Petervan Studios – Update Feb 2022 – The Scaffold

Here is the latest update on Petervan Studios. The previous update already goes back to June 2021.

The family is good. Somehow, we managed not to get infected by the virus. We all got boostered and respected safety measures to the max. Most of my time, I spent home in my studio and only came out for some grocery shopping, some visits to art exhibitions, and delivering the taxi service to my daughter’s school and horse stables. Zero travel since October 2019, but I cannot say I miss it.

At this moment, it looks like we are getting out of the woods of the 5^th Covid wave, and measures in Belgium are getting relaxed. Partying is allowed again as of 18 Feb 2022.

More importantly: my father is still alive and kicking, and he celebrated his 90^th birthday in Sep 2022!

What else?

The Bricks Project

For those who remember, this is my “zen” project. Drawing bricks in silence. Many bricks. 8,255 Bricks at the time of writing this post:

Exhibitions

Since the last update, I visited the following art exhibitions:

Luc Deleu, De Singel, Antwerp, Aug 2021

Drawing Art, BOZAR, Brussels, Sep 2021

ING Laughing Art, ING Gallery, Brussels, Sep 2021

David Hockney, BOZAR, Brussels, Oct 2021

Masculinities, FOMU, Antwerp, Nov 2021

Re-Collect, FOMU, Antwerp, Nov 2021

Rinus Van de Velde, Tim Van Laer Gallery, Antwerp, Nov 2021

Train Modernity, KMSK, Brussels, Nov 2021

Fabrice Samyn, KMSK, Brussels, Nov 2021

Pop-Art, SMAK, Ghent, Feb 2022

Chaos, Alex Vervoordt, Wijnegem, Feb 2022

Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Zeno X, Antwerp, Feb 2022

David Claerbout – The Close, Brugge, Feb 2022

Luc Deleu inspired by Buckminster Fuller

Detail of painting by Rinus Van de Velde – 2021

Hippie Elias (Self portret) by Etienne Elias – 1970

Fabrice Samyn – Detail from Eve&Adam – 2018

Still from The Close – David Claerbout – 2022

Outdoors

Weather did not treat us well. My recollection is one of all shades of grey and lots of rain from August 2021 till Feb 2022. Only the beginning of Sep 2021 was decent. But I have some nice winter fog pictures from my strolls and bicycle rides:

Horses

Astrid made a lot of progress in horse-riding. She won the 2^nd price at a local dressage competition, and she also enjoys jumping a lot.

Talking about Astrid, in Dec 2021 she celebrated her 16^th birthday. Where has the time gone?

Traveling Without Moving project

Travelling without Moving (TWM) is a series of essays documenting my mental and philosophical journey in 2020-2022.

The main outline was published in November 2020, and in the meantime, several episodes have been released. Since the last Petervan Studios update, I published one more essay on “Studios”.

There are a couple more in the pipeline, but I have a hunch that these will morph into The Scaffold project (see later in this post).

Books

Check out my GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3085594-peter-auwera

Some highlights

Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine by Geoff Manaugh, Nicola Twilley

Where Is My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall

Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action by J.F. Martel

Lichamen by Peter Verhelst

Petervan Rides

Since July 2019, I publish every month a Spotify List with new releases combined with some oldies from the 60ies, 70ies, and beyond. Search for “Petervan Ride” and select “playlists”. Subjective selection of course, as driven only by my personal taste (or lack thereof).

Here is the latest Ride from Feb 2022, still being populated as we publish this post.

I suggest you play it in shuffle mode, it enhances the surprise experience.

My Art Practice

I did not produce much artwork. I was very focused on a work-project that required all my attention and focus. I shared most of my recent art work via my Facebook page, or on this blog under the heading “Sine Parole”. Some “highlights” if I can say that about my own work:

Professionalisation of Petervan Studios Art Practice

As from March 2022, I will focus on the professionalization of my art practice. I have hired a coach to help me with that. We are working with a digital archiving platform with an API that is steering the show & tell of my analogue and digital artworks. There will also be an integration with a shopping environment, and an online VR exhibition environment. There is also a brand-new website for Petervan Studios in the making. This new online environment will also become the home for a new project, working title “The Scaffold”, see below

Freelance Projects

I have been deeply involved and committed as architect and head of design of an 100% on-line learning expedition running from Sep 2021 till Feb 2022. We just landed the closing session. We still want to produce a “scrapbook” that documents the journey by end Feb 2022. The experience came in two chapters. The first chapter was a technology refresh on digital identity, infrastructure, VR, Robotics, Web3, and UX. The second chapter was about developing a practice of innovation for wicked problems, and how to design for emergence in complex adaptive systems.

I had the chance to collaborate with professional facilitation and innovation partners, and a collective of “guides” – some really smart people – that helped us shape and deliver the content.

The Scaffold

The learning expedition mentioned above had a great impact on me and the way I look at “events”. I believe I am onto something that may be the start of a new “genre” of learning studios. And I have started talking and pitching to potential partners and investors. Here is the high-level pitch:

The Scaffold is a 100% online learning studio for creating new knowledge based on the passion of the explorer.

