Why do we need a contribution accounting system?

First published on 3 January 2014 and last modified on 26 August 2026

........................................................

NOTE: Before 2017 Sensorica used the expression ''value accounting system''. The current expression in use is ''contribution accounting system''. See more on the OVN wiki. The origin of this modification is a redefinition of value, inspired by Tibi's essay ''Scale of social structures''.

.........................................................

With the advent of the Internet and the development of new digital technologies, the economy is following a trend of decentralized globalization. The most innovative environments are open source communities, while peer production is on the rise. That is the crowd that innovates and produces. But the crowd is organized in loose networks, it is geographically dispersed, and contributions to projects follow a long tail distribution. What are the possible reward mechanisms in this new economy?

Our thesis is that in order to reward everyone who participates in p2p economic activity, and thus to incentivise contributions and make participation sustainable for everyone, we need to do contribution accounting: record everyone's contribution, evaluate these contributions, and calculate every participant's fair share. A method for redistribution of benefits can be established on top of this contribution accounting. If this method is transparently exposed at the beginning of the economic process, it then constitutes a contract among participants, and it allows them to estimate their rewards in relation to their efforts. We call this the contribution accounting system (CAS).

For the rest of this article we will try to explain why a CAS is needed in a more decentralized economy, and unavoidable in a global p2p economy.

Contribution accounting and exchanges 

First, we need to make a distinction between a contribution accounting system and an exchange system.

Suppose that we have 3 individuals picking cherries using one basket. The CAS keeps track of how many cherries everyone puts in the basket, so that when they sell the basket at the market they can decide to redistribute the revenue based on everyone's contribution. It describes how contributions from multiple individuals amalgamate into a product (the basket of cherries), during a co-production processes (picking cherries).

Once a product is created, i.e. once the basket is full and ready to go to market, it can be exchanged, using an exchange system that can be of various types: barter, currency-mediated transaction, etc.

The CAS is not a currency, nor a barter system. It doesn't refer to an exchange between our 3 individuals who are picking the cherries, nor between them and another entity, company (hey are not getting paid a salary in exchange of their work). They are collaborating, they all add cherries into the same basket, which is their product to be. The exchange might occur at a later time, after their basket is full and ready to go to the market. Meanwhile, they all share the risk of having their cherries being eaten by birds, or of not getting a good price for their basket.

Production processes

A production process that requires more than one individual can be based on one of the following arrangements, or on a combination of them:

• stigmergic coordination -  Participants don't have aligned goals, don't maintain a relationship other than being contributors to the same process. Ex. this is how Wikipedia is built. 
• cooperation - The goals of participants are not necessarily aligned. Ex. in a corporation employees and business owners usually have divergent interests and goals. 
• collaboration - Requires a large degree of alignment in goals. Ex. a group of individuals climbing a mountain together. 

The traditional capitalist economy is mostly about cooperation, which doesn't require an tight alignment of interests and goals. Production is sustained through an exchange process, where workers exchange the time they spend on different tasks against wages. The exchange process transfers risk from workers to the owners of capital, but at the same time, the workers are stripped of their rights to the output of their labor. Workers cooperate (despite some inconveniences and misalignment in interests and goals) with the owners of capital in production processes because there exists an economic dependency between the two groups. Workers need money, which are by far the predominant means to acquire basic necessities. On the other side, the owners of capital need labor to generate more wealth. This economic dependency is not symmetrical and makes the system prone to abuse, which explains the existence (and necessity) of unions to counterbalance the tendency for exploitation. 

In peer production we have a blend of the 3 arrangements mentioned above, with stigmergic collaboration being very present. In general, no one works for anyone else. Everyone involved is a peer, an affiliate of a peer production network. The p2p culture prescribes that the output of a collaborative and participatory process should not be owned or controlled by anyone in particular, but shared among participants in a fair way. Immaterial artifacts that are produced in such way (such as software or hardware designs) are usually released as commons (they are openly shared, under open source licenses). Material goods can be exchanged on the market, and the revenue generated is shared among all the participants. Service-based models also exist, where services are exchanged on the market against some form of payment, which is redistributed to everyone involved in providing the service. A good example of service-bases p2p model is the Bitcoin network. If we focus only on the mining aspect, minors form a open network of peer participants, they collectively maintain the hardware infrastructure of the entire network. Minors are rewarded in proportion to the computing power that they provide to the network. 

