the evolution of a research question

What happens when you bring together three people, from three different continents to collaboratively develop and explore a research thesis? Some might say chaos, others might say misery- but at the end of the day FAR chooses to think of it more as a little bit of magic.

You start with three people with very different interests but a shared 'hunch' that wikinomics and new forms of web collaboration have some potential to transform the world as we know it.

Then you throw in a little bit of Beyond Zero, Brave New Collaboration and the amazing exploration and insight of the wonderful Menka and Ed.

Shake it all up a little bit, and throw in four years of past research into the field of strategic sustainable development, the cutting insight of our advisors, some Natural Step International and presto you have a research question!
Or that's what we thought- until we sat down for a day and 'let the sparks fly.' After a day holed up in la casa de Petzel, diving into the literature and trying to finalize the details of our thesis proposal- something funny emerged. A lot of the spark came from Peter Gloor's articulation of collaborative innovation networks. Much came from Menka's always thoughtful questioning. And so much came from The Partners4SSD thesis group. But by the end of the day, our research questions emerged from the ruble brand new, and hopefully improved. Let us know what you think.

1. In what ways can collaborative innovation networks contribute to transformational change towards a sustainable society?

2. What emerging factors effect the strategic functioning of collaborative innovation networks (business models, technology, licensing models, the semantic web....)

3. How are individuals working towards sustainability currently using collaborative innovation networks?

4. What could collaborative innovation networks look like in a sustainable future?

5. What barriers and opportunities confront collaborative innovation networks?

We know, we know, it's a lot to bite off in four months. But luckily we're not going at it alone. We're excited about the opportunity to partner with the Brave New Collaboration team to launch a wiki that will both embody the opportunities of collaborative networks and add to the field of knowledge about these networks. We're inspired everyday by our MSLS classmates, and the insights of alumni such as Andre who volunteer their time. Then there's Sam (whose collaborative global warming network made it into our thesis proposal- thanks Sam!) Iain, Adrian, Val, Mr. Petzel, Juice and all you other crazies who kindly help us out through this blog.

Can't wait to collaborate more and uncover some answers to the pesty questions above....

Our fresh new look

Special thanks goes to Stefano of Germany for, in the spirit of collaboration, letting us use his image in our header.

If you like his work, check out his porfolio and blog.

Super Stefano!

Something to stop my brain falling out...

I just wanted to mention a browser tool the FAR team is trying out called ZOTERO. It helps you do things like keep references, take notes, store brainwaves so is potentially very useful for us students / researchers. It sits as an icon at the bottom of your browser, and opens up when you click on it. It talkes up about half your screen (snappity - snap quick screen shot - see below).
I'm thinking of all you other thesis groups as I write this post.... Val you need to check this out.

The one thing it seems to be missing is the possibility of collaborating - i.e. viewing / sharing your zotero... It would make our lives in FAR alot easier if we could zoterotogether.

Did you lose your ninja?

Do you recognize this ninja?  If so, we'd love to credit its creator, maybe with a rad creative commons license.

Really- FAR needs to thank whoever made this tough little jigsaw ninja and beg their permission for a real life copy.  We're desperately seeking a mascot.

And in case the creator is MIA- consider this our official request for inspiring cool ninja graphics.  Preferably resembling a jigsaw puzzle piece.

back to basics- do I even want to collaborate?

HELP!

Today we were lucky to have Stanley Nyoni, senior consultant at The Natural Step International spend some time chatting with FAR about our project.  Stanley wasted no time knocking us down a few notches, stumping us with ridiculously complicated questions like:

"What is Collaboration?"  

"Why is collaboration different than partnership?"

"How does collaboration help us?"

FAR collectively mumbled some excuses about needing to 'hit the books' and tried to scrap together some semblance of meaningful conversation- but we thought maybe you, our diligent blog readers, might have a better idea.  What do you think about collaboration- why should we do it?  So really what we're saying is- hey Val- what does collaboration mean to you?

In case you need a place to start, Stanley highlighted the skeleton of collaboration- the basics we are striving to elaborate on in our thesis and in the Brave New Collaboration wiki.  Thanks Stanley for a great talk, and helping us get back to basics.  Alright the skeleton of collaboration:

• Collaboration is a choice- so why would you make that choice?
  
• If we do chose to participate- it's likely based on the assumption that there is something to gain- some benefit to be derived...
  
• So how, once we engage collaboratively, do we ensure all those benefits are realized?
  