The Scaffold can be seen as a form of Pop-Up school and/or an experimentation-based learning playground.

The Scaffold is planned as a three-year research cycle, with cohorts joining an online virtual playground for six-month intensive high-impact expeditions where together with the faculty they will create new knowledge in collaboration.

The curriculum of the expeditions is composed of several interventions, interruptions, and provocations anchored in the reality of a client’s project. The project serves as a vehicle to trigger new and imaginative thinking.

The Scaffold is a “scaffold” for something much bigger, something that could lead to a movement and foundation for better futures.

More about that later, probably in the second half of 2022. I hope to have a first client cohort signed-up by then.

So, in summary, what’s next?

The plan for the coming months is to work/play on:

Professionalizing my art practice

Pitch and realize my project “The Scaffold”

So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Sep 2022.

Warmest,

Innotribe at Sibos 2013 – Big Data Track

Here is the third weekly update related to our 5^th edition of Innotribe at Sibos in Dubai from 16-19 Sep 2013.

As you probably know by now, we’ve designed our programme like a metro map. Just like the underground or subway, it’s up to you to decide which “track” to follow, depending on your expertise, interests, learning objectives, and availability.

In this week’s post, we’d like to walk you through the Big Data Track at Innotribe@Sibos 2013.

Big Data track

Big Data is an industry trend that the Innotribe team has been monitoring for some time now. We had session about Big Data at Innotribe Sibos Toronto in 2011 and Innotribe Sibos Osaka in 2012.

People, businesses and devices are hyper-connected through highly pervasive networks, creating unimaginable amounts of information. What if we could tap into the intelligence and insights buried in these networks to devise better strategies for growth? This new environment will require extraordinary insight and adaptability.

This year, we’ll explore how you and your organization can derive new insights through Network Analytics from all the data that surrounds us.

Toolkit: Planning for Unpredictable Futures

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Tuesday 17 Sep 2013

Time: 09:30 – 10:30

Another “Toolkit” session: an immersive learning experience to help you internalize the basic principles of scenario thinking in support of better future planning. This session will lead into the Network Insights session later that day.

Daniel Erasmus – one of the world’s most renowned experts on Scenario Thinking – will give an in-depth introduction to this methodology that helps making better decisions and sense of an unpredictable future.

After the intro, Fabian will relate this back to why this is relevant for our community.

We have designed a practical interactive exercise to familiarize the audience with scenarios of high impact, but low probability; this is all about getting comfortable with uncertainties in business.

Speakers:

Daniel Erasmus, Owner, Digital Thinking Network. Daniel brings the unique combination of scenario thinking and big data.
Fabian VandenReydt, Head of Securities Markets and Core Business Development at SWIFT

Big Data creates network insights for growth – Part-1 – What is Data?

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Tuesday 17 Sep 2013

Time: 12:30 – 14:00

This is a highly interactive session, where we will let the audience discover the expanded definitions of what we mean with “data”. We will cover following dimensions:

What do we call data?
How do we see/visualise data?
How do we analyse data, how do we draw conclusions?
How do we layer data and apply pattern recognition?

We will close this part-1 highlighting the domains of applicability for our business: Fraud, Risk Management, Growth opportunities, etc. We will then move into part-2 about tools that can help spot us unknown growth opportunities or unknown threats.

Big Data creates network insights for growth – Part-2 – Overview of tools for growth.

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Tuesday 17 Sep 2013

Time: 14:30 – 16:00

After having set the scene in the two previous sessions (“Planning for Unpredictable Sessions from 09:30 – 10:30am” and “What is Data? From 12:30 – 14:00pm”), we will demonstrate how different analytics and big data tools can be used to identify growth opportunities or unknown threats.

In a very engaging story telling format, you will see demos, videos, animations and other explorations of the latest state-of-the-art tool for big data analytics and visualization. This is a high-paced session with 7 different showcases.

Speakers for Part-1 and Part-2 are:

Neil Bartlett, CTO And Head of Development of Risk Analytics, IBM
Daniel Erasmus, Owner, Digital Thinking Network
Matthew Gordon, Forward Deployed Engineer, Palantir
Walid Jelassi, Transformation Consultant, HP
Simon Small, Founding Director, Arria
Kimmo Soramaki, Founder & CEO, Financial Network Analytics
Michael Warner, CEO, Quantum4D
Special commentator: Fabian Vandenreydt

More information about the Innotribe@Sibos 2013 programme can be found in our programme Brochure (PDF flyer), on Sibos.com and of course Innotribe.com. The full Innotribe 2013 speaker list with bios is here.

By @petervan from the Innotribe Team

Innotribe at Sibos 2013 – Innovation Track

As from now, we offer you weekly updates related to our 5^th edition of Innotribe at Sibos in Dubai from 16-19 Sep 2013.

In this week’s post, we’d like to walk you through the Innovation Track at Innotribe@Sibos 2013.

