What will Ikea do?

When a new concept/product/service/proces/competitor/trend hits the market, Jeff Jarvis learned us to ask ourselves regularly 'What will Google do?'.

It becomes interesting to apply the 'Jeff Jarvis method' to the launch of Google Wave. What will Ikea do with Google Wave to improve their relationships with their customers?

Why Ikea? Ikea is the 'Google' of the Home sector, following a value-constellation-strategy which has some similarities with the strategy of Google.

It will be interesting to experience how Ikea will apply Google Wave in the coming five years.

David de Boer

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Fluidity of the Media Eco System

Throw away all your marketing books you have read at university. These books - with lessons about the four marketing P's (price, product, place, promotion) - are useless by now. Sad, but true.

Forget about Michael Porter's Value Chain. The Eco System is the next new metaphor.

Try to mentally switch from the Value Chain concept to the Value Constellation concept.

Keep repeating: Media Eco System = Value Constellation = Syndication

I have tried to capture the notion 'fluidity of the Media Eco System' into four beliefs:
Belief 1: People-centric (real-time web)
Belief 2: The stream
Belief 3: Get ready to 'Google Wave'
Belief 4: Media companies framing their added value for 'companies, formerly known as advertisers' into advertising concepts limit their range of possible solutions. And, thus, limit their potential added value while exploring new business models.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma, The Netherlands

Transformation of Media Companies

According to Accenture research and a panel discussion at the 2008 Accenture Global Convergence Forum, media companies need to take four critical steps to be a winner in the-next-generation-media-industry:

• Focus on strengths and use them across multiple channels
• Understand and get to know B2C and B2B consumers better
• Give existing workforce and new talent as much autonomy as realistically possible.
• Get the cost base right.

While an exciting future may loom on the horizon, there are major challenges around strategic execution, the panelists said. In the “age of execution,” the potential to relate to and engage with B2C and B2B consumers is more profound than ever before. Media companies must be prepared to change much more and much faster than in any other time in their recent history.

Recently, Patty Maes of MIT woke up Microsoft by demonstrating that their vision of 2019 is already technically possible today.....and within reach for every consumer. The wearable device of Patty Maes - that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data - costs only about $350.

Will Apple bring us our 'next level Iphone' and introduce an Apple designed Patty Maes' device this autumn?

Proliferating technology is enabling ubiquitous media. This, in turn, is facilitating the shift in consumption habits and content participation and creating huge growth opportunities for media companies.

Media companies will need to transition from analogue, offline delivery to integrated, file-based, digital enterprises. Media companies that want to survive are well-advised to start their path toward it today if they have nor done so already.

But turning around media organizations is a huge, and typically slow, undertaking. To learn more about how prepared the industry is to make this transformation and take advantage of industry change, Accenture interviewed more than 100 of the world’s top media executives.

The research results show that two out of three industry organizations have less than 40 percent of the capabilities to complete the transformation successfully and become a true digital, high performance business. And this statistic is likely overstated.

32 percent of respondents generated less than 10 percent of their 2007 revenues from nonlinear consumption (downloads and on-demand broadcasts, for example). And only a small minority—9 percent—have broken the 25 percent barrier.

A critical component of enabling transformational capabilities quickly and effectively is an integrated multi-platform. About 63 percent of respondents said they are pursuing a three-screen distribution strategy—using TV, online and mobile. However in doing so, at least 30 percent of them are using a completely siloed approach, which has been shown to result in low customer satisfaction and lost revenues.

An integrated, multi-platform, value-creation-network capability will help media companies find new ways to reach consumers, to be more valuable for consumers, to respond to how and where they access media and make digital content available to consumers whenever and wherever they want it. The panel saw this as the largest growth driver for content companies over the next five years. It would appear, then, that the media market is no longer characterized by the big eating the small but the fast eating the slow.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma Uitgevers, The Netherlands

Sanoma will be moving beyond the serving ads advertising model.

Our mobile devices become the remote control for our daily lives. This will generate data (of a dimension which we have never had before), which in turn provides Sanoma the means to really increase our value for our B2C customers (providers of the data) and our B2B customers. It provides Sanoma the means to become more relevant at the right time and place, and transform the accepted practices of marketing, media and commercial communication.

