Recently on a Network Leadership blog, an authority remarked, “The number one task of network leaders is to help others become network leaders.” Of course, this principle is important, desirable, but, not ‘number one.’

Sidebar: describing network value as an ordinal number is not recommended. It’s not a good way to understand living systems. Living systems are remarkable for the things they do NOT do, i.e., radical efficiency. Thus, everything is ‘most important.’ N.B. Cartesian reductionism and assigning ordinal number importance simply cannot describe/define network value or living systems.

Rather, the core activity of network leadership is easing structural holes through brokering. Recall, structural holes are often a required and beneficial property of hierarchies, functions, command, control activities and so forth. They are often referred to as white space, boundaries, cross-functionalism, edges, etc. They’re essential because they provide the domain network with the unique social composition that fundamental advances higher-order subject knowledge and competence.

Structural holes propel the knowledge-based view (KBV) of the enterprise. They are often derisively called ‘silos.’ They are essential to KBV and effectiveness. In short, silos are an important organizational asset.  

Network leaders and leadership serve the essential role of identifying, bridging, brokering, and mastering the organizational gestalt to achieve desired, prosperous outcomes. In short, network leaders transform structural holes to structural wholes.

Structural Holes

The post Structural Wholes appeared first on Colabria.

Storytelling for Leaders Program Outcomes:

• Influence without relying on authority.
• Build fast rapport.
• Change minds and inspire action.

Anecdote’s Storytelling for Leaders program will teach you the techniques you need to better influence, engage and inspire others – just as hundreds of leaders already have, from Melbourne to New York, London to Singapore.

Organisations are changing quickly. Structures are flatter and reporting lines more complex. Your people and customers are spread around the world. And everyone is deafened by the ‘noise’ of information inundation. Yet the modern leader still needs to be able to influence and persuade in this constantly fluid environment.

The sharing of stories orally is a powerful way of cutting through. When we tell stories, people ‘get’ what we are saying – and they remember it. This is the case whether we are communicating informally (which is what we do most of the time) or in a more formal environment such as a presentation.

“Other presentations were dry and heavy, but the Yammer presentations really stood out because we were telling stories versus merely sharing data.” A Storytelling for Leaders participant describes the way storytelling changed her presentations. Click here to hear more.

More than just storytelling…

Storytelling for Leaders will teach you a systematic method for becoming a better, more confident storyteller. However, the program goes further. You will also learn how to use the magic of stories to get more from others:

Story-triggering involves a leader doing something remarkable enough that it inspires people in the organisation to recount what happened. We show you how you can do this successfully.

Story-listening is the art of getting others to share stories. You’ll learn how to elicit stories from others, building stronger connections and gaining a better understanding of what’s really happening.

More information and registration at EventBrite.

The post Storytelling for Leaders appeared first on Colabria.

1. Think first of the other person. This is THE foundation — the first requisite — for getting along with others. And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must make. Gaining this, the rest will be “a breeze.”

2. Build up the other person’s sense of importance. When we make the other person seem less important, we frustrate one of their deepest urges. Allow them to feel equality or superiority, and we can easily get along.

3. Respect personality rights. Respect as something sacred the other person’s right to be different from you. No two personalities are ever molded by precisely the same forces.

4. Give sincere appreciation. If we think someone has done a thing well, we should never hesitate to let them know it. WARNING: This does not mean promiscuous use of obvious flattery. Flattery with most intelligent people gets exactly the reaction it deserves — contempt for the egotistical “phony” who stoops to it.

5. Eliminate the negative. Criticism seldom does what its user intends, for it invariably causes resentment. The tiniest bit of disapproval can sometimes cause a resentment which will rankle — to your disadvantage — for years.

6. Avoid openly trying to reform people. Everyone is imperfect, but we do not want someone else trying to correct our faults. If you want to improve a person, help them to embrace a higher working goal — a standard, an ideal — and they will do their own “making over” far more effectively than you can do it for them.

7. Try to understand the other person. How would you react to similar circumstances? When you begin to see the “whys” of them you can’t help but get along better.

8. Check first impressions. We are especially prone to dislike some people on first sight because of some vague resemblance (of which we are usually unaware) to someone else whom we have had reason to dislike. Follow Abraham Lincoln‘s famous self-instruction: “I do not like that person; therefore I shall get to know them better.”

9. Take care with the little details. Watch your smile, your tone of voice, how you use your eyes, the way you greet people, the use of nicknames and remembering faces, names and dates. Little things add polish to your skill in dealing with people. Constantly, deliberately think of them until they become a natural part of your personality.

10. Develop genuine interest in people. You cannot successfully apply the foregoing suggestions unless you have a sincere desire to like, respect and be helpful to others. Conversely, you cannot build genuine interest in people until you have experienced the pleasure of working with them in an atmosphere characterized by mutual liking and respect.

11. Keep it up. That’s all — just keep it up!

– Dave Packard, electrical engineer
HP’s 2^nd Management Conference (1958)
Sonoma, California, USA

The post 11 Simple People Rules appeared first on Colabria.

Popular management fads come and go. Most are simply rhetorical hyperbole. Many are harmful; scarce few are useful (EBITDA, CAGR, DCF). Here is a partial list of management methods from the Website 12Manage. How many are familiar to you? Which ones are you using? Which ones should you abandon NOW?

