Organizations Insights

This book is interesting with some facts and figures that I like, but a lot of anecdotes to illustrate ideas, which I am not hot on. Prefer the facts and principles
Rating: 2 / 5

Hey Clay, WAZZZZZZZZAAA?

I loved the book. Many thanks to Vanessa, Scott and Janet for the work they do. And now for my contribution– and my only post on Amazon (Farzad a la Mode)

I thought your book was thought provoking all the way to the end. You respected the reader enough not to do what so many authors do today, which is to keep repeating the same thing over and over again in simple words.

I also keep seeing things that echo with the lessons of your book. Did you see the NYT article about the case of the stolen Skyline GT? Another nice example of how if there’s love (in this case for a car) then online community action can be intense. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/automobiles/13STEAL.html

BTW- you scared me with your Deaniac analysis- I sure hope that’s not the case w my man Obama- but he’s trading at 80c http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_DConv08.cfm so I’m still feeling good. (The newspaper headlines after PA should have read: “no new information in Clinton win- markets unmoved”).

Throughout the book I kept scribbling stuff down, and thinking- I should send this section on web 2.0 tools for human rights to Saman, or the section on “implicit promise” to Jamie (Heywood), or the piece on loose networks to Les. Unfortunately, it’s too much of a drag to scan and email. We need a better tool for this.

How’s this for an idea? If while I was reading your book, how about if I could add some marginalia (like my random thoughts above), and other readers could see it too, and rank it. That way, I could choose to read not only your brilliant thoughts, but also the most highly regarded comments from all your readers. Kind of like the Talmud with commentary all around the original text (http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudPage.htm). Or alternatively, maybe I could only turn on my friends’ comments, so reading a book would be social like watching a movie with a bunch of friends and kibitzing is.

Anyway, looking forward to talking to you soon- unless of course, you’re too famous to get back to me. Cue “Stan” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_(song)

Farzad

Rating: 5 / 5

1. A woman name Ivanna left her phone in the backseat of a New York City cab. The phone has an expensive feature call the sidekick, which came with a screen, keyboard, and built-in camera. Ivanna had information store in the repository about her upcoming wedding. Ivanna buys a new phone and the company copes her information on its servers on her new phone.

2. Ivanna discovers, a 16 year old girl, named Sasha living in queens through emailing distributed too friends messaging pictures and text using the old phone. Ivanna asks Evan Guttman, a friend, who previously posted a reward for return, now asks for the phone back from Sasha. Sasha will return the phone claiming her brother found the phone in a cab and gave it to her. Evan builds a website name StolenSidekick highlight etiquette of returning lost items. Friends of Evan find a myspace picture of Sasha and her boyfriend and link it to the webpage. Evan posts how the phone was lost, who had it now, and how to file a claim with the New York Police department.

3. A man named Luis contacts Evan and says he is Sasha brother and a member of the Military police. Luis says that Sash bought the phone from the cabbie. Luis told Evan to stop harassing Sasha and hinted violence, if he didn’t layout. Evan’s story appears on Diggs, a service that rates thumbs up or thumbs down. The story struck a nerve and Evan receives tens of emails a minute.

4. Evan writes forty commentaries within ten days.

5. Members of Luis’s Military Police unit wrote to inquire about allegations that an MP was threatening a civilian and promised to look into the matter. Evan moves the debate to a bulletin board and more people join the discussion of events.

6. Several people in NYC government wrote in offering help to get the complaint amended

7. Millions of readers were watching the evens and dozens of mainstream new outlets covered the story. People wanted to “fight injustice” using the social network.

8. On Jun 15, the NYPD, arrested Sasha and delivered the Stolen phone to Ivanna. Evan wrote, “The story of righting a wrong is a powerful one and helped him generate the involvement of others that finally led to the recovery of the phone.”

9. “Image how disorienting it must have been for Sasha to learn that the owner of the phone actually did have an army of sorts, including lawyers and cops, along with an international audience of millions.”

10. When a group comes together community control is not simple. The group must find a shared vision. Do want a world where a grownup can leverage knowledge and experience to a teenager arrested for a crime? Millions wanted Sasha to be arrested and punished for her misdeeds. However, we want the punishment to fit the crime, Justice. Do we want a world where someone with leverage gets riled up and resets the priorities of the local police department?

11. As a group grows it becomes impossible for everyone to interact directly with everyone else. Hierarchies simplify communication and the boss plays a more important role. However, as transaction costs move towards zero, more decentralized processing emerges. Transaction costs are the basic constraints to all organizations. If we have markets, why do we have organizations at all? Why can’t all exchanges of value occur in the market? Worker could simply contract with one another, buy and sell their labor, in a market, without needing any managerial oversight.

12. Electronic networks are enabling the creation of collaborative groups that are larger and more distributed than any other time in history.

13. For group to take collective action, it must have some shared vision strong enough to bind the group together, it must have some shared vision strong enough to bind the group.

Rating: 5 / 5