Data has always been used in marketing, but it has been on a path of evolution. Three key stages can be identified:

• Stage 1: Socio-demographics: age, gender, postal code, occupation, lifestyle, mentality.
• Stage 2: Context sensitive: search domain/subject, time, location, mood
• Stage 3: Social Marketing Intelligence: the combination of market segmentation and context, combined with customer behavior and social network profiles.
  

Marketing-, media-, commercial communication-decisions and data need to be symbiotically connected to each other to optimalize value, and to optimalize (marketing) resources for all partners (B2C customer, B2B customer, Sanoma). It this way the resources of Sanoma and our partners can be deployed intelligently at the right place and at the right time to create optimal value for all partners/participants/actors, while applying the optimal business-model(s) for that specific 'constellation' at that specific moment.

The decision on how much to spend and where to allocate (marketing- and media-) resources will evolve:

• the once-siloed 'static'data warehouse becomes a living 'enabler' of making realtime (marketing- and media-) resource-allocation-decisions on a continiuous basis.

The effort and attention of marketing has always been focused on one aspect of marketing (serving ads). We have to get used to leave this one dimensional view behind us, when one begins to realise how a data-driven approach to marketing can be transformational by offering an opportunity to remove 'static' organisational silos that truly hinder that continious, fluid, dynamic process of resource-optimalization.

The way forward is to better understand what data Sanoma (and Sanoma's partners) do already have and will generate. We have to think about how that data gets better through user-interaction [through interaction with our B2C and B2C customers] and take care of 'co-produced offerings' (services/products/applications) for those partners that give them back the value of that data.

Which players in the media-industry are (culturally) able to make this fundamental change of mindset and transform succesfully? The timing of this necessary transition is crucial. So time will tell us.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma Uitgevers, The Netherlands

Sanoma's 'value constellation strategy' in the post-assembly-line media eco system

The media company Sanoma is a collective mind of a large group of over 20.000 individuals.

Strategy is the art of creating value. It provides the intellectual frameworks (conceptual models) and governing ideas that allow Sanoma to identify opportunities for bringing value to B2C and B2B customers and for delivering that value at a profit. In this respect, strategy is the way Sanoma defines its business and links together (by mediating human relations) the only two resources that really matter in today’s media economy:

1. 'knowledge' (technologies, specialised expertise and business processes; Sanoma's collective mind that is accumulated over time and packaged in our offerings). But knowledge is not enough. Sanoma's knowledge/competencies are worthless without B2C/B2B customers willing to pay for them.
2. Thus, the other key asset for Sanoma is 'relationships'; our establisched B2C/B2B customer base

Our traditional thinking about value is grounded in the assumptions of an industrial economy. According to this view, Sanoma occupies a position on a value chain. Upstream, suppliers provide inputs. Sanoma then adds value to these inputs, before passing them downstream to the next actor in the chain. Seen from this perspective, strategy is primarily the art of positioning Sanoma in the right place on the value chain -- the right business, the right products and market segments, the right value adding activities.

Today, however, this understanding of value is as outmoded as the old assembly line that it resembles and so is the view of strategy that goes with it. Please, forget Micheal Porter's Value Chain concept. The fluidity-trend (changing mediamarkets, changing roles of relevant actors, changing business models, changing technology) and global competition are opening up new ways of creating value.

Two important challenges:

1. Of course, more opportunities also mean more uncertainty and greater risk. Forecasts based on projections from the past become unreliable. Factors that have always seemed peripheral turn out to be key drivers of change in Sanoma’s key markets. New competitors, from previously unrelated sectors, with radically different business-models, change the rules of our game.
2. Sanoma exists in value networks where the actors have similar metrics, margins and motivations. Moving from one value network to another is very challenging (source: The innovator's Dilemma, Clayton M. Chistensen)

Due to the insight that strategy is no longer a matter of positioning a fixed set of activities along a value chain, Sanoma transforms its strategy from 'adding value' to 'reinventing value'.