• And finally- maybe collaboration isn't a good thing.  Specifically, maybe collaboration using the web, isn't a good thing.  Maybe it violates our needs- rather than supporting our needs.  Obviously FAR scoffed at this ridiculous idea and promptly laughed Stanley right back to Stockholm, but we thought we'd do him justice and allow you readers to consider that angle as well.
  

All sounds pretty simple right?  We thought so too.  So just let us know what you think, and we'll plop it right on in to that little thesis paper.

Hats On to the FAR team!

We took a day on Tuesday to let our research questions 'emerge' by going through the Qualitative Research Design book recommended in our course, and this also lead to us working out what information we 'need to know', so that we can be more strategic in this research phase of our thesis. We considered our goals (personal, intellectual and practical), looked at key concepts, factors, variables, relationships and assumtions, thought about our method and considered where we might go wrong.

So, our final research questions, at least for the next week are:

Can the web 2.0 and future web 3.0 enable strategic collaboration towards sustainability?

If so, how?

How do business models support/hinder the strategic potential of web collaboration?

Not bad for a days work and we all went home feeling like things were coming together and we were on the same page.



Wednesday provided a great follow-up to this whereby we were able to start exploring how we can use this wiki during our Thesis to explore and observe collaboration in the context of our Thesis Question. We started by exploring what we want it to be able to do, to be useful towards our thesis and created a giant mind map on the white board. Next up we wanted to collect and inspire our thoughts on the wiki, so we used this great 'hats' exercise which helped us to be objective and non-judgemental, culmulating in us generating a very positive list of actions towards this being really great resource.



There's still lots to do, so we're working on a timeline and schedule to keep us on track.

More soon

FAR out

Happy Thesis Day

FAR celebrate Fei and Alice's Birthdays

January 20th- an important day for all us

FAR officially kicked off thesis season with our first eight hour work day.  Besides Rebecca's constant hacking, a few detours into Chinese You Tube land and Alice's potentially groundbreaking mathematical revelation- it all went pretty smoothly.

And before you ask, no the significance of FAR's first day being shared with a certain someone else's first day was not lost on us.  And yes, we do think the similarities are uncanny.

I mean Barack Obama is America's first Web 2.0 president, and we are BTH's first Web 2.0 thesis group!

The inauguration was Tweeted live all day, and Rebecca made her third tweet!

The inauguration drew record crowds, and the MSLS common room was flooded with students dying to join our meeting.  It was actually a bit ridiculous (yeah we're talking to you Val...).

Barack Obama is working to raise the consciousness of America.  He is collaborating across party boundaries to bring about change.  Wether he really is change we can believe in is yet to be seen, but man it's nice to believe for a little bit.

And today our thesis group discovered that we are passionate about raising global consciousness around sustainability. We are striving to collaborate with as many people as possible to understand the power of the web to rapidly increase the pace of our societal shift towards sustainability. Wether this type of collaboration is possible for a thesis is yet to be determined (please don't ask our thesis advisors their opinions), but we are excited to be the change we want to see in the world.

Economics Economics Economics

Have I mentioned that I love the planet money podcast?  Today I listened to a piece about punctuated change, pretty much what is happening as industries transform (or collapse?) all over the globe in the face of this recession.  The piece emphasized the need for creativity, innovation and experimentation to redefine the rules of the game for the major global industries- and see what will shake out as the next standard competitive advantage.  I don't see why 'open' couldn't or wouldn't be that trend.

Two other 'economy' type things I came across this weekend.  The long tail theory by Chris Anderson (Ed put this one up on our wiki)- and Lawrence Lessig's descriptor of the hybrid economy.  Too brain dead to elaborate much more now- but seems like at the least we can start tackling definitions of these theories for our glossary- as theories that could support/describe an economy where collaboration flourishes.

What can WE do for you today?

I'm finding it difficult not to be an idealistic youth. I don't think I want to stop – we've been learning that holding vision is what will help us move forwards, that pragmatism and old ideas lead to incremental change, but that we can do better. I am from the Net Generation. The generation that thinks it can have anything, do everything, can have its cake and eat it.

I recently read in the economist that us Net Gen kids are a pain to employ. Selfish, divas and poor team players, that need masses of support. In my first job, you could definitely have got that impression from me, but the truth was, my whole office was on constant procrastination mode - surfing the web and delivering the bare minimum. Staff were unenthusiastic, projects were accomplished sloppily and when I asked for guidance to make sure I was doing the best job I could, the management answered a different question to the one I asked.

I'm curious: Do we Net Genners threaten the Biro Generation because we are raring to go? Because we want to go FASTER than old habits and systems will allow us? Whilst we're all bored and itching in the office do you see us as lazy and uncommitted?

