June 11, 2003

NEW COLLABORATIVE ENTERPRISES: LIFE AFTER CAPITALISM Last week I outlined a scenario for a post-capitalist, post-consumer economy , and suggested that the engine for this economy would be New Collaborative Enterprises (NCEs), which writer-philosopher Daniel Quinn first envisaged and called New Tribal Ventures. The purpose of this post is to lay out a blueprint for creating such enterprises. It's very rough. This is very much a work in process, a first inarticulate attempt to spec out something potentially very important. Please write me and tell me how to make it better. Are You Ready? First, a checklist of readiness. If you answer 'no' to most or all of these questions, you are probably ready to walk away from the consumer-capitalist economy and help establish a new economy that puts well-being ahead of wealth. Or perhaps you already have. Does your standard of accomplishment and your measure of self-worth depend substantially on your material wealth and/or your level of income? Do you (when you travel or go on vacation), and would you (when you retire), find it difficult to give up the personal physical possessions that root you in one place, in return for the freedom that comes from being comfortable anywhere? Do you (or would you) get an important sense of security from having a large 'nest-egg' and knowing that you have enough assets to last a long time if your income suddenly stopped? Does the idea of running your own business terrify you? Are you genuinely happy doing what you do every day to make a living? If you are retired, you should put these questions in the past tense and answer them in respect of the final few years of your 'working' life. If your answers would have been 'no' then, you're probably ready to help others establish NCEs. The under-utilized talents of retired citizens will play a critical role in building this new economy. Even if you answer 'yes' to most of the first four questions and 'no' to the fifth, you may be ready to at least start thinking about establishing an NCE, and knowing more about them might ultimately change your answers to the earlier questions. What is a New Collaborative Enterprise? In simple terms, an NCE is a self-selected, self-managed group of people (members) making a living together following a set of agreed-upon principles. It differs from traditional commercial enterprises in several important ways: Where traditional commercial enterprises are hierarchical and their relationship to their 'employees' is limited and contractual, NCEs are completely flat, equal networks of peers who accept full responsibility for the well-being of all of their members.  Where traditional commercial enterprises have HR departments that hire and fire employees based on competencies and performance, members of NCEs must agree unanimously to accept or expel members based on whether they provide skills critical to the enterprise. Where traditional commercial enterprises strive to grow and maximize profit for shareholders, NCEs have no shares and operate at the size that optimizes members' well-being (as the members define well-being). Practically speaking, an NCE is limited in size by the necessity to involve all members in most decision-making, and by the need for that decision-making to be consensual, agreed to by all members without the need for voting. How is an NCE different from other types of collaborative enterprise? Unlike a family business, all members of an NCE have an equal say in decisions, and there are no 'mere' employees or absentee 'shareholders'. You're either a member or you're not. Unlike a commune, members of an NCE don`t necessarily live together, or even in the same country. Unlike a cooperative, an NCE is not ancillary to the main 'business' of the members, and does more than just purchase goods for resale to its members at cost. Unlike a collective, the work-product of the NCE is developed and owned by the members working together, rather than by the individual members under a loose cost-sharing 'umbrella'. The 'agreed-upon' principles by which NCEs operate are more like a code of conduct than a corporate charter. Although every NCE will have its own principles, the following common principles will probably be necessary both to differentiate the NCE from a commercial business enterprise (and hence attract disenchanted people away from those enterprises), and for the survival of NCEs collectively: Every member has an equal say in all aspects of the operations of the NCE, and all decisions, including decisions on acceptance of new members and expulsion of members, are made by consensus. [This is radically different from how most businesses are now run. Women are generally better at building consensus than men, and at achieving compromise. The consequence of failure to achieve consensus -- that one or more members will leave the NCE -- will necessarily encourage NCEs to become very good at building consensus, or to stay small if they can't.] When the NCE becomes unwieldy it will, by mutual consent, split into two or more logical, networked NCEs. The NCE will as much as possible attempt to do business with other NCEs in preference to profit-motivated enterprises.  The NCE will define success as the achievement of  well-being for its members, which may include any of: financial security, health, happiness, fun, feeling of belonging, feeling of making a difference, feeling of giving back to society and the world, love for others, time for other pursuits, intellectual challenge, emotional fulfilment etc.  The NCE will maintain high social standards, including respect for others' rights, freedoms and opinions, contribution to the welfare of the society beyond just the NCE's members, etc.  The NCE will maintain high environmental standards, including minimization of waste, pollution, and use of non-renewable resources, keeping a small ecological footprint etc.  