• Sanoma's focus of strategic analysis transforms from 'the company' or 'the industry' to 'the value-creating system' itself, within which different actors (suppliers, B2B customers, B2C customers, Sanoma employees and other business partners) work together in a constellation of different business models to co-produce value.
• Sanoma's key strategic task is becoming: the reconfiguration of roles and relationships among this constellation of actors in order to mobilise the creation of value in new forms.
• Sanoma's underlying strategic goal is becoming: creating an ever-improving fit between 'Sanoma's competencies' and 'B2C/B2B customers'.

Sanoma’s value constellation strategy is made possible by a fundamental transformation in the way that value is created. But what is this new logic of value, and what are its strategic implications for Sanoma?

To answer these questions, begin with the simple observation that any product or service is really the result of a complicated set of activities: economic transactions and institutional arrangements among actors (suppliers, B2C customers, B2B customers, Sanoma employees and other business partners). In fact, what we usually think of as products or services (magazines, websites, events) are really frozen activities, concrete manifestations of the relationships among actors in a value-creating system. To emphasise the way all our 'products and services' are grounded in activity, let's call them 'co-produced offerings'.

Second observation: The distinction between physical products and intangible services is breaking down. Does Sanoma offer a product or a service? The answer is neither -- and both. Very few of our 'co-produced offerings' can be clearly defined as one or the other anymore. Increasingly, they involve some complex combination of the two roles.

Today, under the impact of information technology and the resulting globalisation of markets and production, new methods of combining activities into 'co-produced offerings' are producing new opportunities for creating value.

The reconfiguration of activities can offer Sanoma's B2C and B2B customers a qualitatively new kind of value. For example, engaging Sanoma's B2B customers in a self-service activity (for example: our recently launched content portal which enables self-supported uploading of their magazine-ads for our B2B customers) can eliminate traditional constraints of space and time. No longer do our B2B customers have to go to their fysical appointment during business hours. They can act at any time and with the proliferation of digital networks, pretty much anywhere. In our view, the vast majority our B2B customers will flock to Sanoma's online 'communications solutions services' and adapt to them quickly and easily.

This is not merely a change in technology or even in the transaction itself. It is a change in the entire value-creating system. The scene, the script, the roles of the relevant actors are all transforming. For example, a great deal of Sanoma's attention, expertise, and activity is now devoted to the design, building, and maintenance of self-service support tools for our B2B customers (for example: the launch of a content portal for self-supported uploading of ads, or last week's launch of the new B2B site of Sanoma Netherlands).

The new logic of value presents Sanoma with three strategic implications:

1. The goal of Sanoma is not to create value for B2C/B2B customers, but to mobilise B2C/B2C customers to create value for themselves from Sanoma's various offerings. Sanoma does not profit from B2C/B2B customers. Sanoma profits from B2C/B2B customers value-creating activities. The 'company' Sanoma does not really compete with other media companies anymore. Rather, it is our 'offerings' that compete for the time and attention and money of B2C/B2B customers.
2. What is true for individual offerings is also true for entire value-creating systems. As potential offerings become more complex and varied, so do the relationships necessary to produce them. A single company rarely provides everything anymore. Instead, the most attractive offerings involve B2C customers, suppliers and B2B customers, in new combinations, in new roles, in new business models. As a result, Sanoma’s principal strategy task is the reconfiguration of its relationships and business systems.
3. If the key to creating value is 'co-produced offerings that mobilise B2C/B2B customers', then the only true source of competitive advantage is the ability to conceive the entire value-creating system and make it work; the reshuffling of activities among actors so that actor and activity are better matched.

To win, Sanoma must write the script, mobilise and train the relevant players and make the B2C customers and B2B customers the final arbiter of success or failure. To go on winning, Sanoma must create a dialogue with our B2C customers and B2B customers in order to repeat our performance over and over again and keep our co-produced offerings competitive.

• Always keep the following equation in mind: (Perceived value [Sanoma] - Price [Sanoma]) > (Perceive value [alternative] - Price [alternative]). Perceived value is the worth in monetary terms of the benefits our customer receives in exchange for the price it pays for our market offering. Raising of lowering the price of our market offering does not change the value that our offering provides to our customer. The equation conveys that our customer's incentive to purchase an offering of Sanoma must exceed its incentive to buy the next best alternative.

