Slides (extensive!) from the John Seely-Brown #purposebiz talk in San Francisco on October 18 2011

1. Preparing Leaders for
a world of constant change
Thriving in a World of Constant Flux
as entrepreneurial learners
Context setting
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2. A Belief
We have moved from
an era of equilibrium to
an era of constant dis-equilibrium.
Our ways of
leading., learning, working,
innovating & organizing
must be reframed.
Unleashing passion and growing talent become key
20th Century Era Captured by Alfred Chandler
Push Economy
20th century infrastructure
roads/cars/trucks/trains/ships/airplanes
Infrastructure capabilities drive organization architecture
And Scalable Efficiency becomes the goal.
• predictable
• hierarchy
• control
S-curve • organizational routines
stable over decades.
(Few real changes in 60 years) • minimize variance
2

3. 21st C infrastructure: no stability in sight
driven by continual exponential
advances in computation
20th C infrastructure
50 yrs
S-curve
S-curve
stable over decades.
rapid set of punctuated moves
20th Century Era Captured by Alfred Chandler
Push Economy
20th century infrastructure
roads/cars/trucks/trains/ships/airplanes
Infrastructure capabilities drive organization architecture
And Scalable Efficiency becomes the goal.
• predictable
• hierarchy
• control
S-curve • organizational routines
stable over decades.
(Few real changes in 60 years) • minimize variance
3

4. in a world of increasingly rapid change,
the half life of a given stock/skill is
constantly shrinking
& the predictability of future needs is
increasingly less certain!
Stocks =====> Flows
protecting participating
knowledge assets in knowledge flows
resource creating new knowledge
management (strong tacit component)
(ERP)
needing new modes of value creation
Scalable efficiency Scalable learning
Mind Set of an
Entrepreneurial Learner
passionate pursuit of extreme performance
questing – seeking, uncovering, probing ...
connecting – listening to others, engaging…
4

5. A fortuitous encounter that
helped shape my thinking.
Oh – an example from
your years of running PARC?
The Grommets
A story about how fame & fortune was brought to Maui
5

6. The first junior champion ever in Maui
and a new genre – aerial surfing.
And now ALL Five!
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7. How was this possible?
6 ways
1.
A passion to achieve
extreme performance and
a willingness to
fail, fail, fail on the way.
7

8. 2.
Accessing and analyzing
frame by frame
the videos of
the best surfers around the world.
3.
Use of video tools to
capture and analyze
each of their own improvisations.
8

9. 4.
Pulling the best ideas
from adjacencies:
wind surfing, skate boarding,
mountain biking, motor cross, …
5.
Accessing spikes of capabilities
around the world–
leveraging networks of practice.
9

10. 6.
Deeply
collaborating and competing
with each other.
Dispositions of an
Entrepreneurial Learner
passionate pursuit of extreme performance
questing – seeking, uncovering, probing ...
connecting – listening to others, engaging…
10

11. Shaping Serendipity
Can be more than just luck!!!
Choose Develop Enhance
Serendipity Serendipity Serendipity
Environments Practices Preparedness
All encounters: deep listening with reciprocity
Transactional --> Relational
Grinding New Lenses
What made us great in 20th Century
might well cause our downfall
in the 21st Century –
a century of constant change
Warning:
unlearning is much harder than learning
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12. A Big Deal
Jack Hidary
Folks tend to isolate themselves from the flows of
new knowledge and the people creating them.
“How often do you get out of your comfort zone?”
A Mindset Change
Stocks =====> Flows
protecting participating
knowledge assets in knowledge flows
Financial leverage Capability leverage
12