We’ll move away from the traditional polarizing discussions such as old vs. new, startups vs. incumbents, incremental vs. disruptive, close vs. open, core vs. non-core and we will help you discover the richness of the options in the middle of the extremes and help you identify which model to best apply in your company. All examples will have specific relevance to financial services.

The track will open with disruptions impacting the traditional banking model. We will also offer you some practice sessions about new non-linear ways of thinking to help you succeed in the ever faster changing world. The track continues with a session that offers deep insights into what else is out there beyond open innovation. The track ends on Thursday morning with a selection of “Power Talks” illustrating how new players are already significantly disrupting banking – and not just the fringes of our industry, but already heading for the core with early signs of scale. We’re not talking about the distant future, but what’s happening right now!

Future of Money

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Monday 16 Sep 2013

Time: 09:30 – 10:30

This session is also part of the Value track.

We had a post about that last week: http://innotribe.com/2013/08/05/the-value-track-explained/

Toolkit: Better decision-making through creative techniques

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Monday 16 Sep 2013

Time: 15:30 – 17:00

Decision-making is “making sense” of things. This raises issues of what criteria we bring to decisions when contexts change. Most of economic history industry has been driven by new developments in sense awareness.

This context changes are very significant because what digital does is alter decision-contexts. It makes us have to respond to more changes, more often and make more decisions in a more delegated way, against a backdrop of criteria that we are having to capture and describe.

This is a “Toolkit” session: an immersive learning experience to help you internalize the basic principles of creative thinking to help improve judgment and decision-making. The audience will learn to internalize the difference between linear and non-linear decision taking, complemented with practice exercises based on creative decision-making based on colour, word, and sound.

We will setup 3 separate experimentation stations:

Art school with Dave
Word school with Haydn
Music school with Petervan

Speakers

Dave Gray, Author, The Connected Company: Dave is world authority in visual thinking
Haydn Shaughnessy, Author, The Innovation Lifestyle. Haydn is a deep thinker and expert on innovation.

Toolkit: Planning for Unpredictable Futures

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Tuesday 17 Sep 2013

Time: 09:30 – 10:30

Speaker:

Daniel Erasmus, Owner, Digital Thinking Network. Daniel brings the unique combination of scenario thinking and big data.
Fabian VandenReydt, Head of Securities Markets and Core Business Development at SWIFT

Toolkit: Thinking in Images

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Tuesday 17 Sep 2013

Time: 16:30 – 17:30

Visualization is increasingly used in business and science to simplify complexity: a picture is worth a thousand words. Drawing is a natural process for thinking, exploring ideas and learning. Every child enjoys drawing — but at some point in our lives we learn that drawing is the province of artists. We begin to say things like:

“I’m no artist”
“I can’t draw a straight line”
“I can’t draw a stick figure”

This is a fallacy. You can draw, and when you were a kid you knew it. You just forgot. It’s time to remember what it was like to draw as a child — and to rediscover the joy of exploring ideas and learning without boundaries. It’s time to forget that you don’t know how to draw. Play isn’t just for fun. It’s how we learn. You can practice your visual thinking skills and have fun at the same time. Enjoy yourself, and take some new abilities back to work with you.

The room will be set-up like a classroom, with the audience as students. Like a Zen-master with his disciples, Dave Gray – one of the masters in the field of visual thinking – will help his students discover step by step their hidden power of visual expression.

New Innovation Models

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Wednesday 18 Sep 2013

Time: 09:30 – 10:30

Our speakers will first give you a fascinating overview on what’s new in innovation models: from “castle and sandbox” one way of doing Open Innovation, to incremental innovation, disruptive innovation, narrow innovation, Jugaad innovation, Reverse innovation, Shanzai innovation (copycatting), computational innovation, radical adjacencies, and algorithmic innovation.

After the intro, we offer you two immersive learning experiences:

Copycatting feels like a taboo in innovation. What if we could get rid of these taboos, and innovate again like kids? In this exercise we will actually train you to copycat, by copying one of the newcomers in payments space. In the coming days, we will also publish here and on swift.com an op-ed by Jaspar Roos, based on a research he did on copycatting.
Crowd-source everything. We will practice how to involve crowds in innovation decision-making: how can a crowd shape a product? How can we crowd-develop, crowd-manage and crowd-design for example. You will be invited to pick one of your existing processes and crowd-source it. Also here, an article based on Haydn’s research on crowd-activities will be published soon.

Speakers

Jaspar Roos, Chief Inspiration Officer, ABN AMRO Dialogues FutureIdeas.eu and Ventur.es
Haydn Shaughnessy, Author, The Innovation Lifestyle

Powertalks: Best innovations in Fintech

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Thursday 19 Sep 2013

Time: 09:30 – 10:30

Inspired by TED Power Talks, we have invited some awesome innovators from the financial industry to present real, live innovations, which are in the market and starting to scale. In other words, this is not about Star Trek, but actual innovations, where the “rubber meets the road”.