• 14 Principles of Management Fayol
• 3C’s model Ohmae
• 3rd Party Logistics (3PL)
• 360-Degree Feedback
• 4 Dimensions of Relational Work Butler
• 4S Web Marketing Mix Constantinides
• 5 C’s of Marketing Strategy
• 5 Ps Model
• 5 Steps Planning
• 7 Ps Booms Bitner
• 7-S Framework
• 8D Problem Solving
• Abandonment Value
• Abductive Reasoning
• Abilene Paradox
• Abnormal Rate of Return
• Absorption Costing
• Accelerated Depreciation
• Accountability, Corporate
• Accounting Equation
• Accounting, IAS
• Accounting, US GAAP
• Accounts Receivable Factoring
• Accounts Receivable Financing
• Accrual Accounting
• Acquisition Integration Approaches
• Action-Centered Leadership
• Action Learning Revans
• Action Research
• Active Listening
• Activity Based Costing ABC ABM
• Adjusted Book Value
• ADL Matrix Arthur D. Little
• Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Agenda Setting
• Aggregate Demand
• Aggregate Supply
• Agile Absorption
• AIDA AIDAS
• Alliance Networks
• Ambient Advertising
• American-Style Options
• Amortization
• Analogical Strategic Reasoning Gavetti Rivkin
• Analytical CRM
• Anchoring Bias
• Anti Hostile Takeover Mechanisms
• Appreciative Inquiry Cooperrider
• Arbitrage Pricing
• ARIMA Box and Jenkins
• Art of War (Sun Tzu)
• Ashridge Mission Model Campbell
• Asian Options
• Asset Management
• Assets Held for Sale
• Asset Stripping
• Assigning Responsibilities
• Attention Model
• Attribution Theory Heider
• Attrition
• Audit Trails
• Authoritarian Management
• Average Cost Pricing
• Average Rate of Return
• B2C Strategy
• Back-End Plan
• Bait and Switch
• Balance Theory
• Balanced Scorecard Kaplan Norton
• Baldrige Award
• Bandwagon Effect Bias
• Banking Covenants
• Bankmail Engagements
• Barriers to Entry
• Bases of Social Power French Raven
• Bass Diffusion Model Bass
• BCG Matrix
• Behavioral Finance
• Behavioral Observation Scales
• Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales
• Belbin Team Roles
• Benchmarking
• Beyond Budgeting Fraser
• Bisociation
• Black-Scholes Model
• Blue Ocean Strategy Kim
• Bonds, Corporate
• Book Value
• Bottom of the Pyramid Prahalad
• Bottom-up Approach
• Bounded Rationality
• BPR
• Brainstorming
• Brand Asset Valuator
• Brand Identity Prism Kapferer
• Branding
• Brand Loyalty
• Brand Management
• Brand Personality Aaker
• Brand Recognition
• Brand Valuation
• Break-even Point
• Bricks and Clicks
• Bridging Epistemologies Cook Brown
• Budgeting
• Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chains
• Bureaucracy
• Business Cycle
• Business Definition
• Business Ethics
• Business Incubators
• Business Intelligence
• Business Models
• Business Process Modeling
• Business Process Reengineering Hammer Champy
• Business Strategy
• Buy-Side Analysts
• CAGR
• Call Options
• Cannibalization
• Capability Maturity Model CMM
• Capacity Management
• Capacity Planning
• Capacity Utilization
• Capital Asset Pricing Model CAPM
• Capital Assets
• Capital Budgeting
• Capital Expenditure (CAPEX)
• Capital Lease
• Capital Output Ratio
• Capital Turnover
• Capitalization Rate
• Capitalization Ratio
• Career Management
• Cartels
• Cash Burn Rate
• Cash Conversion Cycle
• Cash Flow from Operations
• Cash Flow Management
• Cash Ratio
• Cash Value Added CVA Anelda
• Catalytic Mechanisms Collins
• Catastrophe Theory Thom
• Causal Ambiguity
• Causal Model of Organizational Performance and Change
• Cause and Effect Diagram
• Centralization and Decentralization
• Ceteris Paribus
• CFROI
• Chain of Command
• Chain Reaction
• Chairman of the Board
• CIOs
• Change Approaches Kotter
• Change Equation Beckhard
• Change Forces Management
• Change Management Iceberg
• Change Phases Kotter
• Changing Organization Cultures Trice Beyer
• Channel Management
• Chaordic Leadership
• Chaordic Organizations
• Chaos Theory Lorenz
• Charismatic Leadership Weber
• Chief Executive Officer
• Chief Financial Officer
• Chief Information Officer
• Chief Operating Officer
• Chief Procurement Officer
• Chief Technology Officer
• Chinese Wall
• Clarkson Principles
• Clusters, Industry
• CMM
• Coaching
• Coalition
• Co-Creation Prahalad Ramaswamy
• Code of Ethics
• Cognitive Bias
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Collection Ratio
• Collective Bargaining
• Co-Marketing
• CommonKADS (ESPRIT)
• Communicating
• Competency-based Approach
• Competing Values Framework Quinn
• Competitive Advantage framework Porter
• Competitive Environment
• Competitive Intelligence
• Competitive Position
• Competitive Pricing
• Completed Contract Method
• Compliance Officer
• Concentrated Marketing
• Concentration Strategy
• Confirmation Bias
• Congruity Theory
• Consumer Analysis
• Consumerization
• Consumption Behavior
• Contingency Planning
• Contingency Theory Vroom
• Contingent Assets
• Contingent Liabilities
• Continuous Improvement
• Contribution Pricing
• Conversion Pricing
• Conversion Ratio
• Convertible Bonds
• Convertible Preferred Stock
• Co-opetition
• COOs
• Core Competence Hamel Prahalad
• Core Group Theory Art Kleiner
• Corporate Accountability
• Corporate Bonds
• Corporate Charter
• Corporate Culture
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Innovation
• Corporate Organization
• Corporate Purpose
• Corporate Reputation Quotient Harris-Fombrun
• Corporate Responsibility
• Corporate Strategy
• Corporate Sustainability
• Corporate Transparency
• Cost Analysis
• Cost-benefit Analysis
• Cost Centers
• Cost Drivers
• Cost Dynamics
• Cost, Insurance and Freight (CIF)
• Cost Leadership
• Cost of Capital
• Cost of Equity
• Cost-plus Pricing
• Cost Recovery Method
• Covert Leadership
• CPOs
• CPFR
• Credit Management
• Credit Rating
• Credit Risk
• Credit Scoring
• Critical Path Analysis
• CSFs and KPIs Rockart
• CRM
• Crisis Management
• Cross-Branding
• Cross Cultural Management
• Cross-Docking
• Cross-Functional Teams
• Cross-Selling
• Crown Jewel Defense
• CTOs
• Cultivation Theory
• Cultural Dimensions Hofstede
• Cultural Intelligence Early
• Culture Change
• Culture Types Deal Kennedy
• Current Assets
• Current Liabilities
• Current Ratio
• Customer Experience Management
• Customer Intimacy
• Customer Loyalty
• Customer Relationship Management
• Customer Satisfaction model Kano
• Days Inventory Outstanding
• Days Payable Outstanding
• Days Sales Outstanding
• Debt Covenants
• Debt Restructuring
• Debt to Equity Ratio
• Decentralization
• Decision Trees
• Deferred Shares
• Deliberate Strategy
• Delphi Method Helmer
• Delta Model Hax
• Deming Cycle PDSA
• Dependency Theory
• Depletion
• Depreciation
• Design Thinking
• Dialectical Enquiry
• Diamond Model Porter
• DICE Framework BCG
• Differentiated Marketing
• Dimensions of Change Pettigrew Whipp
• Disaggregation
• Direct Marketing
• Discounted Cash Flow DCF
• Discount Pricing
• Disintermediation
• Disruptive Innovation Christensen
• Distinctive Capabilities Kay
• Divestitures
• Dividend Discount Model
• Dividend Payout Ratio
• Door in the Face
• Downsizing
• Dual Commitment
• Due Diligence
• DuPont Model
• Dutch Auctions
• Dynamic Capabilities
• Dynamic Regression
• Earned Value Management (EVM)
• Earnings Management
• Earnings Per Share EPS
• EBIAT
• EBIT
• EBITDA
• E-Business
• E-Commerce
• Economic Margin EM
• Economic Value Added EVA
• Economies of Scale
• Efficiency Wage
• Efficient Market Hypothesis
• EFQM
• Eight Attributes of Management Excellence Peters
• Elasticity of Demand
• Elasticity of Supply
• Emergent Strategy
• Emerging Markets
• Emotional Intelligence Goleman
• Employability
• Employee Attitude Surveys
• Employee Benefits
• Employee Development
• Employee Performance Measurement
• Employee Stock Options
• Employee Stock Ownership Plan
• Empowerment of Employees
• Enterprise Architecture Zachman
• Entrepreneurial Government
• Entrepreneurship
• EPIC ADVISERS Banhegyi
• E-Procurement
• ERG Theory Alderfer
• European-Style Options
• Evidence-Based Management
• EVM
• Excess Return ER
• Exclusive Distribution
• Execution as Learning
• Exit Strategy
• Expectancy Theory Vroom
• Expense Centers
• Experience Curve
• Exploratory Factor Analysis
• Exponential Smoothing
• Extended Enterprise
• Face Value
• Facilitation Styles
• Factor Endowments
• Factory Gate Pricing
• Fair Value accounting
• False Consensus Bias
• Feasibility Studies
• Feedback Loops
• FIFO Method
• Financial Covenants
• Financial Leverage
• First-mover Advantage
• Five Disciplines Senge
• Five Forces Porter
• Fixed Assets
• Flat Organizational Structures
• Flip-in
• Flip-over
• Focus Groups
• Foot in the Door
• Forced Compliance
• Force Field Analysis Lewin
• Forget Borrow Learn Govindarajan Trimble
• Formal Organization
• Formal Strategic Planning
• Four Ps of Persuasion
• Fourteen Points of Management Deming
• Four Trajectories of Industry Change McGahan
• Framing Tversky
• Franchising
• Free Cash Flow
• Free On Board
• Friendly Takeover
• Full Costing
• Functional Teams
• Fundamental Analysis
• Futures Contracts
• Game Theory Nash
• Gantt Chart
• Garbage Can Model
• Gearing Ratio
• Gestalt theory
• Globalization
• Glocalization
• Golden Handcuff
• Golden Handshake
• Golden Hello
• Golden Parachute
• Goodbye Kiss
• Governance, Corporate
• Gray Knight
• Gross Domestic Product
• Gross Profit Percentage
• Groupthink Janis
• Growth Phases Greiner
• Guard Dog Theory
• Hagberg Model of Personal Power
• Harvest Strategy
• Hawthorne Effect Mayo
• Hedge
• Hedging
• Hidden Needs
• Hierarchical Organization Structures
• Hierarchy of Needs Maslow
• Horizontal Agreements
• Horizontal Integration
• Horizontal Mergers
• Hoshin Kanri – Policy Deployment
• Hostile Takeover Prevention
• Human Behavior
• Human Capital Index HCI
• Human Motivation
• Human Needs
• Human Resource Management Roles
• Human Thinking
• Human Values
• Hypodermic Needle Theory
• IAS
• Illusion of Control Bias
• Impact/Value framework Hammer
• Impression Management
• Incentives
• Inclusive Value Measurement IVM
• Income Effect
• Index Funds
• Industry Analysis
• Industry Attractiveness
• Industry Change
• Inferior Goods
• Infomercials
• Informal Organization
• Information Management
• Information Technology
• Initial Public Offering (IPO)
• Innovation Adoption Curve Rogers
• Innovation, Diffusion of
• Innovation Management
• Installment Sales Method
• Institutional Investors
• Intangible Assets
• Intangible Assets Monitor Sveiby
• Integrative Thinking
• Intellectual Capital Rating
• Internal Rate of Return
• Internet Impact
• Internet Strategy
• Interpersonal Skills
• Intrinsic Stakeholder Commitment
• Inventory Shrinkage
• Investing in Securities, Derivatives
• Investment Centers
• Investor Sentiment
• IPMA Competence Baseline
• IT Strategy
• JICNARS Scale
