Ideas for Change

Tell me @twitter: who do you belong to?

Blog, Open Business Models, Open Culture

05/04/2012

Image by opensource.com

When future historians want to know more about past tormented years and an the uncertain present, they will only have to access Twitter archives to grasp a sense of the world’s pulse at each specific moment and place.

Twitter has become a public space where citizen’s conversations take place; and for that reason every movement concerning it’s shareholders, it’s governmental relations, it’s team or users holds an immeasurable transcendence not only for the company’s future but also for the freedom of speech of general citizenry. During the past months there has been plenty of movements and diverse proposals.

January 2011 #shareholders

A Saudi prince invests 300 million dollars for an estimated 3% of the company. Months before, a big Russian corporation – according to some supported by its government – had purchased around 5% for the amount of 400 million dollars. Let’s agree in the fact that both of them do not seem to be the best examples of freedom of speech.

February 2012 #government

Twitter announces in its blog that it has the capacity of deleting those tweets that violate the legislation of a country exclusively in that same country, maintaining the content accessible to the rest. Simultaneously, it forbids it’s stakeholders to sell more than a 20% of their participation to others; this decision prevents them from having to inform about their financial situation and becoming public in the stock exchange.

April 2012 #inventors

Twitter stirs the field of corporate intellectual property announcing the new “Innovators Patent Agreement”. It will revise terms of past patents and future ones to grant more control to inventors who have participated in the development. Creator will be able to establish the criteria for what a patent gets licensed or not, and under which conditions; even after a hypothetical sale to a third party. As well, Twitter has promised to use patents exclusively in a defensive manner, limiting its offensive use that stands in the way of others innovation. Bravo Twitter! We need people behind decisions, an open management of intellectual property, which promotes innovation.

April 2012 #everyone?

Benoit Raphael proposes that Twitter should be the next Wikipedia: open, ubiquos and sustained through monetary private donations. He arguments that Twitter is as relevant as the online encyclopedia for humanity’s evolution of information. Humanity’s conversations can’t pertain to private property, he concludes. You would need in between 100$ – 200$ annual million dollars to maintain it – Wikipedia costs 30 – according to his calculations. Stimulating!

#nor one or the other

Twitter’s objective to grow as a business may clash with the transparency and independence mandatory guidelines which a big part of its user community considers already a common resource. If in organizations people gather around a common mission and a common resource, it appears as if Twitter will be forced to recombine both characteristics in an innovative way in order to be able to continue to be our public square.#nocorporation #nocommunity

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Affordable medicine and open science. Fresh air

Blog, Open Science

05/03/2012

Image by opensource.com

The right to access existent drug products at a reasonable price is a traditional demand in developing countries and is about to be achieved, at least partially, through three complementary but different ways.

The industry cooperates and donates

Invited by Bill Gates, the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world have reached an agreement to share their research in order to eradicate forgotten tropical illnesses. They have also agreed to increase significantly the donations of medicine products that cure obsolete illnesses in the West. Bravo! Thank you.

The (Indian) State regulates

Nexavar, a drug for kidney and liver cancer patented by Bayer will be produced in India under the name of Sorafenat by the local business Natco Pharma. The Indian patent law allows local industry manufacturing if, after three years since launch, the drug is not accessible for the general citizenship at an “affordable” price.

The monthly treatment for a patient cost 4,000€ with Bayer’s drug product. The generic alternative will be available for a fraction of that price: 134€/month. 29 times less.

This means that over a 95% of the product’s price does not directly correspond to production costs. Instead, this amount includes R&D, marketing, financial and structure costs. Bayer offered it’s medicine for 475€ to certified sick patients. The authorized business will pay a 6% of sales in royalties. A necessary exception. Applicable everywhere else? Sustainable?

Scientists share

The active professor Dr. Matt Todd of the School of Chemistry at Sydney’s University has developed a methodology for open research that already has showed results: an alternative way for low cost production of a medicine that threats Bilharzia, a parasitic sickness which affects millions of people who do not have access to clean water sanitation systems.