13. The Skadden Story
Learning from the Twitter/FB generation.
Open Source Software Communities
Creating:
• code to be ‘read and tried
• engagement thru useful additions and critique
• social capital matters
A form of distributed situated learning
cognitive ‘apprenticeship’
enculturating to
networks of practice
open community discussion, open building
Conversation  Construction
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14. SAP wants to accelerate customer inspired
enhancements of NetWeaver
SAP Developer Network (SDN) was created as a
learning platform and as an environment to foster
interaction through forums, wikis & blogs in 2002
Growth in Members 2003-2008E
1,600
SAP community 1.4M
1,400
network growth
1,200
1.0M
Total Members (000)
1,000
800
654K
600
400 339K
200 109K
0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008E
Natural Evolvution
connect – answer questions- build reputation –
attract others – with attracted group build new stuff
Note: Includes SDN and the BPX Community beginning in fall 2006. Source: SAP
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15. An Enterprise Twitter solution emerged from
the SAP Development Network
Enterprise Social Media Experiment (ESME) Founding Members
Anne Petteroe
Pearl Consulting
-ABAP developer,
Darren Hague* Web/UI designer
Axon Solutions
-Architect, Java/ Oliver Kohl
Scala coder MIBS GmbH
-ABAP/Java
Dennis Howlett developer
Enterprise
Irregulars
Mrinal Wadhwa
-BPX expert
Rich Internet App.
-Flex, Flash, AIR,
AJAX developer
Dick Hisrich
Siemens IT
-NetWeaver expert
Other participants
*Now a principal consultant for SAP
Creation Spaces qua
Institutional & technological
Platforms -
environments that effectively integrate
individuals and teams
within a broader learning ecology
to engage in challenging problems
so that performance improvement accelerates
as more participants join.
15

16. Unleashing passion & learning.
Starting to think eco-systemically,
And at the societal level.
16

17. El Systema
José Antonio Abreu wanted to break through this cycle of
poverty, and in 1975 he established the first Venezuelan
youth orchestra in Caracas with 12 children from the
barrios. Since then he has built up a network of orchestras
and music centres through the whole country.…
…musical perfection is not the first priority;
…instead, what’s important is being able to play
together with others with the older children pass
their knowledge down to the younger ones.
Abreu’s intention and philosophy is
a simple, elegant concept:
“for him an orchestra is first and foremost about
togetherness, a place where children learn to listen
to each other and to respect one another & and thru
their individual roles each participates in an inter-
dependency of harmonies & rhythms that form a
powerful collective. ..where each member is self
correcting until the collective literally resonates.”
Ap-j/jsb: Design Unbound
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18. A sense of what is possible with small moves
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19. cultural transformation at three critical scales
personal– self esteem, confidence and a process of
identity construction & leadership
family – a role model for his family that inaugurates
an ascending social path of consequence.
community - the orchestras and choirs become
creative spaces of culture and new sources of
exchange and meaning.
bootstrapping a new social life/culture
Ap-j/jsb
The Bigger Picture
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20. Key
Breaking free of the Red Queen effect
Experience curves Collaboration curves
harnessing network effects where
the more people that participate the
greater the potential returns
39 The Power of Pull
Copyright © 2010 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.
Individuals and Institutions
individuals will increasingly reshape institutions
rather than vice versa
20th
century
21st
century
social media & cloud computing
40 The Power of Pull helps to shift power to the edge
Copyright © 2010 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.
20

21. The purpose of the 20th Century firm:
to minimize transaction costs &
achieve scalable efficiency
The Purpose of the 21st Century Firm:
to accelerate capability building
(building talent)
and scalable learning/collaboration
Learning from others as they learn from you:
accelerated bootstrapping thru an ecosystem
A Fundamental Transition In Values
I am what I wear, I am what I create, share
own, control and others build on.
The beginnings of the
creative economy &
the entrepreneurial learner.
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22. Crisis of Imagination
honoring the past but daring to imagine
what now could be possible.
The big shift
> embracing change,
not fearing it
> being willing to
challenge ‘wisdom’
enabling new means & pathways to
engage, innovate, disseminate & learn
Networks of Imagination
emergent
from colle ctive action
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23. And to afford curiosity in a
constantly changing world.
Ages: 2 & 5
tomorrow’s employees
A Golden Triangle for the
Entrepreneurial Learning
imagination
a
sense of
Awe,
Curiosity,
Humility
intuition inspiration
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24. Thank You
Special thanks to Susan Haviland for the sketches
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