• Johari Window Luft Ingham
• Joint Ventures
• Just-in-time JIT
• Just-World Effect
• Kaizen philosophy
• Kepner-Tregoe Matrix
• Killer Bees
• KISS Principle (Ockham Razor)
• Knowledge Creation
• Knowledge Management Collison Parcell
• Kraljic Model
• Lap Dog Theory
• Laswell Communication Model (Five Ws)
• Lateral Thinking
• Leadership Continuum Tannenbaum
• Leadership Pipeline Drotter
• Leadership Styles Goleman
• Lean Production
• Learning Organizations
• Level 5 Leadership Collins
• Leveraged Buy-out
• Leveraged Recapitalization
• Levers of Control Simons
• LIFO Method
• Limited Effects
• Liquidation value
• Lobster Trap
• Logical Incrementalism
• Logistics Management
• Loss Aversion Bias
• Low Ball Technique
• Loyalty Programs
• M&A
• Macro-Environment
• MAGIC
• Management Accounting
• Management Behavior
• Management Buy-out
• Management by Exception
• Management by Objectives Drucker
• Management Development
• Management Functions
• Management Metaphors
• Management Succession Planning
• Managerial Grid Blake Mouton
• Managing for Value McTaggart
• Marginal Cost Pricing
• Market Cap
• Marketing Mix 4P’s 5P’s McCarthy
• Marketing Strategy
• Market Perform
• Market Segmentation
• Market Value
• Market Value Added MVA
• Mass Communication
• Mass Customization
• Materials Management
• Matrix Organizations
• Maturity Date
• McKinsey 7-S Framework
• McKinsey Matrix
• Media Communication
• Media Dependency
• Mentoring
• Metaplan Schnelle
• Metonymy
• Microfinance
• Microfinance Channel
• Microinsurance
• Middle Management
• Mind Mapping
• Mirroring and Matching
• Mission Statements
• Moral Purpose Mourkogiannis
• Motivation Management
• MSP OGC
• Multi Channel Marketing
• Multiple Sourcing
• Multitasking Behavior
• Multitasking Consumer
• Mutual Funds
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
• Nationalization
• Net Present Value NPV
• NOPAT
• Network Organizations
• Niche Marketing
• Nielsen Ratings
• Nominal Value
• Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO)
• Non-Systemic Risk
• NPVGO (Net Present Value of Growth Opportunities)
• Objective Analysis Trees
• Office of Strategy Management Kaplan Norton
• Off-Balance Sheet Financing
• Oligopolies
• One-to-one Marketing
• Online Corporate Reputation
• OODA Loop Boyd
• Operating Lease
• Operating Profit Percentage
• Operational Agility
• Operational CRM
• Operational Excellence
• Operations Research
• Opinion Leaders
• OPM3 PMI
• Opportunity Cost
• Options, American-Style
• Order Management
• Organic Growth
• Organizational Absorption
• Organizational Agility
• Organizational Commitment
• Organizational Configurations Mintzberg
• Organizational DNA
• Organizational Growth
• Organizational Learning Argyris Schon
• Organizational Memory Walsh Ungson
• Organizational Resilience
• Organizational Structure
• Organization Chart
• Outsourcing
• P/E ratio
• PAEI management roles
• Paralysis by Analysis
• Parenting Advantage Goold Campbell
• Parenting Styles Goold Campbell
• Pareto Principle (80-20 rule)
• Parkinson Law
• Participative Management
• Path-Goal Theory House
• Payback Period
• Peer-Appraisals
• PEG Ratio
• Penetration Pricing
• Pension Parachute
• People CMM CM-SEI
• People Pill
• Perceived Value Pricing
• Percentage of Completion Method
• Performance Appraisals
• Performance Management
• Performance Measurement
• Performance Prism
• Perishability
• Permission Marketing
• Personal Belief Bias
• Personnel Management
• Persuasion Techniques
• Persuasion Theory
• PEST Analysis
• Peter Principle
• Phantom Stock Plans
• Planning Fallacy
• Plausibility Theory
• Play Theory
• PMBOK PMI
• PMMM Reiss
• Poison Puts
• Policy Deployment
• Popular Management Concepts
• Portfolio Agility
• Portfolio Insurance
• Portfolio Management (Assets)
• Portfolio Management (Strategic)
• POSDCORB Gulick
• Positioning Trout
• Positive Deviance Pascale Sternin
• Post-Merger Integration
• Pre-Employment Screening
• Preferred Stock
• Pressure Groups
• Price Skimming
• PRIMO-F Model
• Prince2 CCTA
• Principles of Reinvention Osborne
• Problem Analysis Trees
• Product Leadership
• Product Life Cycle Levitt
• Product/Market Grid Ansoff
• Product Marketing
• Profit and Loss Statements
• Profit Centers
• Profit Pools Gadiesh, Gilbert
• Project Deliverables
• Pro Forma Earnings
• Project Management
• Project Management Knowledge
• Project Management Maturity
• Project Milestones
• Project Planning
• Project Portfolio Management
• Program Management
• Promotional Pricing
• Proportional Voting
• PRVit
• Psychological Pricing
• Public Relations
• Purchasing Portfolio Management
• Put Options
• Pyramid Principle Minto
• Qualitative Investment Analysis
• Quality Assurance
• Quality Function Deployment Akao
• Quantitative Investment Analysis
• Quick Ratio
• Quick Response Manufacturing
• RACI (RASCI)
• RAPID Approach
• RAROC
• Rätselvermehrung
• Rebalancing
• Recapitalization
• Redemption Value
• Regression Analysis
• Relational Capital
• Relationship Marketing Levitt
• Relative Value of Growth Mass
• Required Rate of Return
• Required Return
• Residual Income
• Residual Value
• Responsibility, Corporate
• Resource-Based View Barney
• Restructuring
• Result Oriented Management
• Results-Based Leadership Ulrich
• Retail Mix
• Retained Earnings
• Return on Capital Employed ROCE
• Return on Equity ROE
• Return on Invested Capital ROIC
• Return on Investment ROI
• Return on Net Assets RONA
• Revenue Centers
• Revenue Recognition
• Reverse Auctions
• Reverse Logistics
• Reverse Takeovers
• RFID Technology
• Ring Fencing
• Risk Management RAROC
• Root Cause Analysis
• Rule of 72
• Rule of Three Sheth
• S-Curves
• Safe Harbor
• Safe Harbor Statements
• Sale and Leaseback
• Say Law
• Scenario Planning
• Scientific Management Taylorism
• Scorched Earth Defense
• SECI model Nonaka Takeuchi
• Second-mover Strategy
• Securitization
• Segmentation
• Selective Distribution
• Self-Appraisals
• Self-Directed Teams
• Sell-Side Analyst
• Servant-Leadership Greenleaf
• Service Quality Analysis
• Services Marketing
• SERVQUAL Zeithaml
• Seven Habits Covey
• Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse Jennings
• Seven Surprises Porter
• SGA Expenses
• Shared Value
• Shareholders Equity
• Shareholder Value
• Shareholder Value Perspective
• Short Selling
• Simulation of Business Processes
• Single Sourcing
• Situational Leadership Hersey Blanchard
• Six Sigma GE
• Six Thinking Hats de Bono
• Skandia Navigator Leif Edvinsson
• Skeleton Staff
• Sleeper Effect
• Social Capital
• Social Judgment
• Social Marketing
• Social Power
• SOFT Analysis
• Soft Systems Methodology Checkland
• SOSTAC model
• Span of Control
• Special Purpose Vehicles
• Spin-Off
• Spiral Dynamics Graves
• Spiral of Silence Noelle-Neumann
• Staff Management
• Stage-Gate Cooper
• Stages of Team Development Tuckman
• Staggered Board of Directors
• Standard Cost Pricing
• Standstill Agreements
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Stakeholder Mapping
• Stakeholder Value Perspective
• Start-up Companies
• Status Quo Bias
• Stock Dividends
• Storytelling
• Strategic Agility
• Strategic Alignment Venkatraman
• Strategic Alliances
• Strategic Analysis
• Strategic Business Units
• Strategic Fit
• Strategic Flexibility
• Strategic Impact of IT
• Strategic Infliction Point
• Strategic Intent Hamel Prahalad
• Strategic Momentum
• Strategic Planning
• Strategic Risk Management Slywotzky
• Strategic Stakeholder Management
• Strategic Synergy
• Strategic Thrusts Wiseman
• Strategic Types Miles Snow
• Strategic Vision
• Strategic Window
• Strategy Analysis
• Strategy Change Cycle
• Strategy Dynamics Warren
• Strategy Execution
• Strategy Formation
• Strategy Map Kaplan Norton
• STRATPORT Larreche
• Stretch Goals
• Structured Writing
• Subliminal Advertising
• Subscription Rights
• Substitution Effect
• Supply Chain Design
• Supply Chain Planning
• Sustainability, Corporate
• Sustainable Competitive Advantage
• SWOT Analysis
• Synchromarketing
• Synectics
• Systemic Risk
• Systems Thinking / Dynamics Forrester
• Tacit Knowledge
• Talent Management
• Tangible Assets
• Tangible Book Value
• Target Marketing
• Target Pricing
• Targeted Repurchase
• Tax Haven
• TDC Matrix Internet
• Team Development
• Team Management Profile Margerison McCann
• Team Member Behavior
• Technical Analysis
• Technological Forecasting
• Technology Impact on Innovation
• Telemarketing
• Ten Commandments for Media Consumers
• Ten Schools of Thought Mintzberg
• Tertiary Sector
• Theory E and Theory O
• Theory of Constraints Goldratt
• Theory of Mechanistic and Organic Systems Burns
• Theory of Needs McClelland
• Theory of Planned Behavior Ajzen
• Theory X Theory Y McGregor
• Thinker Keys
• Thinking Preferences
• Three Dimensional Business Definition Abell
• Three Levels of Culture Schein
• Tie-in Marketing
• Time Management
• Time to Market
• Time Value of Money
• Top-down Management
• Total Business Return TBR BCG
• Total Cost of Ownership
• Total Productive Maintenance
• Total Quality Management TQM
• Total Shareholder Return TSR
• Trade Marketing
• Training Within Industry
• Trait Leadership
• Transactional Leadership
• Transfer Pricing
• Transformational Leadership
• Transparency, Corporate
• Treasury Stock
• Triple Bottom Line
• TRIZ
• Turnaround Management
• Twelve Principles of the Network Economy Kelly
• Two Factor Theory Herzberg
• Two Step Flow Model
• Ultra Vires
• Unaided Recall
• Unbranding
• Undercapitalization
• Undifferentiated Marketing
• Unfreezing-Moving-Refreezing
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Unissued Stock
• Uses and Gratifications Theory
• US GAAP
• Validity Effect
• Value at Risk
• Value Based Management
• Value Chain Porter
• Value Creation Index
• Value Disciplines Treacy Wiersema
• Value Engineering Miles
• Value for Money Audit
• Value Mapping Jack
• Value Net Brandenburger
• Value Profit Chain Heskett
• Value Proposition
• ValueReporting Framework PWC
• Values and Lifestyles
• Value Stream Mapping
• Variable Costing
• Vendor Managed Inventory
• Vendor Rating
• Venture Capitalists
• Venture Funding
• Vertical Agreements
• Vertical Integration
• Vertical Mergers
• Virtual Business
• Vision Statements
• VMOST
• Voting Rights Plan
• Vulture Capitalist
• WACC
• Wage Drift
• Warrants
• Waste Management
• Watchdog Model
• Wealth Management
• Whisper Number
• Whistle Blower
• White Knight
• Whole Brain Herrmann
• Word of Mouth Marketing
• Work Absenteeism
• Workforce Reduction
• Working Capital
• Work Presenteeism
• World Class Manufacturing
• X-Efficiency
• Yield Management
• Yield to Maturity
• Zero Based Budgeting
• Zero Defects
• Zero-sum Game
• Z-Score Altman

