Networked information society: what it means for your business

My blog posting activity has been on the light side recently. This posting marks the return of more regular postings.

Wealth of networks

If you have not yet read The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler, can I recommend that you do. The main theme of the book – that the networked information society creates social value – is at once a great challenge for the 21 century, and is also one of the great opportunities.

It’s challenging to those that hold dearly on to the main elements of 20th century market economies: exclusivity, wealth measured in monetary terms, the organisational power of the firm, the nation state, consumerism and the media. The networked information society is challenging to accountants, economists and management consultancies, the rationale of all being bound by the main elements of market economies.

Information is not scarce. Knowledge is not bound by centralised control. Indeed, the value of knowledge and information grows with sharing. Networked social value is not exclusive property. Not only is it possible for people to be well-organised in networked relationships online, it is actually very easy – and adaptive and resilient too. The value of networks transcends organisational and jurisdictional boundaries. Can you put any of that on a balance sheet – or confine it to a national identity? Hell no!

The networked information society creates social value through connections between people. Social value is created through shared creativity, expression and reputation. In The Internet and the Project of Communications Law, Susan Crawford described it this way. “…the greatest possible diversity of new ideas that will support our country in the future will come from the online world, because of its special affordances of interactivity, interconnectivity, and unpredictable evolution” (page 6). Written in 2007, don’t those words seem that much more important in the global economic meltdown. Oh, and while referencing Susan Crawford, another take-away from her piece is: don’t treat the internet like a content-delivery supply chain. It’s greatest value is in human connections and relationships online.

Implications for the firm and other institutions: it’s about relationships, not things

Get networked! Participate and engage with your customers, stakeholders, citizens, people everywhere. Get to know them better. Anticipate their needs. If you have something of value to them, go directly to them. Avoid intermediaries.  Invite them to know you better. Collaborate with them. People are influenced by those they know about and trust. Share to grow. Use others data and platforms where you can.

Reach out and use the scale of the internet to go beyond your town, your region, your country.

Use mulitmedia. People are more passionate, more emotional with video interaction. There is far richer connectivity. Tell stories about you, your service or product.

Transparency, participation and collaboration in Government

On 21 January President Obama issued a memo to the US federal heads of departments and agencies on the subject of transparency and open government. I know this direction is confined to the USA, but the principles have applicability in all democracies.

The aim of the initiative is to strengthen democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government through transparency, participation and collaboration. The memo acknowledges that knowledge is widely dispersed in society and that public officials benefit from having access to dispersed knowledge (as well as better access to information and knowledge held by other departments and agencies).

In summary, the consequences for departments and agencies are to:

• disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use
• offer increased opportunities for the public to participate in policy-making
• use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organisations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector.

An Open Government Directive to implement these measures will be developed over the next four months. You can view the memo here.

As well as improving the quality of information and analysis to support evidence-based decision-making, I can’t help but feel this initiative by President Obama has the potential to transform government processes and restore public confidence in democratic processes. The Participative Web has arrived in Washington DC.

I have not seen this memo mentioned in mainstream media, but the blogosphere has latched onto it. Interesting in itself. Maybe that is a sign that the watchdog role of the media is now going social?

In any case, President Obama’s initiative is bound to support and foster social networking and social media. As to the establishment: here comes everybody!

Flexible organisation

Bob Johansen’s Get There Early is a very good read. Johansen’s message is that taking a long-term view helps make sense of the present, out of which comes learning how to act.  There is much in the book to take in. The main trust of this posting though is in reference to Chapter 9 Flexing and Flexibility. Using connections within social networks – inside and outside of organisational boundaries – provides flex and response to change.

There is growing awareness about how innovation and value is created by moving from hierarchies to collaborative, autonomous networks. Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams, in  Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything, say that online collaboration “can be mobilised to accomplish much more than one firm acting alone”. In
the digital economy, access to knowledge – within as well as beyond the firm – drives innovation and new value.

Mark Pesce has blogged about Web-enabled connectivity creating opportunities for people to develop new behaviour and techniques, and where these are successful, to have them disseminated widely and quickly.

Dave Morgan has bogged about the possible emergence of ‘people networks’ through the development of OpenSocial- a set of common APIs for interoperable social communication between social network sites and other web sites. Morgan suggests that while social networking would be distributed, organisation would be possible but largely through people networks.

It does not take long to realise that decisions about the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services could transfer to people networks. Seems to me that Facebook, Bebo and Google all realise that – and are getting there early. Those that are building large virtual connections between staff (such as IBM’s presence on Facebook) realise that, and are getting there early.