A strategic Analysis of Knowledge Sharing and Social Change Platforms

A Strategic Analysis of Knowledge Exchange and Social Change Pla9orms

Posi;oning the PLAST Project

Helene Finidori CC BY - SA

The present analysis of the sustainability of pla2orms for social engagement and social empowerment incorporates insights derived from the exponen:al growth of web based businesses. The @pentagrowth model on which it is based was elaborated from a study of 50 web businesses that achieved annual growth of greater than 50 percent per annum (in revenue, number of users and impact) for five consecu:ve years from 2008. The study iden:fied five laws for exponen:al growth and, on this basis, five levers, each with a scale onto which various business models can be posi:oned. Creus, Javier, 2015, @PENTAGROWTH REPORT: The five levers of accelerated growth. A new point of view on the keys for growth for organizaDons in the digital environment of the XXI century. Ideas for Change . hIp://pentagrowth.com/report/

Adap;ng the @pentagrowth Model

The five laws that characterize the poten:al for a pla2orm to grow exponen:ally as iden:fied in the @pentagrowth study are the following:

●  Collect: the smaller the effort an organisa:on requires to build its available inventory, the greater its poten:al to leverage those assets.

●  Connect: the larger the number of nodes that an organisa:on connects, the greater the poten:al of the organisa:on.

●  Empower: the larger the number of capaci:es of its users that an organiza:on integrates into its business, the greater its poten:al growth.

●  Enable: the larger the number of value creators that use the tools provided by the organisa:on to generate their own business, the greater its growth poten:al.

●  Share: the larger the community that shares a sense of resource ownership with the organiza:on, the greater the organisa:on’s growth poten:al.

The @pentagrowth laws were adapted into levers and scales allowing to describe the business models observed. We adapted the @pentagrowth model and its scales to evaluate, from the perspec:ve of user experience and its effect on the scalability and sustainability of a pla2orm, a variety of the state-‐of-‐the-‐art knowledge co-‐crea:on and exchange pla2orms and prac:ces: maps, online encyclopedia of the first genera:on, wikis, sustainability social networks, knowledge commons of open source soTware, systems thinking prac:ce, paIern language prac:ce. The five levers (derived from the original model) and the scales we adapted for the present study follow.

Collect In the @pentagrowth model, the smaller the effort an organisa:on requires to build its available inventory (centralized, decentralized, commons), the greater its poten:al to leverage those assets. In our adapted model, the inventory is both what the pla2orm aIracts and what it builds. It emphasises the ‘connectability’ of the elements, their ease of discovery and sharability, their ‘aIrac:on’ and ‘ac:va:on’ power, and ul:mately how they can mobilise higher levels of usage by leveraging network effects. Our scale ranges from collec:ng single instances/objects (such as people, organiza:ons, events in a map or directory), through networks of objects (such as processes, inter-‐related knowledge bases, groups of users in a wiki or social network), to systems with their inten:ons, ‘objects’, processes, and outcomes (such as an organisation). ! The more ‘genera8ve’ the elements collected, the greater the poten8al

for a=rac8on and connec8on.

Collect Inventory

Instances

Systems

Networks

Connect In the @pentragrowth model, the larger the number of nodes (people, situa:ons, things) that an organisa:on connects, the greater the poten:al of the organisa:on. In our adapted model, we not only consider the number of nodes connected but also the genera:ve quality and enabling poten:al of the connec:ons to produce an op:mal flow between the parts. This is best achieved through shared social-‐objects. Our scale ranges from connec:ng people (such as in a social network), to connec:ng knowledge/ideas (such as in a wiki) to connec:ng praxis and thus ac:on (such as in a repository recording s:gmerge:c memory). ! The closer to praxis and ac8on the connec8ons are made, the

greater the poten8al for produc8ve interac8ons. Engeström, Jyri. Why some social network services work and others don’t — Or: the case for object-‐centered sociality <hIp://bit.ly/1oL6JfM> [Accessed 10th April 2015]

Connect Poten;al

People

Praxis

Knowledge

Empower In the @pentagrowth model, the larger the number of capaci:es of users (as users, producers or other role) that an organiza:on integrates into its business, the greater its poten:al growth. In our adapted model, in addi:on to the number of capaci:es or roles, we also focus on the diversity and scale of capabili:es of users the pla2orm can unleash to maximize individual and collec:ve agency and help drive change across domains. Our scale ranges from empowering individuals (to generate autonomy), to empowering collabora:ons and communi:es (to generate convergence, cohesiveness), to empowering en:re diverse ecosystems (to generate polycentric coherence and coalescence/mutual reinforcement of effects) ! The greater the diversity and scale of agencies empowered, the greater

the poten8al for systemic transforma8on.

