Posts tagged collective intelligence
Seed funding for social ventures: acknowledging multiple value streams
72 years ago
Below is an excerpt from an email I wrote on a thread
concerning chronic absence of early-stage funding for social ventures:
I wonder if we will find a solution by zooming out beyond the finances to include value streams of knowledge, relationships and underutilized assets/inventory/infrastructure. If these non-financial value streams can be made visible and measured, it will be easier to incorporate them into financial risk calculations.
A cherry tree releases thousands of blossoms, but only a handful will grow to full-sized trees. But the blossoms are not waste, they recycle nutrients in the ecosystem and feed the bees. So really we need systems for converting the energy of a “failed” startup into fertilizer for the whole system.
So assuming that many seed-stage social ventures will fail, how can we harvest the learning (usable knowledge and wisdom) from the founders such that it is a financial loss but an increase in knowledge and systems awareness? Or would this knowledge output be too noisy?
What other value exists in these “positive failures” that can be fed back into the system?
Also, many entrepreneurs start with an “idea” and try to resource this vision toward implementation. How can we leverage collective intelligence to vet ideas through the wisdom of the crowd so entrepreneurs can focus their energy on the most promising ideas and business models?
Am I stating the obvious here or being naive or cliche? Or is this worth a second look?
Incredible video on how to solve climate change!
02 years ago
This is probably the smartest, most creative, beautiful and inspiring
web video I’ve ever seen. I’m blown away. Sign me up!
Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.
Hosting dialogue that supports a trans-personal worldview
02 years ago
I’ve been reading Ken Wilber’s A Short History of Everything which is a synthesis of what humans have learned so far, and gives a story of our development as a species.
I’d like to share my interpretation of some of his ideas, and how they relate to building inner capacities for deep collaboration.
Thoughts are interpreted through a lens that we learn/inherit from our native culture. Without this shared subjective worldspace (cultural context) the internal realities (thoughts, emotions, spiritual depth) lack meaning- they are like words in a foreign language. So subjective truth is context-dependent, but that context is boundless.
Since internal truth has no absolute, empirical location/identity, to observe and understand the internal realities of the Other, dialogue is required.
Dialogue is successful when the subjective experience of one person is understood as clearly and accurately as possible by another. So meaningful communication is a skill that we must develop.
For dialogue to be successful, we need to first be truthful with ourselves. We must strive to accurately interpret our own thoughts and emotions.
As we become more truthful internally, we can then represent this truth more accurately to others.
As the dialogue becomes more truthful on the collective level, the cultural context (collective-internal) begins to evolve. This upgraded worldspace allows us to hold thoughts and emotions with greater truth, and allows in new stimuli, archetypes, and linguistic patterns that were formerly incomprehensible to the cultural lens.
SO!
The inquiry is three-fold:
-How do we invite and support people in becoming more truthful with their interpretation of their own subjective experience?
-How best can we build a deep but accessible cultural context that can be a common platform for truthful intersubjective communication between vastly different parties, at all levels of personal development?
-What are the right-hand (external) compliments to round out this process? Art is a good upper-right. As we begin to be able to make collaborative art, we move downwards into the collective external world. Since most social/environmental/cultural change initiatives are weighted toward this lower right (external systems) perhaps if we focus on the other three quadrants, we will be able to plug our efforts into many existing lower-right projects.