The normal and the long tail modes of production

In the traditional capitalist economy wages should be regulated by the free labor market, if we make abstraction of all sorts of mechanisms through which this market can be biased (labor unions and governmental intervention included). The market is responsible for the difference in salary between an engineer and a clerk. The notion of job implies that a salary is determined and agreed upon before the employee starts working (with the possibility modify the salary based on performance). Since the amount of $ per hours of work is pre-established, the capital owner needs to make sure that the employee produces enough during the work hours. Therefore, a new role is needed within the organization to guarantee this, the beloved project manager. Traditional organizations spend a lot of energy doing time management, because usually the interest of the worker is not perfectly aligned with the interest of the capital owner (see cooperative production above). Traditional firms operate on the normal mode of production (from the ''normal curve'' or ''bell curve''), where the number of workers is minimized, and the majority of employees in a category of roles produce almost the same amount. Very few workers produce less than the norm, because they are eliminated (i.e. fired). Very few produce more, because there are no incentives to do so, the association with the mission of the traditional enterprise is weak, the sense of belonging is usually low (usually fabricated by the HR department), the sense of ownership is almost absent, etc.

The situation is very different in a peer production environment, which is open to participation, is decentralized in terms of allocation of resources, and uses a horizontal governance system. In peer production, we see a log tail distribution of contributions, which means that a very large number of individuals are involved in production, only a very small percentage of those contribute a lot, the great majority of them contribute very little, and most of the production is done by those who make small contributions. A prearrangement on revenue is impossible in this context. First, because the production process is very dynamic and relations of production cannot be contract-based. Second, the process involves a great number of individuals that are distributed all over the planet, therefore it is impossible to do time management. Moreover, no one can force anyone else to work more. In this mode of production we need to evaluate rewards after the fact, based on deliverables or based on the type of activity and its potential to increase the probability of production of valuable products. A system is needed to account for everyone's contribution, to evaluate these contributions and turn them into rewards.We call this an access to benefits algorithm. In some sense, the access to benefits algorithm is a distributed solution to time management, which can be applied to large scale and very dynamic peer production processes. It embodies positive and negative incentives, and can contain parameters to influence individual participation and quality of contributions, it can regulate behavior, it gamifies production. For example, a reputation system can be tied to the access to benefits algorithm: a higher reputation results in a higher reward, all other things being equal, and vice versa. Moreover, it can also contain parameters to incentivise periodic and frequent contributions, and to prioritize important processes. 

Contribution accounting and network resource planning

The long tail mode of production needs a contribution accounting system in order to allow fair redistribution of rewards. It allows participants to record contributions of various types and it uses an access to benefits algorithm to turn them into benefits. But this is only the first part of the story.

In the OVN model contributions are attributed to the creation of resources, which can be documents, designs, parts or full prototypes, etc. (some contributions go into infrastructure of community development and they lack clear resource or deliverables). From the resource level, contributions aggregate at the project level. A project is an open venture, or a business unit. It is the smallest unit within the OVN that can generate all sorts of benefits, including revenue.

The fact that contributions can be attributed directly to resources (not projects) is very important for commons-based peer production (CBPP), which builds on open source. On Github, pieces of open source software (OSS) can be picked up by someone and remixed into something else. Open source hardware (OSHW) development follows the same path, i.e. designs (mechanical, electronic, optical) are forked and remixed. This ability to fork and remix parts of more complex systems makes open source development a very efficient process. This explains why modularity and interoperability are very important properties of OSS and OSHW. If rewards are envisioned for the work done, CBPP needs to find a way to account for contributions at the resource level and to track the way resources are put together in different contexts (projects are considered contexts). If contributions are only recorded at the project level, projects become silos of economic activity with a reduced possibility of benefits flows between them.

Taking into consideration the structure of OSS development, the solution to the benefit/reward redistribution problem is to attach some information to individual resources created that allows their reevaluation later, when they get remixed and integrated into larger systems, in other contexts. The metrics of evaluation can vary depending on the context. This is the role of the network resource planning system NRP, which allows benefits/rewards to propagate upwards through value streams and the creation of a single resource can generate rewards from many different sources (many projects), depending on how many successful projects are using it.