“The challenge was that the medicine had to be produced at a very low cost and that was a challenge that academia was not going to solve”, states Todd. So he tried something different: he openly published his lab notes online while he advanced in his research and this proved to be crucial in the process.

In may he begins – with Australian government funding for three years – an open research project to find a feasible treatment against malaria using worldwide scientists that share live time results without worrying about patents. He believes that open science can achieve significant discoveries in the initial phases, before clinical trials. Free, without pardon or permission, for all.

Open as well for existent business for collaboration, investment or cost reduction. Inspiration to redefine their strategy and activities. Energy to to impulse new business models and new structures based on the common resource. Fresh air.

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Open data or closed data? It depends!

Blog, Open Data

05/03/2012

Image by opensource.com

Everything we understood as established is changing dramatically. And an issue that appears to be especially troubled, or at least questioned by all, is the relationship between people and the data.

We find ourselves in a unique, unprecedented point in time. A moment that partly due to the current debate regarding the Transparency Law , it is of common knowledge the fact that Spain is the most opaque country in Europe in matter of public data access and where it is an urgent need the passing of this law. Citizens start to become conscious that the knowledge and processing of public data figures is not a privilege but a basic right that, if it had existed before, it probably would have saved us many economic and politic headaches. Open data, please.

While this notion so obvious for other western inhabitants, is starting to sink in Spanish mindsets, on the other side of the Atlantic they go further with citizen data. The US Department of Veteran Affairs has created a blue button on their website that enables users to download their health records and share them with whom they wish; a new doctor, a hospital…etc. Thanks to this popular initiative and encouraged by Obama’s administration, utility companies have enabled a green button, which allows the same: each user may download their energy consumption data for their use. This not only implies that – for now- 15 million informed citizens can use energy in a more efficient way, but it promotes the emergence of an applications ecosystem that monitors the consumption, for example like an app that allows you to see the thermostat at real time and then assess the financial and environmental implications of raising or lowering it. Will we see in the future yellow, red, orange, black buttons? Here, closed (personal) data.

Meanwhile another revolutionary idea emerges among citizens: the right of owning our own data as potential consumers and sell it to brands who consider the data relevant to their message.

Before, companies who owned customers data naively believed they owned the customer. They didn’t realize that markets need buyers and sellers to function and that people need products and services the same way products and services need people. As a result, new platforms that empower the consumer are appearing, enabling the necessary tools to interact with brands in a way that both benefit. This change of paradigm in the consumer – brand relationship has been named by Harvard Law School as VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) and is considered an evolution from the overexploited Customer Relationship Management.

A good example of these types of platforms is the one launched by the company Qustodian, which works like this: 1. Users provide companies data on their profiles and preferences, 2. They accept receiving targeted SMS messages to establish transactions with relevant brands 3. Qustodian shares one third of the revenue generated by the SMS messages, transferring the amount directly to the customers Qustodian account.

In this type of model the customer is the owner of its data and decides in what way or form it is “sold” to companies. Meanwhile, these brands are obliged to ask for permission in order to communicate with their target and send them relevant messages. Yes, here closed data, please!

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Britannica? Encarta? Wikipedia!

Blog, Open Business Models

05/03/2012

On the 13^th of March of this year 2012, Encyclopaedia Britannica, the world’s oldest encyclopedia ever written in English, announced the definitive suspension of its print edition, arguing that the company would focus all its resources in its online subscription services. For the past few decades, we have witnessed its struggle in figuring out a sustainable business model, which would deliver profits. Two blows sunk Encyclopaedia Britannica into obsolescence:

First hit: Microsoft Encarta and the disappearance of paper

During the 80’s, Microsoft approached Britannica offering their collaboration to create a CD-ROM version of the Encyclopaedia, but Britannica declined it due to the belief that a digital version would cannibalise its print sales. In 1993 Microsoft reached an agreement with the publishers Funk and Wagnalls and launched their first CD edition, becoming the world’s best-sold multimedia encyclopaedia. However, turning digital was not enough either: In 2009 Microsoft announced the discontinuation of the product, appealing to the “decline of traditional markets”.

