John Henry Clippinger

John Henry Clippinger III is a researcher, entrepreneur, and activist around decentralized, autonomous, self-organizing systems with a focus on generative governance and finance for climate change and social equity.He is the author of A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity (Perseus, Public Affairs, 2007) and a number of other books and publications. He edited The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprises (Jossey Bass, 1998), contributed to The Reputation Society: How Online Opinions Are Reshaping The Offline World,and co-edited (with David Bollier) From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond: The Quest for Identity and Autonomy in a Digital Society. Quotes Great leaps forward in scientific understanding have, throughout history, engendered similar leaps forward in how we understand ourselves. Now, the new hybrid disciplines of evolutionary biology and social physics are making the next leap possible—and fundamentally altering our notions of individual identity. If identity is a fact not derived from within the individual, but conferred on an individual by a group, or network, a host of assumptions about how governments work, how conflicts arise and are resolved, and how societies can be coaxed toward good are overturned. John Clippinger brilliantly illuminates how the Enlightenment itself—the high point of individual assertiveness—was a product not just of a few moments of individual inspiration and creativity, but rather of a societal shift that allowed innovation and creativity to flourish. Michelangelo owes quite as much to the circumstances of the Renaissance as the Renaissance does to the work of Michelangelo. Now, the digitalization of society, which affects all of us already, allows new insight into these What does it require for societies, organizations and individuals, to thrive? Who decides who you are? How can happiness be shared and spread? Who can you trust? Increasingly interconnected, volatile, and complex, today's organizations cannot be controlled by any conventional approach to management. Indeed, an entirely new definition of what it means to manage is called for. In The Biology of Business, John Clippinger and nine outstanding contributors introduce managers to the Complex Adaptive System (CAS) of management, a system that takes into account all of the variables that impact modern enterprises and allows managers to take control from the bottom up. Here, the authors show how McKinsey & Co., Capital One, and Optimark have employed CAS to achieve specific business goals and improve overall corporate fitness. And they bridge theory and practice to provide managers with proven tools and techniques they can use to transform their enterprises into self-renewing, self-organizing systems that are maximally responsive to changing market conditions and opportunities In 1842 after (US president) Andrew Jackson shut down the banks, people produced their own copper coins, called hard-times tokens. It was a bottom-up protest. There is a similar logic with bitcoin. During the 2008 banking crisis people could not trust fiat and the authorities that have oversight. There is a real distrust in the conventional mechanism so that is why token sales, to a certain segment, are seen as a safe haven. Tokens are the new, new thing. Some say they herald the beginning of a new kind of economy and maybe even the end of capitalism as we know it. The concept of a digital token is not obvious. It is a unit for exchange of value between two or more parties, but it is more than a transaction. It is a unit of value that binds a relationship. Digital tokens can take the form of smart contracts and be quite complex. They can take different forms under different conditions. They can be a commodity, a currency, a security, or all of those things. That is why there is some confusion and issues about how to regulate them. Tokens can also be an expression of trust. A token could be a credential that I use to assert something about myself. It can be used for digital identity. It can be certification of certain attributes such as age or place of residence or a credential proving that you earned a diploma. Tokens can get you access to different kind of services. They assert different forms of trust and value and can be dynamically updated. What exactly is a token? Bitcoin is a kind of token — a demand- backed asset like a commodity or a unit of exchange. Ether is an example of a token you can use to purchase certain services. Smart contracts run on Ether so you could also use these tokens to keep track of and use your frequent flyer miles. To extend this further, a token can be like a virtual good: companies like (the Chinese conglomerate) TenCent create their own digital currencies which are used in the game world to buy virtual goods. This has proven to be extremely successful with lots of people buying or exchanging tokens. Imagine applying this to the business model of Facebook or Google. They have very iffy data that can’t be properly verified. There could be a lot of value if the person who owns the data would agree to trade that knowing that he can benefit from that financially. The notion of self-sovereign ID and data is now accepted, and companies that don’t comply will be vulnerable to heavy penalty. Tokens can be used to create a common protocol on how to handle permissions to use data so companies don’t run afoul of liability laws. What is the difference between a bitcoin and a token? When the SEC issued an opinion on the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) blow-up they correctly censored them because really they were selling securities. However if one is careful it can be treated as an asset token. If it is a rewards program with no passive income derived or voting shares then it is really not a security. When you increase the supply of a currency you have to offset that by creating debt because you can’t print money. With digital currencies it is not necessarily the case. If you issue tokens with specific value propositions around different sectors you don’t have to offset that with debt. There are examples of this in the sharing economy. If you look at next-generation mobility services and autonomous vehicles, it is very unlikely the vehicles will be privately owned. There will be a huge congestion problem but if you can have access and that can be guaranteed then that is better than owning your own car. There is a token called Lambo coin which allows people to buy part of a Lamborghini and have access privileges at all times. This is indicative of where things are going. It’s a membership model like timeshare but much lighter and easier to do. In a July ruling the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) found that the tokens in a prominent Initial Coin Offering (ICO) were in fact securities — meaning the transactions violated federal investment laws. What are the key differences between tokens and stock certificates? ICOs are token generation events. There is sloppiness in how people talk about utilization tokens versus speculation tokens. An example of a utilization token is when you join a community and create a kilowatt of sustainable energy and it generates a token. What is an initial coin offering (ICO) and why are we seeing so many right now? We have a monetary system and fiat system that is quite ancient and not digital and does not reap the benefits of what digital tech and cryptography can do. The rate of innovation and change is only accelerating so it is just a matter of time before we shift to a highly decentralized and digital system with cryptographic proofs and other kinds of mechanisms to verify transactions and services. You are seeing that already in the rapid uptake of crypto currencies in different jurisdictions around the world: Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, UK, Russia. There is lots of activity in China but the government there is a wildcard in this. We are seeing the beginnings of a new international financial system. Right now there are lots of issues around the technology and it is in an early phase but in my experience I have never seen such rapid speed of innovation. Every week something changes. Decentralization is starting to take place. If you can avoid and control the inflation and bubble manipulation then you are creating a much more accurate, more transparent system than you have currently because you can have analytics and artificial intelligence looking at every pattern in hyper real-time speed. How will this change in the way that companies are getting funded impact stock markets, venture capital and the global economy in general? Don’t incur debt. Don’t give up equity and make customers token holders. There will be a lot of new options for public financing. Underwriting will be dramatically different. One of the key benefits of tokens is to align incentives among participants of the ecosystem. So far only startups have launched tokens. Is it possible to tokenize existing large enterprises? How would that work and what would be the benefit? Tokens are a very powerful way of distributing control. How many companies will make the shift to a token-based economy? Big companies coming from China like Tencent and Alibaba understand it. The old industrial companies will fight it. They may win some battles but they won’t be able to compete because of the way they are organized. The net of this is not an easy message. Corporations like to think about change being incremental and they don’t like it when I tell them that in this case it won’t be. What should corporates do to prepare for the changes ahead? External link Category: living people Category: Entrepreneurs