No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world

Making sense of our
non-linear world

@alansmlxl

We are at the edge of the adaptive range of our
industrial world. At the edge, because that world,
our world is being overwhelmed by a trilemma of
social, organisational and economic complexity.
We are in transit from a linear world to a non-
linear one. Non-linear because it is for all of us
socially, organisationally and economically
ambiguous, confusing and worrying.
Consequently we are faced with an increasingly
pressing and urgent problem, WHAT COMES
NEXT? And also we are therefore presented with
a design challenge: HOW do we create better
societies, more able organisations and, more
vibrant and equitable economies relevant to the
world we live in today? No Straight Lines presents
a new logic/literacy and inspiring plea for a more
human centric world that describes an entirely
new way for true social, economic and
organisational innovation to happen.

http://ht.ly/7OAod

“
The mind is like a parachute it only works when it is open
“
| www.no-straight-lines.com | making sense of our non-linear world | 2011 |

My story,
my narrative,
my song-cycle, my fable
my folk culture,
my truth


WTF
Frank

Faultlines

Looks like
faultines in
society
Steve


#ows
#sovereign debt
#eurocrisis
#pensions

the life and death of eco-systems

the emergence of a new system
trailblazers
collapse of system

hospicing
of old system


Cultural

Old world - New world
alan moore | www.smlxtralarge.com | no straight lines introduction 2011


Obsolete skills

Legal

A non-linear world

The trilemma of a non-linear world
complexity

Organisation Social

Organisational,
social, economic
change

complexity complexity
Economic

“Big ﬁrms have
allowed themselves
to be seen as
detached from
society”
andrew witty, glaxosmithkline



A more unfair world

£12.7bn failure
Patient records project
Rise MRSA


“You judge a modern society, not by what it
consumes but – by what
it throws away”
zygmunt bauman


I + We = why?


Human nature is not a machine

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/camil_t/82015664/

BUT WE ARE ASKED TO LIVE A MACHINE LIKE LIFE


Freedom?



Existential cowboys & the fetish of choice

alexey-titarenko_city-of-shadows-03

Noisy ghosts in
the machine
called life

Fearfulness leads to fundamentalism…


Organisation Social

Economic



Me, We. Jung re-wired
for the 21st Century

Ali’s shortest poem

“Me We”

“I”
Needs
“We”
to truly be
“I”
carl jung


Me
Identity, community, communication,

Self
?
communion

Single Many

Family
Community
We



Communication ?

Communion

Transcendence



POWER


Access to, and, the (RE)distribution of knowledge allows
us to renegotiate the relationships of power; church,
state, government, society, commerce


Q: did the Catholic
church see
Gutenberg coming?


Gutenbergs little wooden printing press was used as the tool by
Martin Luther to overthrow the hegemony of the church in Europe
and change the direction of political power



A technological revolution…

…or, a social one?

“What does technology want?

What do We want?”

OPPORTUNITY
FREEDOM
EMPOWERMENT
MUTUALISM
DIVERSITY
EFFICIENCY
INDEPENDENCE
BEAUTY


“A revolt of the spirit against… a world in
which man was threatened by a monstrous
moral and metaphysical materialism”

Coordination
Vs.
Cooperation


http://www.flickr.com/photos/16230215@N08/4066005402
Institutional failure, people are learning to
get what they need from each other


Trust networks challenge
outmoded models of
organisation & control
ETSY.COM / MUMSNET / MONDRAGON /
GROWVC / LEGO


System Upgrade



HOS 
Human Operating System


Participatory culture

“Drift towards mutualism is
moving towards an old dream:
to maximise both individual
autonomy and the power of
people working together”.


A connective
communications
membrane
wrapping itself
around
the earth


2500
years ago
within 20 generations
all humanities major
religions came into
the world

Surplus of abundance of agriculture – so if the fastest growing resource is knowledge and information
if we have a surplus what happens next?

Folk culture ?


Folk culture ?