Definitive hit: a decade of collaborative work displaces the category reference for 250 years

When Wikipedia entered the scene, the struggle ceased to be about confronting formats (paper vs. digital) and became about ways of organization: the copyright industry against a community who firmly believed in the freedom of knowledge. Wikipedia’s founders established a set of requisites that built the necessary framework to enable contribution, which became a success formula: the Encyclopaedia could be edited easily, of low maintenance, easy to develop contents and instantly implementable. Eleven years later, Wikipedia is the largest digital work ever written online and it’s contribution to global intelligence is priceless.

In how many other fields are we able to witness a community, who maintains and shares a common resource, displacing established market players such as Britannica?

In knowledge, in software, now in hardware and science…we increasingly observe the growth of initiatives capable of consolidating themselves and finding resources to remain active. Some, such as Wikipedia, extend their field through a “share alike” clause, which forces users to also share the content where they have used Wikipedia. Viral.

However, these communities are not free of problems; they present human flaws such as the fight for personal recognition and power struggle become also part of the game. But still, it is easier to establish a parallel project based on an existent one –since it is possible access all the cumulative knowledge – than to begin from scratch.

Historically the contribution economy has been a model of production based on reciprocity, which used to demand physical proximity and trust. Now, thanks to a connected, educated population, the model it has changed in scale, capacity and ambition.

¿Do you contribute?

This article has been published in our favourite magazine, Yorokobu.

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Open culture in three steps: scale, abilities and ambition

Blog, Open Culture

05/03/2012

Even though it has recently become a recurring motto, collaboration in the field of the arts is nothing new. No need to rewind too much: Surrealists, Dadaists, Situationists and Plagiarists already conceived the idea that all creation is derivative and worked in a cooperatively manner.

Think of the following question: What changed between the exquisite corpse of Tzara, Breton & Co. and the Exquisite Corpse Festival celebrated in October of 2011 in the US? In both cases the resulting creation is a product of convulsive beauty and common participation with a playful spirit. However, in the first example collaboration arises at a local level, occurs in a shared physical space. In the second, the American festival has been created from the Web and users were able to participate in an event where artists that might have never met before created a collaborative work of art through multiple mediums.

“The Exquisite Corpse Festival uses the surrealist parlour game to inspire collaborations in unlikely media and between unlikely artists”

Change of scale

Yes, you got it! What has changed is the scale. And that change is directly related to certain processes that have been brewing for the past three decades due to the existence of a young and educated population, which is connected through the Web and in active search for alternatives. As a result, what before was local now is global, what used to be confined to a domestic field, familiar and close, now acquires to a planetary dimension.

The digital remix culture is a good example of the change of scale in co-creation. The Grey Album is a mash up record created by Danger Mouse and launched in 2004. It uses an a cappella version of the rapper Jay – Z combined with plentiful unauthorized samples of The Beatles. The album gained notoriety when EMI tried to stop its distribution pleading copyright infringements. That same year DJ Spooky remixed D.W. Griffith’s film “Birth of a Nation” (1912), and launched it as “Rebirth of a Nation”.

In addition, the comparison between The Grateful Dead and Dj Vadim is useful to understand the change of scale that the Web 2.0 and P2P have made possible. The cult band from California used to invite fans to record parts of their live performances and in many occasions reused those samples in their own music. Vadim takes advantage of the Web to offer his samples to anyone who wants to remix and upload them back. Then he chooses the creations he likes best and plays them in clubs or turns them viral through his soundcloud account.

“Remix old and new Vadim tracks and upload them back to the cloud: we play our favourites on mixes, in clubs and share on our soundcloud”

Change of capabilities

The second change that affects collaboration has to do with capabilities. The film “El Cosmonauta” is a clear example because it is the only Spanish movie partially crowdfunded. Both the scripts and the shooting plan have been published in the Web and followed by users whom, after co-financing the project, became producers of the work. The feature film will be distributed under a Creative Commons license.