Empower Agency

Individuals

Ecosystems

Collabora:ons

Enable In the @pentagrowth model, the larger the number of value creators that use the tools provided by the organisa:on to generate their own business (provide, co-‐market, co-‐create), the greater its growth poten:al. Our adapted model focuses on the responsibility for the provision of content and tools to users to create their own value and the incen:ve, empowerment and agency of users to maintain these generators of value. Our scale ranges from provide (content), to co-‐produce (ac:onable knowledge), to co-‐nurture (a whole genera:ve system, the pla2orm itself). ! The greater the incen8ve for users to co-‐nurture the whole plaCorm system,

the greater the poten8al for keeping the content and tools updated and alive.

Enable Value

Provide

Co-‐nurture

Co-‐produce

Share In the @pentagrowth model, the larger the community that has a shared sense of resource ownership with the organiza:on (proprietary, non commercial, open), the greater the organisa:on’s growth poten:al. Our adapted model takes open as a given, and focuses on the degrees of joint sense of ownership of the pla2orm itself. Whether a user has access to plain informa:on, or a system of ac:onable items, will affect their iden:fica:on with, adop:on and shaping (via content, processes of co-‐produc:on and governance) of, a pla2orm. Our scale ranges from a joint sense of ownership of output, process, or system. ! The greater the appropria8on of the whole system by its users, the greater the

incen8ve for the on-‐going shaping and adapta8on of the plaCorm to needs.

Share Ownership

Output

System

Process

The correla:on between levers display the essen:al quali:es pla2orms must have to grow, scale and thrive. Here again, our correla:ons are different from the @pentagrowth.

Between Collect and Connect, the quan:ty and quality of what is collected and therefore the poten:al for connec:on and for produc:ve interac:on influences the extent of possibili:es that can be unleashed, and thus the Scope of the pla2orm, and ul:mately its ability to scale.

Collect Inventory

Connect Poten;al

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Between Connect and Empower, the poten:al to connect a variety of kinds of agencies and capabili:es and ini:ate a flow of produc:ve interac:ons, determines the Reach, or capacity for transforma:on and impact brought by the pla2orm’s ac:vity.

Connect Poten;al

Empower Agency

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Our examples will be posi:oned on this web graph

At the intersec:on of Empower and Enable, polycentric agency combined with the ability to generate value, maximizes the poten:al for Actualiza;on across the board.

Empower Agency

Enable Value

Co-‐nurture

Provide

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With Share and Enable, the sense of ownership and on-‐going regenera:on of pla2orm output as well as processes and infrastructure by its community are the drivers for the Sustainability both of the prac:ce, the system enabled by the pla2orm, and the pla2orm itself.

Enable Value

Share Sense of Ownership

Co-‐nurture

Provide

Co-‐produce

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Between Share and Collect, how shared inventory is renewed and kept alive by a community, determines the Resilience of the pla2orm as genera:ve system, and its capacity to adapt to change.

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Visualizing Informa;on -‐ Maps Collect instances up to generaDve systems , Connect praxis Ephemeral Empowering, Sharing and Enabling Maps are excellent tools to promote visibility of something -‐-‐ to provide an inventory of instances and locate it, geographically or in a classifica:on. The open mapping soTware Ushahidi developed in Kenya to report post presiden:al elec:on violence in 2007 has successfully been used for emergency repor:ng. In 2010, 40,000 reports were sent out and 4000 districts covered in the aTermath of the Hai: earthquake. Crowd-‐sourced maps have been popular since then in par:cular for ac:vism mapping or alterna:ve solu:ons mapping. Most of the solu:ons associated to social change are related to mapping. The risk however is ‘one shot mapping’. Maps that are created around a specific event and an immediate need for ac:on (by ac:va:ng the ‘empower’ lever), quickly become obsolete without ongoing ac:vity; this is true for geographical maps, and inventories, but also more spohis:cated maps such as mind maps, ontologies, or genera:ve systems. A dedicated blog called Dead Ushahidi, (which used to map dead crowdmaps and is now dead itself!), lists the shortcomings of crowdsourced maps: “Mapping doesn't equal change… Just because you built it doesn't mean they will come”. Maps that predominantly push the ‘collect’ lever need sense of ownership (‘share’ lever) and ac:vity or ac:on (‘enable’ lever) to achieve network effect, scale, and remain alive. hIps://deadushahidi.crowdmap.com/page/index/1 [Retrieved 10 April 2015]