The economics in the post-assembly-line media economy presents Sanoma with a stark choice: either re-configure our business system to take advantage of these trends or be reconfigured by more dynamic competitors.

To exploit these trends, Sanoma takes three steps:

1. Reconsidering the business potential of our chief assets: Sanoma’s knowledge base and Sanoma's B2C/B2B customer base.
2. Repositioning or reinventing our co-produced offerings to create a better fit between Sanoma's competencies and the value creating activities of our B2B/B2C customers.
3. Making new business arrangements and sometimes new social and political alliances to make these offerings feasible and efficient.

As been said, in an economy founded on the new logic of value, only two assets really matter: 'knowledge' and 'relationships' or 'Sanoma's competencies' and 'our customers'.

• Competencies are the technologies, specialised expertise, business processes and techniques; the collective mind of 20.000 experts that Sanoma has accumulated over time and packaged in its offerings. But knowledge alone is not enough. Obviously, Sanoma’s competencies are worthless without customers willing to pay for them.
• Thus the other key asset for Sanoma is its established customer base. Sanoma's relationship with a B2C customer and with a B2B customer is really an access channel to the B2C/B2B customer’s ongoing value-creating activities. Any B2C/B2B customer, whether another business or an individual, uses a wide range of inputs in order to create value. Sanoma’s offerings have value to the degree that B2C/B2B customers can use them as inputs to leverage their own value creation.

Sanoma needs to enlarge its knowledge base continuously. Sanoma must invest in an ever broadening range of knowledge resources and combine ever expanding kinds of knowledge into Sanoma's offerings. What is more, these investments in new knowledge can become so large that Sanoma’s own offerings to its existing B2C/B2B customer base are no longer adequate to recoup its investment. So the new knowledge tends to drive Sanoma into new businesses in search of new relationships with new B2C/B2B customers. And the cycle repeats.

The secret of value creation is building a better and better fit between relationships and knowledge. Currently, Sanoma accountmanagers are trained in our Sales Academy:

1. To master the design and management of interconnected, co-productive offerings.
2. How to mobilize value creation in their B2B customers businesses by reconfiguring roles, relationships, and structures.
3. To perpetually reinventing value in a dialogue between competencies and their B2B customers.

These are the skills that a winning network of Sanoma experts will have to acquire in the post-assembly-line media economy that is now emerging.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma Uitgevers, The Netherlands

Sanoma SalesWiki: Power of co-operation

"We must be able to create an atmosphere and corporate culture where we can utilize the know-how of over 20.000 experts in 20 countries in the best possible manner" (Hannu Syrjänen, CEO Sanoma)

The media company Sanoma is a collective mind of a large group of over 20.000 individuals. Unfortunately, the combined intelligence of a group has always been inversely proportional to group size. That means the larger the group, the stupider the group. Larger groups have always been inefficient and stupid. Most large organisations are still very stupid collective minds.

Why is that? Because the limitation has always been that it is just to inefficient to share knowledge, to access what other people are doing, thinking or sensing. And because we have always been disconnected, because of space and time, it has always been hard to think as one ‘Sanoma-organism’.

New wiki-technology beats these (former) limitations and empowers Sanoma Account Managers to form dynamic networks, generating ’smart’ results to compete more effectively and to respond better to a changing world.

Last year, open source, webbased wiki-technology enabled us to coordinate the activities of individual Sanoma Account Managers so that the group output is of lasting value, gains competitive edge and increases productivity

Last year, we have proved to generate this valuable group output as a byproduct, without regard of institutional models, to coordinate the activities of the group. In fact, the Sanoma SalesWiki was not a product innovation, but a process innovation.

The impact of this result: Group size is not a weakness any more, but a strength.

We have succeeded to create a positive relationship between the group size and the combined intelligence & productivity of this group.

The 'only' limitation left is a widespread, fundamental business culture/mindset change in our institutional way of organizing. After getting used to 'user-generated-content' (for example Youtube), we have to get used to 'employee-generated-organization' (for example Company-groups @Linkedin).

Within the Ad Sales group we have succeeded to overcome the - understandable - resistance to this disruptive way of dynamic-network-organizing and reached the tipping point. I am confident that the network effect will continue in 2009, building valuable group output what was once only available in our imagination.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma Uitgevers, The Netherlands



Sanoma SalesWiki from SanomaCrossing on Vimeo.

