Actics Blog

Percy Barnevik, ‘Europe’s hottest business executive of the 1990s’  has set up his own micro finance organization hand in hand, building on trend to foster development by encouraging grass root entrepreneurship.

Hand in Hand follows a broadly similar agenda to other microcredit initiatives that attempt to alleviate poverty through female entrepreneurship and education, its strategy is based on
Mobilising the poorest women, who are largely illiterate, into self-help groups led by   full-time business consultants.

Put child labourers in schools.
Equip “citizen centres” with books, computers and internet connections.
Provide access ot medical treatment.
Improve the local environment.

Reboot is on again! I’ll give two talks this year, one on The Ethical Economy, a topic dear to  Nicolaj and me, and a theory that illustrates the core principle of Actics, the other: an introductory crash course in humanism (30 mins). Hope to meet all of you there. (also, if you come, you’ll get to see Michel Bauwens and George Por…).

In the aftermath of the Kathy Sierra affair, Tim O’Reilly felt called to propose a general code of conduct for bloggers last month. Although I understand and sympathize with O’reilly’s urge to react somehow (I agree that some people loose decency in online communication and handle anonymity extremely bad), the choice to suggest a general code of conduct as known from old fashioned CSR is totally futile and highly untimely as well. Here’s why:

1. Bloggers are highly heterogeneous. If codes are not to be vacuously generic and abstract, they stand no chance of being sufficiently operational to change conduct.
2. As such, codes will remain dead tombs of half harted morality and empty gestures. Most welcome for those convinced that all talk of ethics is hypocritical and poison to the effort of actually bringing about ethical changes.

Instead? It can be of no surprise to you that my alternative is putting an Actics widget on your blog, stating what kind of ethical values you personally live by and how. If you for instance live by the value ‘respect’ you could state the action ‘Always remove comments with no positive intent’ or ‘Only allowing comments not insulting other readers’. Then your ‘local’ ethical criteria on your blog is much more personal and concrete. AND it allows your readers to feedback on relevance and your ability to walk the talk.

News from the world of reports and knowledge. The cool hunting site PSFK featured an abstract of our CSR 2.0 working paper a couple of days ago. We got some criticism for lack of references and examples. We quickly remedied that with a new version (although the paper originally was meant more like a mix between a manifesto and forecast.) However, for the critique of hyping and skepticism on whether a convergence between the public engagement of Web 2.0 and corporate responsibility is actually taking place, here are two pieces that seriously back our claims and predictions.

The core tenet of the latest Trendwatching report on ‘Transparency‘ is quite in line with both Actics and our CSR 2.0 perspective in specific. It contains numerous great examples of what happens if you ride the transparency wave - and if you don’t (the links under 4 are especially relevant for us). The report offers amble documentation for how CSR is becoming a matter for the masses online. Everything is up for investigation, evaluation and comparison – including corporate conduct (It sounds like a no-brainer but is more complex than that, as the recent Edelman report indicate). The solution?

Getting worried about your own brand? While most brands show a Pavlovian tendency to spend even more on ‘disaster-handling’ courses, the real solution is of course to not misbehave or underperform

The Trendwatching report links to a recent Wired article on transparency, The See-Through CEO. It is just as interesting and contains other instructive examples of the value of transparency and honesty in hyper-connected age. This quote alone captures the main point of our CSR 2.0 perspective:

The new breed of naked executives also discover that once people are interested in you, they’re interested in helping you out - by offering ideas, critiques, and extra brain cycles. Customers become working partners.

Highly recommended readings!

If any of you like to comment on and thus improve our CSR 2.0 paper please find an almost daily updated version here.

May 4th, 2007 by Benjamin Duranske, by way of VirtualLaw

The dirty little legal secret of Second Life isn’t the virtual escorts, illegal gambling, ponzi schemes, or even money laundering, but trade mark infringement.
Here are a handful of numbers gathered May 4, 2007, that begin to illuminate the scope of the problem:
* There are at least 16 shops in Second Life advertising that they sell “Ferrari” cars. One model sells for L$1995 (approximately US $7.75). Ferrari does not have an official presence in Second Life.
* At least 40 stores in Second Life advertise virtual “Rolex” and “Chanel” watches, averaging around L$350 (US $1.61). Neither Rolex nor Chanel runs any of these stores.
* Ferarri Rolex Chanel Gucci Rayban Oakley Prada and Nike Knock-Offs in Second LifeThere are more than 50 stores in Second Life carrying virtual sunglasses branded “Gucci,” “Prada,” “Rayban,” and “Oakley.” Each pair is priced around L$125 (US $0.75). None of these stores appears to be owned, sponsored, endorsed, or licensed by any of these companies.
* Even geek-darling Apple isn’t immune. A half-dozen stores in Second Life sell virtual “iPods” for avatars. Some add copyright infringement, preloading the unlicensed “iPods” with songs from artists ranging from Michael Jackson to Gwen Stefani. Apple is not behind these stores.

and so on… The economics of this are big, even with conservative estimates.

This past March, about 11,500,000 transactions took place within Second Life. There’s no way to know exactly how many involved knock-off goods, but a quick overview of in-world shopping areas reveals that well over 1% (probably closer to 3-5%) of the goods for sale in-world carry unlicensed trademarks. For the sake of argument, let’s be conservative and say that about 1% of the transactions in-world involve unlicensed trademarks. That’s about 115,000 instances of profitable, in-world trademark infringement in March, 2007, alone. Projected out, around 1.4 million transactions a year.Using an average transaction value of $1.50 (less than the current, saturated-market price of a knock-off Rolex) we’re in the range of US $2m in transactions involving counterfeit goods in Second Life every year.

This only supports my previous argument that popular trademarks shoudl be made the property of UNESCO. Aparently they have become so natural to mankind that not even a new, ‘virtual’ world can do without them….

Starting in 2007, the Danish government is spending 160 million Kroner [equivalent to 21m Euro or 29m USD] a year- and the budget is slated to grow a lot larger over time- on a centre for user centred innovation, to be hosted at Copenhagen Business School.

The logic behind the new Danish policy is that, essentially, all the government spending on innovation around the world is now technology push - R&D subsidies to manufacturers and so on. The Danes and other small countries can never win at that game; they will always be outspent by larger countries. Their new idea is to help their manufacturing firms be early at converting to the new, user-centered innovation paradigm we have been discussing in order to create a comparative advantage for Denmark.”

more at the DUCI site