Patrick Griffin, Head of Business Development of OpenCoin, the organization that first built the Ripple protocol. A Ripple is a unit of the native currency that exists in the Ripple network. The Ripple network is a peer-to-peer payment network. It enables free payments to merchants, consumers and developers, and to send and receive money in dollars, euros, yen or Bitcoin without having to do extra work for foreign exchange transactions and without charge backs. Ripple is also an open source protocol created for anyone to build on top of or use.
Kristoffer Lawson, Co-Founder & Chief Evangelist, Holvi. Kris will talk about Holvi’s upcoming European launch and his work as initiator of the Popup Society movement: setting up a company, forming a team and building a product, all within 48 hours. In true popup fashion many of these ideas die immediately, but not all. Some have gone on to become great companies.
Jaspar Roos will showcase some of the latest innovations in financial services his teams build over the last year in his different roles as Chief Inspiration Officer, ABN AMRO, Dialogues, FutureIdeas.eu and Ventur.es
Manu Sporny, Founder/CEO, Digital Bazaar and Chairman PaySwarm will share what happens if payments get commoditized to the level of the W3C protocol? Manu spends most of his time creating open standards and open technology that will integrate payments into the core architecture of the Web. His vision is to democratize finance, making the financial tools that are only available to large organizations today, available to everyone on the Web.

Closing Plenary Innotribe: “Around the campfire”

Location: Innotribe Space

Day: Thursday 19 Sep 2013

Time: 14:30 – 15:30

Later in the afternoon on Thursday – at 14:30pm – we will all join the Closing Plenary Innotribe: “Around the campfire”, where we will share the lessons, tools and techniques learned during the week. We are very proud to confirm our two tribal wise men:

JP Rangaswami (Chief Scientist of Salesforce.com and direct report of Marc Benioff) and;
Andrew Davis (Global Head of e-Commerce Strategy and Innovation, HSBC).

By @petervan from the Innotribe Team

Dystopian Futures

On 10-12 June 2013, I was invited as a panel participant to the ISACA Insights World Congress. It was the second time in two weeks – the previous time was during a session at the Amplify Festival – that the panel was asked by the moderator what the future would look like in 2040. At Amplify the question was around the future of work. At ISACA, the question was even more open ended.

Although nobody of course knows what the future will hold, and everything I say on this topic is almost wrong by definition, I believe I surprised my audience with my very dystopian view on the future.

Many seem to believe that the future will be “bright”, with lots of possibilities for hyper-collaboration, in open and shared spaces, where serendipities happen every minute, where hierarchies don’t exist anymore, sort of love-and-peace in a sharing collaborative back-to-Woodstock environment.

That may be the case in 2020, but I think the picture will be less rosy in 2040. Already today, algorithms trade in matter of milliseconds, a real-time world that we as humans can’t even grasp, let only survive. Where those algorithms now work for stock trading companies, by 2040 we will most probably be “augmented” – at best – by our personal algorithms.

It will not be a nice picture to look forward to: by that time, we will be totally ruled by robots and algorithms, and we will have to fight – assisted by our “devices” – for that very last minute of work in a crowded world marketplace where we will have to compete at rates of 1.5$ per hour. And this for probably high-skilled tasks, as the rest will be taken over by robots: a “Present Shock” of technological presence, a world undone of human presence, a very disturbing place where we are ruled by algorithms working on our behalf, where betting on peoples future is the new normal, where siren server masters raise interest fees on the mortgage of the personal success/failure of the data slaves.

The Singularity will have happened, but in quite a different way, in a way that technology owns us, eats us, swallows us, not a singularity of jolly happy people being more intelligent or augmented. A world of technology versus machines, where technology will dictate what it wants from us (See also Kevin Kelly “What Technology Wants” – with Kelly being the technology optimist he is – and Jaron Lanier “Who Owns the Future?”).

What we have witnessed during the last weeks’ revelations represents a true tipping point. Where we still may have had the illusion that we could empower ourselves, take charge, we will be at best be empowered by other powers: a new dystopian world where authoritarian technology rules, an authoritarian singularity, where we are reduced to data slaves of the new data masters.

As part of the Digital Asset Grid (DAG) project (an Innotribe project stopped after its incubation phase, and given back to the community), I have written in the past about the “Catastrophic Complexity” that is emerging right now through the explosion of the number of nodes on the grid, ànd the explosion of data. Where these data are more and more stored by “Siren Servers” – a metaphor used by Jaron Lanier – and where the DAG proposed a 100% distributed model of data storage in personal or corporate clouds, but with a choice of appropriate Trust Models, so that we don’t end up in another worldwide west. Indeed, with the advent of trillions of nodes on the grid, we will require a new kind of species, a new kind of architecture, but more importantly a new type of governance.

I am also getting more and more disturbed by a sort of “over-glorification of technology. This may be surprising as a “Techonomist”, where the belief is that technology will enable a new philosophy for progress – I still believe that – but we need some solid healthy criticism in the debate.

When I read this week in The Guardian – a quality newspaper, right? – about the “gadgetry and behavior concepts for the 21 century” and the related comments that these are “super important” new behaviors, I believe we are missing the point; we need to counterbalance all this excitement with way more attention for humanizing our businesses.

