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Open content. Remix culture. ... Alternative currencies. The gift economy. Friending. Social media. Slow food. Slow mone
Pragmatic visionaries leading deep change Crowdsourcing. Crowdfunding. Co-working. Open content. Remix culture. YouTube. Makers and Fabbers. Do-It-Yourself. Freecycling. Free services. Dying business models. Alternative currencies. The gift economy. Friending. Social media. Slow food. Slow money. Transition towns. Urban farming. Resource sharing. These recent trends are evidence of major economic shifts as well as profound changes in people's values and priorities. They are the future of business and society. What will happen to incumbent firms? What new businesses are emerging? How is this shifting global power balances? What is really changing? Thinkers interpret these trends in different ways. John Seely Brown and John Hagel call their pragmatic business-oriented view the Big Shift. Peter Senge calls it the Necessary Revolution. Clay Shirky describes the Social Surplus that people are soaking up as they learn to share resources. Barbara Marx Hubbard calls her more spiritual perspective Conscious Evolution. Where do you fall on this pragmatic-to-spiritual spectrum? How are you getting yourself and your organization through the shift? Would you like coconspirators with whom to understand, assess and act on those changes? REX is a private, collaborative expedition into this shift through conference calls (twice a month) and in-person workshops (twice a year), led by me, Jerry Michalski. Together, our expedition's members (and a few invited guests) will address: • • • • •

How can we build a profitable business when our key assets are available for free? What are the new sources of value? What should we let go? Hold fast? How can we be the most trusted players in our industry? What new skills do we need to thrive? What structure? What might we do together to accelerate the changes?

The REX group tackles these questions with a unique perspective, clear goals and an innovative process. Perspective: The "RE" in REX is the Relationship Economy, a topic I have been developing for over a decade and the point of view that helps us scope and steer this eXpedition. The Relationship Economy brings some very inconvenient and unpredictable forces -- social dynamics, openness, abundance and emergence -- to bear on the "old" consumer economy, which was more about launching products developed in secret at carefully targeted demographic segments. This collision of forces upends a few deeply held assumptions, such as the notions that scarcity equals value, that a company owns its brands or that most things should be designed by experts. Your organization's key assets may no longer be in patents or inventory, they may instead be in the energy and connections represented by your organization's relationships. You can feel these forces when you ask questions like, Whom do you trust? (And who trusts you?) How do you decide what to watch or buy? How will you tell the world about your new product or invention? What is the role of business in maintaining common pool resources? What drives people to join large companies, or to create complex shared resources like Wikipedia? How can companies help build more stable communities, cities and economies?

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The old perspective is not being wiped out. Old and new are finding new points of balance. Some examples: doing well and doing good, profitability and sustainability, a commercial economy with gift exchange. Happiness and well-being are becoming measures that matter. It's a sweet future, but the road there will be difficult. The disruptive effects are cascading through all parts of all organizations: from leadership and innovation, through operations and support, to marketing and service redesign. The nature of firms is changing. We're even seeing shifts in the boundaries that have long separated the business, government and nonprofit sectors. As I write and speak about the Relationship Economy, I bring those and others' insights to the bi-monthly REX conversations and biannual meetings. Together, through collaborative inquiry with trusted peers, we turn those ideas into exercises, presentations and plans for each of our organizations. Goals: Members of the Relationship Economy eXpedition take pragmatic actions today that reshape their organizations to thrive in this emerging world. The actions might be to design and launch a business unit, rethink hiring and talent management, rewire departmental responsibilities, adopt novel practices or services, venture together into new markets or promulgate a new industry standard. Here are some of REX's more direct value propositions: • Understand deeply the new forces at play such as openness and abundance, and how they are changing global commerce, governance and society. • Work together in harmony with the new forces. Experiment with new business models. Learn where to "put the gates" that generate profits. • Build productive relationships with others who share similar ambitions for their organizations and careers. • Be part of a supportive network of peers who mentor one another on making change happen. • Form subgroups around initiatives specifically interesting to you. • Innovate in dimensions you didn't have permission to explore or you didn't perceive existed. • Bring pattern-breaking ideas back to your organization. • Learn to translate ambitious strategic goals into actions that play out over weeks, not months. • Get and customize deliverables that will help you drive your organizational transformation. • Get trusted referrals to individuals and organizations with specific skills you seek. • Learn to use the new tools of social media, open development and remix culture. • Shape yourself and your organization to thrive in the coming economy. Process: REX members are pragmatic visionaries. Their common skills are an ability to see far, yet act now. They come from different fields, at various levels of authority: A rich variety of points of view makes our interactions far more valuable. REX members are transformation agents, internally and externally, directly and indirectly. I interview them all, hold the space and lead our eXpedition. Membership in REX costs $9,000 per year. Special invited guests circulate in the REX community and bring greater depth and perspective to aspects of our quest. We don't ask them to do their introductory talks; instead, we engage them in directed inquiry to answer our open questions.

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The REX model is rigorous but flexible. It evolves with the group's insights and experiences. Besides the bi-monthly conversations and biannual in-person meetings, other events emerge from our process, such as workshops, exercises or local meetings. We draw on many outside resources and team up with other organizations, as appropriate. In our calls and meetings, I balance directed exercises with open, almost chaotic conversations so we have enough space for fresh ideas to show up, yet enough discipline to act on them. The key to profiting from new ideas is to execute better and more quickly than others, not to put a lock on them. To that end, we work as openly as possible. Our conversations are private and our internal information is confidential, but a major part of life in the Relationship Economy is sharing generously and engaging others in meaningful interactions. We create a shared memory of the REX insights in a variety of media, from essays to videos, screencasts and concept maps, and share them with the world. In that spirit, I invite you to join the Relationship Economy eXpedition. Jerry Michalski, founder [email protected] @jerrymichalski REX: www.sociate.com/REX

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