Hey Cristina! 
At the risk of redundancy (the following is also posted here), we want to encourage you folks to give serious consideration to spawning your Internet platform as an extension of the MicroAid platform. The fine-grained opportunity identification, micro-funding, and detailed results tracking is a non-trivial software development challenge. Not only does MicroAid already have much of what you are looking for, they also have valuable experience with the management and legal challenges of making such an idea work.
Here is our note from the Tiered Investments discussion…
Mark Grimes said:
[snip]… but could not find anyplace where a normal consumer (ala myself) can put small funds in an invesment instrument, and make the world a better place thru microfinance (and educate consumers at the same time).
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Small Is Good World Working Group
at the Skoll World Forum |
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(l. to r.) Michael Chertok, Timlynn Babitsky, Toby Beresford, Christina Kirabo Jordan, Jim Salmons, and Pam McLean |
Hi Mark,
We have a post under development that ties this topic and the Big Picture NED discussion together. We will post a cross-link to that here soon. In the meantime in response to your comment above, we encourage you to explore partnering with our good buddies, Toby and Richard Beresford and their U.K.-based social enterprise, MicroAid.net. The Beresfords, along with us and Christina, are founding members of the Small Is Good World Working Group which has been pursuing a change insurgency agenda over at Social Edge.
Father Richard is located in Indonesia and has decades of U.N.-based international development experience. Technogeek son Toby is in the U.K. where he is evolving the MicroAid platform as well as working on MicroAid’s a social change strategy by developing community self-support tools for marginalized communities in the U.K.
You can get an idea of what we think about the Beresfords and MicroAid in this article, MicroAid - International Aid In the Small Is Good World.
The main MicroAid web site currently focuses on the self-support tools for community organizing. However, MicroAid started as a person-to-person international aid service which is most evident on the example, Pusat Studi Pengembangan Masyarakat - PUSPEM Foundation. Here is an example fundable micro-project, Business Development for Small Canteen in Pasar Manggis. And here is a list of the micro-projects currently under development and seeking support.
Our upcoming post will dig more into the connection between microfinance and NED-style consumerism. As these ideas converge, we’ll invite Toby and Richard into the conversation as they are wonderful people with much to contribute to these topics and to the NED agenda.
–Sohodojo Timlynn and Jim–
December 3rd, 2005
Mark Grimes said:
[snip]… but could not find anyplace where a normal consumer (ala myself) can put small funds in an invesment instrument, and make the world a better place thru microfinance (and educate consumers at the same time).
|
Small Is Good World Working Group
at the Skoll World Forum |
|
|
|
(l. to r.) Michael Chertok, Timlynn Babitsky, Toby Beresford, Christina Kirabo Jordan, Jim Salmons, and Pam McLean |
Hi Mark,
We have a post under development that ties this topic and the Big Picture NED discussion together. We will post a cross-link to that here soon. In the meantime in response to your comment above, we encourage you to explore partnering with our good buddies, Toby and Richard Beresford and their U.K.-based social enterprise, MicroAid.net. The Beresfords, along with us and Christina, are founding members of the Small Is Good World Working Group which has been pursuing a change insurgency agenda over at Social Edge.
Father Richard is located in Indonesia and has decades of U.N.-based international development experience. Technogeek son Toby is in the U.K. where he is evolving the MicroAid platform as well as working on MicroAid’s a social change strategy by developing community self-support tools for marginalized communities in the U.K.
You can get an idea of what we think about the Beresfords and MicroAid in this article, MicroAid - International Aid In the Small Is Good World.
The main MicroAid web site currently focuses on the self-support tools for community organizing. However, MicroAid started as a person-to-person international aid service which is most evident on the example, Pusat Studi Pengembangan Masyarakat - PUSPEM Foundation. Here is an example fundable micro-project, Business Development for Small Canteen in Pasar Manggis. And here is a list of the micro-projects currently under development and seeking support.
Our upcoming post will dig more into the connection between microfinance and NED-style consumerism. As these ideas converge, we’ll invite Toby and Richard into the conversation as they are wonderful people with much to contribute to these topics and to the NED agenda.
