The International VillagE: The Future of Business, Work, and Life

 

This is the International Village Mall.

This shot is taken from the deck where I lived for 13 years. We will be exploring the story behind these two over the coming summer and fall. 
This International Village is going to be ground zero for the Ecosystem Alliance's first major project. Transforming Malls into the future of business, work and life in cities the world over.

This is Me

Ecosystem Orchestrator Extraordinaire!!

I cannot design an ecosystem, much less develop one.

True Confession 

It Takes An International VillagE to Raise An Ecosystem

Hello, my name is Gregory D Esau and I am an Ecosystem Orchestrator, Designer and Developer. 

The irony, or paradox if you will, of my line of work is I actually can't do any of this. 

It's impossible. 

Individuals can't orchestrate ecosystems, nor can they design them, and they certainly can't develop them. 

The only way to Design, Develop and Orchestrate ecosystems the right way is through an international village, a village of around 1,500 people. Very select people. How select? We're going to get to that. 

What does an Ecosystem Designer, Developer and Orchestrator actually...um...do?? What are our chops?

I'm glad you asked. Ecosystem Design Principles. 

And for that an Ecosystem DDOer has to be a specialised- generalist with a lot of range and a lot of depth. 

For a high performance economic ecosystem, this range covers around thirty different "knowledge domains" and the knowledge networks that allows the orchestrator and their teams to best understand where the peak of those domains need to operate at in field conditions every single day. 

For economic ecosystems that function at scale, the Ecosystem Orchestrator needs to be able to attract a "Smart Swarm" of around 150 people who work closely together to collectively orchestrate the ecosystem. 

Note the word "attract". It is an important distinction, as you cannot "hire" a Smart Swarm. 

A Smart Swarm is by our definition a collective of autonomous individuals whose collective output exceeds their individual output by magnitudes of 10X or more. 

That is, if individually they could produce at a rate that puts their market value at say, $1,000,000 per year, that's $150 million gross output for 150 individuals. 

However, if they worked collectively effectively, the gross output of this 150 person Swarm would be $1.5 billion. That's network productivity. 

What we Masters of Ecosystem Orchestration need to be good at are:

1. Who should be in the Village, their Swarm, and all other the Domain Swarms.
2. How to create the conditions to make these groups 10X or more in terms of network productivity. 
3. Defining the Strategy of the Ecosystem, its Village and its Swarms
4. Getting buy-in daily from everyone involved at an inter-connective, interdependent level.
5. Getting the economic incentives right across a spectrum of essential "capitals'. 
6. The governance and distribution models right.
7. Creating the culture for highly collaborative and diverse markets of open and closed networks. 
8. Creating the environments that maximise the very best of human nature while mitigating the very worst of human nature. 
9. Staggering degrees of complexity. We eat chaos for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are the masters of probabilities. 
10. Military grade network security. This is stupifyingly difficult. Because. You know. People. 
11. Trust is our Code.
12. We put the Ordinary in Extraordinary. We are only as good as our ecosystems. 
13. Platform Development and Management. Platform design is how ecosystems capture value. 
    
     

Easy-peasy, right!?!?

This, my friends, are what we're going to find out over the next six to sixty months. 

How hard or easy it will be is entirely interdependent on our ability to stop knowing and to start learning. For the level we will be performing at, knowing is a disadvantage. 

Continuous learning and execution is the only advantage. 

The exceptional people we will attract already embody this mindset.

Can we bring together this right mix of people that can design and develop The International Village Business Model for the Future of Work and Value Creation at the Civic level to life? 
Can we find the right mix of people who can touch, feel, see, hear and sense the staggering potential and the depth of the threats society faces today?

If things flame out in six months...it's back to the drawing boards for me. 

However, if we can keep breaking through barriers on our way from one stage to the next over the sixty months, then we have a better than average chance to capture the estimated "sixty trillion in annual revenue that ecosystems will redistribute by 2025".

How do we design, develop and orchestrate ecosystems that will capture the majority of that sixty trillion in revenue redistribution? 
I mean, this isn't a bad carrot, no? Imagine the vitality of cities if collectively we could capture those value flows? 

These questions only an International Village can determine. 

Over the next six months a growing tribe of us will convince you that this International Village, this village that will personify the future of work and business, will be the best investment there is in the world today.

What I believe is everyone this mastery of ecosystem orchestration needs are one degree of separation away from finding each other and coming together as an International Village. 

"Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends": The International VillagE. 

Over the next six months my intention as an Orchestrator is to bring together the extensive network around domains of knowledge necessary for high performance economic ecosystems that I have attracted over the last 25 years along with the network of the types people who exist in Vancouver and cities the world over, all into this International Village for Ecosystem Design, Development and Orchestration under one roof. 

