Michel Bauwens from P2P Fundation

I think I could not articulate Multitude Innovation, nor the philosophy behind my Multitude Project better than Michel Bauwens. 

Reflections on Open Innovation

What is the big buzz about open innovation? What’s the big change? The subject was discussed at the Connecta 2010 Congress in São Paulo and at Stefan Lindegaard´s workshop (during The Hub SP Winter School). It´s been approached in books and web communities and accounts for more than 12 million links at google search. Here are some thoughts about the theme from the last few weeks. Read more... 

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 use of social media as a tool for marketing

A few months ago we warned corporations to be very careful in using social media as their new playground for marketing. They don't control this medium! They don't control the narrative anymore! It was easy for them to make you believe almost anything they wanted in a society provided only with one-to-many communications, controlled by them. Many-to-many communications are changing the game. The message doesn't  move directly from them to the consumer. It propagates from person to person, and at every step anyone can play with it. In order to get your message around it must be a powerful meme, it must resonate with people to make them push it further, share it with their peers. If the public perception of a company is bad, the message released by that company WILL get distorted and WILL play against. It's harder now to fool everyone...  If you do things wrong, sooner or later the shit will hit the fan. The certain way to prevent a branding and marketing disaster is to be honest.

Social media will make organizations responsible by making it harder for them to lie and to hide their dirty stuff.

A lesson in AT&T's Facebook approach

More companies are embracing social media these days for marketing purposes. But at the same time, there's always the risk of PR disaster. Kenny Malone reports on one approach companies can take when Facebook turns unfriendly. Read more...

By AllOfUs

Science publication 2.0

Here's how the power structure which consolidated within the scientific community is getting dissolved...  Oh, don't tell me you thought that science was objective...  Science is highly instrumentalized and used by different centers of power! One lever of control is the publication process. This is how they manufacture truth. Is it in  Nature or Science? Then it MUST be true...

I am a scientist myself, I believe that the scientific method is a valuable tool to acquire practical knowledge about our physical environment. Don't get me wrong... I am not telling you no to believe in science. What I am telling you is that scientific knowledge is never clear cut, there is always debate, and because of this reason there is room to temporarily influence the scientific community and the public as well.

Do you want a good example of mixing science with politics, economy and finance? The debate around climate change... There might be negative anthropogenic climate change. But one thing is clear, the hype around this subject became exaggerated. It was infused with pseudo science, emotions, irrationality, etc. What's the drive behind it? Follow the money! The entire "market-based" solution, including a global carbon tax and strict regulations are designed to strengthen the grip on power of the global financial and economical cabal. I am not saying we are not damaging our environment! I am just saying that this debate was intrumentalized by the global elite in order to strengthen their global system of economical enslavement. The science was compromised under tremendous pressures, publications were filtered, data was massaged, etc.

A new European-funded initiative is advocating an entirely new system of science publishing, in which scientists avoid the hassles of traditional peer review by taking a quietly radical step: post their results on their websites.  

As the news release for Liquid Publication simply states: "Don't print it; post it." To disseminate the information, the program has a software platform that lets other scientists search for what's been posted, leave comments, link related works, and gather papers and information into their own personalized online journals -- all for free. Read more: Publish or post? - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences 

See also the Scientific Oeuvre article and concept.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around this subject become a member of Science 2.0 on LinkedIn, or of Science 2.0 & Publication 2.0 group on Research Gate

By AllOfUs

Having problems with your employer?

The Multitude Project designed the Boomerang method to help individuals in their up-heal battle with their employers.

Have you been wrongfully terminated? 

Have you been treated with injustice by your employer? 

We've added another tactic to this method, which gives you the possibility to socially paralyze your company. You have power! The Multitude has power. Corporations need to get used to it...

See the Unleash the beast section for the new addition.

By AllOfUs

Crowdfunding Science

What a great example of multitude movement action! Scientific development IS controlled by large centralized institutions for different motives. As in communism with a planned economy, which led to disaster, we are living in a society with planned science, which is moving fast towards disaster. Scientific development and innovation must be open! Regulations must only apply to the use of new knowledge, not to its development.


ANDREA GAGGIOLI AND GIUSEPPE RIVA propose Crowdfunding Science:

We suggest crowd-funding as a possible strategy to cope with the lack of investments in research, as well as to increase democratization in the sciences. Projects seeking funding could be stored in an online repository. Each project would include a description of its objectives, duration, and requested contribution. Investors (either people or funding agencies) could decide which projects to fund. Read more in this letter to Science...  

Andrea further adds:

The closest example of crowdfunding science is Cancer Research UK's MyProjects scheme. Launched in October 2008, MyProjects allows Cancer Research UK donors to search projects by type of cancer and location to find a specific research project to donate money.

See also S.C.I.En.C.E.

SCIEnCE – Share Collaborative Ideas, Enact Cooperative Efforts – is part of the growing movement dedicated to encouraging public sharing of testable ideas. Not just ideas, but plans of action – ideas will be developed into specific, step-by-step proposals via Wiki-inspired community editing. A new system for attributing credit will be used to distribute funding for SCIEnCE projects. The projects outlined by these collaboratively written proposals will be tackled with a cooperative experimental approach. Society will benefit much more from the ensuing scientific and medical progress than any individual could benefit from the prestige of doing it first and doing it alone. 

By AllOfUs

Stafan's good reads on Innovation

Stefan is a specialist on open innovation. He blogs on 15inno.com. He shares with us a short list of good reads for the week Good Reads on Innovation

By AllOfUs

Moving Beyond Open Innovation

"Opening up R&D organizations to outside ideas has become a powerful weapon in the strategic arsenal of research managers. As Henry Chesbrough writes, “[O]pen innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology.” This strategy has been associated with notable commercial successes, such as Procter & Gamble’s SpinBrush, sourced not from internal R&D but rather a group of inventors in Cleveland." Read more from Moving Beyond Open Innovation

By AllOfUs

Democratizing Innovation

From MIT Press:

"Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.

The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive.

Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license."

Get this book for FREE from Google Books now

By AllOfUs