The post Popular Management Techniques appeared first on Colabria.

Alan Kay

Please remember the famous observation by Alan Kay, the noted computer scientist,

“UCLA has one department of computer science and 25 biology departments. Why? Biologists are smarter.”

The pioneer of object-oriented programming and the graphical user interface also made the famous remark below. It should be an official Business mantra.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” 

According to Peter Drucker (and Colabria), the purpose of business is to create and keep customers. This is achieved through evolutionary development (‘evo-devo’). Business is all about learning from prospective events and relationships to inform situated behavior. All business serves the emerging future.

Biological principles of emergence, adaptation, mutation, exaptation, stochastics, hybridization and so forth are the absolute foundations of modern business. Fundamental principles of living systems shape business and prosperous outcomes.

Traditional management practices like Baldridge or Six Sigma offer robust methods, structured techniques, key measurements, and standards. They offer Best Practices for routine, predictable and linear processes and mechanical, deterministic activities.

However, lofty management fads are the polar opposite of effective customer creation and retention. Authentic business and effective customer creation consist of Next Practices. They are the foundation of innovation and customer creation. Customer creation will never be a rigid, standardized method like quality, project management or manufacturing. Managerialism is the moldering cadaver of 20th Century business.

Business and living systems inhabit a state of organizational disequilibrium by definition. Excellence in customer creation originates from biology, not mechanics, engineering or applications. Biological business propels productivity, innovation, and performance.

The historical schema for business originates from religious, military, and engineering abstractions. This drives business activities like standards, centralize applications, measurement, and control. They don’t fit well anymore. Fordism is a decomposing vestige of the Industrial Age.

For too long, properties of complex living-systems have been deliberately avoided. It’s one major reason sensible people avoid conventional business practices. Reasonable people know process fetish and malignant bureaucracy is wrong. The failed engineering, process and measurement legacy of customer creation and innovation is over.

Today’s popular term ‘business ecosystem‘ originates from ecology – the study of relationships. Contrary to Newtonian-styled business, the essential core of biological business is relationships. Biological and living systems furnish and equip far better abstractions and mental models for business leadership.

The new-old biology paradigm is an enormous leap for business. Leaders are just beginning to grasp network patterns, autopoiesis, and dissipative systems, for example. They are adopting biological business jargon like viral diffusion and organizational DNA. The biology of business delivers higher performance, disruptive innovation, and accelerated customer creation.

Authentic leaders strive to master and express business by revealing and serving dynamic patterns of relationships of people in and across organizations. The key is always about nurturing customer discovery, creation, and retention. 

“Look deep into nature,and then you will understand everything better.” – Albert Einstein

The post Biology of Business appeared first on Colabria.

Analysis of patterns and structures are seeing increased use in business. Many examples are now in the forefront such as ecosystems, diversity, viral apps, etc. Expect to see far more pattern idioms to describe business prosperity (and failure). 

Click links (Leadership Styles Around The World & Metapatterns) for more details. 

Leadership Styles Around The World

Metapatterns

What patterns affect your business?

The post Patterns appeared first on Colabria.

MIT validates the obvious: conversation is good business.

Authentic conversation is a key modality of The Social Enterprise and your Colabria Action Research Networks.

In the BofA call center:

“Individuals who talked to more coworkers were getting through calls faster, felt less stressed and had the same approval ratings as their peers.”

Face-2-face conversation is good for business? Gasp!

Remember, this disruptive innovation, conversation, requires no enterprise social media, no 2-year IT project, no so-called management.

For authentic conversation, there is no million dollar budget, no fancy PowerPoints on ‘culture’ (?), no software, no well-manicured vendors.

Great conversation means no ‘thought leadership,’ no annoying consultants, no hierarchy, no community of practice, no training, no loopy change management – just genuine chitchat.

This is a great Colabria Next Practice. It elaborates the business advantages and enormous, tangible discounted cash flow benefits originating from deliberate conversations.

Excerpts:

“Data mining is about finding patterns in digital stuff. I’m more interested specifically in finding patterns in humans,” says Pentland, who has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and psychology from MIT. “I’m taking data mining out into the real world.”

“Informally talking out problems and solutions, it seemed, produced better results than following the employee handbook or obeying managers’ e-mailed instructions.”

So the call center tried its own experiment. Instead of staggering employees’ coffee breaks as it had previously, it aligned their breaks to allow more chatter. The result, Bank of America told MIT a few months later: productivity gains worth about $15 million a year.”

Bottom line? Conversation is Good Business.

Main article: Mining Human Behavior At MIT

The post Conversation is Good Business appeared first on Colabria.

Too often business writes down banal claims about culture. ‘People Are Our Number One Asset” is a classic chestnut.

On the contrary, organizations with this claim, and most organizations in general, always see people as their Biggest Damn Expense. Codifying culture is a fool’s errand.

Codifying culture is a fool’s errand.

Culture is a complex adaptive system, or, more simply, complex. Culture is only served. Culture is not built, crafted, created, codified, changed or even defined. Codifying culture in PowerPoint is a confident farce. Strive for cultural comprehension — not tortured clichés.

Boundaries and intentions of the human system are elaborated through example, practice, authentic conversation, and genuine narrative. Prosperous outcomes are not determined by some platitudinous blowhard and their vacant rhetoric. 

One manager went so far as to create a painful analogy as follows:

“Product is to marketing as culture is to recruiting”

This is wrong on so many levels. The most obvious is the backward logic. In reality, marketing creates product (value); people (recruiting) creates culture.

Product determining marketing is a huge and common mistake: “Gee, we built the product… now let’s go see if anyone wants it!” 

Like codified culture, this inexcusable blunder is still made over and over. The purpose of business is to create customers, not products. Businesses don’t fail because of lack of product; they fail from a lack of customers.

Thus, the far more sound analogy, again, on many levels, is:

Marketing is to product what people are to culture.

Culture is about acting in the situated present. People reveal and serve culture; marketing reveals value (product) for customers.

Remember, cultural advantages, constraints and agents are perpetually evolving through authentic conversation and thoughtful narrative. They are not pinned down by soaring hokum or inane slide decks on culture.

Companies don’t fail because they lack the artifacts of culture; they fail from a lack of authentic conversation. There’s no need for more corporate baloney.

Recruiters often look for candidates with a ‘cultural fit.’ That’s patently absurd. People don’t fit to culture like a transmission to a driveshaft; people are the culture. Culture determining recruitment is a huge and common mistake.

The far more appropriate recruiting question is, ‘Will this candidate help us continuously reveal a more prosperous future?’ Allow new people to engage, embrace and expand the culture through their own behaviors. Never try to correct people to fit the culture. That’s crazy talk. 

Stay away from ALL written cultural platitudes. These sappy bromides are harmful. Here is a universal, one-word position on slides codifying corporate culture: Forgetaboutit. Culture is not bookkeeping.

Remember and embrace complex systems like culture behave at the edge of chaos. 

Culture is not controlled, only served. It is revealed never created. In short, be the culture you want through your behavior, narrative, conversation, example, self-control, engagement, introspection and consistent practices. Be mindful and the rest will take care of itself.

Don’t waste your time trying to codify complex systems – it will never work. Rather, focus on leadership. Above all, avoid another classic business oxymoron: management science.

The post Business Oxymora Meets Culture appeared first on Colabria.

Image credit: iStockphoto

Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement is is an excellent essay on how to improve student engagement in the classroom. It is highly recommended.

It is so darn great it was modulated for lifelong learning and employee engagement. It elaborates the critical leadership principles for sustained business innovation. It’s how to achieve employee engagement and achieve leadership excellence in perpetual innovation. 

Teachers and business leaders are charged with creating a robust learning environment. Their job is to create engaged learners and shared imagination. The most productive employees and students are those that are continuously learning.

Somewhere business lost its way. Treating people inhumanely is wrong (and expensive). It has led to an epidemic of employee disengagement.

According to Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace Report fully 70% of the US workforce is not engaged in their work.

“…managers from hell are creating active disengagement costing the U.S. an estimated $450 billion to $550 billion annually.”

– Jim Clifton
Chairman and CEO

This is a crisis. The headlong flight to digital business innovation makes it apocalyptic. If you knew a recession, new competitor, hurricane or other calamity was about to hit your business hard you would do something about it, right?

These quotes from students are excellent and highly perspicacious! They furnish the fundamental principles to get digital business innovation on the path to excellence. For continuous and disruptive business innovation heed the wisdom of eighth-graders!

Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement
by Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Author’s Introduction

A while back, I was asked, “What engages students?” Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders.

The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students’ answers to the question: “What engages students?” – Heather Wolpert-Gawron 

What engages employees?

With enormous gratitude to Heather, conceived by eighth-graders, slight rhetorical adjustments for employees, here are the answers to the Age Old Question: What engages employees?

1. Working with their peers

“Employees are growing learners who require and want interaction with other people to fully attain their potential.”

2. Working with technology

“I believe that when employees participate in “learning by doing” it helps them focus more. Technology helps them to do that. Employees will always be extremely excited when using technology.”

3. Connecting the real world to the work

“I believe that it all boils down to relationships.”

4. Clearly love what you do

“Engaging employees can be a challenge, and if you’re stuck in a monotone, rambling on and on, that doesn’t help…instead of talking like a robot, leaders should speak to us like they’re really passionate.”

5. Get me out of my seat!

“When an employee is active they learn in a deeper way than sitting.”

6. Bring in visuals

“I like to see pictures because it makes my understanding on a topic clearer. It gives me an image in my head to visualize.”

7. Promote choice

“Having freedom in assignments, project directions, and more choices would engage employees…More variety = more space for creativity.”