The NCE recognizes that there is more to life than work, and will strive to allow members as much time to pursue other activities as possible without critically compromising the NCE's ability to achieve well-being for its members. I am sure that many readers will see the above principles as naive and unworkable, perhaps even contrary to human nature. Families in fact operate on similar principles, and our record at keeping them together and functioning well without coercion is unimpressive. However, I believe that once several NCEs show the way, and prove that this model of making a living works well, with much happier members than the employees of traditional commercial enterprises, the tipping point at which this model begins to supplant the old economic model could be reached quite quickly. This model is instinctively more human, more satisfying, and more sustainable than the commercial model that underpins our current economy. If a large number of people, as a matter of principle, only bought goods made domestically, this would radically refocus the economy on local job-generating production. Likewise, if a large number of people only bought goods and services from NCEs, the exploitative, acquisitive, destructive consumer-capitalist economy would quickly go the way of past 'obsolesced' economies. The old economy would be simply and painlessly replaced. How to Create a New Collaborative Enterprise This is actually the easy part. First you need to decide how you want to make a living (i.e. what you want your role to be, what you want to do, not what industry you want to be part of). Then you need to find others that have complementary skills to yours, people you would like to make a living with. Remember, this isn't a commune, you don't have to want to live with these people, or even share their politics or worldview, you just need to mutually agree (a) that your and their skills are necessary, complementary and collectively sufficient for a viable enterprise (b) that you can accept each other's definition of well-being (everyone's is different) and agree to work collaboratively to achieve all members' well-being, and (c) that you can agree on a set of operating principles like the one above. The Internet is a great place to start looking, and social software promises to make it much easier to find people you'd like to make a living with. That's it. From here on, it's just like setting up and running any other unincorporated enterprise. With the right talent, energy, and stewardship, it's hard to go wrong. Here are the basic steps to get started, Entrepreneurialism 101 : Plan: Put together an enterprise plan. Explain what your enterprise will do, and who (members and customers) it will do it for. Describe how it will do it uniquely to their satisfaction. Identify what resources (skills, time, tools, space, materials, cash) it will need to get started, and once it gets going. Determine where those resources will come from (contributed by members, contributed by customers, acquired outside). Reconsider whether you have the right members. Research: Verify the answers to each point in your plan: Make sure your customers really want what you plan to offer, and that you really know who the customers are. Make sure you can get the resources you need. Allow for contingencies and unexpected change. Test: Start small, try things out, fail quickly and inexpensively, and learn. Set Goals, Roles & Processes: Agree with your members on what you're trying to achieve (leading to their definition of well-being), what everyone's role will be, how you will operate (principles + procedures), and who will do what by when (schedule). Manage your Resources. Make sure you have enough but not too much. If you don't, agree on what needs to be done. Promote Your Enterprise. Make sure the people that want what you offer know you exist. Use Your Networks: Build networks of customers, suppliers, potential members, and people whose opinion or expertise you trust. Give and take from each. Adapt to Change. When your customers' needs change, or the economy changes, or your resource needs change, or resource availability changes, get your members to agree how you need to adapt. It is not inconceivable that the line between your members and your customers will blur or even disappear, especially if the enterprise is large and your offering is a basic need like food. Self-sufficiency, as people who live on islands know, is a good thing. There will be failures. We've been conditioned to compete with those we work with, to take out more than we put in (if we can get away with it), to work at what we think we're good at rather than what we really want to do, and to allow decisions to be made without consensus. These are hard things to unlearn. Just as there are failed marriages, it will take some time and experience to figure out exactly who we each want to make a living with, and most of us won't get it entirely right the first time. But such failures are critical lessons and have a very low cost -- you just change the membership and keep going. There are no shares, no corporations to wind up, no bankruptcies, no lawyers or accountants or bankers to have to deal with, no property to divide up. This is very early thinking on this subject, and much more thinking needs to be done, and many lessons learned, before the launching of New Collaborative Enterprises can become an art, much less a science. As with all human ventures, we'll figure out how to do this by trial and error, and the pioneers will pave the way. We need people to build on these ideas, to spread the word, to talk about it and tinker with the model I've outlined above, probably until it is unrecognizable, and until it isn't my idea, but ours. Next installment: What readers and others have to say, and who's actually doing it. 5:29:23 AM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Dave Pollard. Last update: 02/07/2003; 8:59:13 AM.