This goes even further, because this same NRP also provides a growth mechanism for CBPP networks. To illustrate this, imagine that members of a CBPP community decide to attribute equity to resources that are created by other communities. (Example: Sensorica decides to integrate a piece of open source hardware developed by another OSHW community). First, why would Sensorica affiliates decide to diminish their revenue by giving equity to other groups when they can just copy the open source design? The economic rationale is to reduce efforts required to internalize new capacity (new knowledge and know how around that piece of open hardware) and to increase the speed of execution (a first to market advantage). CBPP networks grow by affiliation. By offering equity to other CBPP communities they are essentially building bridges to innovate faster and improve production processes. This is the higher-level structure of networks-of-networks (see the NOICE project)

We believe that in order to sustain the CBPP we need to create infrastructure that allows attribution of value-related properties to individual resources, to allow reevaluation of these individual resources in context, and to facilitate the formation of networks-of-networks that preserve the individuality of every community part of it, but at the same time brings them together on the same economic platform.

Contribution accounting in transition models

As the economy transitions to a networked state, existing organizations are trying to adapt. We already see traditional corporations going from in-house R&D, to outsourcing R&D and more recently to crowdsourcing R&D. This movement is forced by the need to innovate fast, and by the fact that open source lowers the price to a point where traditional high-tech corporations can be put out of business. Crowdsourcing R&D means utilizing all sorts of schemes to attract the participation of the crowd into innovation processes that are sponsored by these corporations. In early crowdsourcing practices corporations tried to control the innovation by signing non-disclosure agreements with the participants. Crowdsourcing platforms were created to match corporate projects with skilled individuals. The practice was competitive, i.e. the company would chose a winner among different proposals, and usually the winner was rewarded with money. This practice gradually became more open, since the first iteration of crowdsourcing platforms were not very successful in attracting highly skilled individuals. In order to attract innovation, in order to grow open innovation communities around them, corporations need to think seriously about the reward mechanisms they put in place. It is not so difficult to understand why the early crowdfunding platforms were not very good attractors. I would not compete in a call by a company to design something for a few bucks, with a good probability of losing the race, knowing that the company will monopolize the work and probably make a lot of profits on it. The trend is to go from closed crowdsourcing to truly open source innovation, which must be accompanied by a broadening of the reward system. Since companies are going to deal with the crowd more and more, they need a contribution accounting system to account for contributions. See this presentation by Sensorica making the distinction between competitive crowdsourcing and collaborative crowdsourcing.  

In parallel to the adaptation of traditional companies we also see the creation of hybrid organizations and models. For example, in the realm or hardware, we have the emergence of ecosystems like Arduino and 3D Robotics/DIY Drones. They are composed of a traditional for-profit organization surrounded by an open source community. This post describes the situation. The difference here is that in most cases the open source community pre-existed the traditional for-profit, the later being created to manufacture and to distribute the products that are based on the innovation created by the open community. These hybrid models, the ones that are sustainable and successful, maintain an precarious equilibrium between the profit motive that can arise within the centralized traditional organization the open and sharing culture within the open innovation community. In some cases, this equilibrium is not maintained and the synergy between the two entities disappears, destroying the ecosystem. This was the case of Makerbot and the RepRap community, well captured in the Netflix documentary Print the Legend. 

By Tiberius Brastaviceanu

 AllOfUs

------------------------------------------------

NOTE to the authors: this text is also published on the P2PF Wiki. Modifications done here must be also done there. 

Capitalism fights us now

This post was motivated by a documentary that you can watch on Youtube: Counterfeiting. 

First, they don't take you seriously. Later, they laugh at you. Then they fight you, and after you win. I think the new economy (call it multitude or p2p) is one step away from going mainstream.

When society reaches a tipping point, all the absurdities of the old system become apparent. This time around, our global society is undergoing profound transformations because the new technology introduces new possibilities, which in turn affect the way we produce and distribute value. But the conflict between those invested in the old system and the proponents of change opens along ethical issues and values. When did we start to call sharing of designs, counterfeiting?