–Sohodojo Timlynn and Jim–
December 3rd, 2005
John Berger said:
Jim and Timlynn, your post is fascinating. I love and agree with your deathtrap 1 ?? you have said it way more concisely than I ever could have. I can??t understand deathtrap 2, but my failure is because I don??t understand what the alternative could be…
Personally, I don??t think I have ever purchased something online because I was ??engaged?…
I am falling into the trap here of assuming my shopping patterns are typical, but I think you would agree that most retailers, even the successful online ones, think the same way…
Hey John and Mark,
Aha! John, your last post shows that you are trying but struggling as you enter the ‘zone’ where you can suspend disbelief and think about ’shopping’ that is not shopping. Congratulations! This struggle is a necessary first step toward envisioning breakthrough innovations necessary for NED’s success. (”Grasshopper,” as David Carradine’s elder would tell him in an old King Fu episode,”Your strength is your weakness, your weakness is your strength.”)
What you described in your ‘use case’ about how/why you shop is a great example of shopping as we know it. Essentially all on-line and real world shopping environments and business models known to date were envisioned and designed with the assumption that the most central element of shopping is finding and acquiring some thing, some stuff, some product that you want and need.
Forget that. For most of us in non-marginalized, non-impoverished circumstances, we probably have nearly all the stuff we need. Sure, there are consumables that we have to shop for repeatedly (food, toilet paper, etc.). And sometimes we have excess capital and want to treat ourselves to a new something or other that will enhance our personal life. For these things, we shop — as in the shopping as we know it way. Price, quality, and service all still, and will, matter.
And yet, while we keep acquiring the stuff that the marketeers tell us we need to be happy, cool, accepted, envied, whatever, there is still a sucking black hole in our lives that says, “Is that all there is? Is this the sum and substance of my life?”
It is shopping as it can be that will speak to and address this void/need/drive in our lives. Imagine a shopping (consumer) experience where the product is incidental to the experience, where the experience/participation itself has intrinsic, fulfilling value. Where the product is the prize in the Cracker Jack box.
Sure, as Mark says in terms of the ’shopper bandwidth’ analogy, NED has to appeal to and serve the ‘thing/product need’ of those who engage in shopping as we know it. But it will be our envisioning and working to explore and create shopping as it can be that will trigger the network effect that puts NED’s impact into the marketing history books.
It is interesting, but understandable. Over the years that we have been exploring these ideas, it is those with the most knowledge and experience in marketing (the strategists of shopping as we know it) who have the hardest time suspending disbelief and imagining shopping as it can be. Yet, once these folks break that tyranny of certainty about know how things are and always will be, we believe these folks will be among our most valuable envisioneers leading the charge to create shoping as it can be.
“Grasshopper, your strength is your weakness. Your weakness is your strength.”
–Sohodojo Timlynn and Jim–
December 1st, 2005
We will respond to the interesting points raised in intervening posts, but first we wanted to get part two of our comments out in response to the flurry of posts about bricks and mortar and the challenges of doing on-line retailing.
Do not presume that the myriad of well-funded, well-meaning but failed social purpose business models on the Internet mean that there is not an opportunity for breakthrough innovation on the order of a ‘next eBay‘. It has long been our contention that social purpose eCommerce strategies to date have been woefully uninspired and built on two Deathtrap Presumptions:
- Deathtrap Presumption 1: Wrapping a product purchase with a benevolent, feel-good social purpose story will tap some latent, socially responsible drive/need in consumers that will create brand preference and loyalty.
- Deathtrap Presumption 2: Alternative marketplaces can be built using conventional eCommerce ’shopping cart’ software.
The failed on-line social purpose businesses mentioned in prior posts believed too strongly in the myth of the first Deathtrap Presumption. This led them to fall prey to the second Deathtrap Presumption as they expected that they could deliver an engaging on-line shopping experience using existing eCommerce software platforms.
Innovative alternative markets will not just happen. They will be the result of an aggressive, strategic, applied research and development initiative to create a software platform that delivers a compelling, interactive, fun, and need-fulfilling consumer experience.
These breakthrough innovations in market definition and consumer purchase decision dynamics will make NED products purchased necessary, but paradoxically marginalized, within the shopping experience as poker chips are necessary, but not central, to poker.
–Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn–
December 1st, 2005
John, Luke, and Mark,
We’ll reply in two parts. In this post we address our concern about too tight a focus on bricks and mortar storefronts. In a second post we’ll address the apprehensions folks have about the challenges of doing NED On-line.
We are not saying that there is no place for bricks and mortar in the NED vision. Rather, physical storefronts need to be a supplemental embodiment of the NED vision rather than its necessary foundation.
We think there is essentially agreement that NED needs to be realized in both bricks and mortar storefronts and as an on-line marketplace/community. We do, however, want to take a moment to make it clear why we want to be sure that the NED vision is not too dependent on a physical storefront strategy.
Although we risk being wrong by presumption as we don’t have explicit knowledge of each of your personal circumstances, it sounds like a number of folks contributing to this thread live in metropolitan areas where physical shopping is readily accessible and full of choices. This is simply not the daily reality for a vast number of folks in the world outside these metro areas.
We spent the last two years in remote northcentral Montana, and last year we relocated to Fairfield, a small (but unusually creative and active) town of less than 10,000 people in rural southeast Iowa. We have a Walmart on the edge of town, and a couple of chain supermarkets. But other than that it’s local merchants that meet our needs. It’s a one or two hour trip to an urban area to get anything close to a major mall, or to find a selection of the retail chain stores that many folks in metro areas take for granted.
This is not a case of better or worse lifestyles. It is just an indication of the range of differences (and therefore the range of opportunities) in which the NED vision is being formed.
Even if wildly successful and the NED network/chain were to grow to many hundreds of storefronts, there is little chance that there will be one in our town or in any of the thousands of rural small towns and distressed urban communities that might want one.
So please do not be overly focused on urban/exurban bricks and mortar as a context for the NED vision. The danger is that this focus could skew the perceived demographic of the NED customer base. And this skew could warp the NED vision into becoming the very thing to which it is trying to be a counterpoint.
–Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn–
November 30th, 2005
John Berger said:
[snip] So, my recommendation is: while it is great to think about franchise and growth plans, the most important thing to do is to get the first NED shop up and running. The business plan should be 90% about the first store and only 10% about the future plans. Also, while it is great to hope that you have record setting margins and sales, you need to establish the business so that it will survive or even prosper if the results are far below your dreams.
Hello, John. Welcome to the NED thread. While your post was full of practical insights, we singled out (and added a bit of emphasis to) the above bit because we 200% concur with your recommendation.
As we move to the Flat World of collaborative networks of empowered individuals, the world of business will become less organization-centric. For NED to be a successful and sustainable 21st Century business venture, we believe it will be realized as an entrepreneurial community ecosystem. Its many piece-parts may reflect any number of organizing models as expressed in the various legal entity types available.
Each collaborative network/ecosystem partner will have a number of decisions to make about how they organize, fund their start up and initial participation, and behave within this collective enterprise. There will be no One Right Way to structure, fund, and manage/influence a network partner.
The franchise aspect of the current NED discussion is interesting from a “what NED might look like” standpoint. But this portion of the discussion is certainly not what has drawn us to, nor what sustains our interest, in the collective NED envisioning. It is very likely that the franchise model will be too constraining, particularly given the regulatory and financing constraints you mentioned.
The same “square peg, round hole” problem will limit the utility of the nonagricultural co-op model. Co-op regulatory requirements different from U.S. state to state, and nation to nation. In addition, co-ops are often constrained from retaining earnings and so are not suitable if a goal of NED is to provide a “sweat equity” means for network/ecosystem members from marginalized communities to participate in true shared wealth production.
We can’t help but think that NED, once realized, will be much more organic and dynamic than can be described by any existing single business organization model.
One thing we are sure of is that no matter what form the various piece-parts of the NED Network take on, an Internet software-based ‘nervous system’ and marketplace ‘construction set’ will be a vital component of the network’s success.
eBay’s breakthrough innovation was due, in no small way, to it being a very lightweight (in terms of human resources) business organization powered by some clever software that tapped the emerging potential of the Internet as market-making infrastructure. If NED can be imagined as the ‘next eBay‘, then most certainly a core of some clever and appropriate software will be vital to its success.
