebook is creating a new innovation opportunity- a new way of getting work done.  There is a parallel- but the parallel stops with an actual feature comparison, which Marc Andreeson points out on his blog.  Yet, Marc Andreeson misses the point that I am pointing to- that the real opportunity is not a feature by feature comparison- but that Facebook has opened up a whole new opportunity- that I am certain entrepreneurs will exploit in the future- Social networking, with the invention of the social graph- (a way to be connected to your contacts and friends) and the “mini-feed” is going to open up a whole new way of working together.  Individuals will be able to coordinate with each other much more deftly than they can today with limited project management tools and email.  Watch as this new future, based around social networking technology, disrupts much larger organizations, where “packs” of entrepreneurs are able to take on much larger bureaucratic organizations, coordinate their actions, innovate faster.  At Enterprise Teaming, we and our business partners are building the social architecture (not just software!) to usher in these new ways of entrepreneurs working together.

Please do let me know how you are using social networking technology to innovate in your startups and organizations… but please, stretch the technology beyond just sharing photos!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: enterprise2.0, Enterprise Teaming, entrepreneurship, social networking

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/23/social-networking-is-not-for-sharing-your-photos/feed/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/18/escape-the-labor-mentality-matrix/ http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/18/escape-the-labor-mentality-matrix/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:00:40 +0000 Kevin http://www.exponentialentrepreneurship.com/blog/2007/10/18/escape-the-labor-mentality-matrix/ The world is shifting too quick to try to keep up with the labor-mentality of the past. It is time to escape the matrix.

Let me try to explain… When I mentioned “Superempowerment of the Individual” in my blog recently, several collegues immediately were drawn to think of the lower cost of production being what I was saying- that because cost are now so low, anyone can start a venture or make a business happen… but that is only part of the picture… To recognize the superempowerment of the individual, we must also see that our world is shifting out of the “labor tradition” to the “knowledge tradition”. By the labor tradition, I mean the idea that man’s body is just an extension of the machines that he used, all prompted by the Industrial Revolution, and that we must work harder to be more productive…. We have moved on beyond that. Ideas are what the world is made up now… yet it sickens me to see many of my brilliant friends still stuck in this old mentality… “If I work really hard around the clock somehow I will make it all happen”… resulting in over worked, over stressed individuals that can not use most of their brains to be creative and create solutions that uniquely solve the issues that their companies are facing. Do you really think that cranking on that spreadsheet is really going to produce blockbuster results if you did not sleep the night before? I doubt it.

We must escape the matrix of this historical thinking, and recognize that the tectonic shift towards knowledge work has begun, and is accelerating…. and if you are not finding ways to relax so that you can leverage your whole mind, you are going to get run over by this shift. Superempowered individuals take advantage of the lowered cost of production, and they escape the “extension of a machine” mentality.

The following image is part of a class that I present on this; To give credit where it is due, my this is a concept that I originally learned from Fernando Flores:

The problem that many of us, especially us Generation X’ers (and I would argue even more so for the Baby Boomers before us) is that work has changed, and we are just now learning about it… but emotionally, down deep, something just does not feel right about what the Milliennials (or Generation Y’ers if you prefer) are teaching us… which happens to be Conceptual Shift #3 from my forthcoming book… work is being restructured by the Attitudinal Shift of the Millennials… They might be younger than us all, they might not have the power that we have, but their ideas and desires are shifting all of us towards their way of thinking.  To ground this point, let’s look to Richard Florida, author of the Creative Class who recently stated on his blog:

The workplace is being re-organized radically away from the old bureaucratic corporation Alfred Chandler wrote about. The relationship between workers and their managers and tasks is changing. What people expect at work is changing too. Work and production organization are being reshaped; design and creativity have entered the picture in a big way. Production increasingly takes the form of globe straddling networks. Cities and communities are being reshaped, becoming more specialized economically, occupationally and demographically. We are in the midst of a great migration. Our culture is being radically reshaped.

Or, if you prefer, listen to one of the Milliennials directly.  Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek (book and blog) tells us this directly with his concept of the four hour work week… His subtitle by the way is “Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich”.  This book describes how to de-engineer (not just re-engineer) your job, and focus on your life.  And for those of you who know me, yes, this is the book that I read this past June that had me cut back on my “work” (read that as “busy work”) and start producing real results while taking much more time off.  Thank you Tim.

The world that is coming is going to require you to learn how to superempower yourself.  Taking advantage of the lower cost of starting and running your business  is only a start.  Escape the labor-mentality Matrix, and free your mind up to create the ideas that truly innovate… or get run over while slaving it out in old-style thinking.

]]> http://www.kevinkoym.com/blog/2007/10/18/escape-the-labor-mentality-matrix/feed/