Culture made by the folk by us you and me - participatory


2005
YouTube
36 hours video every 60 secs of every day
Facebook
A congregation of 800 million
Myspace
Destroyed by News Corp


http://www.,lickr.com/photos/nathaninsandiego/2723981272/ 
Fan ﬁction

“Precedents for conceiving
political change. 18 th Century

France, it was the language
used by pamphleteers, and
journalists as the rhetoric of
public action. ” tony judt, ill fares the land



“
“
the limits of our language is the limit to our world

We need a new literacy


Craigslist
and the
“paid for”
classified ad

market


Newspapers
did not
understand
the language
of a non-
linear world

“The production of shared software
is communism”
steve ballmer

Learn from the music industry,
adapt or die


“
Mutuality is our
business strategy”
Evolution engineers mutualism into biology because the
benefits are win-win. Individuals work benefits the
group – building upon the work of others.


Language enables us to properly describe the world around us,
and engage in meaningful action


“Convivial”
Compatible with life


Everyone has a voice || The tools of creativity are widely
distributed || It’s easy and cheap to experiment ||
Capability counts for more than credentials and titles ||
Commitment is voluntary || Power is granted from
below || Authority is fluid and contingent on value-
added || The only hierarchies are “natural” hierarchies
|| Communities are self defining || Individuals are
richly empowered with information || Just about
everything is decentralized || Ideas compete on an
equal footing || It’s easy for buyers and sellers to find
each other || Resources are free to follow opportunities
|| Decisions are peer-based.


http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/9912988@N02/2696483201

read & write


The new media landscape is liquid
and linked


Interconnected business models


Ubiquity = Everywhere


An “old-new” cultural
economy: markets are
conversations


“20th Century economics mistakenly
assumed that market transactions are
an ideal and even default model for
human interactions. But some kinds of
value can’t be created by markets, only
by a set of shared and mutually
coordinating assumptions – cultural”.
clay shirkey


Communities of interest & the
economics of sharing
Producer,
co-creator
consumer
evangelist

org+
values
passions
needs


Business foundations

commerce

connectivity culture

community


Markets are conversations

participatory

consensual deliberative

associative


blended reality  Blended reality
Its not online or
offline…


People embrace
what they
create

Technologies of co-operation
Technology does not come out of nowhere it is a human
invention in the first place and it succeeds or not to the extent
that it meets fundamental human needs

http://www.,lickr.com/photos/an_untrained_eye/1195966967/ 

Embedded Sociability


The default setting is

Open

Deconstructing organisation


What if ?

The ‘WHAT’S NEXT’ for business

What if we could build
sustainable, green cars
5x faster at 100x times less the
capital cost?



What if we could build an €83m
business that sells fashion via
mobile devices?



What if our customers
co-created the future of our
company, meaning we created
better products, services, and
increased revenues?



What if the next Silicon Valley
was not a place but a platform?
That would ignite
entrepreneurship and unleash
innovation at an international
scale?



What if we could create a service
to better manage people’s
chronic health care? Reducing;
wrong diagnosis, over
prescription of drugs, clogging
up hospitals and specialist time?


Does this language suggest
new ways of doing/making/
creating?
How does this affect you
and your clients?
5 min discussion


Disruption does not ask
permission

Broadcast culture: disconnected, walled,
centralized: Traditional telcos, legacy media,
Network-TV...

You no longer need to rent someone else’s audience


Booz & company estimates that by 2015 the $ volume of physical
goods sold through social media should rise six fold to $30bn from
$5bn this year – and sales of services through social media are
equally promising

Disrupt yourself before someone else does it to you


Nokia will never
release a
touch-screen
phone!

So somebody
else did…


Apple’s market cap the
2nd/3rd largest in the

world. Nokia had 40%
market share and makes
$1bn Apple has 3% and
makes $1bn

Open:
To new ideas
To new ways of doing things
To fail
To transform
Of minds
Of Borders
(http://ht.ly/7ODc1)


Lets talk about
Android…


… Android could
earn Google $10bn
per year –
Eric Schmidt


What does mobile mean?


A converged eco-system


What is disrupting you?
Are you aware of who,
what, where and how?
And – are you ready?
5 min discussion


Curation of content, packaging
of content, ﬁltering and sense
making

Reﬁned data the black gold of the
21st Century

Alex Pentland, director of MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory,
“Using location data, I can say a lot about the music you like...
for example, your financial risks.”

What on earth has a 3D printer got to do
with marketing? Everything.