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Digital Encyclopedias Collect networks and Connect knowledge Weak on Empowering, Sharing and Enabling First genera:on digital encyclopedias started as online versions of paper encyclopedias. The currently stalled, but soon to be re-‐launched, Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human PotenDal is a good example of a database of sustainability-‐related knowledge comprising systemic inquiry using paIern-‐like templates, with a pluralis:c approach such as we are developing in the PLAST project. It was started in 1972 as a paper encyclopedia (first published in 1976) by the Union of Interna:onal Associa:ons (UIA) and Mankind 2000, to collect and present informa:on on the problems humanity is confronted with, as well as the challenges such problems pose to concept forma:on, values and development strategies from a broad range of perspec:ves. The Encyclopedia was digi:zed in 1996, brought to the web in 1998, and opened to the public in 1999. The informa:on content was collated mainly from civil society, including materials produced by the 20,000+ interna:onal organisa:ons profiled regularly in UIA’s Yearbook of InternaDonal OrganizaDons; then classified, structured (into open hierarchies and causal chains), recombined and made accessible through AI-‐like mechanisms. The team struggled with the challenge of connec:ng the knowledge so produced with poten:al users. “Who is that for?” or “How would I use this?”were ques:ons that oTen asked by UIA members. The Encyclopedia’s co-‐founder, Anthony Judge, recalls debates about the difficulty to pin down problems and the diverging priori:es of the various stakeholders on the most pressing issues. Judge also men:ons the lack of tools available at the :me to represent and navigate complex forms of informa:on in graphic form. The Encyclopedia was created to collect and connect knowledge based on a systemic concept similar to PLAST’s; but with very liIle use of sharing, empowering and enabling levers (ownership taken by users and the community in terms of maintenance of both the knowledge and the tools). The Encyclopedia’s ac:vity started to slow down around 2005 for want of funding, stopping completely in 2008. hIp://www.uia.org/encyclopedia [retrieved 5 April 2015] Commentaries on Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Poten:al. hIp://kairos.laetusinpraesens.org/encycom_ee [retrieved 10 April 2015] Judge, Anthony, 1991, Encyclopedia Illusions: Ra:onale for an Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Poten:al. hIp://kairos.laetusinpraesens.org/91enill_9_h_1 [retrieved 10 April 2015] Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Poten:al, Assessment: Strengths and weaknesses. hIp://kairos.laetusinpraesens.org/43assess_ee [retrieved 10 April 2015]

Encyclopedia UIA

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Sharing Informa;on -‐ Social Networks Collect networks, moderate Connec;on of knowledge Weak on Empowering, Enabling, Sharing of the resource Probably the most striking state-‐of-‐the-‐art example is Wiser Earth (Wiser standing for World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility). Started in 2007 as a directory of non-‐profit organiza:ons, it became a social network in 2009. Wiser was organized around a master list of issues which were "networked" in such a way that registered users could edit the "connec:ons" of each issue to organiza:ons, resources, jobs, events and groups. The website featured groupware and social networking components, including graphical "network maps". Despite having 115,000 organiza:on members and 80,000 individual members, 3000 working groups, and eight million pages of published content, Wiser closed down in 2014, ostensibly because the organiza:on could not keep up with the technology. The official leIer stated: “...maintaining social media pla2orms and tools comes at a cost. The soTware technologies that we are using need con:nual maintenance and upgrades.” (source Wikipedia). Off the record, addi:onal reasons for the shut-‐down included an accumula:on of informa:on that was hardly ever updated and insufficient ac:vity and cross-‐pollina:on among groups, rendering the project sub-‐viable and unable to jus:fy the costs of maintenance of the site. Wiser collected communi:es around issues and sustainability domains; the social mechanism adopted allowed (and required) users to connect to each other and to issues. Users who were empowered to co-‐create did not maintain and curate the connec:ons and knowledge they had produced. This knowledge was not vital to them. It did not provide a return in livelihood or achievement that would jus:fy the :me they invested in contribu:ng to the content and ac:vi:es. The membership scaled, but the quality of the data and the interac:ons did not follow. There were few bridges across silos. Without a sense of ownership that users acquire when they are not only empowered but also enabled, a community does not take care of a pla2orm. The burden falls on the shoulders of the centralized ini:a:ng organiza:on, which cannot follow. Wiser.org Wikipedia entry <hIp://bit.ly/1Fwwmnv>[Retrived 10 April 2015] Wiser Earth’s Execu:ve director’s leIer <hIp://bit.ly/1ckwvDF>[Retrived 10 April 2015]