As a member of the Net Generation, I have at my fingertips the collaborative knowledge of MILLIONS of people and if you can handle me properly, through me, they can work for you.
Its time for managers to learn how to make use of the Net Gen.

Our business systems are not geared up for the information age just as society is not geared up for the Net Generation. Like it or not, the Net Generation ARE the future and the information age is here NOW. Perhaps you, as a manager can learn to help me fulfil my potential which, with tools like the internet is getting bigger every millisecond because I don't only use my brain. I can collaborate using the internet and access thousands of other Brains – what can we do for you today?

Toyota wants your ideas...

http://www.toyotawhynot.com/#/home

By encouraging this exploration and sharing of ideas, will Toyota build itself a resource that can eventually provide a return on investment?

How do the participants of these collaborative concepts make money from their collaborating, begging the questions:

Does business just want their work done for free?

How will individuals 'earn' in the future?

How about a pay - per - collaborate site (a bit like pay per click?)

Another angle of web-collaboration we haven't gone in deep with yet...

xxx

'HYBRIDIZATION of physical & virtual'=net gen's social capital

I love it when all my passions overlap:)  The author of Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirkey, was interviewed on planet money discussing a p2p lending site the government in the U.S. just shut down, called Prosper: Let's Bank on Each Other.

The truly fascinating part of this story is the need for strong, enforced Social Capital for such peer to peer lending to work.  There are few places in our world where social capital is still alive and well, and we generally tend to consider these places somewhat 'barbaric' (ie tribes in the middle east where if you fail to repay, you're murdered, or dismembered- not pretty stuff).

Shirkey explores the idea that sites such as prosper are bringing back social capital.  My instinct is social capital will be a critical concept if we are going to collaborate and share and support each other in a sustainable manner, but I'm curious to investigate more....

Web 3.0 Defined

So looking over Alice's definition of web 3.0, and exploring the only resource I use any more (I swear I'm trying to broaden my horizons) it seems to me the way we've started to use the term web 3.0 is not quite accurate.  

We've been thinking of it as the next evolution from the web as something you consume (web 1.0), to the web as something where the producers and the consumers are less defined (web 2.0) to a place where the web 2.0 collaborations end up with physical, real world interactions (web 3.0).  

I'm not sure where we got this from, and while I think this manifestation of physical world meet ups is something relevant- is it web 3.0?  As web 3.0 is the future possibilities of web technology (open being a key part) it's probably impossible to restrict the definition, but I'm curious if there's another more accurate categorization for our web networks manifesting in physical meet-ups.

How does twitter help us collaborate?

They call it informal collaboration.  I decided to investigate because my favorite podcast/blog just blogged about their tweeting community- and how all the tweeters in this planet money community are going to start meeting up.  More on this planet money community coming soon.... but for now this quick explanation (by Twitter itself) of just what need Twitter meets, what purpose they serve.

Alice's response to ED

Have you thought about doing a small 'collaborative' project as the basis of your thesis research...

This would be fab - I really would like to work on a real project - lets explore this idea further. Would the web - resource itself be this kind of project? I gather we are trying to construct a platform for collaboration - maximising the benefit, and useability of the platform will require working with users, tailoring it to their needs (this links to the language angle below).

So what type / area of collaboration do you guys share an interest in?

I think we need to go deeper with this question. We're meeting soon, so we have an opportunity to explore this together. I'm personally very interested in your suggestions around culture and language, in particular your comment that:

It's interesting that still on the web there's precious little truely inter-cultural collaboration... Wikipedia a bit, but they are separate languages, Linux has contributers from several countries (code languages are international, like music notation and pictures), but very little on more 'social' projects... yet that is what is needed for addressing global social/environmental challenges.

I had a brainwave of a real-time translation tool, for collaborative websites, so that you always see the page and posts in the language of your choice. The user would help with the continued development of the dictionaries... Maybe this thing allready exists...? (More to explore).

With FAR's Thesis in mind, we need to explore the application of such a tool for business towards facilitating 'truly inter-cultural collaboration'.

Alice :)

Bridging the gap - 6 degrees and couch surfing - Web 3.0 in action?

I'm postponing my thoughts on Eds email just for now so I can write down some quick thoughts spawned from my weekend Couchsurfing in Stockholm (and inspired by a conversation with Stanley Nyoni of TNSI).

It started when I was thinking about how Africa has the least amount of connections (6 degrees of freedom concept) - they have 7 or 8 (I should reference this but its hear-say I'm afraid). I realised that by meeting Stanley (Zimbabwe / Sweden), I have more connection to Africa, and vice versa.

