Actics Blog

Together with the Swedish think tank fenomenal, Kesera has produced a research report for the Muncipality of Malmö, Sweden, on how to handle new, participatory cultural forms, like social production and citizen innovation. The abstract follows below, the whole report is available by contacting adam.

This report presents the results of ‘Laboratorum för Spontanklur’, a research initiative financed by the Culture Board of the municipality of Malmö in 2008. Laboratorium för Spontankultur worked for six months in 2008 with the task of defining the concept of ’spontankultur’ (spontaneous culture) and elaborate a strategy for future cultural policy based on this understanding. Spontankultur refers to the proliferation of self-organized acitvities of cultural production that has become a feature of the informational city. Empowered by new information and communication technologies, people in different ages and life situations tend to organize their own cooperative networks to provide goods (like organic produce), experiences (like music or other forms of aesthetic expressions) and services (like care of the elderly) on an autonomous basis. These productive networks also constitute a revitalized civic culture that has the potential to compensate for the declining activity of traditional organizations. The report suggests that ’spontankultur’ can provide a substantial resource for the development of the city of Malmö in three main respects. First spontakultur can work as a field of cutting edge cultural research, feeding the creative and cultural industries with new ideas and input. Second, spontankultur can serve as a way to revitalize the civic culture of the city, providing new spaces for interaction and democratic participation. Third, spontankultur can be put to work to generate strategies for sustainable livlng form below, offering an innovative take on sustainable city development. In order to work with this new cultural factor, the municipality needs to rethink its cultural policy. Culture needs to be conceived as a productive material, rather than as ready made products destined for consumption. A strategy to support and empower spontankultur would build on three factors. One, supporting actors, giving people the time and resources to engage in self-organized forms of production. Two, supporting environments, making sure that the city offers spaces for such spontaneous production, ensuring an active city life and contrasting gentrification. Three, empowering and enabling networks and projects, particularly through the simplification of regulations and forms of municipal financing. The report concludes by presenting a concrete suggestion for how such a new cultural strategy could be institutionalized in a specific municipal institution, Spontanlab.

We’re proud to announce a new website for the Ethical Economy book project. At www.ethicaleconomy.com, you can download a final version of the first chapter that introduces and summarizes the argument (the second chapter, The Ethical Economy is Already Here, on how capitalism is no longer ‘capitalist’ but something else, will be available int he end of November). There is also a wiki where you can contribute and comment and a blog.

Abstract:

This book suggests that we are facing an epochal economic and social shift, perhaps of an importance unsurpassed since the bourgeois revolution that gave birth to the capitalist economy that we have today. The next economy will be an ethical economy where value is no longer based on labour as in the capitalist economy (nor on land as in the feudal economy that preceded it), but on the ability to construct ethically significant social relations. This is no utopia: the ethical economy is already here, in brand management, in advanced forms of knowledge work, on financial markets, and in the expanding range of autonomous forms of social production- ranging from P2P software, via fan communities to alternative forms of agriculture and food distribution- that have evolved around new information and communication technologies. And its impact is set to grow with the further diffusion and evolution of those technologies. This book offers a first coherent theory of the ethical economy, examining its origins, its present dynamics and its future potential. It draws out the implications of this epochal shift for business, politics and society.

I was invited to do a 4 hour seminar with brand executives from P&G at the company´s own ‘creative workshop‘ - an ex brewery in the slums of Cincinnatti: very creative class. The topic was the ethical economy, and they loved it. They all agreed with the message and I didn’t have to convince them of anything. People in big corporations sense that the tide is turning and they want to prepare for the next phase.

And, yes, there were also the primaries…

More and more people are arguing that 2008 will be remembered as the year in which the business community really discovered sustainability. We read about these news every day, Apple begins to tackle its bad sustainability record, even WalMart pronounces sustainability to be a major concern.

A recent paper sponsored by BT and Sisco: ‘A new mindset for corporate sustainability’ (and available here) points at three major aspects of this shift in business mindsets.

* Boardroom commitment to sustainability helps build a framework for robust corporate governance.

* Investors are becoming increasingly receptive to sustainability.

* Sustainability offers a proven and legitimate framework for exploiting new avenues for innovation.

(via EthicalCorporation)

What will come out of this? Will the US recession trigger a new New Deal organized around sustainability and Green Capitalism? Will this be a way for the west to maintain its position vis-a-vis energy-intensive China? It’s a possibility.

Hu Jintao, in his speech at the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party stresses the importance of Culture, both for national cohesion and as a development tool.He emphasies committment to spreading internet access, promoting Chinese Creative Industries and realizing a Chinese Experience Economy!

some quotes

“Culture has become a more and more important source of national
cohesion and creativity and a factor of growing significance in the
competition in overall national strength,”

“…to vigorously develop the cultural industry, launch major
projects to lead the industry as a whole, speed up the development of
cultural industry bases and clusters of cultural industries with
regional features, nurture key enterprises and strategic investors,
create a thriving cultural market and enhance the industry’s
international competitiveness”

“…to establish a national system of honors for outstanding cultural
workers”

The ultra-cool XO laptop from the ‘One Laptop per Child’ project will be commercially available from Nobvember 12th. It works like this, you buy two laptops, one is donated to a child and the other is shipped to you. Price about $ 380 for both of them. Given the ridiculously cheap dollar this is a really good deal (apart form being ethically sound). The thing is a design marvel, with ultrasensitive wifi antenna (detecting a network where you ordinary pc is blind) and a screen that’s perfect for reading e-books in the sun.

get it here

We’re happy to have Michel Bauwens with us once again, this time it is free and everybody’s wellcome

PEER TO PEER AND USER-LED SOCIAL INNOVATION.

Gå hjem møde- After work seminar

with
Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives (www.p2pfoundation.net)

Friday June 8th, 15.30-17.00
Nye KUA, bygning 23 – University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Humanities, building 23
room: 23.0.49
Njalsgade
(for queries and info. contact Adam Arvidsson, arvidsson@hum.ku.dk, 26174875)

‘Information and communication technologies have unleashed the creativity of users, consumers and other members of the public. The cost of designing, producing and distributing creative products is rapidly diminishing. So far this has had a revolutionizing impact on the creative industries, on innovation and product development and on knowledge production in general. But do these new relations of production have the potential to move beyond today’s social order? What kind of political thought and what sort of social institutions can come out of such diffused production systems? ‘

Michel Bauwens is one of the world’s leading experts on such peer-to-peer systems. He has published widely on the political economy of peer production (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499)and runs the foundation for peer to peer alternatives (www.p2pfoundation.net), the worlds leading information resource on the economic, social and political implications of peer-to-peer production

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…).

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.