So, based on John’s insightful recommendation, when we think about the 90% focus for that first NED store, we believe that it should be an eCommerce store/marketplace rather than a bricks and mortar establishment. The primary goal of this initial on-line marketplace should be to provide a highly engaging proof of concept of the proposed marketplace and supply/value chain dynamics. In addition, this portal/store should serve as an effective extranet facilitating prospective network/ecosystem member participation.
–Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn–
November 30th, 2005
Paul O’Hara said:
Jim and Timlynn said: * “The world desperately needs alternative markets that address the myriad of other behavioural motivators that contribute to health and happiness”
Thanks Jim and Timlynn for bringing the price debate so far forward. Couldn’t agree more.
You are welcome, Paul. And thank you for contributing such a thoughtful and “spot on” reply.
??The heart has its reasons that reason does not know? Pascal
He’s so right. Pop forward a few centuries and you’ll find this same sentiment reflected in Danish futurist Rolf Jensen’s insightful book, The Dream Society, where he describes how we are becoming more Hunter-Gatherers of the Heart than Cultivators of the Mind. Jensen goes on to make a strong case for the emerging importance of story and emotion in marketing and organization ‘visioning’. We explore Jensen’s ideas further in Nanocorps in the Dream Society: How ‘Small is Good’ Business Webs Will Compete in the Story-driven Marketplaces of the 21st Century
“Happiness is when what one thinks, what one says, and what one does are in harmony” Ghandi
Again spot on, Paul. Notice what Gandhi doesn’t say… It isn’t about what you have, your stuff, that is important to a fulfilled, happy life. Madison Avenue would obviously consider Gandhi a dangerous person to be silenced if he was still around shaking things up.
If the three key purchasing drivers are price, quality and service and lowest price is not an option for an ethical retailer or the Small is Good market, then we must add equivalent or greater value back into the offer elsewhere.
Those three dimensions are adequate when you limit yourself to consumer purchase dynamics in the Big Is Good World. But we believe that Pascal, Ghandi, Jensen, and others are suggesting that there is much more to life that stuff consumption. Sure, price is important to a lot of folks. And, yes, they will pay more for appreciable quality. And service is worth paying for. But this still leaves a whole spectrum of Maslow-ian human needs to bring to the shopping experience. Paul, you go on to say…
Please consider Maslows Hierarchy of Needs … the human motivations which in turn drive our needs and eventually influence our behaviours. As we evolve up the hierarchy, I would hope that we will move away from todays ignorant and selfish pre-occupation with lowest price.
We’re on the same wavelength. Once we break the tight-coupling of price and product we can begin to transform the act of shopping into a diverse, interactive, impactful community- and world-changing experience that fulfills many human needs beyond our basic need for more stuff. When we start to realize this transformation, we will be on the road to Nedville which will be found somewhere in the emerging Small Is Good World.
–Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn–
November 29th, 2005
- Mark Grimes said:
- [snip] In other words, it needs to work on the $100 windup computer, so tech like Second Life is way out of the question for a few years. I’d love it if it could be done in Flash.
Both Christina and nmw hit the nail on the head… Flash simply does not meet your LCD criteria. The biggest issue being accessibility (not just disability-wise but cross-culturally) and bandwidth.
There are really two different LCDs to be met:
- Participant platform - minimum for a microenterprise supplier, community marketers, etc.
- On-line Shopper platform - minimum for a compelling story-driven, game-oriented shopping experience
As we discussed on our phone call, the LCD computer-based Participant platform should be the Nicholas Negroponte $100 laptop. (There also needs to be a ‘last mile’ participant platform that is not computer-based, but that is an issue for another conversation.)
The On-line Shopper platform is another issue entirely. While it is getting easier and easier to support multiple DDCs (device delivery channels), there still needs to be an LCD minimally acceptable platform. To our mind that means “modern” (but not cutting edge) HTML with CSS (cascading style sheets).
As we look at our various web site logs, the truly ancient browsers are disappearing. It used to be a significant challenge to write a static (or template-based dynamic) HTML page that could be rendered the same (or nearly so) in all the generation 3, 4, 5, etc. browsers. Even modest use of cascading stylesheets was problematic when there were so many browsers of so many evolutionary standards around.
Thankfully, we are moving beyond that Babel-onian era. There are a number of free, modern, full-featured, small-to-download web browsers that can handle a modern web page with CSS positioning and styles, etc. Add in optional Javascript and you would be amazed at how interactive your browsing experience can be.
