OPEN

Networks change everything they touch. New models for business will emerge as we begin to understand their potential.

Recently I’ve seen a potential model for loose networks of individuals to be applied to real-world challenges.

Let me tell you about it…

The SOMESSO conference in London on Friday was a deep draft of insights on how the age of networks is beginning to transform business.

I arrived after lunch, just in time to catch a double-blast of Lee Bryant and Umair Haque. Both had intensely engaging and compelling arguments to make – Lee about throwing off the 20th’s century organisation’s legacies and Umair about how the Obama campaign gives us a view on how 21st century organsations can succeed. More on those later, mostly likely – they were taking mee deeper into ideas I’ve been following them develop on their respective blogs.

There was something very new to me though, in Lloyd Davis’s presentation based loosley around the themes and stories of being a “social artist” and the work of art that is the Tuttle Club.

Social Media Club’s been running in London for a while now, and new nodes are springing up in various locales. And now Lloyd a hundred or so Tuttlers are trying out a new approac to appying their distributed talents, experiences and knowledge to real-world problems.

The formula is simple: Crowds / Tribes / Teams. (Its so elegant and compelling that I recalled it immediately afterwards without referring to notes, and have had the phrase/structure bouncing round my head all weekend.)

Read Lloyd’s post at the Tuttle Club blog for more on this, but here’s the nub as it is applied to a consulting process:

We begin by meeting you as a Crowd of highly experienced, highly creative and highly competent people. As we engage with your business, we work with you to create a series of Tribes – groups formed around your specific business issues, made up of those most engaged by them, and with experience most relevant to them. Finally, each Tribe becomes a Team, committed to delivering clearly defined solutions to specific, carefully considered issues.

This model is no in play, apparently. I can’t wait to hear about their adventures…