Mass customisation

Recommendation engine, usage based,
data fed

ux?

Interface without interference

interactive + connected + human

the communities motivation
cultural of
organisation interest
assets
Rolling Exhibitions Public Money

Permanent collections Corporations Pleasure

Archives Universities/ academia Self improvement

Lots of stuff in storage Business Status

Implicit Knowledge: Other museums / cultural Professional information
curators institutions

Inter-related

The link economy:
create a bundles of products and services
Data driven:
Amazon data architecture – recommendation
engine, Apple genius and iTunes, personalisation

Data driven business


My Yoad?
Yoad /‘jэυd/ 1. n. a file in database storing a person’s profile
information and consumer lifestyle preferences for use as an
interface between companies determining whether to send a
highly relevant commercial communication to that person
(normally to their mobile telephone). [orig. unkn.]


Qustodian innovating with communities
of passion, with data, with technology,
& revenue models – Exhibit [a] Atletico
Madrid. http://uk.qustodian.com/


Mass Niche
Communities
Of Interest

Girlswalker created in 2003 is for young women that love fashion. It is what I call a mass
niche community of interest. The girls are not in anyone location but spread out across
Japan, in fact heavy usage comes from young women that do not live in Tokyo, Kyoto or
other major cities but are desperate to belong to a fashion tribe.


45% response rate
€83m revenues in 2008

Be realistic imagine
the impossible then
create it!

The story of Local Motors reinventing the automotive industry


http://www.flickr.com/photos/naum/1639496461/

sxsw | 2010 | alan moore

Requiem for Detroit

what if…

we build the car of your
dreams?

it was green?

we made it in your town?

we listened

we did it?


The only way of discovering the limits of
the possible is to venture a little way past
them into the impossible

Threadless Local
Motors

Competition &
Community

Lessons


whole systems

Fundamentally changes
the relationship to supply
and demand by rethinking
and redesigning the
process from conception
to ﬁnal production

knowledge
Fundamentally changes the relationship to supply and demand

Distributed knowledge
network both
Hyperlocal & Superglobal


legal, innovation, community

Open Source &
Creative Commons
In one year 44,000 designs were submitted to Local 
Motors, and 3600 innovators have shared their knowledge 
and insights. 


accelerated innovation with community

In one year 44,000
designs were submitted
to Local Motors, and
3600 innovators have
shared their knowledge
and insights.

velocity and cost

5X faster than traditional
methodologies, and with
more than 100X less
capital
From $200m development
costs to $1.5 

economics, people, regions

Micro-Factories Locally
which provide an engaged
experience for customers,
money flows into local
communities, local jobs
for local people. 

learning
C 

Constant Feedback loop

aka:
the learning organization


summary

The company: as a
community, as a media
platform. Competitions as
risk mitigation & innovation
accelerator, markets are
conversations, mutuality a
business strategy.

principles

6 challenges



The cultural
challenge of
how we get from
here to there
philosophy
skills
process
motivation
tools

These are some of the organisations we have
worked with, studied, and, talked to have
have designed for transformation


[1]
Participatory cultures
& tools


[2]
Craftmanship
The maker of
civilisation



[3]
Adaptiveness The capability to learn
is not just nice to have;
it has become a key
factor for survival –
not only for people,
but for organisations,
and industries.

[4]
Ambiguity
Learning
to deal with
an uncertain
world


Openness
[5]
is resilience


[6] Epic:
seek epic wins


To bring unlikes in close proximity
To use our literacy
To use our vision
To use our tool box
To identify patterns – not risk
To Prototype

To seek Epic Wins we use synthesis’
& we design for transformation

VIDEO
http://smlxtralarge.com/2009/08/04/no-straight-lines-why-no-straight-lines/


What if ?
In the classrooms of our hospitals. The floors of our factories, in
our villages, town and cities we are no longer content with the
current status quo and we are asking so what comes NEXT.


So how do we see and
connect to our best
possible future potential
instead of continuing to
operate from the
experience of the past?



http://ht.ly/7OAod

smlxtralarge.com
no-straight-lines.com

No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Semelhante a No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world

Semelhante a No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world (20)

Mais de SMLXL Ltd

Mais de SMLXL Ltd (18)

Último

Último (20)

No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world