Wednesday, May 21, 2003

More on initial conditions - The Power of Trajectory and in intervening early in all aspects of life I posted this chart a few days ago which shows how interventions in the first two years of a child's life can have a dramatic impact by grade 10. It has got me thinking more about the nature of initial conditions and trajectory. One of the reason I have been a light poster recently is that the weather has been so nice that I have been working in the garden all the time. Robin my wife has been getting our tomato plants ready for about 6 weeks. She has grown them from seed and under lights, she has provided enormous care. Even now, as we can expect more frost, they are now hardening off in a frame but not planted. Once they are planted, other than watering, there is not much we have to do. They will have reached the tipping point, where they will do most of the work themselves. I am wondering is this not a central truth. Once our children are a certain age, for better or worse they tend to get on with life and much of the destiny of their trajectory has the power. If this is true, then new companies need a huge amount of tending and nurturing in the early years. I wonder if VC would work better if a VC saw his role as a parent of a gardener. It is not enough to provide only the money. It is not helpful to be critical - if this is  a natural model, then the VC's need to find out what are the 2 essential acts that they need to perform. We know in human development that reading and touch are the most highly leveraged interactions. What is the business equivalent? 3:19:03 PM    comment []

Social Flows and Intellectual Capital - How to measure effectiveness Cool visualizations need a home. Visualization of flows in social networks. Thomas Burg points to Visualizing Flows In Social Networks. Follow the links, they worth it! Frederico Casalegno, Roberto Tagliabue, and Marco Susani presented an intriguing visualization of flows in social networks at last November's Doors of Perception [Smart Mobs] [Mathemagenic] It would be great is something like this could be useful.  Built into some existing social networking environment? Perhaps they can convince Jonathan Abrams to include this in Friendster? [Marc's Voice] Many have asked how to measure the value of social interaction. In my early work on Intellectual capital my partner Hubert Saint Onge and I came to the conclusion that if we measured the velocity and power of the flows, we would find the value. What do we mean by this? Here is the typical organizational knowledge situation. A customer/supplier/environmental event occurs such as a shift in preference or anew technology. The organization needs an individual to spot this event and to extract meaning from it - what does this event mean for us? Is it important even if it is small? This is flow 1. He/she then has to convey this meaning to their colleagues who have the power to give a go/no go decision on how and whether to respond as an organization. This is the critical Flow 2 choke point. Here the organizational culture plays a key role. In a typical command and control hierarchy, the flow from the front line to the decision makers is slow and gets a lot of distortion. Low trust demands a great deal of "proof" before a case can be agreed on to react or to pro-act. Assume a go decision. Than a plan has to be developed and acted on and a change to the organizational process executed. This is flow 3. Again in a command and control model this is a slow and poorly done part. In a networked model this can be done both fast and well. Assume the response has been set in motion. The process begins again with an organizational observer seeing the result and determining new meaning and recommending a new response. If you "see" an organization in this light, you see its nervous system. You can measure these flows as you can electric current for both volts, amps and resistance. An analyst can begin by making assumptions about these floes. You can assume for a start that strong command and control - top down - organizations will be slow and inaccurate in their response to their environment. You can assume that organizations that use weblogs and have a culture that is collegial can respond quickly and accurately. For all the failure in peacekeeping, the US military have worked very well to increase the flows up and down and across. We see the results in Iraq 9:20:32 AM    comment []