8. Understand your clients

“Encourage employees to voice their opinions as you may never know what you can learn from your employees.”

9. Mix it up!

“I don’t like doing only one constant activity…a variety will keep me engaged in the topic.”

10. Be human

“Don’t forget to have a little fun yourself.”

N.B. For further reading, tools and advice see: ‘How to Engage your Staff at Each Stage of the Employee Lifecycle‘ by Advanced Systems.  

The post Employee Engagement appeared first on Colabria.

Of course, everyone uses CAGR, EBITDA, and P/E Ratio every day. How many others do you know?

It is important to recognize these as mostly tortured rhetorical flourishes rather than useful techniques.

Remember, management science, methods and formulas have nothing to do with leadership. In fact, it is critical to break-free from the analytic reductionism of 20th Century Management. Rather, focus of 21st Century Leaders is to Create the Future.

If you can conduct an interesting, authentic conversation with employees, partners, and customers, you will be a better manager and leader than a 6σ Black Belt. Forget about lofty baloney like ‘disruptive innovation‘ or ‘big data.’ Rather, learn how to create and delight customers!

Your Colabria Action Research Networks are fluent in all these techniques, of course. It is precisely why we focus on leadership versus management.

Remember, the best firms are customer-led not managed. Dramatic failures of ‘well-managed’ yet under-led firms are legion. Management Science may be the mother of all business oxymora. It’s mostly a distraction. 

Anyway, for fun and nostalgia, see how many techniques you remember from b-school. Also, try to imagine how many are focused on creating and keeping customers (the purpose of business). Gee, guess what? Most of them are arcane and obsolete. Beware!   

Don’t fret. The first step to becoming a better leader is to unlearn so-called ‘management science.’

Management Interest Groups

1. 14 Principles of Management Fayol
2. 3C’s model Ohmae
3. 3rd Party Logistics (3PL)
4. 4 Dimensions of Relational Work Butler
5. 4S Web Marketing Mix Constantinides
6. 7 Ps Booms Bitner
7. 8D Problem Solving
8. Absorption Costing
9. Acquisition Integration Approaches
10. Action Learning Revans
11. Activity Based Costing ABC ABM
12. ADL Matrix Arthur D. Little
13. Affiliate Marketing
14. Analogical Strategic Reasoning Gavetti Rivkin
15. Analytical CRM
16. Appreciative Inquiry Cooperrider
17. ARIMA Box and Jenkins
18. Ashridge Mission Model Campbell
19. Attribution Theory Heider
20. Balanced Scorecard Kaplan Norton
21. Baldrige Award
22. Bases of Social Power French Raven
23. Bass Diffusion Model Bass
24. BCG Matrix
25. Belbin Team Roles
26. Benchmarking
27. Beyond Budgeting Fraser
28. Blue Ocean Strategy Kim
29. Bottom of the Pyramid Prahalad
30. Brainstorming
31. Brand Asset Valuator
32. Brand Identity Prism Kapferer
33. Brand Personality Aaker
34. Break-even Point
35. Bricks and Clicks
36. Bridging Epistemologies Cook Brown
37. Business Intelligence
38. Business Process Modeling
39. Business Process Reengineering Hammer Champy
40. CAGR
41. Capability Maturity Model CMM
42. Capital Asset Pricing Model CAPM
43. Cash Flow from Operations
44. Cash Ratio
45. Cash Value Added CVA Anelda
46. Catalytic Mechanisms Collins
47. Catastrophe Theory Thom
48. CFROI
49. Change Approaches Kotter
50. Change Equation Beckhard
51. Change Management Iceberg
52. Change Phases Kotter
53. Changing Organization Cultures Trice Beyer
54. Chaos Theory Lorenz
55. Charismatic Leadership Weber
56. Clarkson Principles
57. Coaching
58. Co-Creation Prahalad Ramaswamy
59. Competing Values Framework Quinn
60. Competitive Advantage framework Porter
61. Contingency Theory Vroom
62. Core Competence Hamel Prahalad
63. Core Group Theory Art Kleiner
64. Corporate Reputation Quotient Harris-Fombrun
65. Cost of Capital
66. Cost of Equity
67. Cost-benefits analysis
68. Crisis Management
69. CSFs and KPIs Rockart
70. Cultural Dimensions Hofstede
71. Cultural Intelligence Early
72. Current Ratio
73. Customer Relationship Management
74. Customer Satisfaction model Kano
75. Debt to Equity Ratio
76. Delphi Method Helmer
77. Delta Model Hax
78. Deming Cycle PDSA
79. Dialectical Inquiry
80. Diamond Model Porter
81. DICE Framework BCG
82. Dimensions of Change Pettigrew Whipp
83. Direct Marketing
84. Discounted Cash Flow DCF
85. Disruptive Innovation Christensen
86. Distinctive Capabilities Kay
87. Dividend Payout Ratio
88. DuPont Model
89. Dynamic Regression
90. Earned Value Management EVM
91. Earnings Per Share EPS
92. EBIT
93. EBITDA
94. Economic Margin EM
95. Economic Value Added EVA
96. EFQM
97. Eight Attributes of Management Excellence Peters
98. Emotional Intelligence Goleman
99. Enterprise Architecture Zachman
100. EPIC ADVISERS Banhegyi
101. ERG Theory Alderfer
102. Excess Return ER
103. Expectancy Theory Vroom
104. Experience Curve
105. Exploratory Factor Analysis
106. Exponential Smoothing
107. Fair Value Accounting
108. Five Disciplines Senge
109. Five Forces Porter
110. Force Field Analysis Lewin
111. Forget Borrow Learn Govindarajan Trimble
112. Four Trajectories of Industry Change McGahan
113. Fourteen Points of Management Deming
114. Framing Tversky
115. Free Cash Flow
116. Game Theory Nash
117. Gantt Chart
118. Gestalt theory
119. Gross Profit Percentage
120. Groupthink Janis
121. Growth Phases Greiner
122. Hawthorne Effect Mayo
123. Hierarchy of Needs Maslow
124. Horizontal Integration
125. Hoshin Kanri – Policy Deployment
126. Human Capital Index HCI
127. IAS
128. Impact/Value framework Hammer
129. Inclusive Value Measurement IVM
130. Innovation Adoption Curve Rogers
131. Intangible Assets Monitor Sveiby
132. Intellectual Capital Rating
133. Internal Rate of Return
134. Intrinsic Stakeholder Commitment
135. IPMA Competence Baseline (ICB)
136. Johari Window Luft Ingham
137. Just-in-time JIT
138. Kaizen philosophy
139. Kepner-Tregoe Matrix
140. Kraljic Model
141. Leadership Continuum Tannebaum
142. Leadership Pipeline Drotter
143. Leadership Styles Goleman
144. Level 5 Leadership Collins
145. Leveraged Buy-out
146. Levers of Control Simons
147. Liquidation value
148. MAGIC
149. Management Buy-out
150. Management by Objectives Drucker
151. Managerial Grid Blake Mouton
152. Managing for Value McTaggart
153. Market Value Added MVA
154. Marketing Mix 4P’s 5P’s McCarthy
155. McKinsey 7-S Framework
156. McKinsey Matrix
157. Mentoring
158. Metaplan Schnelle
159. Mind Mapping
160. Moral Purpose Mourkogiannis
161. MSP OCG
162. Multi-Channel Marketing
163. Net Present Value NPV
164. NOPAT
165. Office of Strategy Management Kaplan Norton
166. OODA Loop Boyd
167. Operating Profit Percentage
168. Operational CRM
169. Operations Research
170. OPM3 PMI
171. Organization Chart
172. Organizational Configurations Mintzberg
173. Organizational Learning Argyris Schon
174. Organizational Memory Walsh Ungson
175. Outsourcing
176. P/E ratio
177. PAEI management roles
178. Parenting Advantage Goold Campbell
179. Parenting Styles Goold Campbell
180. Path-Goal Theory House
181. Payback Period
182. PEG Ratio
183. People CMM CM-SEI
184. Performance Management
185. Performance Prism
186. PEST Analysis
187. Plausibility Theory
188. PMBOK PMI
189. PMMM Reiss
190. POSDCORB Gulick
191. Positioning Trout
192. Positive Deviance Pascale Sternin
193. Prince2 CCTA
194. Principles of Reinvention Osborne
195. Product Life Cycle Levitt
196. Product/Market Grid Ansoff
197. Profit Pools Gadiesh, Gilbert
198. PRVit
199. Pyramid Principle Minto
200. Quality Function Deployment Akao
201. Quick Ratio
202. RACI (RASCI)
203. Real Options Luehrman
204. Regression Analysis
205. Relationship Marketing Levitt
206. Relative Value of Growth Mass
207. Resource-Based View Barney
208. Result Oriented Management
209. Results-Based Leadership Ulrich
210. Return on Capital Employed ROCE
211. Return on Equity ROE
212. Return on Invested Capital ROIC
213. Return on Investment ROI
214. Return on Net Assets RONA
215. Risk Management RAROC
216. Root Cause Analysis
217. Rule of Three Sheth
218. Scenario Planning
219. SECI model Nonaka Takeuchi
220. Servant-Leadership Greenleaf
221. SERVQUAL Zeithaml
222. Seven Habits Covey
223. Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse Jennings
224. Seven Surprises Porter
225. Shareholder Value Perspective
226. Situational Leadership Hersey Blanchard
227. Six Sigma GE
228. Six Thinking Hats de Bono
229. Skandia Navigator Leif Edvinsson
230. Soft Systems Methodology Checkland
231. Spiral Dynamics Graves
232. Spiral of Silence Noelle-Neumann
233. Stage-Gate Cooper
234. Stages of Team Development Tuckman
235. Stakeholder Analysis
236. Stakeholder Mapping
237. Stakeholder Value Perspective
238. Strategic Alignment Venkatraman
239. Strategic Intent Hamel Prahalad
240. Strategic Risk Management Slywotzky
241. Strategic Stakeholder Management
242. Strategic Thrusts Wiseman
243. Strategic Types Miles Snow
244. Strategy Dynamics Warren
245. Strategy Map Kaplan Norton
246. STRATPORT Larreche
247. SWOT Analysis
248. Systems Thinking / Dynamics Forrester
249. TDC Matrix Internet
250. Team Management Profile Margerison McCann
251. Ten Schools of Thought Mintzberg
252. Theory of Constraints Goldratt
253. Theory of Mechanistic and Organic Systems Burns
254. Theory of Needs McClelland
255. Theory of Planned Behavior Ajzen
256. Theory X Theory Y McGregor
257. Three Dimensional Business Definition Abell
258. Three Levels of Culture Schein
259. Total Business Return TBR BCG
260. Total Cost of Ownership
261. Total Shareholder Return TSR
262. Training Within Industry
263. Turnaround Management
264. Twelve Principles of the Network Economy Kelly
265. Two Factor Theory Herzberg
266. US GAAP
267. Value Based Management
268. Value Chain Porter
269. Value Creation Index
270. Value Disciplines Treacy Wiersema
271. Value Engineering Miles
272. Value Mapping Jack
273. Value Net Brandenburger
274. Value Profit Chain Heskett
275. Value Stream Mapping
276. ValueReporting Framework PWC
277. Variable Costing
278. Vendor Managed Inventory
279. Vertical Integration
280. WACC
281. Whole Brain Herrmann
282. Z-Score Altman 

