My son Julian has a post up entitled Business, more like open source software at Exceler8ion.com. He’s working toward a greater understanding of how the methods of the open source software movement can be applied in the business world. It seems counter intuitive – that openly sharing ideas with potential competitors could be a good thing. But it is happening. The occasion for Julian’s post is something called a ‘Talent Unconference‘ that took place this week in the Bay area involving 70 people who are involved in recruiting for large companies. Because its an ‘unconference’ it doesn’t have people speaking to an audience, but peer interaction. As the organizer, Jeff Hunter, put it “Everyone teaches, everyone learns.” The people themselves come as individuals, not as representatives of their corporations. They might be the HR person, they might be the CEO – it doesn’t matter at the unconference, they are just individuals representing themselves. What I see is that the usual proprietary business barriers are lowered and the normal academic structure of experts lecturing to those deemed less expert is also done away with. The emphasis is on collaboration and developing new ideas.

What’s driving this attempt to shift the very structure of how we innovate? I think the fundamental answer is pretty simple – the existence of the Internet, because the Internet is a shift in the very structure of the way we think and operate in the world. Its bigger than that actually. It changes our fundamental assumptions of how we understand the world.

To understand a little more about the magnitude of the change the Internet is causing I want to introduce some theory from Marshal McLuhan to try to shed light on why people are feeling the need for ‘unconferences’. The subtitle of McLuhan’s most well known book, Understanding Media, is ‘the extensions of man’. McLuhan lived through a series of rapid changes in the 20th Century technological and media environment – he was born in 1911 and experienced radio, TV, the rise of the automobile and atomic energy. What he saw that most people don’t see is that these changes in media and technology change not just the outside world but the structure of the way we think about the world. McLuhan’s particular insight is based on the idea that media and technology are extensions of ourselves. He saw automobiles as a primary example and often used metaphors involving them. For example his most famous one is that we drive into the future with our eyes firmly fixed on the rear view mirror.

The automobile is a good example because it is easy to understand. It is an extension of our feet. Now that is obvious enough, but here is McLuhan’s key insight. He says that we become hypnotized by these extensions and forget that they are extensions and not an actual part of ourselves. Let our automobile break down and even force us to walk distances that we cover effortlessly with its assistance and we suddenly become painfully aware how unconscious of the real state of affairs we have become. However, McLuhan goes on to point out, we first understand new technology in terms of old applications. Early on we think of automobiles as horseless carriages, and computers as glorified filing cabinets or typewriters on steroids – remember dedicated wordprocessors, like the Wang? What we didn’t see about horseless carriages in 1907 is that we were creating a system of paved roads that would become the basis for an entire new way of life. Likewise when we created the Internet we didn’t see that we were creating entirely new ways of working and doing business and much more besides.
We have no idea where it will lead but we are smart enough to know that it will lead somewhere and that we need brainstorming structures like the unconference to ferret out those new uses sooner rather than later. Look at the state of play 100 years ago when the automobile was just getting started. There was an infrastructure of cobbled streets in our cites and some level of improved roads in the countryside but neither cobblestones nor gravel roads worked well with the rubber tired automobile – they needed smooth pavement. Of course it didn’t stop with road surfaces – that’s the point. No one knew then paved roads would beget expressways and expressways would beget UPS and cross fertilize with telephone and airplane technology to produce overnight delivery. Amazon or Land’s End are fairly conventional extension of this process through the Internet, but eBay goes much further. Glenn Reynolds in An Army of Davids quotes blogger Jeff Jarvis:

Of course it [eBay] hardly employs anyone, but it enables a lot 0f people to employ themselves and run their own businesses: 724, 000 people are using it as their full or part time employment, up 68 percent from a year ago; another 1.5 million use it to supplement their their income. (p11)

It’s finding the next eBay, the next ‘impossible’ to conceive of entity in the old industrial era environment, that open source techniques like the ‘unconferences’ are about. Its a combination of an old academic technique – the conference – with the creation of a free brainstorming zone within the usually highly restrictive proprietary zone of the business world. It’s purpose is to get outside the assumptions of the past – to tear our eyes off that rear view mirror and try to look though the windshield at what is coming. Of course, one of the obvious questions I imagine the participants in the Talent Unconference are dealing with is how can recruitment and development of talent be thought of outside that industrial age concept – the job? Even, perhaps, thier own.