Ray Kurzweil op Singularity Summit

Tim O'Reilly about Mobile 2.0

Mobile 2.0 will be there if somebody breaks the back of the phone companies. Phone companies like to keep it closed.

Mobile 2.0 will be open internet style developer ecosystem on mobile. Then we will see the development of information applications that are driven by user participation and network-effects. Applications that get better the more people use them, whether it is:
A. more people around the same social network;
B. more people searching on google and therefore the ad network gets better;
C. more people clicking on links and therefore google gets smarter about what people are really looking for;
D. more people commenting on Amazon, so it becomes a better product catalog

All these are Web 2.0 phenomenons. The same will happen on the phone, except it will be things around location and new insights/new meaning will come from movements towards the 'sensor-web'.

Meaning is hidden in data. Mobile 2.0 breakthrougs come when somebody has a new insight about the hidden meaning. Every time we spend money we are voting, every time we link we are voting. It will be possible to get insights as: 'People that go to this car-dealership spend twice as much as people going to that car-dealership'.
All that data is in the creditcard statements.

Think about what data you have. Think about how that data gets better through your user-interaction, and then built applications for those users that give them back the value of that data.

Sanoma's 360 graden Partnership

Bijgaand de presentatie die ik vandaag heb gehouden om Sanoma's 360 graden Partnerships toe te lichten.

360 Partnership Sanoma

view presentation

Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold gaat lessen geven via de video-widget Sproutbuilder.

Juan Enriquez: Genomics

Juan Enriquez is an authority on the economic and political impact of science. He is the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project. He also is CEO of Biotechonomy, a research and investment firm helping to fund new genomics firms. In his book 'As the future catches you' he examines the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society.

According to Juan Enriquez, scientific discoveries demand a shift in code, and our ability to thrive depends on our mastery of that code. In this TED-speech Juan applies this notion to the field of genomics.

Wim de Ridder

Wim de Ridder is STT-hoogleraar Toekomstverkenning en toekomstonderzoek Universiteit Twente en heeft voor de Stichting Maatschappij en Onderneming een aantal interessante boeken gepubliceerd.

De komende honderd jaar zal evenveel technologische vooruitgang laten zien als de laatste 20.000 jaar, want technologische veranderingen zijn vaak exponentiële ontwikkelingen.

In het jaar 2020 eindigt het ICT-tijdperk waarin we nu leven, omdat dan de nieuwste generatie chips intelligenter is dan hun ontwerpers. IBM's Roadrunner kan nu al meer dan 1 biljard berekeningen per seconde uitvoeren (Snelheid van 1015 - miljoen maal miljard). Dat is voor het eerst sneller dan de mens.

In het jaar 2020 start het GNR-tijdperk en komt de technologie in een nieuwe fase. Chips zijn nu als de basiselementen van Genetica, Nanotechnologie en Robotica (GNR).

Rond het jaar 2045 vindt een onomkeerbare verandering in de geschiedenis plaats. Biologische en niet-biologische kennis gaan samen, onsterfelijke, met software samengestelde menselijke wezens doen hun intrede en ultrahoge intelligentie komt beschikbaar die zich met de snelheid van het licht door het universum verplaatst.
Ray Kurzweil spreekt van singulariteit.

Bill Joy (SUN Microsystems) wijst in Wired (2000) op het ontstaan van antibioticaresistentie waardoor veel gevaarlijke bacteriën vrij spel krijgen. Robots, genetisch gemodificeerde organismen en nanobots zullen zichzelf kunnen kopiëren en dat kan tot onbeheersbare situaties leiden. Het zijn in wezen massavernietigingswapens.

Destructieve toepassingen zijn gemakkelijker te realiseren dan constructieve en daarmee is het voor het eerst in de geschiedenis dat een biologische soort door eigen, zelf gekozen toedoen een gevaar voor zichzelf is geworden. Joy spreekt van 'knowledge enabled mass destruction'.