So while exotic channels, such as SecondLife and Flash, may find a role to play in NED on-line commerce, we believe these channels must be optional supplements rather than a minimum entry requirement.
–Sohodojo Timlynn and Jim–
November 29th, 2005
nmw said:
Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn said:
price does not have to be the ultimate driver of markets.
I am also trained as an economist (I have several documents with letters on them) and I am also inspired by the work of Schumacher — but the statement above is very difficult to swallow (especially for an economist).
Give me a buck and I’ll tell you some more.
;D nmw
Indeed nmw. It is that very training that ties you to a mindset that is only as real as we accept it to be. Our collective Industrial Era experience is but a blink of the human experience eye. The laws of economics are not so fixed, relatively (or locally relativity-wise) speaking, as those of physics or the other so-called ‘hard’ sciences.
As a human/social science, economics invites experimentation as much as it provides a growing fount of information to guide our thinking. But we cannot let that fount flood our thinking and blind us to alternatives.
We simply would never have breakthrough scientific innovation if one or more inquirers did not ask, “Does it have to be this way?”
The Big Is Good World works best when its consumers are blindly herded by a Siren song telling them that price is king. It simply does not have to be so. And your brother’s sandal story above is a case in point.
Imagine if as many smart, highly motivated economic, behavioral, social, and marketing management scientists suspended disbelief and put as much energy into exploring the multitude of other dimensions of consumer purchase decision dynamics as have been put into honing our skills at single-minded focus on price. We simply have turned a blind eye to the possibilities beyond the obvious.
If money buys stuff, and if happiness is achieved by having enough of all the right stuff — isn’t that the drumbeat of modern marketing? — then why are so many people in affluent societies so unhappy?
The answer is simple. The widely shared misbelief that the acquisition of stuff at the expense of the active and ongoing participation in community is broken. The Big Is Good World’s path to happiness leads to perpetually unsatisfied consumers. This is no accident, it is by design. The Big Is Good World would put itself out of business if stuff-consumption led to satiated customers.
We’re not saying to abandon the Big Is Good World of stuff, only to moderate it with an exciting and engaging alternative. The world desperately needs alternative markets that address the myriad of other behavioral motivators that contribute to health and happiness. And paradoxically, these other market dynamics are not likely to be based on appeals to altruistic benevolence.
When we have a well-tuned economic engine that runs on the twin cylinders of the Big Is Good World and Small Is Good World, charity as we know it will fall into a marginalized role of a tactic of last resort.
–Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn–
November 22nd, 2005
Christina (Kirabo the Gift Mom) Jordan said:
OK, you have my arms, legs and mind… What is our next concrete step?
Hi Christina!
As you may know, we had an extended ‘mind-meld’ telephone conversation with Mark on Saturday. The ‘tyranny’ post above is a direct result of that conversation. We want to start getting some NED Design Prepositions on the table that can drive our next concrete collaborative steps.
Although we haven’t firmed up plans specifically yet with Mark, we have an inkling that one immediate step we might take. We’d like to get directly involved with Mark in the design and development of the NED On-line prototype eCommerce web site he is working on to offer LiA crafts purchased from your WE Center folks not too long ago.
To back-fill the story of our readiness for this adventure, over the last several months we have had a contract development project that gave us an opportunity to dig deeply into Drupal, an Open Source content management platform. that has a unique and flexible eCommerce framework add-on. It is ideal for actively prototyping the story-driven and game-oriented ideas we have for Small Is Good World markets.
If we can work with Mark on this ‘front end’ aspect of the marketplace, then perhaps we can engage Toby Beresford of MicroAid.net to provide an opportunity identification, investment, and payment system that would tie Mark’s web store to your WE Center microenterprises.
If we were to ‘divide and conquer’ this agenda along the lines described here, we would be taking some Giant Steps toward birthing NED’s Small Is Good World entrepreneurial community ecosystem. Cool, eh! Just like we were talking about over beers in Oxford at the Skoll World Forum last March.
So bottom line, next steps look like some simple collaborative agreements to work together, and we have to put together a short and specific work and funding plan to make it fly.
Onward! The game’s afoot…
–Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn–
November 21st, 2005
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