The post Management Science appeared first on Colabria.

Colabria is an action research network. Scholars and academics sometimes call it praxis intervention. The focus is proximate. The scope is global.

Colabria conducts periodic collaborations, conferences and confabulations. They are known as Colabria Clusters. The purpose is to Create The Future.

Colabria was founded in San Francisco in 1996. Ongoing themes include network science, collective intelligence, knowledge leadership, the knowledge economy and digital society. Colabria conducts and participates in hundreds of seminal events for thousands of delegates worldwide.

Colabria elaborates the rich systems-level portfolio of techniques and methods required to lead 21st century knowledge-based businesses, organizations and civil societies. 

The Colabria Clusters priority is the diverse stable of future-focused systems-thinking and knowledge network techniques, tools, talent, technology and theory.

The heart of the Colabria mission is leadership development. Robust, confident leadership creates optimal and prosperous networks and knowledge ecosystems.

Mastery is achieved through triangulation of theory, tools and practice. Sense and meaning are energized through authentic conversations.

Many groups, universities, consultants and others examine vertical tools and singular, isolated techniques. This mechanical reduction of networks and knowledge methods is lacking. 

The unique, systems-level network bias of the Colabria Clusters advances comprehension. Elegant simplicity delivers inspired interactions. Shared imagination drives action. Mental models shape learning. Personal mastery is achieved. The outcome is prosperity.

A portfolio of methods and techniques propels the Colabria Clusters. Some themes that inhabit the global action/research ecosystem are as follows:

These are among the tangible and intangible techniques required for knowledge-based endeavors. Comprehension abets personal mastery, mental models, and team learning. The Colabria Clusters uncover the interdependence of knowledge-based techniques. Colabria Clusters reveal and serve the future. 

Create The Future

The post What is Colabria Action Research? appeared first on Colabria.

• “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” — Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
• “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
• “I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and walked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” — Editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
• “But what … is it good for?” — Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
• “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,1977
• “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.  The device is inherently of no value to us.” — Western Union internal memo, 1876.
• “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.  Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” — David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urging for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
• “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” — A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
• “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” — H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
• “I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.” — Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With The Wind.”
• “A cookie store is a bad idea.  Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.” — Response to Debbie Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.
• “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” -Decca Recording Studio, rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
• “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
• “If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment.  The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” — Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.
• “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us?  Or we’ll give it to you.  We just want to do it.  Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you.  You haven’t got through college yet.”‘ -Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.
• “Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react.  He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” — 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work.
• You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles?  It can’t be done.  It’s just a fact of life.  You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training.” — Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the “unsolvable” problem by inventing Nautilus.
• “Drill for oil?  You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” — Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
• “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” — Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
• “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” — Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
• “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” — Charles H.Duel  Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
• “Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction”. — Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
• ‘The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon”. — Sir John Eric Ericksen, British ‘surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.
• “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” — Bill Gates, 1981

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Memorial Day 2016

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Today’s lesson is on Brooks’ Law and large-scale government IT & systems failure. To the extent possible, and as respected information systems scientists, we leave the politics to pundits and politicians.

Brooks’s Law is simple: Adding people to a late project makes it later.

Brooks’ Law first appeared in 1975 in The Mythical Man Month (free download, multiple formats). This legendary book is enormously impactful. It is highly recommended. Read it now. In 1975 it made critical observations about complexity and organizations and software projects. 

Every software engineer knows the Mythical Man Month or should.

Unfortunately, politicians, appointees and dilettantes are often running outsized govt projects. Facing challenges and failure their reflexive chorus is, ‘lack of resources.’ Adding talent and money to any failing project is an objective violation of Brooks’s Law.

Brooks’ Law is insidious in government IT settings because they can order up fresh resources, talent and money, with total impunity. Unlike businesses there exists no accountability or consequence in centralized, statist government efforts. That’s is why all large government IT projects are so failure-prone. They collapse under their own hubris.

While business leaders earn resources with positive customer outcomes, govt project managers submit to capricious political breezes. Business IT people may be summarily dismissed ‘at will.’  For the most part, government IT works cannot be fired. 

Meanwhile, the motor-response to fix govt IT and systems challenges is to apply the ‘best and the brightest’ and ‘throw money at the problem.’ Again, this is a patent violation of another of Brooks’ Law: “In a suitably complex system there is a certain irreducible number of errors. Any attempt to fix observed errors tends to result in the introduction of other errors.”

For those fluent in networks, this explains it – exponential complexity.

Corollaries to Brooks’ Law are the Death March and Anti-Patterns. 

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The Internet of Things (IoT) is very, very simple. It is easy to describe. IoT is Internet devices consisting of sensors, embedded computing and radios that create value. Period. It is the essential model, the required technologies. Devices without sensors + computing + radios are NOT ‘Things.’ Absent Things there is no IoT. Capiche? Simple.

Of course there may be many IoT extensions. Actuators, motors, lights, alarms, etc. are IoT adjuncts, not requirements. Same for novel network configurations, analytics, Big Data, etc. They’re optional. 

BTW, IoT is here, Big Time. Thing is, like the future, it’s just not very evenly distributed. (W. Gibson).

IoT is like the URI/URL, HTTP and HTML. TBL simply connected these to the Internet to reveal the WWW. If you do not know what this is see the World Wide Web.

IoT is simple, pervasive and creating massive value today. There is extreme, geometric value on the horizon. IoT is everywhere. Remember, in 1995 the WWW was also, “…not very evenly distributed.”

What is a serious problem is the apoplexy that takes over everyday people, management, pundits, etc., when faced with IoT. It is concerning and strange. It’s akin to when the WWW hit the mainstream. Apparently, IoT simply has no frame for most people. Yet, most people are heavy users.

Look, smartphones are the most pervasive ‘Thing’ on the Internet today. The 2+ billion Things out there today all depend on, naturally, sensors, embedded computing and radios. Again, IoT is here, creating value, Big Time.

Remember, IoT really debuted around 1995. We were discussing a lot it at HP and the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto. Paul Saffo authored a nice paper that set the IoT course. Of course, connected sensors, radios and computers go back much further, but Paul added some welcome and much-needed perspective.

Many are in denial. Even while the embrace appification and wait-in-line for the iPhone 6s.

The App Stores (iPhone, Android) account for over 3M apps, w/100s of billions of downloads. Many depend on Internet “Things.” Many consists of sensors, computing and radios to create value, i.e., Uber, Postmates, Skype, Instagram, etc. Be brave!

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The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing exponentially. IoT will impact all dimensions of business, education, government, military and civil society. IoT propels Colabria’s traditional action/research initiatives and enterprise advisory activities.

At Colabria we recently completed a confidential, multi-year research study of Enterprise IoT. (It’s why things have been so quiet.) The sponsors were CIOs and executive management of many household names in the Fortune 500. The findings were astonishing! They will be revealed once contractual date obligations have passed.

The role of Colabria participatory action/research is to aid immediate problem solving activities. Primary techniques include distributed phronesis, praxis intervention, heuristics and diffusion. These are fancy terms for building creative, iterative innovation that achieves prosperous outcomes. A delegate once said, “Colabria creates makers, not fakers.” The aphorism stuck.

Essential to Colabria is context. Too often context is under-appreciated. The context for IoT has been coalescing for a generation. At Colabria we sometimes advance our friends at the Institute for the Future. One of their irrepressible leaders, Paul Saffo, authored a paper 20ya that sets the context for IoT. (It’s the Institute for the Future, after all.) Colabria has been evangelizing sensors for 20 years as a core plank of ubiquitous computing. See:

https://www.saffo.com/essays/sensors-the-next-wave-of-infotech-innovation/

IoT is not new, but it’s time is now.

A lot of people, from all stations and walks of life, ask Colabria how to get started in IoT. The two-word answer is simple: Build Something.

To really understand IoT go to littleBits and get CloudBit and snap the Internet to anything. If you have an old smartphone, download free software to convert it to a motion-sensing video monitor in under two minutes. It’s cool and useful. Get WeMo to automate your house lights or sprinklers. Making something right now is the fastest way to master IoT. Oh, have fun, too!