Futuroloog Ian Pearson sluit zich daarbij aan en acht de collectieve, autonome kracht van de computerchip zodanig groot dat het menselijk leven rond 2085 tot stilstand komt. Die toekomst schetste hij in een voordracht op de conferentie van de World Futures Society in 2004.

Het meest gelezen boek in de wereld van de futurologie was in 2003 de studie van Martin Rees, die onder de titel 'Our final century' is gepubliceerd. Zijn conclusie is dat de kans dat onze beschaving het einde van de huidige eeuw haalt, niet groter is dan 50%. Kortom, de technologie van de 21ste eeuw kan, al dan niet per ongeluk, het leven ernstig bedreigen en er een vroegtijdig einde aan maken. Deze technofoben appelleren aan een breed verspreide angst voor de toekomst.

De realiteit gebiedt echter te onderkennen dat een moratorium op technologische ontwikkeling bij afwezigheid van een dominante wereldmacht niet mogelijk is. Eerder kon nucleaire technologie niet worden verboden, al zijn er massavernietigingswapens mee gemaakt en vervolgens twee maal in Japan ingezet ten koste van meer dan tweehonderdduizend doden. In de gezondheidszorg is nucleaire technologie niet meer weg te denken.

Analoog kunnen we vaststellen dat het de technologische verworvenheden van de laatste decennia zijn die door de opkomende landen in korte tijd worden overgenomen. De Bric-landen realiseren hiermee hoge groeicijfers en creëren daarmee de voorwaarden om de levensstandaard van een fors deel van de wereldbevolking te verbeteren.

Deze existentiële problematiek lijkt onoplosbaar. De enige weg die zich aandient is inspelen op de komst van cyber sapiens 100.000 jaar na homo sapiens. De opkomende cyberspace is een wereld die vanuit zijn vertakte netwerkstructuren en de daarmee verbonden wetmatigheden een eigen intelligentie zal ontwikkelen. Op deze wijze zal de beheersing van de planeet aarde vorm en inhoud kunnen krijgen.

(Bron: FD, 24 september 2008)

Dave Blank

Nano-technologie houdt zich bezig met processen waarbij op atoom- en moleculair niveau producten worden gemaakt. Aan de Universiteit van Twente staat Dave Blank aan het hoofd van het instituut voor Nano-technologie.

In speciale stofvrije ruimtes bouwen ze hier - molecuul voor molecuul - producten voor de toekomst, waarbij structuren van minder dan 100 nanometer (100 miljoenste millimeter) worden ontworpen, geproduceerd of toegepast. Op die microscopische schaal hebben materialen heel andere eigenschappen dan ze op grondstoffelijk niveau vertonen; daar doen oppervlak en vorm er meer toe.

Nanotechnologie is een revolutie omdat we voor het eerst kunnen bouwen met individuele bouwstenen van de materie. Dit sluit aan bij de manier waarop levende materie is opgebouwd. Via een code opgeslagen in DNA worden immers eiwitten gesynthetiseerd waaruit een complex levend organisme wordt opgebouwd en instandgehouden. Daarnaast is via de nanotechnologie een revolutie mogelijk omdat allerlei fysische eigenschappen van materie bij verkleining benenden de 100 nanometer veranderen.

Toepassingen:
* Er is titaniumdioxide op de markt die als film op glas een fotokatalytische werking heeft op vuil en daarmee ramen zelfreinigend maakt.
* Carbon nanotubes: draden die vele malen dunner zijn dan een mensenhaar en honderd maal sterker dan staal. Met nano-technologie wordt de moeder van alle machines gecreeerd.
* de Nano-tandpasta
* de Nano-sok
* Nano-leds in woonkamer: met nano-draadjes ontwikkelde lamp die het warme licht van de gloeilamp evenaart. De nano-ledlamp bestaat uit een bundel van miljoenen nanodraadjes met een diameter kleiner dan 200 nanometer. De nano-ledlampen zullen in 2011 commercieel verkrijgbaar zijn.
* Methode om waterstof op te slaan in nano-deeltjes
* Ford gaat bij bouw van personenauto's nanotechnologie gebruiken om tot 350 kilo lichtere auto's te bouwen.
* Nanospray die het wrijvingsverlies in de cilimber terugbrengt, waardoor de motoronderdelen minder snel slijten.
* Snel, schoon en goedkoop reinigen is mogelijk met behulp van nanodeeltjes.
* Nano-technologie heeft geleid tot nieuwe generatie petfles die al na twee maanden afgebroken is.