I started to think about quality of connections in complex networks. I gather that the quality of a Connector or Hub is normally 'how many link it has, but I want to change it to the relevance or usefulness of those links to specific tasks. So that depending on the task in hand, a few quality links are better than numerous useless ones.

What does it mean - to be linked to someone? What is the point of my link to Stanley's Network, and what does this mean for sustainability?

With Stanely we discussed this and he helped me to the realisation that: When I watch the news I care MORE if I know someone from an aflicted area - even if they arn't there at the time. By knowing Stanley, I feel more concern for Zimbabwe, because I feel a link to his family there. By knowing Khuloud in my class from Palestine, I feel more concern at the current situation, to the point that I care for Khuloud, and feel and extra concern regarding its effect on her.

Stanley thinks that raising consciousness is key in the path towards sustainability. So how do we raise conciousness? How is the internet a tool for raising consciousness. Facebook and other social networking sites help me to maintain communication with people I allready know, and links me to their networks, however to draw those networks closer - for me to raise my conciousness I need more - in general (bar the odd occasion) social networking hasn't developped my sense of consiousness, simply has webified my connections - I added them to the sites - that is soooo 2.0

Couchsurfing - I / we couchsurfers have a need - for cheap sleep or to make friends...
Using the internet to communicate, and collaborate, leading to meeting someone NEW. to developing a rapport and to caring for those people, is helping to build HIGH-QUALITY links. The more international surfing that goes on, the more international links we can forge. By Hosting a surfer from China, we share our cultures, learn and bond, facilitating the development of our mutual consiousness.

The glue for my ideas hasn't set, but I'm starting to think around how web 3.0 can help us work towards sustainability, and where business fits within this.
Can couchsurfing provide a business platform template towards service orientated web collaboration that actually encourages people to care about each other? (SP4 combatting the systematic degradation of the capacity of people to meet their needs)
What other concepts and projects are out there that work in this way? - that not only leverage business towards sustainability but have some physical real-world outcomes with SP4 repercussions?

Thats all for now...

Alice

In response to Ed....

So thank you to Ed for sharing those thoughts- I couldn't agree more about the importance of exploring what collaboration truly is and bringing that into this project.  And I couldn't resist responding....

Our class really spent the first half of the program discovering the power and challenges of collaboration; which is what led me personally to this topic.  Our program has people from all different walks of life, from all over the globe, and all of our academic work is done collaboratively- with the thesis as the capstone of that work.  I came to Sweden to learn more about leadership and how to tackle our shared sustainability challenge, but the true Aha! moment came when I realized I was here to learn how to really collaborate- and the necessity of this to address the sustainability challenge.  I realized that in my past I'd done lots of group work, but very little meaningful collaboration where different minds come together and are empowered to create something greater than each individual involved.  I know one of the greatest experiences for me was working with three other individuals all from different continents, different ages and different levels of experience to develop a learning experience for our peers about Theory U.

I'm sure Alice and Fei can speak of similarly eye opening collaborations- and the three of us are really excited to put all our learning to practice on this project.  I'm excited about Brave New Collaboration because I think the web has the opportunity to change the way we share, learn and organize ourselves to allow collaboration that transcends barriers- but only if its developed intentionally to overcome those barriers.  As a group from all over the world, I think we have a better chance of really addressing those- but that's also why I think it will be so valuable to bring in Beyond Zero's experience in Africa and some of the unique barriers to that region.

One obvious barrier to the web's usefulness is the danger of information overload, particularly e-mail overload.  In our program it's clear that because we e-mail in english,  it is more time consuming for non-native english speakers to process e-mails; posing an unequal barrier to participation.  And then there are those of us who constantly fear the work e-mails coming in at all hours of the day, always staring at us when we sign in.....

At the same time, we don't want to lose those random thoughts and insights that are relevant to building shared knowledge, passion and understanding just because we're afraid of sending yet another e-mail, especially considering we are collaborating at a distance.  One strategy we're toying with is saving e-mail communication for logistical necessities- timely things needing response- and then post all other thoughts, commentary, insights to this blog people can check at their own convenience during set times.  We haven't used it much yet so no way to know if it will work.  Maybe over the next few weeks while we're waiting for our site to go up, all the 'facilitators' of this project (FAR, Menka, Ed and anyone else who is keen to take such a role) could share thoughts here- because I'm sure we'll all have many.  And then if we find it necessary to have a private means of communicating for the project facilitators, we could keep this on an unlinked part of our site.

Ok- more than enough from me.  I'm sorry brevity is not my strength- I promise I'll work on it...