Groups can chat, work or trade. And if they pooled their data on their own cooperatively owned platform, they’d be so much more powerful
From New York Times
True to the “fourth sector economy” roots of A/UK, and inspired by Uffe Elbaek and his Kaos Pilots, we are constantly interested in forms of enterprise that arise from below, and locally “outmode” the existing wider system.
Oliver Sylvester-Bradley, founder of the Open: Coop events, is a fellow traveller in this - we’ve run his work from the start of the Daily Alternative.
Here, Oli suggests that cooperative and mutual enterprises should identify the “modes” of their group identity. And then pursue that mode on a platform that amasses the data they need to compete with the mainstream economy - while still maintaining their proud autonomy.
Oliver Sylvester-Bradley: Making Groups Work
There is a growing consensus that enabling groups, and networks of groups, to work together, is essential to delivering exponential impact in collaboration and solving humanities multiple challenges.
The Magical Number Seven, ideas about committees, decision making, teams and productivity all suggest that small groups are the most effective.
Management consultant John Hagel suggests that “achieving the full potential of these small groups requires them to come together in creation spaces or movements, building networks that can help these small groups to connect more effectively with each other at larger and larger scale”.
There are various ideas and opinions on the formation and running of groups. You can start with land + people + practices (behaviour, experiments, verbs). As opposed to starting with ideas + vision + principles (values, mission, nouns).
However, I have rarely seen anyone talk about the ‘status’ or ‘mode’ of a group – which seems equally, if not more, important. No group will ever be effective unless its participants know what’s expected of them, according to the ‘status’ of the group.
In my PLANET concept - my vision for an open source operating system for a collaborative, sustainable economy - I proposed the idea that effective groups have 3 possible statuses:
Chat groups
Working groups
Trading groups
I see these as fairly universal: almost any group must be in one of these modes.
Either the group is just chatting (i.e. a WhatsApp group, or book club). Or the groups’ members have agreed to work together on some specific purpose (i.e. a open source software project, or startup).
Or they’ve developed an idea to a suitable state in order to present a proposition to others (outside or inside the group – i.e. as a business or buying club). In that case, they’re trading – albeit not necessarily with money.
I believe defining groups according to their status could help groups become more effective. Forming and evolving them, through the three modes, will enable a new economy. I propose that defining groups according to status will also help us empower groups with appropriate tools, in order to make them more effective.
What tools? See below:
I believe that a cooperatively owned platform—empowering groups by providing them with the above tools according to their ‘status’—is the holy grail that can deliver decentralized collaboration at scale.
Ideally, this platform would use free and open source software. This would make it extremely easy to form groups and upgrade their ‘status’ from one level to the next.
If you’re already a co-creator, click here. And if you can, please contribute!
Chat groups could probably be delivered for free. Working and Trading groups would pay increasing subscription fees according to their size, data requirements and trading volumes.
A platform of this nature, organised as a co-op and co-owned by its members, would also avoid the need for startups and other projects to deal with the incorporation minefield. The details and protocols of forming a company plagues all startups, stifling innovation and collaboration.
Trading groups could sidestep the need for incorporation, bank accounts and legal fees since they would simply be ‘subprojects’ or ‘collectives’ of a larger ‘fiscal host’ (like on Open Collective). But in our case, their fiscal host would be the platform co-op, which they would co-own.
With the tools listed above at their disposal, Trading groups could be more effective by focusing all their efforts on their core objectives rather than having to deal with selecting, setting up and managing software – which all groups need.
They would also be able to transact with each other via an ‘internal’ trading system of mutual credit, thus reducing their dependence on debt-based fiat currency and directly catalysing the new economy.
Another significant advantage of a centralised, co-owned, group-empowering platform would be the ability to cross-promote their business propositions. And also, to share the costs of acquiring users between trading groups.
If we’re looking for the holy grail of infinite abundance, I see this as the key. Dylan Walsh describes the issue as the ‘cold start’ problem. Co-ops and other startups are unable to compete with existing tech giants—because they don’t have huge data troves, or the venture capital to buy them,
We have discussed this problem under the title of the ‘capital conundrum’ at previous OPEN conferences. Alex Pentland, co-founder of MIT Media Lab, suggests that aggregating user data is the answer.
A data co-op organised like a credit union (which is essentially what I am suggesting here) could invite all its members to engage with new trading groups. Then, as Pentland puts it, “suddenly that new entrepreneur ends up with 10 to 20 million customers overnight.”
There is often a preference, in open source and progressive circles, for decentralised patterns and protocols. I respect this and agree that decentralisation and subsidiarity are essential components of the new economy.
But I believe there is a more effective way to enable a ‘coalition of the willing’ to build a new economy, right now. And that is to empower people to set up and develop decentralised groups, by sharing the cost of providing effective group tools. While also aggregating data between groups, via a centralised, cooperative platform.
If you are interested in discussing these ideas, and forming and joining working groups to help make this idea a reality, please join us at OPEN 2020 on the 11th and 12th of June in London.