Remember, IoT is not ERP. It doesn’t take 3-5 years to implement. Trust me, your competitors are building IoT value now. Act or they are going to kick your butt. Don’t ruminate, integrate!

If you are a business leader needing IoT for customer value creation then you must experiment. Beware of very expensive, throw-away conferences. Forget PowerPoint spiels by slick product marketers and other dilettantes. Avoid silly ‘entertainment’ at TED conferences. Dismiss well-manicured consultants with lofty ideas and per diems. They are highly counterproductive to the adoption and diffusion of IoT.

Rather, subscribe to Friend-of-Colabria (FoC) Michael Schrage’s essential principle: “Cheap Experiments Are Worth More than Good Ideas.” (The Innovator’s Hypothesis, September 2014)

For most applications no turnkey end-to-end IoT solutions exist. IoT is a complex adaptive system by definition. To reveal customer value with IoT you need incisive, complex systems leadership. IoT is all about experimentation, building, testing, refining and leading customer engagement. Again, the IoT watchword for success is: Build Something.

Just here in Northern California, in Q2, there are over a dozen major IoT ‘industry’ events. They are waste of time and money. Pundits try to force IoT into convention IT/CIO models of command and control. They’re laughable. They offer kettles of IoT red herrings (security, privacy, bandwidth, namespace, network, capacity, storage, etc.) to distract from IoT value creation. Beware.

Meanwhile, among the most exciting developments in the IoT ‘Maker Movement’ revolution is iHangar in San Francisco. iHangar inhabits the enormous space at the Palace of Fine Arts space that was once the home of The Exploratorium.

Fell welcome to engage Colabria to learn more and activate in the IoT community.

IoT represents the next great episode of global economic growth. IoT is akin to the PC revolution but with Internet speed, scale and reach. Colabria will continue its record of high achievement as broker and trusted advisor for all in the IoT époque. Stay tuned, engage, BUILD and prosper!

– John Maloney
@jheuristic

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Colabria was founded in San Francisco in 1996. Ongoing themes include enterprise leadership, social media, complex systems, information architecture and knowledge-based methods and techniques. Colabria conducts and participates in hundreds of seminal events for thousands of delegates worldwide.

Colabria refracts and anneals essential leadership behaviors. Systems-level techniques and future methods lead the conversation for delegates. The focus is 21st-century knowledge-based businesses, organizations and civil societies. Colabria drives mastery of future-focused systems-thinking, networks and complexity. Techniques, tools, talent, and technology  propel Next Practices.

The heart of the Colabria mission is leadership development. Robust, confident leadership creates prosperous businesses outcomes. Optimal leadership inhabits future-focused organizations and ecosystems. Mastery is achieved through triangulation of theory, tools and practice. Sense and meaning are energized through authentic conversations and narratives.

The unique, systems-level bias of the Colabria Clusters advances comprehension. Elegant simplicity delivers inspired interactions. Shared imagination drives action. Mental models shape learning. Personal mastery is achieved. The outcome is prosperity.

Colabria’s orbit and history is broad and varied. Below is a modest collection of seminal events worldwide. 

Colabria® Announces the AngelList User Group

Colabria announces the AngelList User Group

San Francisco, California (PRWEB) February 27, 2013 — The AngelList User Group  is an after-work reception and Meetup on Tuesday, March 12th 2013 in San Francisco, California USA. It is for entrepreneurs, investors, talent and all users of AngelList. AngelList is popular website and platform for raising money for startups. All are welcome.

Colabria® Social Media Network Analysis Workshop

Social Media Network Analysis Workshop

Pomona, CA (PRWEB) April 15, 2010 — Why do some social media and online groups succeed when so many others fail? How do different online media and populations differ? How do patterns of contribution vary? How do these differences illustrate the roles people play within their communities? How can I visualize and optimize my networks to assure success with social media?

Enterprise Collective Intelligence Summit

Enterprise Collective Intelligence Summit

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) May 13, 2010 — The Prediction Market Clusters in collaboration with Microsoft Corporation, Aurora WDC, Consensus Point, The Boeing Company, Amazon.com, the Iowa Electronic Markets, the University of Washington and many others announces the Collective Intelligence Summit – Leading Enterprise Prediction Markets on Friday 4 June 2010 in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Open Enterprise Mashup Summit San Francisco

Open Enterprise Mashup Summit San Francisco

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 3, 2010 – The Open Mashup Alliance, Jackbe Corporation, The Programmable Web, Serena Software, EMU Summits, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Ribbit, DreamFace, Hinchcliffe & Company and many others announces the Open Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit on Friday, 12 March, 2010 in San Francisco, California USA (https://www.emusummit.com/). The Enterprise Mashup Summit will be held at the San Francisco State University beautiful downtown campus in the heart of San Francisco.

Colabria Collective Intelligence Summit Chicago

Colabria Collective Intelligence Summit Chicago

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) October 21, 2009 — The Prediction Market Clusters in collaboration with Aurora WDC, Consensus Point, Spigit, CrowdCast, InTrade, Exago Markets, Mercury-RAC, Motorola, the Iowa Electronic Markets, the University of Chicago and many others announces the Collective Intelligence Summit – Leading Prediction Markets on Friday 6 November 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Collective Intelligence Conference and Prediction Markets Summit New York City

Collective Intelligence Conference and Prediction Markets Summit New York City

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 29, 2009 — The Prediction Market Clusters in collaboration with NewsFutures, Crowdcast, Consensus Point, Mercury-RAC, the Prediction Markets Industry Association, and many others announces the Collective Intelligence Conference and Prediction Markets Summit 24 April 2009 in New York City, New York USA.

Collective Intelligence Conference and Prediction Markets Summit SF

Collective Intelligence Conference and Prediction Markets Summit San Francisco

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) December 9, 2008 — The Prediction Market Clusters in collaboration with NewsFutures, Xpree, the Prediction Markets Industry Association, Mercury-RAC, Robin Hanson, and many others announces the Collective Intelligence Conference and Prediction Markets Summit 23 January 2009 in San Francisco, California USA.

Colabria® Announces the Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit

Colabria® Announces the Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit

New York City, NY (PRWEB) December 24, 2007 — Colabria®, in collaboration with Google, Jackbe, Kapow Technologies, Mashery, The Programmable Web, IBM, Serena Software, Nexaweb, Capgemini, SAP Users Group, University of Southern California and many others, announces the Open Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit East – Expanding Customer Value Networks on Friday, 1 February, 2008, in New York City, NY.

Colabria® and AEI-Brookings Joint Center Prediction Markets Conference

Colabria® and AEI-Brookings Joint Center Prediction Markets Conference

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) December 20, 2006 — AEI-Brookings Joint Center, in collaboration with Colabria, announces the AEI-Brookings Joint Center Prediction Markets Conference, on Thursday, 18 January, 2007 at the AEI-Brookings Joint Center Headquarters in Washington, DC. New ways to share, trade and aggregate information using Internet-based markets are growing rapidly. These powerful knowledge markets help companies, schools, governments and individuals to acquire and master ever-growing bodies of knowledge. These capabilities achieve mastery of collective wisdom with stunning speed and accuracy.

Colabria® and Uplift Academy European Uplift Academy Workshop

Colabria® and Uplift Academy Announce European Workshop

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 30, 2006 — Colabria®, the leading worldwide action/research network of the knowledge economy and Uplift Academy, a Transformational Network, announce the European Uplift Academy Workshop, in Paris, France, April 27-28, 2006.

European Value Networks Summit

European Value Networks Summit

San Francisco, Calif. USA (PRWEB) March 27, 2006 — Colabria®, the leading worldwide action/research network of the knowledge economy and Cisco Systems®, announce the European Value Networks Summit and broad industry sponsorship for value networks (VN) and value network analysis (VNA).

Colabria® and Cisco Systems Announce Sponsorship

Colabria® and Cisco Systems Announce Sponsorship, Collaboration for Value Networks

San Francisco, Calif. (PRWEB) February 15, 2006 — Colabria®, the leading worldwide action/research network of the knowledge economy and Cisco Systems®, announce industry sponsorship, collaboration, events and leadership for value networks (VN) and value network analysis (VNA).

Prediction Markets Summit – New York City

Prediction Markets Summit New York City 2006

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) January 19, 2006 — Colabria® — the leading worldwide action/research network of the knowledge economy – announces NewsFutures, InTrade and HedgeStreet. will join Google, Yahoo!, CommerceNet and others for the Prediction Markets Summit, February 3rd, 2006 in New York, New York USA.

First Global Prediction Markets Summit

First Global Prediction Markets Summit to Take Place Dec. 2 in San Francisco

San Francisco, Calif. (PRWEB) November 28, 2005 –  Colabria® and CommerceNet are proud to announce that Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, HP Labs, Stanford Business School, NewsFutures, InTrade and HedgeStreet are all participating in the Global Prediction Markets Summit, Dec. 2 in San Francisco. It is the first collaboration on a global level to combine scholarly research with innovative technology and practical solutions for executives, decision makers and professionals.

Colabria Showcases Knowledge Management with First PM Summit

Colabria Showcases Knowledge Management with First PM Summit

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 8, 2005 — Colabria, KM Cluster, CommerceNet and NewsFutures announce the first Prediction Markets Summit, to be held December 2, 2005 in San Francisco. The Prediction Markets Summit will highlight the applications of knowledge management, an up-and-coming trend in business technology, for the knowledge and information markets.

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May 31 – June 2, 2015

Conference @ the Marriott Santa Clara in Santa Clara, CA

Please go to the conference link and click on the Call for Papers tab for more information and to make a submission.

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/collectiveintelligence

Registration for this conference will be open soon.

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Excerpt: 

Mark Granovetter

“Mark S. Granovetter at Stanford University is more of a sociologist than an economist, but his innovative work in economic sociology has landed him on Thomson Reuters’ list of contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.