Wiser Earth

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Co-‐Producing Knowledge -‐ Wikis Collect networks and Connect knowledge, Share process, Empower autonomy, Enable co-‐produc:on. Wikipedia is the state-‐of-‐the-‐art example of successful applica:on of wiki to the aggrega:on and interconnec:on of knowledge. With the help of its editors, the wiki has evolved into a structure able to produce a working reliability of informa:on, with processes that, “[F]oster the ‘federa:on’ of knowledge, a network of voices that don’t exactly say the same thing, but that contribute, through their very diversity, to a larger whole. From that larger whole, a working consensus can emerge.” The working consensus allows a meta-‐stabiliza:on of the knowledge for a key por:on of what is produced, and flagging of content with liIle certainty and a lot of controversy as uncertain or un-‐resolved, and documented as such. The editor survey undertaken in 2011, however, notes a decline in editor par:cipa:on across languages, a possible consequence of “edit wars” and harassment reported by editors. This has caused Wikipedia to adopt more rigid editorial rules and precau:ons. There is a dilemma, however: on the one hand that heavier top-‐down cura:on of knowledge disempowers poten:al contributors and works against par:cipa:ve content-‐sharing; on the other hand, completely free and open edi:ng endangers the quality of the content, which then may discourage par:cipa:on from well-‐meaning editors and drive away readers. Regarding the levers, Wikipedia collects and connects knowledge, empowers its users for co-‐crea:on, and shares through common ownership of the process, co-‐crea:on of content and co-‐development of the Wikimedia tool. Wikipedia does not enable the building of market, i.e. a livelihood-‐sustaining system based on the commons. Producers of Wikipedia, the editors, are not the ones who benefit from its usage, or not in a direct way. To some observers, the model that relies on editors’ pride and personal fulfillment is a fragile one. Wikimedia Founda:on (2011). Wikipedia Editors Study: Results from the Editor Survey, April 2011. <hIp://bit.ly/1Fl9Qhi>[Retrieved 5 April 2015] Cunningham op. cit. Postrel, V. (2014). Who killed Wikipedia? Pacific Standard Nov. 2014 <hIp://bit.ly/1DjOPXn>[Retrieved 5 April 2015] hIp://paIern-‐library.sec-‐bridge.eu/paIern-‐library/ [retrieved 5. April 2015] hIp://polemictweet.com/about.php [retrieved 5. April 2015] Reiners,, R. (2014). An Evolving PaIern Library for Collabora:ve Project Documenta:on. Shaker Aachen, Germany Jemielniak D. (2014), Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia, Stanford University Press

Wikipedia

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Prac;cal knowledge/Specialized wikis Collect networks and Connect praxis, Share output, moderately Empower collabora:on and weak Enablement Wikipedia has reached the cri:cal mass that enables it to collect and evolve a huge corpus of interconnected diversified knowledge and to aIract a large community of knowledge producers to keep it alive. Smaller specialized communi:es, such as Apropedia and the P2P Founda:on, seek to provide their members with working knowledge. There are, however, few resources to document the prac:cal applica:on and results of implementa:on of such working knowledge to feed back into the knowledge base. The format and interoperability of the knowledge, the degree of upda:ng and cura:on of the knowledge, and the size of the ac:ve contribu:ng communi:es, are variable. However, many ac:ve members of these communi:es share how difficult it is to keep par:cipa:on going and to keep the data alive. Many users also complain about the difficulty of querying and naviga:ng basic wikis where naviga:on relies on the categoriza:on of the data, something communi:es don’t always do well. Because of the split between administrators and users, par:cipants may not feel a sense of shared ownership or responsibility. Small communi:es would benefit from the structure and interoperability of the paIern language format, from the possibility to develop and maintain their own repositories of paIerns and from the perspec:ve gained by exploring greater bodies of knowledge to find challenges, analyses, prac:ces and models relevant to their ac:vity which can help deepen and expand the reach and possibili:es of the community.