If you read history books you will not be able to miss the importance of diffusion of technology across continents. Marco Polo is depicted as a hero, because he embarked on a 24 year long and very dangerous voyage from Venice to China and back, and enriched Europe with new technology from the East.  How can a culture consider Marco Polo a hero because he copied the Chinese, but at the same time consider the Chinese thieves, because they copy technology and designs from the west? There is nothing important to understand there, other than the fact that our modern society is undergoing a crisis, a major transformation.

Copying and sharing are essential to development. If an economy starts to vilify essential things like copying and sharing, it is just a matter of time before it collapses, because by denying essentials it will start to accumulate ineficiencies.

How value networks can articulate with the present economy - an example in food preparation and distribution

Yesterday I had a conversation with my friend Paul about the advantages of open value networks (OVN) over classical structures, including co-ops.

picture comes from this website

Context

Paul is involved in #occupy Montreal and they are now organizing a center for preparation and distribution of vegan food in Montreal. They also want it to be very local. This operation would require gathering products from different local farmers, cooking/preparing, packaging and distributing raw or prepared food. 

Question

Should they create a co-op or an OVN? 

My answer 

They can have a co-op embedded within a value network. 

Value Networks, about commercializing their products

We take the example of a specific value network, SENSORICA.

The problem

One of SENSORICA’s main reason for existence is to provide for its members/affiliates the means of subsistence and well-being. This is to say that the surplus value that is created by the network must be exchanged on the market against other values, which are to be redistributed to participants based on their relative contribution. This redistribution is done according to the value accounting system, to which all members must adhere. The goal here is to establish a channel of distribution for SENSORICA’s products. The problem is that there are laws and regulations which makes it difficult for a non-legal entity like SENSORICA to sell certain products. Someone must take the blame if those products don't respect established standards, and our society doesn't know how to interface with things like SENSORICA.

Solution 

In the current situation, we need to create legally recognizable forms to channel products through them. This is actually the role Tactus Scientific Inc. plays for the Mosquito Scientific Instrument System, designed for the scientific instrument market segment.

How to play the open game in the present and future economy

This is the fifth draft; it will evolve based on your feedback. First published on 6/19/12. Last modified on Jan 30, 2026. Come back later for more...  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More and more solutions to our problems today come in the form of open artifacts, i.e open source software and hardware, created by online communities and networks. Traditionally, most of these communities have relied on voluntary participation, i.e. the developers do not expect a direct or immediate tangible reward for their contributions. These open artifacts have been regarded as marginal, mostly intended for amateurs and hobbyists. How can one expect serious things to come out of loose organizations that don't use the prescribed governance model and methodology, and don't have access to a large budget? At least this was the unadvised belief, until we realized that critical infrastructure, like the Internet, runs mostly on open source software, created and maintained by these unorthodox organizations. Ingenuity, the helicopter drone, part of the Perseverance mission to the planet Mars, operates on Linux, which is an open source operating system. Bitcoin, runs on open source software and is supported by an open group of people (miners), who can be practically anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Since Bitcoin was launch in 2009, no one has hacked it, despite the astronomical reward, ranging in the tens of billions of dollars, if we only consider the abandoned accounts of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the network. So some open artifacts developed by unorthodox organizations are pretty serious, highly secure, mission critical, or operating at global scale. There are also lots of crappy ones, as there are crappy products offered by serious companies.

What I call playing the open game is developing open artifacts (based on open source technologies) relying on unorthodox organizations and being able to make a living.

There are a few important components to the open game... 

 

First, there's the intellectual property regime. Open source means that no one can create a temporary economic monopoly on a particular solution, as it is the case with products based on patented technologies. If one cannot control the artifact how can one capture value or generate wealth? 

In the most simple terms, how can one make money developing open source technologies. My first reaction to this question is to point to the obvious: 

• IBM has invested billions of US dollars in Linux and other open source technologies. ref
• Google has gained mobile dominance by opening Android, the mobile operating system. 
• Tesla has engaged in a hybrid IP strategy, i.e. open source patented. 

The second order economic model 

It becomes possible to generate wealth while developing open source technologies, if the business model is not simplistic and/or linear. In most viable cases, whatever is open source is not the product, but by open sourcing some technology in the IP portfolio, these companies produce some effects within their ecosystem, which they can harvest or leverage for their core business. In the case of Google, opening Android increased its adoption rate, while propagating some core Google functionalities, thus putting Google services in billions of mobile devices, which then could be monetized using Google's core business model. We also see a second order kickback pattern with online services like Facebook, where free access is given to a digital service (search or connecting and interacting with people), while making money from selling users' generated data or attention. So we need to stop thinking about business as a simple and linear process, as simply transactional.