He has criticized some of the assumptions in today’s economic research like the thought that social norms and values dominate the market and has emphasized that trust is essential in many transactions.”

Read more at Business Insider.

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Complexity Digest September 2014.

Complex network theory and the brain

We have known for at least 100 years that a brain is organized as a network of connections between nerve cells. But in the last 10 years there has been a rapid growth in our capacity to quantify the complex topological pattern of brain connectivity, using mathematical tools drawn from graph theory.

Here we bring together articles and reviews from some of the world’s leading experts in contemporary brain network analysis by graph theory. The contributions are focused on three big questions that seem important at this stage in the scientific evolution of the field: How does the topology of a brain network relate to its physical embedding in anatomical space and its biological costs? How does brain network topology constrain brain dynamics and function? And what seem likely to be important future methodological developments in the application of graph theory to analysis of brain networks?

Clearer understanding of the principles of brain network organization is fundamental to understanding many aspects of cognitive function, brain development and clinical brain disorders. We hope this issue provides a forward-looking window on this fast moving field and captures some of the excitement of recent progress in applying the concepts of graph theory to measuring and modeling the complexity of brain networks.

Complex network theory and the brain

Issue compiled and edited by David Papo, Javier M. Buldú, Stefano Boccaletti and Edward T. Bullmore

Collective motions of heterogeneous swarms

The emerging collective motions of swarms of interacting agents are a subject of great interest in application areas ranging from biology to physics and robotics. In this paper, we conduct a careful analysis of the collective dynamics of a swarm of self-propelled heterogeneous, delay-coupled agents. We show the emergence of collective motion patterns and segregation of populations of agents with different dynamic properties; both of these behaviors (pattern formation and segregation) emerge naturally in our model, which is based on self-propulsion and attractive pairwise interactions between agents. We derive the bifurcation structure for emergence of different swarming behaviors in the mean field as a function of physical parameters and verify these results through simulation.

Collective motions of heterogeneous swarms Klementyna Szwaykowska, Luis Mier-y-Teran Romero, Ira B. Schwartz

Multidimensional homophily in friendship networks

Homophily, the tendency for individuals to associate with similar others, is one of the most persistent findings in social network analysis. Its importance is established along the lines of a multitude of sociologically relevant dimensions, e.g. sex, ethnicity and social class. Existing research, however, mostly focuses on one dimension at a time. But people are inherently multidimensional, have many attributes and are members of multiple groups. In this article, we explore such multidimensionality further in the context of network dynamics. Are friendship ties increasingly likely to emerge and persist when individuals have an increasing number of attributes in common? We analyze eleven friendship networks of adolescents, draw on stochastic actor-oriented network models and focus on the interaction of established homophily effects. Our results indicate that main effects for homophily on various dimensions are positive. At the same time, the interaction of these homophily effects is negative. There seems to be a diminishing effect for having more than one attribute in common. We conclude that studies of homophily and friendship formation need to address such multidimensionality further.

Multidimensional homophily in friendship networks * PER BLOCK and THOMAS GRUND

Network Science / Volume 2 / Issue 02 / August 2014, pp 189-212

Conditions for the Emergence of Shared Norms in Populations with Incompatible Preferences

Understanding norms is a key challenge in sociology. Nevertheless, there is a lack of dynamical models explaining how one of several possible behaviors is established as a norm and under what conditions. Analysing an agent-based model, we identify interesting parameter dependencies that imply when two behaviors will coexist or when a shared norm will emerge in a heterogeneous society, where different populations have incompatible preferences. Our model highlights the importance of randomness, spatial interactions, non-linear dynamics, and self-organization. It can also explain the emergence of unpopular norms that do not maximize the collective benefit. Furthermore, we compare behavior-based with preference-based punishment and find interesting results concerning hypocritical punishment. Strikingly, pressuring others to perform the same public behavior as oneself is more effective in promoting norms than pressuring others to meet one?s own private preference. Finally, we show that adaptive group pressure exerted by randomly occuring, local majorities may create norms under conditions where different behaviors would normally coexist.

Helbing D, Yu W, Opp K-D, Rauhut H (2014) Conditions for the Emergence of Shared Norms in Populations with Incompatible Preferences. PLoS ONE 9(8): e104207.

Quantifying the benefits of vehicle pooling with shareability networks

Recent advances in information technologies have increased our participation in “sharing economies,” where applications that allow networked, real-time data exchange facilitate the sharing of living spaces, equipment, or vehicles with others. However, the impact of large-scale sharing on sustainability is not clear, and a framework to assess its benefits quantitatively is missing. For this purpose, we propose the method of shareability networks, which translates spatio-temporal sharing problems into a graph-theoretic framework that provides efficient solutions. Applying this method to a dataset of 150 million taxi trips in New York City, our simulations reveal the vast potential of a new taxi system in which trips are routinely shareable while keeping passenger discomfort low in terms of prolonged travel time.

Quantifying the benefits of vehicle pooling with shareability networks Paolo Santi, Giovanni Resta, Michael Szell, Stanislav Sobolevsky, Steven H. Strogatz, and Carlo Ratti

Extra-Pair Mating and Evolution of Cooperative Neighbourhoods

A striking but unexplained pattern in biology is the promiscuous mating behaviour in socially monogamous species. Although females commonly solicit extra-pair copulations, the adaptive reason has remained elusive. We use evolutionary modelling of breeding ecology to show that females benefit because extra-pair paternity incentivizes males to shift focus from a single brood towards the entire neighbourhood, as they are likely to have offspring there. Male-male cooperation towards public goods and dear enemy effects of reduced territorial aggression evolve from selfish interests, and lead to safer and more productive neighbourhoods. The mechanism provides adaptive explanations for the common empirical observations that females engage in extra-pair copulations, that neighbours dominate as extra-pair sires, and that extra-pair mating correlates with predation mortality and breeding density. The models predict cooperative behaviours at breeding sites where males cooperate more towards public goods than females. Where maternity certainty makes females care for offspring at home, paternity uncertainty and a potential for offspring in several broods make males invest in communal benefits and public goods. The models further predict that benefits of extra-pair mating affect whole nests or neighbourhoods, and that cuckolding males are often cuckolded themselves. Derived from ecological mechanisms, these new perspectives point towards the evolution of sociality in birds, with relevance also for mammals and primates including humans.

Eliassen S, Jørgensen C (2014) Extra-Pair Mating and Evolution of Cooperative Neighbourhoods. PLoS ONE 9(7): e99878.

Neural coordination can be enhanced by occasional interruption of normal firing patterns: A self-optimizing spiking neural network model

The state space of a conventional Hopfield network typically exhibits many different attractors of which only a small subset satisfy constraints between neurons in a globally optimal fashion. It has recently been demonstrated that combining Hebbian learning with occasional alterations of normal neural states avoids this problem by means of self-organized enlargement of the best basins of attraction. However, so far it is not clear to what extent this process of self-optimization is also operative in real brains. Here we demonstrate that it can be transferred to more biologically plausible neural networks by implementing a self-optimizing spiking neural network model. In addition, by using this spiking neural network to emulate a Hopfield network with Hebbian learning, we attempt to make a connection between rate-based and temporal coding based neural systems. Although further work is required to make this model more realistic, it already suggests that the efficacy of the self-optimizing process is independent from the simplifying assumptions of a conventional Hopfield network. We also discuss natural and cultural processes that could be responsible for occasional alteration of neural firing patterns in actual brains

Neural coordination can be enhanced by occasional interruption of normal firing patterns: A self-optimizing spiking neural network model Alexander Woodward, Tom Froese, Takashi Ikegami

Measures of Human Mobility Using Mobile Phone Records Enhanced with GIS Data

In the past decade, large scale mobile phone data have become available for the study of human movement patterns. These data hold an immense promise for understanding human behavior on a vast scale, and with a precision and accuracy never before possible with censuses, surveys or other existing data collection techniques. There is already a significant body of literature that has made key inroads into understanding human mobility using this exciting new data source, and there have been several different measures of mobility used. However, existing mobile phone based mobility measures are inconsistent, inaccurate, and confounded with social characteristics of local context. New measures would best be developed immediately as they will influence future studies of mobility using mobile phone data. In this article, we do exactly this. We discuss problems with existing mobile phone based measures of mobility and describe new methods for measuring mobility that address these concerns. Our measures of mobility, which incorporate both mobile phone records and detailed GIS data, are designed to address the spatial nature of human mobility, to remain independent of social characteristics of context, and to be comparable across geographic regions and time. We also contribute a discussion of the variety of uses for these new measures in developing a better understanding of how human mobility influences micro-level human behaviors and well-being, and macro-level social organization and change.

Measures of Human Mobility Using Mobile Phone Records Enhanced with GIS Data Nathalie E. Williams, Timothy A. Thomas, Matthew Dunbar, Nathan Eagle, Adrian Dobra

The Matthew effect in empirical data

The Matthew effect describes the phenomenon that in societies the rich tend to get richer and the potent even more powerful. It is closely related to the concept of preferential attachment in network science, where the more connected nodes are destined to acquire many more links in the future than the auxiliary nodes. Cumulative advantage and success-breads-success also both describe the fact that advantage tends to beget further advantage. The concept is behind the many power laws and scaling behaviour in empirical data, and it is at the heart of self-organization across social and natural sciences. Here we review the methodology for measuring preferential attachment in empirical data, as well as the observations of the Matthew effect in patterns of scientific collaboration, socio-technical and biological networks, the propagation of citations, the emergence of scientific progress and impact, career longevity, the evolution of common English words and phrases, as well a!

s in

education and brain development. We also discuss whether the Matthew effect is due to chance or optimisation, for example related to homophily in social systems or efficacy in technological systems, and we outline possible directions for future research.

The Matthew effect in empirical data, Matjaz Perc

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