I am afraid we are slipping into an “Authoritarian Surveillance State” as described in Washington Post, or even a “Techtarian State” as articulated by Stan Stalnaker in The Huffington Post.

To understand what’s really going on, let’s looks at some understreams that cause the waves of change at the surface. I have split them in technological and more societal changes:

Technological:
- SMAC: Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud
- Platforms and APIs leading towards the end of highly vertically integrated organizations, and where the new skill becomes horizontal sourcing of pin-point functionality
- Explosion and loss of control of data.
- Explosion of Cyber-threats
- Our identity schemes not keeping up with the sheer explosion of nodes, hampering our security, as the internet was never built with identity in mind
- Disintermediation through hyper-connectivity (example Über)
Societal
- Erosion of Privacy
- Platform, everything as a service
- New economies (P2P, Sharing, Reputation,…)
- New expression of value, currencies, assets, cred, influence, reputation,
- Crowdsourcing everything (credit cards, funding, investing, lending, mapping, reputation, …)

We probably most underestimate this trend of crowd-everything. There is something deeper going on: this is really about the use of external power to scale; think platform, using crowds as change accelerators, like developers for building on your APIs, but now through users. Google recently acquired Waze for 1B$ !.

The industrial scale application of crowd is very much a “Singularity University Meme”, says Haydn Shaughnessy in Forbes. Crowd-recording, crowd-sensing, crowd-data collection, more eyes and ears and sensors, through Waze, through Glasses, etc. It’s clear some parties want way more data to be available, searchable, to be monetized, with us working like slaves to provide all these data for free. We evolve from democracy to “crowdocracy”.

Our near future will witness the “fragmentation of everything”: the fragmentation of work, of applications, of hierarchies, and states giving in to power data houses, data guerillas, pods, and cells.

We will see the “asymmetry of everything”: asymmetry of transparency, of search and computing power, of concentration of data. This will lead to power unbalances, to surveillance mania, to loss of freedom of speech. Already now the recent developments makes me more selective on what I tweet and share. The only way out is a 100% distributed system, but I am afraid that it is already too late for that and that our future is already owned by Jaron Lanier’s “Siren Servers”

We already see the “exceptionalism of everything”, where the exceptions become the norm: events such as stock exchange black swans become the norm. We take for granted the exceptional qualities of uber-people like Marissa Mayer, Zuckerberg, and other “heroes”.

We are “attacked by everything”: our secrecy is attacked by Wikileaks, our privacy by Siren-Servers, our security by cyber-attacks, our value creation by thousands of narrow innovations at the speed of light. All this happens at the speed of light, at “Un-Human” speeds, runs on a different clock, lives in another world.

We seem to live in a “perpetual crisis”, jumping from one incident to another, where there is no room anymore for building a story with a begin, middle, and an end; no room for reflection, no room to assess and scan the waves of change on the surface of the data ocean.

The world enters into a complexity

that cannot be addressed anymore

by conventional binary linear thinking.

We need new tools, capabilities, and ways of thinking, more non-linear, be prepared to open up for more options. These new tools are about forecasting and assessing in different ways (scenario thinking), decide our options in different ways, design thinking in context with intent and within constraints, and richer ways of expressing our options through visual thinking and other techniques more leveraging the human senses of color, sound, smell, trust, sensuality, presence.

We have come at a point where our only options out are a revolution of the data slaves and evolving as a new kind of species in the data ocean, trying to preserve what makes us human.

I have no clue how we can avoid this dystopia, but we will need a new set of practices for value creation; where data slaves dare to stand up and call for a revolution; where value creation and tax declarations go way beyond being compliant with the law; where we see the emergence of ethically responsible individuals and organizations. But it will be very difficult to turn back the wheel that has already been set in motion several decades ago.

Spiral Networks

Some days, stars are perfectly aligned, and sudden insights create these wonderful aha-experiences. A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting together with Philippe Coullomb and Charles Collingwood-boots, co-founders of www.wheretofromhere.asia and initiators of the Sydney chapter of Corporate Rebels United.

They shared their work about “Patches and Nodes”, a G+ Community of change agents determined to nurture and drive systemic transformation in Asia Pacific.

“We aim to inspire inclusive transformation by facilitating the emergence of new models for value creation, new mindsets for doing business, and new behaviors for the workplace”

They had prepared a deck (the same one they used for the Rebel Jam on 30-31 May 2013 > WebEx recording here). The key slide in there is the following:

It’s a fantastic slide that helps us understand that big change in systems requires “systemic innovation” and a sort “graph thinking”. The circle with the colored dots represents your company. Within that company, different silos work together in some form or – in some cases – not at all.

But companies do not operate in isolation. They are part of a system, and when other actors in the system have counterproductive behavior, which may neutralize completely the efforts you are doing in your own box.

My epiphany happened, when I started looking at this drawing not as a “flat” 2D map, but as something 3-dimensional, like a galaxy of stars, where there is no middle. Every point in the graph is the starting point of a journey.

It suddenly reminded me of the great graph thinking we had done during the Digital Asset Grid (DAG) project. It revived the thinking of “We are all nodes in the Grid”.

