This is the second of a series of pieces originally posted at Fast Company. It follows from an earlier post called A post consumption economy.
When I consider bidding for something on e-Bay, the first thing I do is check the reliability rating of the seller. When I want to meet a hard-to-reach executive, I try to establish a link through my network. When I consider which conference I will pay to attend, I choose TED because I know it will give me the most new ideas to feed off for the year.
Each of these qualities–reputation, access, and ideas–has real and tangible value to me and to the individual or institution that holds them. I am more likely to shop with an e-Bay vendor with a stellar rating. I am more likely to meet that executive if I have a large and well-maintained network. I am more likely to pay (a very large sum of money) to go to the conference with the most useful ideas. So why don’t we measure some of these things and have them constitute the picture we have of our personal, corporate or national wealth?
Some would argue that these are intangible and therefore hard to exchange, unlike cash or physical assets. I would argue that this is much less true in an information society where essentially everything is intangible. How can anything be less tangible than credit default swaps, and yet somehow we managed to exchange those, with admittedly disastrous consequences? With the information systems at our disposal, we can create measures of many of the things that facilitate modern society. Here is my list of things that I think might make up a networked, participation based economy.
Network value would describe the access that an individual or organization has to new ideas and opportunities. Brand value would describe reputation. Social value would measure influence. Knowledge would be measured through the number and quality of ideas and, finally, meaning measured through engagement. I suspect that we may have a hard time letting go of the measuring of cash, so I assume monetary value remains one of the dimensions of a participation economy. Personally, I think it would be an interesting thought experiment to imagine the first five replacing money rather than augmenting it.
Each type of value has to have some kind of measurable currency and the units of that currency presumably have to be exchangeable in some form. So in this framework monetary value has a measurable currency in the form of cash and has units such as dollars, euros or yuan. The measurable units of currency for networks might be connections, such the number of Linked-in connections I might have. For brand, reputation would be measured through ratings, just like e-Bay ratings, or the ranking of corporations that Interbrand publishes each year. The influence generated through social value might be measured by tracking conversations, much as the number of hits in a Google search is an indication of influence or importance. Identifying a universal measure for meaning might well be the most difficult, but corporations manage to measure employee engagement and media companies measure audience engagement. Somehow the stickiness of our experiences ought to be measurable and be an indication of how important to us any given experience might be. The more meaningful those experiences, the wealthier we should feel, and be.
Measuring and tracking all six of these may make for a complex economy, but unlike much of what we measure today, these are all relevant at an individual, organizational, or national scale. It seems to me we are more likely to want to participate in their nurturing and growth rather than leaving it to a few smart mathematicians on Wall Street.
Are these the right things to measure in an economy based on participation–and could their measurement result in some kind of sustainable system of growth and wealth creation?
So let’s assume for a moment that all values you’ve listed come from time you invest. If you invest time to buildup relations, you can count those relations, but you can’t trade them for objects, you can only use them to get more knowledge and maybe more connections. So how do you treat those values for other values. I think what is missing is an exchange rate which makes values depended on each other so they are more tangible. But the difficulty is that you never really spend network value while you can use it to enhance the outcome of spending monetary value. So if all of these values could be treated for one another and we assume that spending one will result in gaining another one you will never loose anything but only change status. So assuming that you will never run out of any of those values mentioned the only resource which is limited and is the fundamental value of everything is time.
But the problem with all this would be, that it is to complicated for everyone to understand. So ultimately I think defining new measurable and treatable values isn’t the solution for everyone involved in the process. Although the perception of those values might be a start that lead to something new.
Hi Tim..
let’s play a little with this idea..
assuming your suggestion is our current real economy… I tried to play around with the concept and see how we can make it work better..
so what I did was plot down the 6 economies and branched out the measurements you mentioned. I found further connections between them and added some. I realized that from all they fall in two streams, diverging and converging economies…
I built on these economies, rebuilt the imaginary nation and found that within each economy, a complex system of rating can be established behind the scenes, but to the other world, a simple toolbar can explain how high or low are you in each economy (i.e. rich or poor). As I saw the colored diagram I realized this is a barter system in disguise! You teach me your knowledge in xyz, I’ll connect you with a leader in this field who I know but really cannot understand. So I give you my contact, my network bar might decrease slightly, but my knowledge bar increases. I can also work with you on your image or brand, and you will give me feedback on my service (provide meaning).. etc.
I rearranged the experience again.. and drew another diagram. Since I cannot attach it to this comment, I’m going to put it up on my blog.. have a look at let me know if you want to play further in this concept. I think we can even try it in a small “nation” like a department or a student university setting. (http://contagiouscreativity.wordpress.com)
Tim,
Your attempt to create a standard rating system for the participation economy (individual cachet) are to be commended. Beyond the chosen variables (and units/scale of measurement) I would welcome the data to be harnessed from such a system. Combinations of snapshots and groupings, based on locales, issues, causes could track Third World development a/o support for certain causes (or candidates).
Participation tracking goes beyond the tools provided by Google and others, to follow participatory development and track evolution of individuals, systems, countries, essentially however you choose to categorize the data. Who knows, you may also want to factor in the influence of the individuals with whom you interact, to weight one’s rating.
Tim: I’ve digested your Fast Company blog postings. Nice work! No small task to change an firmly anchored set of economic values. But if you are really looking ahead and thinking to address the “Post Economic Crisis” and ways to influence it, I would suggest sooner rather than later you are going to reach an end to defining these new values by abstract reasoning and will have to employ something you know very well how to do; i.e., “learn by doing”. It is very likely that the new values obtained from human centered design thinking, both producers and consumers, will be, perhaps surprisingly, different. In this light, I think the first priority has to be the design of a participation platform, initially a pilot platform. If we are talking about something real as opposed to virtual, I have sent an idea (a big idea) to your tbrown@ideo.com site which complements your thinking and briefly describes the way to leverage the platform for global effect. We can talk more if you wish. Dean Kastel
Hello Tim
Thank you, I’ve just come across these posts and enjoyed them very much.
Last year, a co-curator and I explored a similar ‘alternative currency’ ideas, superimposed onto existing businesses, to create a temporary, conceptual store in London and New York. Take a look at www.brandnext.com.
On the opening night at Wolff Olins, we invited guests not just to look, but to do something. In the Store for Tomorrow, you don’t pay to get; you give to get.
To make an exchange in the store, shoppers do not need to give money, instead they are required to commit to an action. Actions are based on things that people do to make the business better. In the store, time, ideas, skills, effort and content are the currency. For example, Current TV needs more people to make films. In exchange for giving ideas and direction, shoppers get a filmmaker and camera hire to bring those ideas to life.
So our ‘currency’ wasn’t standardised, like-for-like, but common to all was that the shopper becomes an integral part of the business, and their (trans)action had a reciprocal, multiplying effect – rather like a network effect – making the product and service better for everyone else (rather like your ‘investing’ idea?).
I have to admit, it was more a creative exploration than a realistic, feasible solution, but it represents, in tangible form, an experimental, flexible system inspired by existing alternative biz models like open source, bartering, timebanking….and so on…which are all successful ‘economies’ in their own right.
I look forward to playing some more!
best, ellie