OPEN

Image: a Lego Vladimir Illich Lenin, by arimoore (via Moonrise).

[Note: this is a post that got stuck in the u-bend of my dysfunctional blog workflow recently – in the spirit of the blog as public notebook I’m just getting it out there.]

Revolutions and networks: I may get poetic, practical or pedantic at times, but most of my lines of thought end up at or can be traced back to revolutions and networks.

Primarily the revolution we are living through as a result of the web’s arrival in the world and the networks we live in and how those are being expressed, optimised and expanded by living online.

So I’m always interested in the perspectives of others on revolutions, especially when they take the care to look to history for lessons in how they work and what it means for the web-driven revolution we’re living through now.

And when I see Charlene Li talking about revolution, I’m definitely going to pay attention: Charlene’s been one of the constants in my reading list over the past couple of years, and the work of the wider team at Forrester has been in turns inspiring, informative, reassuring and (sometimes unexpectedly) complementary to the work I’ve been doing with my colleagues / co-conspirators…

I’m definitely encouraged by the sentiment of a post and a presentation she made recently about the difference between radicals and revolutionaries. Well worth a look and a read, but the upshot is that while radicals provoke and stir up change revolutionaries are the ones who go further and make the transformations stick.

How do they do that and how do we make become revolutionaries in our organisations, industries, fields of endeavours, and our networks beyond that? The answer, according to Charlene, is to bring frameworks to bear that can help to make long-lasting change possible.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s this line of thought that the iCrossing Social Spaces F-numberramework has come from, sparked by the discourse about how you actually bring change through social computing, social media to large organisations that I had with Jim Byford one afternoon about a year ago.

Charlene’s starting point for strategy is called POST:

P: People: Assess your customers’ social activities.

O: Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish.

S: Strategy: Plan for how relationships will change.

T: Technology: Decide which social technologies to use.

It’s a good place to start, but there are also other ways to think about it. The three principles we work to in the social media team at iCrossing are:

• Understand your networks.
• Be useful to your networks.
• Be live in your networks.

I would stress that your networks are about more than your customers, but should include all stakeholders. Networks are best searched for by topic, by the focus of interest, i.e. by what they mean to themselves, rather than what they mean to you.

Anyhow, I’m going to be going into more detail on all of this soon. Writing a book/blessay of sorts that should make things clear.

: : Acually, all of this also brings to mind another post by Umair Haque that is so cutting and to quick that I feel like printing it out and keeping a copy in my pocket with me always. (Must get a printer one of these days.)

It’s a rallying call to *all of us*. That the time is now and that if you understand what is happening with the web revolution around us you need to start thinking about what that means for the way that you are going to change things.

Because change is very possible right now in everything from the global markets to the way your local neighbourhood is run.

Read the whole thing, but here’s the conclusion. One which seriously stirs my soul – I think about it a lot at the moment. And I’ll think about this morning as I sit down to write an outline plan for some changes in my world….

Let me put it more sharply. I think we have two choices. Help fix things, and get rich, or just get blown up along with everyone else.

Let me make that concrete.

-For venture guys, that means: most of you are going to have to develop new investment theses, centred on redefining industrial era DNA. What do next-gen value chains really look like? What do the economics of production and consumption look like tomorrow?

-For entrepreneurs, that means: forget about hot products/services (ads, games, etc) and tech. Think about DNA, and how it can reshape the markets and industries that are crying out for help. Where does business suck today, and how can you make it radically better?

-For corporates, that means: stop making acquisitions driven by growth/share thinking. That’s easily dominated. Make acquisitions driven by DNA, and use it to suck the lameness out of your strategy – fast.

What are you waiting for? Let’s get on with it…