A similar example of second order economic model, extended to a whole community or ecosystem, is Tiki, an open source wiki CMS groupware? The wealth generation model is similar to Red Hat, the poster child, based on support, training, and consulting services around the core open artifact, which is offered for free. 

 

At this point, I find that is it important to raise to your awareness the fact that the wealth generation model is not the same when the technology is software or hardware. It is beyond the scope of this post to dive deeper into this distinction, but if you're interested, we can discuss in the comments.

Note that I have deliberately use the term open artifact instead of product and the expression wealth generation or economic model instead of business model, to avoid cognitive interference. When we say product people think about commodity, something that you can buy/sell on the market. But you cannot sell the Linux operating system (an open artifact), which defies the law of supply and demand, as it is an abundant, non-rivalrous resource, since its reproduction (copy/paste) and distribution (download) costs are negligible. The case of open source hardware is not the same, but similar. The costs for reproduction and distribution are high for material artifacts, but since everyone has access to the design, anyone can fabricated it locally, (see more on distributed fabrication and DIY - Do-It-yourself), making use of digital fabrication techniques (3D printing, CNC, etc.).

Beyond money

So what about the expression wealth generation? 

When we say wealth most people think about money. When engaging in open source development, people are seeking other forms of wealth, for what they are in themselves (or for a later conversion into money, monetization). For example, someone may want to contribute to an open source project to learn new skills, to develop new relations with people that have specific skills or that share specific values, or to build reputation. In some cases, when money is introduced as a motivation factor in open projects the social cohesion breaks down.

 

So playing the open game requires a renunciation of mechanisms of control of intellectual property, which entails the refusal to create a temporary monopoly and thus the adoption of more sophisticated economic models or the adoption of different forms of wealth or new forms of value. But the open games deploys within a very different organizational environment, to which we already alluded above, as most of the time the open artifact emerges from open organizations or networks. 

p2p as a new organization paradigm 

Recently, we have witnessed the emergence of new economic models that brake away from the gift economy, directly rewarding those who contribute (with time, financial capital, social capital, ...) to open projects. The open artifact is gradually becoming sustainable. The first step in this direction can be illustrated by Open Source Ecology, which designs open hardware for farming, construction and manufacturing. The designs are  entirely open and free, but the Open Source Ecology community is not interested in commodification, i.e. market exchanges, their designs made with DIY (Do It Yourself) in mind, destined to be produced by the user, or very close to the point of use. In the case of Open Source Ecology their model for subsistence is based on revenues in fiat currency, from donations or educational services.

Open crowdsourcing is another model in which designers, part of an (open) community, are rewarded to complete a project. This scheme doesn't only rely on donations or voluntary participation, since those who contribute are rewarded in exchange with some symbolic gifts (tokens of recognition), reputation tokens, job opportunities, etc. Arduino is an example of such model, a hybrid between the open (value) network OVN and a traditional business, which relies on a vast community of enthusiasts to propose new designs, find and eliminate bugs, engage in promotion, etc. 

There are also closed and non-transparent crowdsourcing initiatives, such as prizes, in which only the best contributors are rewarded. Contributors are often placed in competition against each other. The resultant designs or artifacts are closed and remain under the control of the initiator. We are definitely against this new form of human exploitation, as you can see in this post. 

Sensorica is based on a more radical model, referred to as an open value network (OVN), which implements commons-based peer design production. It is in fact a mix between a gift economy and a transaction-based, or market economy. Sensorica can produces open artifacts that can either be exchange on the market or disseminated as DIY open designs. Various forms of rewards (including revenue from market exchanges or donations) are redistributed to all contributors in proportion to their contributions, based on a Benefit Redistribution Algorithm, which is at the heart of the Network Resource Planning and Contribution Accounting system (NRP-CAS). 

