Let’s democratize the enterprise!
We wanted to create a life raft to jump ship from the old boat of choosing between a Corporate job and freelancer “feast or famine” income cycle. A third alternative to the future of work as an open ownership model, platform, and ecosystem.
The status quo
In an average human lifespan — ⅓ is spent sleeping, ⅓ working, and ⅓ living — we orient life around unspoken and unconscious mental models for how “work” should be done, for how organizations “should be” structured, and rarely question the systems, incentives, or methods themselves or seek to improve upon them. We operate based on habits without taking into account how much the world has truly changed.
Why reinvent the wheel?
For eight of our best hours, we use our brains and muscles to add value. In the western world, we claim to be a democratic society but the governance for this freedom was never established for the most impactful part of our lives — namely the workplace.
In a traditional organization, profits are extracted, authority and decisions are made from the top, while execution and information are generated throughout the organization bottom. As work becomes more automated, along with an increasingly distributed global workforce — new challenges emerge.
For the first time, the technology to experiment with new systems of governance is possible.
Traditional models have arguably the most efficient means for the creation of goods and services. However, it fails, in one important respect: It does a terrible job of distribution; especially if there’s no profit motive.
New paths require we break the mold of traditional ideas and learn lessons of the past. Melding together what works for today with a plan for a better future that takes advantage of new tools. This goes beyond the traditional arguments of capitalism vs. socialism. We need a brand-new framework for a modern digital age.
Organizations evolved
Part of any movement has to be a plausible plan for a better way to move forward. When ideas for the cooperative enterprise are discussed — the theories of the past get brought up. The classical socialism is not what we’re talking about — the past versions (Russia, China, Venezuela) didn’t work out too well, to put it mildly. The communist/socialist brand as a mental model has also been conflated and intertwined too deeply in the psyche of too many people. It’s a blocked area for multiple reasons. In the end, capitalism is not a religious faith. It’s just a tool. But it’s only a means to an end, not the end in itself. It may or may not be suitable for the end in mind. However, when we apply our virtues of democracy to the workplace we could have a radically different economic system. When this concept is applied with technology as an enabling function, new systems and ways of working are unlocked.
Our vision is simple: Democratize the enterprise.
- Everyone is part of a community that makes up the workplace
- Democratize the experience and provide interoperability across inter/intra silos for mutual alignment
- voting consensus to improve accountability, reduce risk/costs, and create a better outcome than we have today through technology and efficiencies of scale
- A quality experience for all human beings that give themselves to this activity
- Produce value in the form of good/services for the benefit of customers
- Distribute gains in proportion to the value contributed
Why this project matters:
The classic path of “go to school, get a good job equals success” formula has been rattled in the minds of modern workers. New graduates are bogged down with student debt, opaque biases and political bureaucracy. 70% of employees are disengaged at work — switching between multiple jobs, roles, and even careers. Governance today is engineered to disproportionately benefit the few (i.e., board members, execs, and shareholders); The system itself is the root cause of inequality. We all participate in it, share little of the rewards, have virtually no say, and at present, have no other alternatives.
Government and citizens are bitterly divided, demographics are shifting, institutions are entrenched in the status quo, and companies revolve around quarterly profit statements. What we’re really talking about is fear of change and the concept of perceived control in a zero-sum game. Where will any proposed solutions possibly come from? Entrepreneurs and startups aren’t incentivized to work on these types of problems. Despite the evidence to the contrary, impact investing is looked upon as altruistic, philanthropic, with many a “do-gooder” patted on the back and passed on to the next group.
We believe a platform can bring together siloed initiatives, and provide benefits across a network of foundations, non-profit organizations, governments, and corporations as a whole.
A new system would need leverage in the form of credible talent, broad participation, and shared resources. An ethos based on a trust network to do business ethically and to seek those that share those same ideals. While not entirely altruistic, a new system must align human self-interest and provide benefits to today’s market. Over time, transitioned over into a mutually beneficial ecosystem. While incredibly difficult to get the flywheel spinning at first, resiliency and engagement will spur a network effect.