In this case, the product is only plausible thanks to the change of scale added to a change of capabilities. The Web becomes a board that enables contribution through a series of micro tasks. But contribution not always has to be monetary: Pantalla Global (Global Screen), currently being exhibited at CCCB (Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona), has been co-created with the help the crowd. It is an “open” exhibition divided in three phases: incubation, exhibition and post exhibition. Users may follow the creative process and even participate through the creation of a “counter exhibition”. As a counter discourse, user generated content becomes part of the physical and virtual expositions.

What is yours is mine, what is mine is mine?

The emergence of Creative Commons licenses offers a legal framework for the current creative effervescence motivated by the change of scale and capacities (excluding some restrictions). In the era of the culture industry, the big intermediaries needed copyright to sustain their businesses. Now, the era of contribution reveals the pressing need of new game rules that may protect the author while enabling open distributions and remixing.

In this context, a well known element appears on stage: the commons (or the common good), that which belongs to the public domain, a resource on which ownership cannot be attributed to any individual as it belongs to the collective. And, talking about the commons, a new riddle pops up: what changed between Encyclopaedia Britannica (RIP) and Wikipedia?

Change of ambition

According to Jimmy Wales, founder of the largest digital work ever written, Wikipedia is “like a library or a public park: a temple for the mind”. The mission behind it is to make knowledge accessible to everybody. With more than 20 million of articles in 282 languages and dialects, written jointly by volunteers from all over the world, Wikipedia is one of the major contributions to the commons and is only possible thanks to the magical addition: change of scale + change of abilities + change of ambition.

We assist to a change in ambition when the resulting product of the joint collaboration is a resource for the commons. A resource plausible of being copied, distributed, modified and redistributed, as Richard Stallman points out in his GNU Manifesto, written a few decades ago.

Coleccionarte.org, Barcelona Creative Commons Festival (which not only exhibits CC films but also allows for it’s replication as a concept itself), all the projects that seek crowd funding in Goteo.org are examples conceived with the same change of ambition: that of a participative and free culture which exploits and cultivates the common resource.

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The three pictures Kodak could have made (and, inexplicably, didn’t)

Open Business Models

05/03/2012

Image by kevitivity.com

1975: Steve Sasson, an engineer working at Kodak, invents the digital camera.

1991: Kodak jointly launches with Nikon a professional camera of 1.3 megapixels.

1995: First “point and shoot” camera.

The 19^th of January of 2012 Kodak opted for a process of arrangement of creditors, relying on the sale of its 1.100 patents to any of the big actors in digital photography or to a specialist in the exploitation of patents.

Lack of innovation has not been Kodak’s problem. But there are three pictures that Kodak could have made and, inexplicably, did not.

Picture 1: The champion of digital photography

The adoption of digital photography started out slowly, accelerated with the widespread usage of Internet and exploded with smartphones.

Kodak invented it but was not agile enough to change a business model based on subsidising cameras and generating profit through film and paper.

Nobody wanted to see it or no one had the courage to assume the consequences. No one was able to put the user in the centre and realize that, for everyday people, a photo is synonymous of a moment and therefore its value rises above quality.

Slow speed in the shot, excess of light, the object is undistinguishable.

Picture 2: Social photo album

Pictures are made to capture a unique moment with the purpose of reliving them in later occasions, and sharing them with others. Photos are not only made, they are used and reused.

If you have been in the photographic industry for 130 years, you know this. If you have decided to name the wheel of film slides “carrousel” to evoke the childhood merry-go-round, you use it. When you associate holiday vacations to Kodak, you proclaim it.

Kodak had the biggest community of photo devotees that ever existed, until Flickr arrived and became the reference of a social photo album. Instagram, the popular app to share pictures, is now the largest native mobile community, above Foursquare. If you know this, use it.

Depth of the field badly adjusted. Key knowledge is out of focus, unseen in midst of the landscape.

Picture 3: the technological platform for digital images

When Kodak invented the digital camera it not only invented a product, but also a whole industry, the same one that has forced its disappearance. Surprise: 85% of digital cameras and interactive telephones use some of Kodak’s technology.