P2P

a post by Poor Richard

What is peer-to-peer (P2P)  culture?
P2P culture is the post-capitalist framework that makes the most sense to me. It includes but transcends capitalism; and encompasses many hybrids of open and closed, public and private, hierarchical and egalitarian associations.

photo by Ian McCalister

P2P emphasizes cooperation, openness, fairness, transparency, information symmetry, sustainability, accountability, and innovation motivated by the full range of human aspirations even including, but definitely not limited to, personal financial gain.

I call p2p a “post-capitalist framework” because many of us are quite happy to abandon capitalism’s euphemisms and reductio ad absurdum altogether. However, other 99%-ers still consider it a major factor in lifting millions from poverty. They would rather reform and adapt it to humanitarian and ecological ends than to abandon it for something novel. I think it is entirely possible to craft forms of capitalism which “do no harm”, and I think there is ample room in the p2p community for such “diversity of tactics.”
Read more on Richard's blog... 

By AllOfUs

New economy - how things will be designed, produced and distributed in the future

Here's another example of the newly emerging pattern of design, production and distribution.

We are glad to see that our vision of the new economy is finally materializing. In 2008 we proposed the Discovery Network concept (see the post describing the initial motivation behind it). In 2010 we launched our first pilot project for the new economy a commons-based peer production system the Matchmaking Device System. It failed...  : (    but we learned a lot.

In 2011 we launched the second pilot project SENSORICA, which evolved into an open, decentralized and self-organizing value network.  SENSORICA is increasing in value and potential since its creation. 

Also in 2011, the know how developed within  SENSORICA spilled over to glocal food systems. In Ohio, USA local food systems are now morphing into value networks, see Greener Acres.

Furthermore, early this year we initiated another project in Montreal, through the #occupy movement, to implement value networks in clothing design and manufacturing. This is the #occupy Fashion project.

In the following weeks we will publish a few videos and documents detailing how value networks form, self-organize, and operate. This information will be put into context based on our new understanding of the new economy.

By t!b!

What are the #occupy camps?

The Occupation camps across the world are not just protest sites. They are not just new political spaces. They are in fact embryos of the emergent new world.

They are emergent cities
If you go to the nearest camp you'll find in there everything you'd need to survive, even during a Canadian winter. For example, only two days after it's initiation the Montreal camp had already a health center, a kitchen that fed easily over 500 people the very first evening, a center of communication and coordination, an information and donation center, a political space (where the assemblies take place), a cultural space (where people play drums, dance, paint...), and obviously a housing space. Believe it or not, we even have the protection of the militia (the Quebecois patriots), who put their tent across the street from the main camp, having great visibility over the area.

The kitchen, first day

New Economy, New Wealth

This presentation by Arthur Brock is really nicely done. It pretty much summarizes everything. Send it to your friends who think you're crazy...   : )

New Economy, New Wealth on Prezi

By AllOfUs

Wikinomics in 5 minutes

By AllOfUs

The Discovery Network Back Office Catalog

A new component was added to the Discovery Network concept, the The Back Office Catalog. To participate, go to the FORUM.  

Click to open document 

Visit Multitude Innovation

By AllOfUs

Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption

The Multitude Social Movement seen from the consumption point of view.

Visit Economical Alternatives

By AllOfUs

Symbionomics: Stories of a New Economy

Visit Economical Alternatives

By AllOfUs

ReMade: The Rebirth of the Maker Movement

The multitude movement takes over innovation and production. 

The economy belongs to the MULTITUDE!

ReMade: The Rebirth of the Maker Movement (1st Trailer) from Electromagnate on Vimeo.

By AllOfUs

Using Technology to Start a Successful Business in (Spite of) a Depression

An interesting article about technological skills you NEED to survive this economical storm. The world in changing, you need to adapt! 

Did you know that some of the most powerful entrepreneurial ideas in the lexicon of human knowledge arose from the ashes of economic catastrophe? It’s true. And the reason is a lot simpler than you think: when times get tough, unemployment increases. So what do people do? They become entrepreneurs.  Read more... 

By AllOfUs

The myth of autonomy debunked, what about the myth of initiative?

photo by r8r
We've all been conditioned into believing that only a small percentage of all people are able to work autonomously. The machine/control paradigm of management is founded in this belief. In order to make people productive apparently you need to tell them what to do and how to do it.