Specialized Wikis Collect Inventory

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Co-‐Producing Value -‐ Linux + Git Knowledge commons of open source soTware Collect genera:ve processes and Connect ac:on, Share system, Empower cohesiveness and Enable co-‐nurturing Linux is not strictly speaking a pla2orm for collec:ve awareness. Nonetheless, it is based on superla:ve communal principles and mechanisms and cons:tutes one of the most sustainable genera:ve systems using the internet. Different from Wikipedia and most other knowledge repositories, the users of Linux are also the producers of their knowledge commons and build their livelihoods from it. By observing the Linux community of prac:ce, we learn that a mature knowledge commons has the following elements: knowledge, media, user community, rules of engagement, use and evalua:on processes, and livelihood genera:ng capacity; it operates as a dynamic en:ty, maintained and evolving through the constant prac:cal engagement of its user community. Linux community praxis scores highly on all the levers of growth. However, being a homogenous community with conscribed purpose, it does not bridge diversity between domains. Of par:cular interest in rela:on to knowledge exchange is the Git fork/merge system, which renders the capacity to copy all or part of the soTware, modify it and bring the modified instance back into the repository. The benefit here is that 1) what is distributed among a mul:tude of users can be consolidated in a common repository (actually an ecosystem of interrelated repositories) that captures the collec:ve intelligence of the community; 2) it encourages broad par:cipa:on by welcoming any user and form of involvement at the ‘local’ repository level while ensuring an overall quality control with mul:ple possibili:es of 'filtering' on the ‘validated’ product; and 3) it fosters a sense of ownership of the users/producers over the whole system. In this text we use Linux as short for “GNU/Linux”, i.e. the well known open source opera:ng system. Strictly speaking “Linux” refers just to the kernel or heart of the system. Hess, C. & E. Ostrom, 2007. Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: from theory to prac:ce. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Bauwens, M. (2012). A Synthe:c Overview of the Collabora:ve Economy. P2P FoundaDon -‐ Orange Labs <hIp://oran.ge/1FrbbZB>[Retrieved 10 April 2015]

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Systems Thinking as prac;ce Connect praxis at the local level, unsystema:c Collect Empower individuals, weak Enable and Share other than local There are many similari:es between systems thinking and paIern thinking (of which paIern language is a tool). Both approach problem solving viewing "problems" as parts of an overall system. Like paIern thinking, systems thinking is based on the idea that the components of a system cannot be seen in isola:on, but rather in the context of the rela:onships they have with each other, with the whole, and with other systems. Most systems thinking prac:ce focuses on simula:on of a situa:on’s structure: describing the underlying paIerns of behavior, the underlying structures responsible for the paIern of behavior that unfolds, and the mental models responsible for the underlying structures. PaIerns of behavior are usually expressed as circles of causality; those with similar structure are recognised as system archetypes. Also iden:fied are leverage points that enable efficient changes in the system. System archetypes are similar to paIerns. A major difference is that they are composed of closed loops that are ‘performa:ve’ on their own, whereas systems of paIerns are chainings or combina:ons of elements that can be probed at each link. System thinking is best applied to situa:ons where stakeholders can agree on a methodology (there are many available) and on the boundaries of an issue. However, the :me it takes to reach agreement on the boundaries of the system being studied (as this system is inextricably part of a larger system so boundaries are always arbitrary), and the difficulty of choosing a place to start understanding and probing a systemic model that is expressed in circles of causal loops are probably reasons why systems thinking hasn’t been adopted more widely. A pressing ques:on currently among systems thinking prac::oners is: how to conduct a systemic inquiry in an orderly, repeatable and understandable fashion. The systems thinking and paIern language communi:es can gain a lot by working together, systems thinking bringing more depth to the systemic inquiry of paIern languages. Systems thinking would gain by having its approaches, archetypes and models formaIed more systema:cally, and in iterable ways, with a documenta:on framework that allow hypothesis and incremental probing in a design driven process. Systems Thinking Methodologies, Systemswiki.org.<hIp://bit.ly/1CKKg3N> [Retrieved 10 April 2015] Systems Thinking, a Disciplined Approach, Systems-‐Thinking.org. <hIp://bit.ly/1NuFHWL>[Retrieved 10 April 2015] Senge, Peter M. (1990), The FiTh Discipline, Doubleday/Currency Meadows, D.H. (1997). “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System” <hIp://bit.ly/1rsFIdv> [retrieved 5 April 2015] Ing, D., 2014. Systems genera:ng systems -‐ architecture design theory by Christopher Alexander (1968). <hIp://bit.ly/1Eq8N3A> [Accessed April 5th 2015].

