Questions about the nature of human connectivity are now at the epicentre of what constitutes and creates personal, commercial and social value.
How will leaders connect with stakeholders in order to be able to do their jobs, and what are the appropriate business models with which to develop connectivity to build business?
Many organizations are yet to integrate the benefits of network effects fully into their business models. As I watched the social media discussions at Davos last week from the comfort of my own desktop, what I observed was a group of decision-makers, however, becoming increasingly aware of the impact that social media is going to have, that when they make their decisions there may be, at least metaphorically, other people in the room. Social business is bringing with it a big shift, and the key is that it involves going from messages to experiences.
There’s no doubt that C level curiosity around this is subject has been aroused; it’s becoming palpable, but whether it’s a pandora’s box or a burning platform is unidentified and uncertain. As Jeff Jarvis tweets, what’s the endgame of ‘FT’s @johngapper sitting on floor; Facebook investor standing: Davos democracy’?
‘Who claims that open is good?’ Steve Jobs has said, and it’s a good question, but as Don Tapscott countered in the Davos session, ‘companies have to undress for success’. When it comes to positioning this, in fact the ethics matter as much as the technology. Blatant integrity might be better, more nuanced and more appropriate, than open.
From ‘Veni vidi vici’, Julius Ceasar and the first days of empire, to ‘ipod, iphone, ipad’, and the liberation of the individual through gadgetry, this is an iterative process. It has always been this way. Now is the time to open up to the experience with integrity.
Carver Mead, a leading computer scientist at the California Institute of Technology, once said, “Listen to the technology; find out what it’s telling you.” Biz Stone has said the same thing about Twitter. At a NESTA session in December, Biz talked about how he’s spent the last two years listening to Twitter, telling him what it wants to be.
Technology is a finite game. It will ultimately solve all the problems it’s capable of addressing, now matter how shiny and new it seems now. What’s a more infinite game are the opportunities of human connectivity, all the shades of creation that are possible to conceive collectively.
A very modern form of disenfranchisement, being denied a networked identity, may become the ultimate social sanction of this century. That kind of ban from the cloud may have the same tarnish as the casting out of convicts to the far flung reaches of Australia two hundred years ago, as just as far an isolation away from the heart of a new civilization. Do we want that, especially at a time when one of the biggest risks we create as we emerge from seismic change, is a lack of education literacy that leads to us creating two societies, not one?
To help answer the question, Chris Brogan’s ‘The Third Tribe’ community launched this week. Chris Brogan, the man behind the move towards more human business, has a price for connectivity and membership to his tribe in the form of a monthly subscription. Subscription however doesn’t create a community, it creates a service, and with it comes a different ambience.
My friend Ed Brenegar’s put it like this ‘popularity in a free environment does not necessarily equate to value in a paid one’ and social connectivity means cost equations have changed. Purchase and purpose are more related, they come together via shared commitments, and purchase might take many forms and currencies – time given, attention focused, contributions made, as well as cold, hard cash.
The old school calls to consume don’t count for as much as they used to, whilst generative connections are growing in value.
I’ve paid upfront sight unseen for the value of being part of collaborative initiatives I believe in. There are causes that are redefining what participation in not-for-profit initiatives can mean and what it’s capable of achieving, and there are communities worth investing in heavily simply because of the quality of the leadership and freedom of connection.
Trust is the synaptic fluid of social business. In that context I think Chris Brogan, as a Trust Agent and because his stock in trade is his humanity, has erred. Trust is an intimate thing and monthly subscriptions are what we do when buying a network utility.
For anyone who wants to monetize social connectivity like in Davos, the key lies in differentiating value delivery appropriately, in understanding where brokerage can be paid for and value consumed, and where service and facilitation that’s free are crucial to delivering co-created value.
There are a number of industries where liberating co-created value is an increasingly important item on the agenda. The government burden of management in face of budget cutbacks, the healthcare requirement to develop insights that can make R&D cheaper, all business that benefits from streamlining business processes that can remove overhead, that knows that pump-priming marketing an increasingly expensive activity.
Old business models are yielding fewer returns. Generative listening is an antidote to the velocity of today’s overloaded information flows. The action potential contained within committed, visceral and trustworthy human relationships, that’s at the heart of the social connections, has never been more important. It’s the synaptic fluid of social business.