Classical hierarchical organizations work that way. The executive sets up goals and directions, managers translate them into concrete directives and actions and pass them to their employees. Employees execute these orders. The employee is seen as a mechanical piece, part of a complex mechanical system. The machine metaphor is clearly apparent here. He/she needs to execute the given tasks within the imposed constraints. Yes, there is feedback going from the employee to the manager, and up to the executive, but there is very little autonomy.

It turns out that human organizations behave quite differently from mechanical automata, especially when creativity is the goal of the game. First, an organization needs to win the cooperation of it's members. A mechanical piece has no consciousness, no free will. You put it into its place within the system and it turns the way it is supposed to. A human being has the choice to do a great job, or a crappy job. In order to gain the full cooperation, organizations must satisfy for the individual some fundamental psychological and material needs. The individual needs to perceive that his/her contribution is important, that he/she is part of something bigger-a form of spirituality. The individual needs to perceive that he/she is respected, valued, appreciated. The individual must also believe that his/her contribution is justly rewarded, etc. etc. Second, it is now well understood that the working environment and all the psychological needs of the individual affect creativity in a major way. Even if you gain the full cooperation of your employees, you are still not sure that the creative juices are flowing to the optimal capacity.

Google understood all this! Among all the successful companies, their employees have the greatest autonomy. On Google's campus you find cafes, bars, swimming pools, game rooms, parks, you name it. You can take your laptop and work from the swimming pool, and your boss is not going to be there to pass you the sunscreen. Google understood that they can get more from their employees if they only emphasize on the job that has to get done, and let the employee decide how to do it. And it works! The myth of autonomy was debunked.

But there is another myth. We are told that the great majority of us have no initiative. If we are not given directions we don't know what to do. We might be autonomous, i.e. able to organize ourselves once we know what has to be done, but the majority of us are apparently incapable of setting goals and directions. What about Linux? Who tells developers which directions they should take? This myth is about to be debunked as well.

I am not advocating that all human beings are autonomous and show initiative. But what is the real percentage? The opposition to my argument brings up statistics, scientific studies made on our actual society, showing only a very small percentage of driven individuals with initiative. But wait a second! There is something scientifically wrong here, the method could be good, but the conclusions are false. The logic used is flawed. We are talking about what us humans are capable of, about our potential, we are NOT describing our actual society. We've seen that before. A scientific study on black slaves on a plantation in South Carolina USA, at the beginning of the century, would most probably reveal that the majority of these individuals were submissive and dependent. Can we conclude that it is in the nature of a black person to be submissive and dependent? Of course NOT! We know that humans are malleable. Put a child into slavery and he/she will adopt a slave mentality. It is a matter of adaptation! You don't comply you die! It is about adaptation, it is a force rather than a weakness. This shows the capacity of all humans to thrive in harsh situations. But once slavery was abolished these same people rapidly acquired the skills to live in society. They become teachers, business man, scientists, doctors, and even presidents.

Our actual system has made us dependent! Our masters only need us to produce, not to be autonomous, not to show too much initiative. We have bee conditioned into being docile and dependent. The scientific data describing individuals only describe the actual system, NOT the our potential.

What is the percentage of autonomous individuals with initiative, potentially speaking, within a culture of freedom and self-determination? If YOU are not a such person you may want be become one, YOU CAN. 

By AllOfUs

The Multitude Project is building the engine of the new economy

This is an experiment of historical proportions. A strong and diverse group was formed to build the infrastructure of a new kind of economical entity. We called this new institution, which is a global collaborative innovation network capable of putting an idea on the market, a "Discovery Network". 

The Discovery Network is a value-based structure as opposed to a power-based structure. It is a decentralized network as opposed to a hierarchical centralized organization. The core values are sharing, collaboration, openness. The Discovery Network is kept together by symbiotic relations, interdependency, synergy. This new form of organization will enable an individual in a poor country, possessing only brilliant ideas and sharp social skills, to generate tremendous wealth for his local community. 

We are testing the Discovering Network architecture for the first time on the Matchmaking Device System, an invention of Multitude Project's founder Tiberius Brastaviceanu. You can read more about the "Discovery Network" concept here.      

   

Anybody interested can join our group as an active participant or just as an observer. You can do so by filling the form on the Matchmaking Device System homepage. 

By AllOfUs