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PaUern Languages for Sustainability and Social Change as prac;ce Collect genera:ve systems and Connect praxis Empower collabora:ons, weak Enable and Share other than local The most widespread and best-‐established use of paIern languages is in computer soTware design, which can serve as an example of what may be achieved in other areas, such as community design. PaIern languages are common in fields such as design of human-‐computer interfaces, and technology-‐enhanced learning, a highly interdisciplinary field in which they facilitate communica:on of expert knowledge across specialised disciplines. SoTware paIern language collec:ons have become mainstream in soTware development in response to the domain's complexity and communica:on issues. Since 1995, more than 100 books and 60 conferences on all con:nents have yielded 3000+ soTware paIerns. However, opera:ng within a specialist field limits the use of paIern languages to communica:on among experts, and does not take advantage of their poten:al to connect diverse user communi:es working in different domains. Some applica:ons stress their poten:al as tools to advance democracy, inclusion, and social jus:ce, notably the Public Sphere Project’s work on paIern languages for use of ICTs as emancipatory tools. In terms of empowering and enabling, most social change paIern languages have been published in sta:c print media that do not allow them to live as dynamic en::es undergoing constant revision on the basis of experience. Some were based on several itera:ons of input from developer and user communi:es – the Public Sphere project's paIern language for emancipatory use of ICTs, for example, was based on extensive collabora:ve processes with input from hundreds of individuals worldwide over several years. Other projects using online formats solicit or facilitate con:nued user input. The Community Pathways website invites contribu:ons of new paIerns. The Groupworks PaIern Language group seeks to cul:vate ongoing user and design communi:es, physical and virtual, through mee:ngs, workshops and use of social media, all feeding back into design. Pauwels, S. L., Hübscher, C., Bargas-‐Avila, J. A., & Opwis, K. (2010). Building an interac:on design paIern language: A case study. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(3), 452-‐463. Winters, N. & Y. Mor, 2008. IDR: A par:cipatory methodology for interdisciplinary design in technology enhanced learning. Computers and Educa:on 50: 579-‐600. Lea, D. (1994). Christopher Alexander: An introduc:on for object-‐oriented designers. ACM SIGSOFT SoXware Engineering Notes 19(1): 39-‐46. Schuler, D., 2008. Libera:ng voices: A paIern language for communica:on revolu:on. MIT Press. Seamon, D. (2007, May). Christopher Alexander and a Phenomenology of Wholeness. In Annual MeeDng of the Environmental Design Research AssociaDon (EDRA), Sacramento, CA. Alexander, C., 2001-‐2005. The Nature of Order. Berkeley: Center for Environmental Structure. Leitner, H., 2015. PaIern Theory. Introduc:ons and Perspec:ves on the Tracks of Christopher Alexander. HLS SoTware. Schuler, D., 2008. LiberaDng Voices: a pa]ern language for communicaDon revoluDon. London: MIT Press (and hIp://publicsphereproject.org/). hIp://groupworksdeck.org/. [Accessed April 5th 2015].