At the Vancouver International Village we are going to bring together daily the very best of what Vancouver has to offer in 21st century business skills and mix us with the world's leading practitioners for top tier performance in open-to-closed network performance. 

The Vancouver International Village will become the model that cities the world over can emulate for developing their own high performance ecosystems. 

We are going to create breakthrough performance at the systematic level, a breakthrough that will dwarf what the assembly line did for manufacturing productivity. 
Manufacturing productivity is linear.

Network productivity is non-linear, exponential and emergent.  

Linked together as the International Civic Ecosystem Alliance, cities will have the ability to shape their economic future by capturing the full potential of the digitally enabled society. 

The Era of Ecosystems as the Engines of the Economy will usher in an economic revolution that will both boost productivity by magnitudes of ten or more, an economy based on ecosystems will by vastly more adaptive to climate change and the innovation necessary to respond. 

An economic alliance of the natural ecosystems of cities allow the global economy to become what Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes as Antifragile. 

Who Belongs in the Vancouver International VillagE? 

The short answer is anyone who loves this city that wants to be part of designing our economic prosperity and sustainability.  

The deeper answer is those that can flourish in this new world village of continuous new value creation. The 1,500 of us that wind up calling this Village our place of work will be the most remarkable people this city has to offer. 

This will be the most challenging, most rewarding experience of our lives. We will evolve towards becoming clusters of global alliance of villages nested in cities the world over that will shape and define our economic future. 

Our daily actions will collectively determine our ability to house, clothe, feed, entertain and elevate the lifestyles of billions of people while at the same time making those lifestyles sustainable within our planet's vast web of ecological ecosystems. 

The Vancouver International VillagE model for Ecosystem Design, Development and Orchestration will draw a balanced and diverse mix of the best and brightest from five structurally important networks vital to every city's functionality:  

1. The Service Network. If we have learned anything from the pandemic, we learned that "essential services" isn't just hyperbole. 
2. The Business Network. Business networks have been the lifeblood of the civic economy ever since there has been cities. Combined with the Global Performance Networks we will establish these networks as the most influential in the global economy.
3. The Creative Networks. Easily the least understood of an city's economic vitality while also the network that will give the International Village its innovative power and distribution capacity. 
4. The Builders Network. Put simply, these are the people that build and maintain our city's capacity to house its people, their places of work, the ways that we travel and generally how we make everything we rely on for our physical economic structures. 
5. The Public Sector Network. This is the network that binds it all together. 
   
   
   

All five natural networks interweave together with our Global Performance Networks to create the greatest economic engine in civic history. 

Thousands of these Ecosystem Orchestrator Villages nested in cities the world over that will transform how we can see our future and design our way to global prosperity and sustainability. 

Keystone Players

What is distinct about high performance networks are the types of roles that have to be filled in comparison to a business or government organisation. 

Networks thrive on attracting talent, not hiring talent. 

The people that thrive at the highest levels in these types of organisations have very unique skills and personalities that cannot be captured by the typical corporate role as designated by titles. Therefore, you will find none of that here in the Village. 

We will be looking for people that have proven abilities to orchestrate networks in their day to day activities for high value creation. 

We need orchestrators throughout the five structurally essential networks as list above, likewise we need orchestrators that can cover every aspect of civic cultural groups from the richest to the poorest, the right to the left, the religious to the scientist, to the indivualist to the collectivist and together we must find a collective intelligence around our economic and ecological future. 

Orchestrators are the most powerful role in an ecosystem. Conversely, Orchestrators are the most immune to the intoxicating effects of this power. 

More specifically, are the different types of ecosystems that require the highest mastery of the craft of  orchestration, and these are:

1. The City Orchestrator. 
   The City Orchestrator is extraordinary in every way.
   A successful City Orchestrator conducts the essential 1,500 regulars of the City's International Village and is responsible for its ability to deliver on our mission. Orchestrators require an exceptional ability to zoom out to the big picture and zoom in to the most detailed aspects of civic life. They must have exceptionally high levels of comprehension of a staggering array of domains of expertise of which they are responsible for keeping at peak operational effectiveness.
   They must have exceptional EQ around a staggering array of cultures that the modern metropolis contains.
   The City Orchestrator must ensure the performance conditions where all people's lives are enhanced by the City's economic ecosystems. It is a rare and exceptional person that can fullfil this role.
   For those with the abilities to take on this role, it will be the role of a lifetime, defining your city's future for generations to come. 
2. Domain Expertise Orchestrators.
   To compete in the era of economic ecosystems, the ability to orchestrate a strategically select portfolio of domains of expertise is the number one competitive advantage.  For Designing, Developing and Orchestrating entire city ecosystems, these domains cover next generation technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies, aligned artificial intelligence, the internet of things (Swarm Intelligence), 5G mobile networks,, VR/AR/AE, autonomous technology orchestration, 3D manufacturing and materials science, all of which are severely restricted by the current economic incentives and corporate structures. 
   Other essential Domain Orchestrators cover everything from the UX to project management to product development to new business model development to teamwork to personal development within high performance networks. 
   Sciences that cover everything from evolution to evolutionary economics, from neuroscience to biology, from ecological systems to cultural systems. From the science of networks to astrophysics and a whole lot more all require exceptional orchestrators. 
   In all, a high performance economic ecosystem will find there will be around thirty essential domains to maintain this systematic performance, along with baskets of essential skills to practice, hone and harness. 
   These essential proprietary domains in turn rely of many sub-domains of science to keep each at the tops of their professions. 
3. Essential Civic Network Orchestrators
   These are the Five Structurally Essential Networks that function within the Business, Creative, Builder, Services and Public Sectors of every city worldwide. 
   Each requires an exceptional person at bringing the massive potential within these natural civic networks together in a daily symphony to unleash an economic and cultural renaissance in their home cities. 
4. Cultural Orchestrators
   Every city is a composite of hundreds or thousands of different cultural groups which are upon themselves micro ecosystems. 
   Cultural Orchestrators work as boundary spanners within the Vancouver International Village. Cultural Orchestrators are the "Social Glue" that make these highly complex social-business work villages function at exceptional levels. 
   
5. Network Skills Orchestrators
   This is the level where rubber meets the road every single second of every single day in the life of a city. The ability of the International Village to create and orchestrate economic performance from the city's vast web of ecosystems is only as good as the skills of the people in the network. 
   It is noteworthy here to mention that the cryptocurrency for the Civic Economic Ecosystem Alliance will be the key for incentivizing and rewarding network skills. 
6. The Ecosystem Business Broadcast Network
   Strategy in the age of competing ecosystems  requires a broad media portfolio with specific focus on economies as ecosystems and highlighting the very unique properties of economic ecosystems and the distinct advantages these properties present to cities that are hard to capture any other way. 
   The EBBN is also how Orchestrators 'conduct' their networks on a daily basis. Likewise, the EBBN is how the networks learns, a perpetual learning environment for how we stay ahead of the curve and define our city's cultural and economic future. 
   It is hard to overstate the importance of the EBBN to the performance and vitality of ecosystems. This is how the system communicates to itself, how signals are sent and received and the core of our data strategy. 
7. Capital Orchestration
   Ecosystem economies measure capital at a much deeper level than a financial transaction token (fiat type national currency). Indeed, it is this extremely narrow concept of capital that severely restricts the breakout potential of "Capitalism" in the age of digital networks. 
   In High Performance Economic Ecosystems essential capital includes Social, Intellectual, Reputation and Engagement in holistic balance with Financial Capital. 
   An Ecosystem's digital currency must capture that balance in its accounting principles. Together these essential capitals must represent that high standards of Trust that network performance is incumbent upon. 
   Capital Orchestration is the next generation of venture capital and Capital Orchestrators are the next generation of venture capitalists. 
   This means systematic performance generated through the interdependencies of Operational Business Models that CO capitalizes. These CBMs in turn become investment vehicles within the ecosystem at either the Civic or Global Ecosystem Alliance levels. 
   
8. The Digital Citizen Pioneers
   A generation that is now thirty years old, we are a spectrum of citizens that are highly digitally astute at the global level and deeply embedded at the local level. We are natural boundary spanners and can move comfortably among many many different conversations and cultures. 
   We are the ones that hold in our hearts, minds and souls the massive potential networks have for unleashing the very best in humanity while keeping our most destructive traits in check. 
   We are the people that will make or break our future. 
   We are the approximately 1.5 billion people that will enable this historical transformation from an industrial society to that of a networked society.  

What's Next?

If you call the Greater Vancouver area your home, and you think you would excel in such a powerful network environment, connect with me on LinkedIn and we can begin get you familiar with the minds behind this venture. 

If this turns out to be something you just have to be a part of, you can join the regular Saturday morning virtual venture meets. 
These high energy meets are where we'll discover where you can develop your own role in the Village and how you can contribute to our earliest project developments which will centre on retail rejuvenation, digital property development, "Smart" infrastructure,  digital currencies and tokens, and the Ecosystem Business Broadcast Network as our marketing strategy. 
Together this basket of projects will be how we learn to Design, Develop and Orchestrate their ecosystems and along the way how we create the Social Business Village model as the future of work and continuous unique value creations. 

If you have what it takes to thrive here, you will have found the way to get the very most out of life and business while creating a prosperous and sustainable future for billions of citizens worldwide. 
The International Village will be the best investment you will ever make. 

Hope to see you soon!
Gregory D Esau