I'm consistently geeked by the parallels between your strategic framework and art-making.

One thing about making music that I love is that the stakes are so low; creativity loves low-risk environments.

Now that the commercially-minded (who are far more abundant than the artistically-talented) can connect and experiment with little or no cost, I can't help but be very optimistic.

The auto industry should start making scooters as fast as they can!

Gas prices are rising and Americans will need fuel-efficient transportation. Motorcycles, scooters, mopeds and bicycles come to mind, with the occasional Segue.

One of the social hacks I would like to see implemented is a combination of Nathan Myrhvold's Intellectual Ventures and Wikipedia: i.e., a wiki for hacking real world problems.

Everyone complains that big companies rarely innovate and they tend drive out the "anti-authoritarian" ethos necessary for innovation and creativity. Clearly, this structure needs to be hacked.

Breakdown core operational needs and make them plug and play within a corporate body (or outside). Decentralize all operational tasks (Accounting, facilities, HR etc) and structures to allow employees to form groups that attack problems without the standard operational concerns.

Less structures, more fluid movement of talent within larger groups (companies). Otherwise these structures will continue to harden and these larger groups will struggle.

The Pirate's Dilemma is an interesting book on these ideas, if anyone is interested.

This sounds wonderful and had my inner Dr. Who fist-pumping with glee. However, I'm afraid that the call for 'hacking' is too abstract for 99% of people that will ever read this.

Let's take one of the examples mentioned - the 'hack' of global poverty with Kiva.org. I'm guessing that the lesson implied is that micro-finance is a hack because it takes something that wasn't valuable before - amounts too small to be worth anything to big banks - and makes it work because of new, low cost coordination, publicizing, and distribution mechanisms, No?

If I've got a grip of what 'non-technology' hacks are then I'm concerned about the derision of 'bean counters'. I hate fiscal responsibility nipping a good idea in the bud prematurely as much as the next guy. However, good will doesn't pay my mortgage. Promises of being personally responsible for hacking a better world doesn't put food on the table. As long as a majority of goods and services require money isn't it a little flippant to tell the kids to ignore a business model and go play?

A readjustment in priorities is needed, perhaps, but leaving the bill paying to tomorrow? That sounds like a recipe for the last bubble...

@Mayson Lancaster i started something like that, to solve issues in Africa.

Have a look at http://groups.google.com/group/technologyforchange

Lets take your example of hacking, now Africa lags behind the world in Technology, Media(When have you least seen a movie / heard a song from Africa?), education, internet(only 4% penetration). Now this blog is very vocal about the ineffectiveness of the current industrial era companies, so how do we go about 'hacking' or making use of edge competencies to gain a competitive advantage for African countries? Remember in some of these countries resources are pretty scarce (food, money, skills),

For example, i can think of a few ways such as reviewing copyright law, maybe a creative commons type license as a default for all media created unless otherwise sated Then when other companies make use of it, the work is promoted further instead of cease and desist letters like this http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/20/bloggers-rejoice-customized-tv-clips-with-redlasso/

I believe countries that do embrace this on a national level would gain a competitive advantage. What are your thoughts? What would be the focus areas to better allocate resources and lift these economies from the current slumps (Yes i know this is a far reaching question... but just quick bullet points would be good)

/I

p.s i have a really strange Captcha below the words are "No Sudanese" WtF?

Brings a big, broad smile. I'll be passing this around.
Hacking. Improv. Great art made on the fly.
Thx Umair

Hey Umair, nice post, very thought-provoking it. I always thought the definition of hacking was taking one thing, and getting it do something that it hadn't been designed for (or that nobody ever thought it was for). This throws up an interesting "problem" from an industrial capitalist perspective:

If you can make something do something else, the "value" of that thing increases. Most "manufacturers" think that just because they've supplied the item, any "discovered" functionality is theirs to capitalise. Mash-ups and APIs are "proof" (if such a thing exists) that actually adding "free value" to something helps to increase the value of the original thing anyway. Hacking is not, and cannot be, about greed.

Traditional "greedy" production is about controlling and maximising return on value. Hacking is about freeing it up - hence why things must be done on the cheap. In a sense, perhaps the two are coming from the same philosophy - getting max output for minimum input, just that one crowd see the inputs/outputs as money, and the other see them as functionality.

Ultimately, this is about innovation, and who controls/benefits from that innovation.

Excellent analysis.

Umair -- you have a real flair for eloquently stating the essence of the problem.