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PLAST’s innova;on poten;al Collect genera:ve systems, Connect praxis Empower ecosystems, Enable co-‐nurturing, Share a system

PLAST innovates by providing tools and methodologies to seek, inves:gate and discuss systemic coherence from a basis of diversity in perspec:ve and ac:on, without trying to achieve unifica:on (i.e., unity in values, vision and approach). It seeks to empower diversity and leverage agency wherever it may be found, fostering the emergence of an ecology for transforma:ve ac:on comprising living communi:es of place, communi:es of prac:ce, and communi:es of knowledge within a global ac:on space who maintain a shared knowledge commons because this commons resource contributes to their crea:on of value. PLAST is conceived as an ‘ac:on’ system with two key elements. A seman:c structure which provides a bridge across languages and subcultures, channeling drives for change and leveraging capaci:es and poten:als for ac:on through exchange of tacit knowledge. A hermeneu:c engine which provides orienta:on across this idea and ac:on space, fostering learning and mutual discovery and enabling effec:ve polycentric solu:ons that collec:vely apprehend the system as a whole.

PLAST’s innova;on poten;al Collect genera:ve systems, Connect praxis Empower ecosystems, Enable co-‐nurturing, Share a system PLAST’s genera:ve model acts upon all five levers in a mutually reinforcing way to mul:ply effects at mul:ple levels. The effec:veness of PLAST relies on the combina:on of all of them to generate systemic transforma:on: Collect

It is expected on the basis of early feedback from PaIern Language and social change prac::oners that PLAST will provide a compelling aIractor to par:cipants to load their exis:ng paIern languages and best prac:ces into the system and to create new paIerns and paIern languages using the system, suppor:ng the collec:on of whole systems of sustainable solu:ons and possibili:es to act upon. The immediate opening of pathways to further knowledge will draw par:cipant into the system to explore related knowledge. The more know-‐how par:cipants provide to the system the more know-‐how they will find opens up to them to discover. For this reason we expect the system will collect a great deal of knowledge from par:cipants in diverse domains. Connect

PLAST will be designed for op:mal ‘self connec:on’ of knowledge and prac:ce using mul:-‐dimensional seman:c interconnec:on of paIerns. PLAST will connect the prac:ce of diverse communi:es and areas of sustainability driving social innova:on by opening up explora:on pathways between them. By accelera:ng connec:vity, PLAST creates communica:on bridges between par:cipants in adjacent domains which are likely to foster produc:ve cross-‐domain encounters of kinds known to spark innova:on. By opening up channels between prac:ces, PLAST’s design promotes the circula:on of knowledge and energy towards ac:on.

PLAST’s innova;on poten;al Collect genera:ve systems, Connect praxis Empower ecosystems, Enable co-‐nurturing, Share a system Empower

PLAST will provide change agents with tools to ar:culate and share knowledge, explore new territories of prac:ces, grow capacity to connect and learn, and relevant connec:ons, and deepen their understanding of the challenges they confront. Bringing diverse capabili:es into contact generates more opportuni:es to act, which in turn increases capability in a feedback loop. Learning and ac:on research are embedded in the design to expand awareness and capacity for ac:on and therefore agency deeply within and across domains. By mobilizing and empowering the diversity of its users PLAST creates opportuni:es for poly-‐centric and mul:-‐level social impact throughout the ecosystem. Enable

PLAST is structured as a co-‐created knowledge commons that enables the pursuit of a change driven prac:ce upon which par:cipants can find resources to beIer achieve their own vision/mission and generate their own livelihood. The high leverage, in terms of return on effort, ensures that par:cipants will keep the knowledge they depend on alive and circula:ng, and the tools they rely on at the state-‐of-‐the-‐art level, co-‐nurturing the system that enables them. Share

As a peer produced commons, used and co-‐nurtured by a diversity of communi:es, sense of ownership is not just about a co-‐produced output or a shared process, it is over a whole enabling system. The ability to hold and maintain a local repository and integrate this repository into a commons repository ensures con:nuity of ownership even through local distribu:on of the data.

PLAST

web web

Collect Inventory

Connect Poten;al

EmpowerAgency

Enable Value


Instances

Systems

Networks

Co-‐nurture

Provide

Co-‐produce

web

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Maps

Encyclopedia UIA

Wiser Earth

Wikipedia

Specialized Wikis

Linux on Git

PLAST

PaIern Language

Systems Thinking

web

Collect Inventory

Connect Poten;al

Empower Agency

Enable Value


Instances

Systems

Networks

Co-‐nurture

Provide

Co-‐produce

web

A strategic Analysis of Knowledge Sharing and Social Change Platforms

Education

Transcript of A strategic Analysis of Knowledge Sharing and Social Change Platforms