Building the Business Model...STOP!!

Step Back, Think, Organize, Proceed.

That’s what I did after I posted the this. At some point I was caught in a chicken and egg dilemma: “Should I build the draft business model (BM) and use it to build the core bioteam?? Or should I get the bioteam and then build the BM with them??” I was inclined to the former. Then, almost as soon as I published the post I started to get “messages” everywhere suggesting that I needed to focus on the team issue, and I realized that forming or putting together a team is what I’ve been trying do from the very beginning of the NEH. It has been a big, let’s say, “source of frustration”. Do I really need to have permanent face to face contact with a core bioteam for the CoE to be a success?? I think that having face to face contact with a team is very important for what I intend CoE to do. Amongst other things, it is about localization, and localization without regular face to face encounters and relationships with my locals doesn’t make much sense. So, at this stage I’m still not comfortable with the idea that I need a core physical bioteam for the CoE, but I do think that several local teams interested in the project should be created simultaneously.

So I decided to STOP with the BM goal and check my alignment with it. Here is the outcome of that decision:

I was asked to choose one place where the CoEproject  would start. Another piece of wisdom was “people invest in teams, not really in individuals”. I addition, very often I see the “get together the right people with the right set of skills” sentence. Initially my thought was “I’ll start it in Brisbane, Australia”. As time passed and I slept on the conversation without being able to completely convince myself about the “one team to start with” thing, a new exciting piece of the puzzle started to form. So, what if the project starts “here on earth”?? Can I make earth my place to start with?? I know, where else would I, right?…but, you know what I mean: How could it start simultaneously and globally??

Imagine: People interested in the CoE project from all around the world gathered in a virtual event. Our first test is to actually run the event together. With the help of an online map, people would add their locations to identify interested neighbors to form future diasporas.

What we would test with the event is, if a mass of people who don’t know each other well, if at all, can, under shared vision and values, develop its own “upgraded democratic [and decentralized] government”. 

"Many of the failures of our current democracy stem from a centralized, “one-size-fits-all” form of representation; we anticipate a world where legislation is crafted not by a few politicians, but by a broad network of people who have been entrusted by others to advocate on their behalf" - Upgrade Democracy

I thought about it because having ONE core team somehow selected by a few didn’t feel like democratic and actually seemed pretty biased towards the usual hierarchic/centralized governments we have today.

So the challenge is “we have to do this between all of us, how do we do it?? How do we agree on issues??Who does what and when?? How do we set our own policies??”

this is what I proposed to the Upgrade Democracy folks on the ContactCon Gmail Group

Then…I had to STOP again. The conference (read the proposal) with the authors is still something I’d like to do, but I think we still need more common ground between us, to be able to draw more motivation into the project, and with more motivation and passion, we bring resources and eventually more action…is my wild guess and hope. I feel we need some more glue to hold the Upgrade Democracy/CoE partnership to then reach out to more people. 


Creating a new way of organizing means giving up a lot of the preconceptions it’s easy to rely on. Schools try to teach problem solving, but they use the same techniques. Test scores, class rankings, online MBA rankings…all create a kind of hierarchy that hangs over the whole process. 


So I updated my proposal to this and sent it to ContactCon again. However, not surprisingly, it hasn't gathered much enthusiasm yet, meaning, no one has asked a question so far. So...should I just keep waiting with CoE on hold?? STOP again...no!!


Once the craziness of moving to a town in Central Queensland with my little family decreases, which hopefully is mid February, I would like to get the two things moving. I'd walk the two paths simoultaneusly, if that's at all possible, in order to try both conventional wisdom with unconventional support (putting a local team together) and search for the upgraded democracy dream. 


I feel  inspired by so many things that have been happening and have been reading and I really believe that it is time to put together our individual ideas into something big!! Let's not let the chance go away!! Will be back asap with more on taking advantage of the moment.