Part 3 From Firm to System

Here I explore some ideas about the systems of co-operation / collaboration.I use interoperability to mean setting protocols and systems for interaction between co-ops, individuals and/or online web resources.  Im talking about communications and knowledge flows.Clearly the interconnectedness / communication that has been enabled by the internet is allowing loads of new forms of co-operation to spring forward.  Much of it is informally ordered.  There is much *buzz* around open source, P2P, 'the commons' etc. etc. I had a look at this presentation yesterday that has some nice observations about the way the internet is progressing and likely future trends. - http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2010/07/web-30-way-forward.html (slide 12 of the SlideShare presentation there is particularly relevant) Innovation Labs I like the idea thats been discussed here of co-operative idea development labs - make them open to anyone, do a lot of promotion to invite people to come in and present/form/discuss/rate ideas.  Identify and make visible value to participation to encourage contributions (maybe promise of some seed funding for good ideas?).   Once an idea begins to gain support it is then taken (either formally or viewers/contributors just take the idea and run) onto open initiative development/management/stewardship possibly something following a model similar to the agile software development process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_Manifesto where an open group of autonomous actors (individuals and/or groups) come together to begin to work towards an idea by identifying actions required and breaking them down into small tasks that can be easily undertaken. http://bettermeans.org/ is an example of a sophisticated free open project management tool- designed for collaborative governance and development. http://www.appropedia.org/Radical_collaboration might point to more of the picture. Many more collaborative tools which enable people to effectively interact are shown on this mindmap (have to scroll about a bit) http://s.coop/6no Crowd funding and/or funding from the co-op sector could be usefully deployed to speed development.InteroperabilityI'm no expert on the co-operative sector but since having my enthusiasm in co-operatives reignited about a year ago Ive noticed that online conversation / discussion about co-operatives is disjointed, spread out between various on-line spaces (Hive, Linkedin, Co-opnet.coop, www.uk.coop) and various events and meetings.  I think that there would be much to gain from linking these conversations. Ive heard it bemoaned that discussions is spread across various platforms and is hard to follow.  Would there be value in trying to agree and promote some basic open interoperability protocols?  This could be from social protocols - if you see discussion forming on one topic in a number of places link the discussions (ie post a web link - mention an upcoming event etc.) to using web based tools to pull the information together and present it with some degree of automation (I like the fact that uk.coop now has a live feed of the '#coops' Twitter hash tag and the Delicious/Facebook/etc. buttons, also like the look of the Federated Social Web http://cotw.cc/wiki/Federated_Social_Web) This interoperability can, to varying degrees (depending on where content is kept and how it is licenced), stretch to content and knowledge resources and allow pertinent information/resources to be made very accessible - eg. information about co-operative development, governance, models rules etc.http://cotw.cc/wiki/Green_Knowledge_Trust - is an attempt to begin to address how an open, acessable knowledge base can be built Some collaboratively created ramblings exploring interoperability - http://etherpad.openstewardship.net/Interop-Swarm