The lens of the DAG and the lens of Patches and Nodes started to align. Focal lenses getting aligned, like stars line up in a constellation.

Starting to form “formations” and “digital maps”,

almost like network cartography

Where had I heard this sort of things before? Oh yes, it was during our work on “Network Insights”, where Kimmo Soramäki from www.fna.fi showed us another type of network cartography for financial network analytics.

Like in the demo on the FNA site, I imagined how I could zoom in and out of the graph, to get deeper insights and greater levels of detail, like a spiral crawling itself through richer and more complete quality experiences and ambitions. The spiral reminded me of myself as a 7 year old – the same age as my daughter now – drawing of spirals on the chalkboard of my class,…

a form of creativity

that was forbidden

and consequently punished

And from a far distant memory, the inspiration from Don Becks “Spiral Dynamics” came back into focus.

From the spiral swirl on the chalkboard, via the spiral zooms into 3D graphs, it suddenly felt that I was where I always was meant to be. Not in a fatalistic way, but as a natural evolution and maturing during the different steps of my life.

Spiral Networks, Spiral Dynamics, and Dynamic Fluid Systems were all terms that made me realize that change programs don’t change anything substantial unless it systems change.

With thanks to Fabian Tilmant (@fabnet_be) for pointing me to this video on The Fibonacci Spiral in the song Lateralus by Tool

I had evolved, spiraled out…

…from the polarizing, poor and static discussions of black vs. white into something that felt more like a trajectory, from passively undergoing change to influencing and (co)-creating my own future. I had realized that we needed quality time for reflecting and – like a surfer – scanning coming waves of change and pick the best ones for a great ride. I had realized that to survive in this perpetual crisis, we needed quality time for scenario thinking, where it is about imagining some – not necessarily all – possible futures, hypothesizing, and defining what to do if those futures would happen.

The “Patches and Nodes” drawing suddenly started to make a lot of sense, not only as a way to solve ad-hoc problems in the system, but as a way of making viral change happen system wide and pro-actively, powered by the group pressure of credible and influential system partners.

All sorts of concepts started to spread themselves like viruses through my brain:

Could this be a way

to propel us forward

into a state of collective progress and prosperity?

What if we could seed “activism” into the patches and nodes, a different type of “creators of change”, from solvers of problems and answering known questions to creating a new reality/framework for deep system value creation? Could it lead to “Spiral Network Activists” like agents in “Systems of Endearment”?

Suddenly Corporate Rebels took a whole new dimension of System Rebels, Change agents for society, for systems, System Activists, a powerful group of “Unreasonable people”, together stronger than alone, like the components of Bucky’s geodesic domes.

“How can we catalyse a number of tangible and distinct but yet consistent and convergent initiatives across the board to initiate a self-reinforcing movement?”

I double-checked the “The power of unreasonable people” by Jon Elkington (Amazon Associated Link), and I noticed that that other Corporate Rebel – Laurent Ledoux – had a summary slide of Jon’s “unreasonable people” in his Rebel Jam talk.

But I wanted to go further than trying to measure the un-measurable, and go on a quest of what is worth measuring, measuring that which makes life worthwhile. Like Robert Kennedy 40 years go in his speech about the GDP, that does measure everything but what makes life worthwhile.

To create sustainable deep system change like in Nike’s Launch2020 initiative, using my advocacy and advancement of ideas toward a state of prosperity.

I suddenly realized we could use this model as a way to create deep viral behavior change, not only on companies, but also in systems of patches and nodes.

Where we go from spiral dynamics to cultural dynamics, as so magically described in the milestone post about Consumer Activism by Gunter Sonnenfeld (@goonth), describing new types of movements, archetypes, cohorts, and industries. Where Jennifer Sertl added this wonderful dimension of “frequencies” to the mix of nodes on the grid, where each of us is liberated to sing their own song, in our own frequency and at our own rhythm,

to make reverb and resonate the system at large

And where the pleasure comes from pure sharing of your mind-spins, without wanting to make a statement. A form of digital poetry just for the pleasure of play of words; and like in “Mavericks in a corporate world”, finding pleasure in just being human and developing and nurturing the capability to be touched by beauty, a picture, by mastery and harmony; developing a richer palette of responses, judgment, choice and appreciation. And to accept and enjoy that we are incurable romantics, and act from that true self.

Mavericks in a corporate world

On 6 June 2013, I presented “Open Innovation Systems – Maverick Ventures in a Corporate World” during the Amplify Festival in Sydney. The Livestream of the talk is available here:

This blog post is documenting the genesis of that talk, therefore not really or only a transcript, but passing the same messages through the medium of writing rather than speaking, hopefully even improving the clarity of purpose and intention of the talk.

Thanks to @cjdelling for this wonderful scribe, made live during the talk.