Despite record stock prices and a booming economy, 62 percent of jobs don’t support middle-class life after accounting for the cost of living, 40M are in poverty in the U.S. making the US the most unequal industrialized developed country. Today’s institutions and overall structure are deconstructing itself due to greed and control. It makes no economic or moral sense to have a system that disproportionately rewards such a few by design. We believe there will eventually be a widespread response as demographics shift and there’s increased appetite for an equitable system.
Next-generation organizations
Technology, like capitalism, is a tool. Artificial intelligence isn’t magic that solves society’s ills. The blockchain isn’t a feature to be bolted on. It is a fundamental shift in understanding trust, how work gets distributed, implemented, rewarded, and managed. The policies and processes for what worked in Corporate America simply don’t translate into the new economy. A new framework has to be created. The purpose of a new system is to align and balance self-interest with governance around a cooperative model, shared by many that are self-sustaining for the whole. Regardless of the economic system, the idea in the end, is for that system to provide the most for the most.
Staying true to principles is hard
With over 50+ active team members, we need funding to kickstart our economy and be sustainable. For this to work it must be backward compatible. After all, people still have to pay bills. But how to do that and stay true to our cornerstone of unified labor and capital?
Herein lies the challenge.
Imagine pitching an open ownership network with no concept of equity, or capital extraction from the top. The idea is radical if not improbable to capitalize with traditional investors. Foundations, organic growth, and partnerships seem to be the most promising avenues for us to explore ahead. We need broad partnerships to help us connect talent to the world.
Why not private investors?
The constraint, is we want to ensure the integrity of the concept from the very beginning. By introducing outside capital it presents different agendas and shifts ownership and incentive structures. We needed our model to stay true to the founding principles. For a cooperative system to emerge as a multi-sided marketplace, we needed to work across various constraints. In the traditional world, preferred shares and common shares are issued with rights, preferences, and a board of directors. Many would say that an investor is rightfully due a disproportionate return for the inherent risk of early-stage investment. But for our unique approach, the rules itself were fundamentally what we wanted to re-engineer.
Cryptocurrency was initially thought to be a mechanism that would allow us to do exactly that using tokens. Unfortunately, the timing of the crypto market conditions concentrates funds to a handful of projects and generally froze crowdfunding across the board for many projects including our own. Ethereum went from the high of $1,200 in Nov 2017 to where it is today, $200 in Nov 2018.
What we’ve done
We’ve assembled an amazing collection of people around the world including the head of PPC/SEM at Beats/Apple, a data scientist with over 40 years experience, an early engineer at Betterment, and a Ph.D. in AI/Deep Learning from Oxford/Cern. We’ve presented keynotes around the world at various events, podcast interviews, and a strong social following helping to translate our materials into over 20 languages. During the early part of 2018, we’ve engaged with over 1,000 interviews with clients, users, and companies. We explored the appropriate governing, legal, operating, compensation, and tax structures. We’ve also taken a guerrilla tactics approach to research extensively in the real world. Next, we’re building the prototype.
Where we go from here
Open platform projects are born and die every day. The ones that stand apart have the courage and resilience to weather the storms. We have not seen another project that addresses the issues we present. So we’re building it. While an ICO didn’t allow us to raise the funds we needed, we’re still moving ahead with our vision and mission — albeit at a different pace, and narrower focus. Our primary efforts will be on the technology, partnerships, and network one step at a time.
I’m incredibly proud of the work we accomplished as a distributed all-volunteer community for over a year. It has allowed us to establish the foundations we have today. Over the last year, we’ve learned a lot. Our ideals haven’t changed since day one, but we will be making some minor tweaks to simplify our story and move forward with a renewed focus.
- Demonstrate the value proposition and simplify the story
- Create a product demo, build credibility and grow participation
- TGE and tokens on the back burner…for now
If you’d like to contact us or learn more visit https://blackboxfoundation.org or email jason@blackboxai.com
