Over a century of management theory and practice has been based on a magical belief in Scarcity. Scarcity of resources, scarcity of time, scarcity of talent, scarcity of technology. What a crock of shit!
We now live in the age of Abundance! As Chris Anderson beautifully argues in his most recent salvo in Wired, we now live in the Free Economy. This applies to many things, not the least of which are the rapidly falling marginal costs involved in delivering digital content (that replaces old school content) across the network to millions of people instantaneously.
Coworking: The New Home of Innovation
Nowhere is the myth of scarcity more apparent than the in mainstream corporate conversations about innovation. There is endless talk in corporate America about the importance of innovation, but it is mostly just talk. There remains the belief that innovation is a scarce resource, the domain of the few and clever and creative. Creativity does indeed matter, but collaboration matters more. In the world of coworking, the realities of abundance are being embraced in ways never seen before. There are now tools and conversations that make SO many things possible that mainstream corporates, really, have no clue.
Within the past few months alone, several bright and intensely innovative companies have bubbled up out of the collaborative soup of coworking. Please check them out:
The lessons here are many, but I'll just mention a few for now. The tools of innovation today are cheap and approach, as Chris Anderson says, free. Solutions are for the here and now, now! And they are being generated in groups, collaboratively, by people who are choosing to work together. As M.C. Hammer once said: "U Can't Touch This."
Abundance thrives outside of the corporate hive, amongst those who are living it. Scarcity, meanwhile, lives inside the hive, where the most guarded of all resources--information--remains locked in the corporate firewall.
My advice to middling corporate managers... Get out of the office, visit a coworking site, ask a few questions, and then whatever you do, don't say a fucking thing. Just watch how the people solve problems and build things. You'll want to hire them to work for your company, but they will just tell you to piss off. They're long gone already. But they have lots to teach you, so listen closely!
The Butcher
At this point, me and the rest of the Conjunctured founders have tasted freedom and there is no going back. Now we seek to share this experience with as many people willing to take the red pill.
It turns out that even the mere *possibility* of innovation is a great motivator.
> "You’ll want to hire them to work for your company, but they will just tell you to piss off. They’re long gone already. But they have lots to teach you, so listen closely!"
Ah, but if they're interesting companies, with interesting work, we might be interested in working *with* them on a project. But no, you're right, not working *for* them.
And yes, I'll look for you at SXSW - sounds like we're all on the same track!
Indeed, when you go from working 'for' to working 'with,' they become your clients. There is only 1 Google, so, other than that, 'client' might be as good as they can expect...
Cesar, bring plenty of those red pills to SX, looks like there will be lots of takers!!
cheers
Andrew, will do man. Where do you want to make the exchange. There aren't really any seedy corners in downtown Austin. Email me at cesar [zat] conjunctured [dot] com. Twitter too @cesart.