You may not able to change the direction of a giant aircraft carrier in time. But clearly you cannot stop a tsunami. You may receive an important amount from the insurance after the lawsuits but it will be already too late.

Maybe the most relevant strategic decision to be taken in open scenarios is a matter of balance. Deciding what to share so as to maintain a decisive position in the system and, at the same time, knowing what to keep in order to exploit it as an exclusive value.

This article has been published by Yorokobu, our favourite magazine

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What if the solution is to open? (instead of closing)

Open Business Models

05/03/2012

Imagine that the technological institute where you have been investigating for years on how to develop a user friendly electronic board for students is threatened by the possibility of shutting down. That was the case of Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino, who along with his team decided to openly publish the design of their board under a CC license (Creative Commons) which allows others to build upon their work as long as they credit them as authors and license their new creations under identical terms (BY SA).

Despite the fact that anybody can manufacture an exact same board, several people choose the one with signature “made in Italy” even if they have to pay more for it. The Arduino team has become the reference in open hardware design and as a consequence it also offers consulting services.

Imagine now you inherit a goldmine in Canada. You spend a fortune hiring the best geologists; you get a complete geological mapping but you haven’t found one golden nugget.

Rob McEwen, Goldcorp’s owner, launched in 2000 the Goldcorp Challenge; he openly published all the maps he had and offered a prize of 575.000 US$ to whom would help him find gold. The competitors for the prize identified more than 110 areas of the terrain where 80% resulted to be profitable for gold extraction. 8 million ounces of gold were found. McEwen calculates that this open collaboration had saved him in between 2 to 3 years of exploration studies.

Last one, for now. Imagine that you are a big corporation such as Oracle or Dell and you are developing a promising business to manage huge amounts of raw data. Hadoop Appears.

Hadoop is an open source computer software supervised by Apache Foundation which offers two services: data hosting, and processing using a technique named MapReduce. Oracle, Dell, NetApp and EMC are already adopting it, accelerating its diffusion and contributing to the project as it evolves in an open and sustainable manner.

It’s the power of open. Do you join it?

Anyone can access without asking for permission or forgiveness. There are already too many opportunities where opening, sharing, and enabling the availability of a common resource are becoming a more profitable choice than keeping it closed.

When that of what is open gets to congregate enough interest and participation of a number of agents that exploit it for their own benefit, while they contribute to it’s development, it becomes unstoppable.

Open systems act in favour of any agent in two ways: offering support and encouragement to explore any available opportunities and having at its disposal a growing array of developed solutions to market. Sequential strategies: first this, then that, cannot cope in scope and speed.

Cooperation between interdependent agents that share a common resource alter, when able to create a competitive open standard, the centre of gravity of industries that appeared restricted to big actors. Software, hardware, education, science, innovation, government, even the production of commercial vehicles, are being affected by the “open phenomenon”.

This article has been published in Yorokobu, our favourite magazine

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Why and how citizens innovate. Seven observations

Blog, Presentations/talks

09/02/2011

In January 2011, we launched We Are Not Ants, a book-based movement promoted and written by Fernando Casado, Javi Creus, Doris Obermair, designed by Pablo Juncadella and published by RandomHouse Mondadori.

We Are Not Ants analyzes and celebrates human successes, points out many challenges to be resolved and it gives visibility to more than 300 citizens’ initiatives, impulsed by people who know that it is possible to change this world.

During these last months we have been given many opportunity to present our ideas and observations to different audiences, in different events. We would like to share the seven main observations about optimistic innovation. Please, note that the presentation is in Spanish. We are working on the translation!

Siete Obervaciones sobre la Innovación Optimista

View more presentations from Ideas for Change .

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Britannica? Encarta? Wikipedia!

Open culture in three steps: scale, abilities and ambition

The three pictures Kodak could have made (and, inexplicably, didn’t)

What if the solution is to open? (instead of closing)

Why and how citizens innovate. Seven observations

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