Tag Archives: featured

Cargo Cult Worlds, Distributed Democracy

The end of Liberalism is the beginning

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Classic liberalism has taken us a long ways, allowing much more complex societies than before. But it cannot pull us much further by itself. The endpoint of the focus on the individual is beginning to pull us a part. As social animals, we cannot survive as individuals.

“Why Liberalism Failed” — the title suggests an abstract and academic treatise, and author Patrick Deneen does not disappoint. The Notre Dame professor discourses on modernity’s prevailing political philosophy and loftily pronounces it dead. His critique spans countries, centuries and fields of study from economics to the humanities. It’s not a small topic, when you think about it.

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But we can use our liberal gifts to bootstrap ourselves to a new way of organizing ourselves, one with a little more balance, by adding more distributed systems of interacting rather than hierarchical.

We are already in the process and early examples are seeing tremendous success. We can do this now because we have tools to accomplish  this change, something lacking before.

This is the fundamental cause of our troubles today – advancing to a new level of social organization. One that provides a selective advantage in the new cultural environment we inhabit

Liberalism got us up several flights of stairs but to continue we need new principles.

Image: Skara kommun

Exponential Economy

Diamandis details 21st century entrepreneurship

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Peter hits the nail squarely here. Humans have a hard time understanding exponentials. And the exponential economy seems like a mystery to them. But if you do not organize your community to deal with exponentials, you will likely fail.

Being an entrepreneur today is vastly different than it was 20 years ago.

Today, each of us has access to more capital, more technological tools, more information, more talent, and more computational power than the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies did just two decades ago.

As I think about what it takes to succeed in a world of Abundance and a world of accelerating returns, I focus on six mindsets and tools that every exponential entrepreneur needs to master.

Here’s a quick look:

1. You Must Understand Exponentials

We’re local and linear thinkers in an exponential world.

Our brains haven’t had a significant upgrade in over a million years, whereas our technology is doubling in power every 18 to 24 months.

Exponential technology is transforming products and services and disrupting industries. That’s why Ray Kurzweil and I cofounded Singularity University.

I often talk about my “6 D’s” framework – it’s a lens through which I contextualize all technological change and opportunities:

The 6 Ds Progression:

  • Digitized: Turning every product or service into “1’s and 0’s.”
  • Deceptive: The doubling of small numbers is deceptive. Start doubling 0.1 to 0.2… 0.4… 0.8… and at this phase, it all looks like “zero.”
  • Disruptive: After we reach “1,” just 30 doublings later, we’re at 1 billion.
  • Dematerialized: Exponential technology turns tangible “things” into digital apps. I no longer carry around GPS equipment – it’s an app on my phone.
  • Demonetized: The cost of duplicating and sending an app is essentially zero.
  • Democratized: Once products and services are digital, they go global and can become ubiquitous.

Exponential entrepreneurs use the 6 D’s as a technological road map to predict where technologies are going and when to capitalize on the opportunities. This framework gives them an unfair advantage over competitors.

2. You See the World as Abundant (vs. Scarce)

Exponential entrepreneurs understand that technology is a force that transforms things from scarcity to abundance.

Technology is creating a world of abundance in almost every major arena, including energy, knowledge, transportation, computation, access to education and access to healthcare.

Once these industries transform from scarcity to abundance, their products and services become cheap (or free) and their quality goes through the roof.

Exponential entrepreneurs understand that despite the constant barrage of negative news from the Crisis News Network (my joking term for CNN) and its ilk, the world is becoming better at an extraordinary rate on almost every possible measure, including food, energy, education, poverty and health. (Note: I collect detailed charts on “Evidence of Abundance here.”)

Exponential entrepreneurs also know that scarcity-minded, closed business models ultimately fail, and open platforms ultimately win.

3. You Leverage Exponential Technologies

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4. You Have an MTP and a Moonshot

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5. You Tap the Crowd for Expertise, Solutions & Capital

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6. You Launch Your Vision, Experiment & Disrupt Yourself

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So many good points. Read and execute them all.

Image: luk.s

21st Century Company, Distributed Democracy, Exponential Economy

Moving Adobe into the Special category

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Adobe’s Record Revenue Proves Successful Business Transformation Is Possible
[Via Daring Fireball]

Ron Miller, writing for TechCrunch:

As we watch organizations like IBM, HP and EMC struggle to transform, Adobe is an interesting contrasting case. It went from selling boxed software to a cloud subscription model in shorter order, and judging from its financial report that came out last week, it’s done quite well making that leap.

First, let’s have a look at the numbers. Adobe reported a record $1.31 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 22 percent year over year increase. It disclosed record annual revenue of $4.8 billion. Mind you these are significant, but the big number to me is that recurring revenue from subscriptions now represents 74 percent of Adobe’s business. What’s more, just under $3 billion in revenue in 2015 came from digital media-related annual recurring revenue (ARR).

Adobe is making this switch to subscription pricing look easy. It’s not.

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Apple has been a great example of a 21st century company, transitioning from a mass producer of  millions of things to a personal producer of things for millions of people.

This is the key transition to the new economy being created. It requires a changing balance between the hierarchical authority so useful in the Age of Mass Production and the distributed democracy driving the Age of Personal Production.

Adobe no longer sells millions of boxes of the same thing to people for them to consume. It has a personal connection to millions of subscribers who use the offerings of Adobe.

This is not easy today but I expect that more will appear over the next decade,

It is all personal.

Image: Valerie Everett