There were many triggers for this talk, but the two most important ones were Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book “Present Shock” (Amazon Associates Link) – a book that left a deep impression on me – and a conversation with Haydn Shaughnessy, that I already somewhat documented in my blog post “The Bridge”

Rushkoff hits the nail when he says “Time Divides” and “Time is digital in character”. Just try to sense the different human experience when looking at 15 seconds of digital time vs. 15 sec on of analog time. In the analog world, there is flow, continuity, and formation. But we have started to accept a new normal where we have to make choices between extremes: black/white, On/Off, Digital/Human, etc. When being presented with the options left/right, we forget we can also go up and down.

“The lack of options is the opposite of freedom of choice,”

says Rune Kvist Olsen.

In an innovation context the limited choices presented are incremental/disruptive, core/non-core, internal/external, castle/sandbox.

There must be a richer better way to have conversations about innovation. I am getting sick of the 1-2 minute conversations where you have to make your case in a tweet. Sick of the 18 min TED talks, where there is no critical dialogue but only glorification of technology as the sole source for progress.

I am hungry for depth

For intimacy and human connection. I am on a quest for depth. A quality space in time and location where free deep thinking is again appreciated. Where we discuss not in limited silos about limiting options. Where life flows like water in oceans, in currents and rhythms, in waves of pendulums with different amplitudes influencing each other as Perpetua Mobile, spiralling as convergent systems into beauty and harmony with a direction of progress.

A space with doors wide open for new world-views where we create knowledge and resource flows (are they the same?), with new thinking: visual thinking, design thinking, systems thinking, and scenario thinking.

A space where bravery and maverick behaviour are not merely tolerated but accepted and encouraged as the new norm for deep viral change. You may call them whatever you want: mavericks, outliers, beyonders, rebels, catalysts of change.

With Innotribe we have created an end-to-end framework, based on the Open Innovation principles of Prof. Henry Chesbrough. That it is an end-to-end framework is not always fully appreciated. Sometimes, the work of Innotribe is reduced to its most visible component, the “events”. And also there, the superficial world with lack of depth and intimacy only sees the externalities of the events, the cheerleader-feel of the facilitators and masters of ceremony, thereby completely ignoring the deep immersive learning experiences and techniques applied and intended.

Superficiality kills depth

But even if the full breadth of the Innotribe work would be appreciated, we are not done. There is more, much more to be done. I would like to re-set the bar. I am getting convinced we have to move into systemic and systematic innovation. It was Haydn Shaughnessy who opened my eyes and gave me the first insights that there is an evolution of Open Innovation possible, way beyond corporate garages, towards a model where innovation is deeply baked-in into the fabric of the organization. Haydn has just published a report on this on GigaOm Pro titled “Rethinking innovation: how to manage ideas systematically” (registration required). There, Haydn introduces “lean innovation”, “algorithmic innovation”, and “radical adjacencies”, which we already knew from his book “The Elastic Enterprise”. (Amazon Associates Link). Haydn will be with us at Innotribe Sibos in Dubai in September to share the results of his research in the domain.

Where “systemic” assumes system-wide approach. Not only within the silo of a department, or in non-communicating black/white, internal/external innovations vessels, but across silos, across vessels. If not, failure is almost built-in, because the two camps engage in finite games, whereas we should play infinite games where we do not look for a winner (and by definition also loser), but where the journey of the whole systems towards progress is the goal (read also James Carse’s “Finite and Infinite Games” – Amazon Associates Link).

In the first case – the finite games – we may be seduced by the means, but I am for sure not attracted by the end-game. We have to move across the corporate boundaries, and become “system activists”. My next blog will describe this new form of corporate activism in more detail.

A great example is Nike’s Launch2020 Project, creating system wide transformation, in partnership with MIT, NASA, and Government.

Where “systematic” stands for planned, organized, designed, focused, and not random. Repeatable. Scalable. The best example I have seen so far is Vodaphone: they have deeply investigated the trends that impact their business; they have documented the needs (not the asks) or their (potential) customers, and made solid customer segmentation. Then they apply pattern recognition across these three layers, and are hyper-focused on where they want to spend their innovation efforts, resources, and budgets.

In general, it also seems to be that many organizations are very focused on product, service, and process innovation, or the latest buzzword “business model innovation”. Probably because that is what we know, what we feel comfortable with. It’s our comfort zone. We have been trained for years in thinking rationally about our businesses, decomposing, fragmenting every process in sub-tasks that can be mapped, followed, and measured. Up to a level that we don’t see the forest for the trees.

What we need are 3 type of engines:

A communication engine, with the ultimate goal of being a serendipity machine, an evangelization machine, and a knowledge flow platform;
An execution engine, with a good balance/portfolio/consistency between internal and external innovation
But all those changes are lipstick on a pig, if they are not deeply embedded in sustained behavioural change in every vain of the company.

What we really need to focus on is the third engine of behaviour change. Deep viral behaviour change. Because behaviour drives culture and not the other way around. And let that change spread like a virus through our organizations and systems. So it is getting copied and amplified through our hyper-connectivity networks. Where leadership becomes leadingship, and backstage leaders act as distributed coaching nodes in the corporate grid.

In the end, it is about being human and developing and nurturing the capability to be touched by beauty, a picture, by mastery and harmony. And to develop a richer palette of judgment, choice and appreciation.