Paul Wouters

Paul Wouters, bijzonder hoogleraar Kennisdynamica aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam en programmaleider Virtual Knowledge Studio (KNAW-instituut), ziet een nieuwe manier ontstaan om wetenschap te bedrijven. Niet alleen in de media-sector, ook in de wetenschap - de kern van het denken - zorgt Collaboration Economics voor een fundamental change. Paul heeft een disruptive view over de toekomst van de wetenschap, die vooral draait om nieuwe ICT-toepassingen.

Naast (1) het massieve computationele geweld dat bijvoorbeeld nodig is om ons genetisch materiaal in kaart te brengen en (2) collaboratories; het efficiënter samenwerken via internet, kan ICT ook andere rollen spelen. Onderzoekers zouden bijvoorbeeld veel meer kunnen doen met simulaties, facebook-achtige dingen en wiki's. We kunnen andere stadia van het onderzoek laten zien, het werk in uitvoering, de ruwe data en de laatste, zeer recente, observaties. Zodat ook anderen daar direct hun eigen analyses en interpretaties aan kunnen koppelen.

Denk ook aan wetenschappers die weblogs bijhouden tijdens het onderzoek, waarbij ze hun observaties al prijsgeven. Antropologen kunnen zo hun ervaringen in het veld al in een vroeg stadium delen met de wereld. Dat betekent wel dat de interactie met de mensen die je bestudeert (bijvoorbeeld Games) intensiever wordt, want de onderzoeksobjecten, de gamers, kunnen zo'n blog lezen en blijven zo dicht bij de antropoloog. Dat leidt tot veranderingen in de methodologie en de ethiek, want in feite wordt het blog onderdeel van het veldwerk. De onderzoeker wordt veel zichtbaarder.

Blogs vormen het begin van het onderzoeks-traject. Wetenschappers kunnen daarna nog steeds boeken en artikelen schrijven, maar die vormen het eindpunt. Simulaties, nog steeds niet geaccepteerd als wetenschappelijk materiaal, gaan steeds belangrijker worden.


Op vrijdag 27 juni hield hij zijn oratie: Dolend dromen van een wereldbrein. Tegelijkertijd lanceerde hij http://www.researchdreams.nl/; een platform voor wetenschappelijke toekomstdromen. Doel is om dit platform te laten uitmonden in een actieve communitie van wetenschappers die over de lange en middellange termijn van hun vak willen nadenken. Na registratie kan iedereen verhalen op de site zetten, want wetenschap is een verhaal. Vervolgens worden die verhalen op trefwoord geordend.

Al eerder begon Paul de Virtual Knowledge studio, waarin nieuwe vormen van onderzoek worden geprobeerd in constellaties met sociologen, fysici, politicologen, bijbelwetenschappers.

Derk Sauer

Zijn leven is een metafoor voor de ontwikkelingen die Rusland sinds de val van de muur doormaakt: Derk Sauer. Vanaf zijn veertiende probeerde hij als overtuigd marxist de revolutie te verspreiden onder de Nederlandse arbeiders.

Veertig jaar later is hij multimiljonair en directeur van het meest succesvolle buitenlandse uitgeversimperium in Rusland. De laatste achttien jaar van zijn leven bracht hij vooral in Moskou door. Hij was er ooggetuige van de omwenteling die Rusland maakte van ‘collectivisme naar doorgeslagen materialisme’.

Zijn meest recente initiatieven in Nederland zijn uitgeverij Nieuw Amsterdam (o.a. The Long Tail in het Nederlands) en televisiezender Het Gesprek.

Derk inspireert mij omdat hij zo onconventioneel is en lef heeft. Derk is niet alleen een creatief denker, maar ook een succesvol doener.

Links:

> Profiel: Derk Sauer 'Van revolutionair tot multimiljonair'

> Beluister het marathoninterview met Sauer uit 2002

> Kijk hoe Sauer de boel op z'n kop zet in 'De wereld draait door' (2007)