Yes, there is some form of romanticism here; shall we call ourselves business romantics? It’s the nature of this beast, to be an incurable romantic.

It’s what I am as human. I cannot and do not want to settle for the sterility of digital zeros and ones, for cogs in cubicles executing standard processes that anyway do not match anymore our fast changing world.

I want to send, propel and amplify positive vibes and frequencies to all the nodes in our grids. I want to reverb and resonate, and inspire you all to dream. To dream big and be unreasonable and go for the impossible. I want to me and you to get alive and get a life. I want us to be mavericks and rebels in a corporate world.

Innotribe Workshop “Network Insights for Growth” on 14 May 2013

On 14 May 2013, the Innotribe team is organising an exclusive invitation-only Innotribe Workshop at Level39, Canary Warf, London. The topic of this workshop is “Network Insights for business growth”.

This workshop is targeted at senior strategists who would like to discover how big data and scenario thinking can lead to early warning systems and new network insights to assist in business growth strategies.

Your organisation is indeed hyper-connected with your business partners. You are not alone. Billions of connected business, people, applications and devices and in future far more sensors, and transactions now add up to create unimaginable amounts of information. This new environment will require extraordinary insights and adaptability: It is as if we are a species from dry land that has to learn to live in the ocean. Already now, we swim in a sea of data and the sea level, so to speak, is rising rapidly. This new environment requires a new design for companies and network insights, representing both threats and opportunities.

The networks that we are part of can be looked at as dynamic fluid systems: the infrastructure of pipes creates a hyper-connected environment. The end-points in networks can be different entities: financial institutions, corporates, and market infrastructures, etc. And physically wired networks can host many different functional sub-ecosystems: some represent major traffic highways, others are more hub-to-hub topologies, others function as pure peer-to-peer exchanges. These different entities and sub-ecosystems also influence each other: they create “ripple effects” up and downstream, as well as “currents” that create significant interdependencies, like ocean currents.

During this exclusive invitation-only Innotribe workshop, we will explore the following topics:

What if you could get deep intelligence about what’s going on in these fluid networks in real-time?
How could that inform your growth strategies, long term scenario planning and policies?
What if you could combine quantitative and qualitative network intelligence streams, and combine them with scenario thinking into real insights and possible early warning systems?
How can you use network insights to inform your future scenario planning and strategies for growth?
How we use these insights for better informed risk management policies?

“Network Insights for Growth” will be organized in the authentic Innotribe-way. We will bring together thought leaders in highly interactive conversations, facilitated by the renowned Innotribe team. In this year’s Innotribe events and workshops, we also try to limit the number of subjects covered, so we can experience deeper conversations and insights.

This “Network Insights for Growth” event will he held at and in collaboration with Level39, Europe’s largest accelerator space, where technology, accelerator and innovation companies are being invited from around the world to come and run their startup and accelerator programs, in one of the most inspiring spaces in London. Situated in the heart of one of the most advanced ‘smart cities’ in Europe, Level39 occupies the entire 39th floor of Canary Wharf’s iconic One Canada Square.

We will start at 10:00am UK on 14 May 2013 with planned closure of the workshop around 4pm UK. With plenty of informal networking opportunities and informal conversations during the networking breaks and lunch. This event is free-of-charge.

If you like to attend this exclusive workshop, please contact me and I will get you your personal invitation. Number of seats is limited.

Looking forward to continue our critical dialogue in London on 14 May 2013.

Detailed program:

10:00 – 10:15 Welcome and Introduction

Fabian Vandenreydt – Head of Markets Management and Core Business Development – SWIFT

10:15 – 11:45 5 different lenses (15 min talks by)

Kimmo Soramäki – Founder and CEO – FNA (Financial Network Analytics)
Daniel Erasmus – Owner – DTN (Digital Thinking Network)
Simon Small – President – Arria NLG (Natural Language Generation)
Walid Jelassi – Transformation consultant information management and analytics – Hewlett Packard
Anant Jhingran – VP Data Strategy – Apigee (tentative)

11:45 – 12:00 Break

12:00 – 13:00 Interactive workshop

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 14:30 Taking Stock

14:30 – 15:30 2^nd Interactive Workshop

15:30 – 16:00 Conclusions, next steps and wrap-up

We plan to continue the conversation on this topic during this year’s Innotribe@sibos in September 2013 in Dubai. During the May workshop in London, we hope to establish a solid baseline as a stepping stone for our in-depth sessions on “Scenario Thinking” and “Network Insights” in Dubai. Earlier this week, i posted a preview of our 2013 Innotribe Sibos program.

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The world enters into a complexity

that cannot be addressed anymore

by conventional binary linear thinking.

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Starting to form “formations” and “digital maps”,

almost like network cartography

a form of creativity

that was forbidden

and consequently punished

I had evolved, spiraled out…

Could this be a way

to propel us forward

into a state of collective progress and prosperity?

to make reverb and resonate the system at large

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“The lack of options is the opposite of freedom of choice,”

I am hungry for depth

Superficiality kills depth

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