As you and your astute readers have illustrated, leadership in the auto industry has lost (maybe never possessed?) its ability to 'hack' its way out of a problem. Too many years of too much that came too easy have dulled their thinking.

BTW, here's another industry in serious need of a good hack -- wristwatches.

Hack = everything to gain, nothing to lose. FOSS is a great example of this philosophy in action.

Auto industry = gov't regulations + legacy + capital. In short, little to gain, everything to lose.

Maybe we can re-frame the "industrial economy" into a more results focus. How does one "hack" an industry, well, they don't start with the industry, they start with the problems (= getting from point A to B faster, smarter with less energy).

Maybe virtual presence is the hack for transportation.

Umair, Have you been watching what's going on between Redlasso and three of the major networks? It appears that Redlasso has the sort of elegant hack that solves a major problem, yet the networks first response is to try to shut them down. Keep an eye on them, it should be interesting to see how things end up.

Great post (again) Umair and great comments, guys.

This is exactly what we're trying to address with our democratised innovation site OneEyeDeer.

It's kinda like Ideascale, but better :) We approach things from a different angle and employ some additional cool tools. This allows us to coordinate in a way that we believe creates more value and makes the experience deeper for the participating community.

Our tagline is actually - "make stuff better" - which seems to fit in well with your definition of hacking, Umair. No doubt the fact that the site was conceived after reading a Bubblegen article years ago has a lot to do with the similarity in thinking.

We're looking for beta-testers ATM, so if you're interested just fill in the sign-up form on the site and we'll send out more details. I'd really like the feedback to know if we're on the right track in addressing the issues we discuss here or if the site needs tweaking.

Other than that, keep up the good work everyone. Posts like these are why this is now my favourite blog.

Very nice Article.

In order for any of the other hacks to work, you need to hack the VC system and the networking system. Here is why hacking the VC system is essential to get any of these other large scale hacks to work.

The incestuous networks that surround most VC culture and the amazingly stupid way people pitch to VC's almost guarantees that no interesting solutions are funded. Trying to fit the correct solution to a huge problem (or even an adequate discussion of the intricacies of the problem necessary to understanding it well enough to evaluate the idea) into a VC pitch is impossible. Any presentation that attempts it will be a wreck.

I propose we call this the Y Combinator problem. These people turn solving the worlds problems into a game show that guarantees no deeply needed ideas get through or are discussed seriously. The idea that an idea without implementation is worthless kills innovation and is deeply flawed. It's true most of the time, but, it's not true in exactly the most important cases where the ideas involve solving a huge problem. Trying to fit a deeply needed solution to a huge problem into a pitch to a VC, or, for example, an unsolicited pitch to you for your 5 companies to mentor, is like asking a potential Tolstoy to pitch "War and Peace" as a Haiku*. The complexity of the problems that most need solving guarantee it is impossible to pitch them in ten minutes or a couple paragraphs of text.

Indeed, the truth reveals itself that most VC's are satisfied with this good enough system and are not interested in putting the effort to get the best ideas and support them however needed, to solve the biggest problems. If they would they would apply a fractional percentage of the effort they put into paperwork into refining their fatally flawed process, your other solutions would just fall out of that. In fact, it is obvious that they actively inoculate themselves from the best ideas.

It's exactly parallel to what happened in physics between Einsteinin and Newtonian conceptions of physics. The Newtonians were right enough to be right most of the time, and they were happy to just keep on doing newtonian physics. But the world isn't like that, and there are problems they will never even possibly solve. Einstein worked as a patent clerk. That is essential. Einstein was a patent clerk. Would special relativity have survived a VC pitch. No. Also, you must take into account the personalities of the people prone to solve these problems. The same obsessive interests, divergent thought processes and lack of social ability that makes for the most creative problem solvers makes these people unsuited to implement their ideas in the real world (in the same way that Einstein did not do the experiments to confirm his theories and got help with math. A quote: "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.").

If you are serious about getting the best answers to the big problems, you need to remove the barriers to entry for the kind of people who solve the biggest problems, and create a channel for them to pitch. You want people who think in pictures or paragraphs or kinesthetic sensations (for example, Einstein said he thought with his muscles, and that violin playing related to problem solving). VC's should create a way for people with big solutions to huge problems to pitch their idea however they think it should best be pitched (have them write or show, then give the good ones coaching and whatever types of help they need, and find businesspeople who actually want to work with the best ideas to manage the money aspects.) You need the philosophers and visionaries that are excluded by the design of the good enough system that ends up calcifying it's mediocrity into the economy. Einstein was a patent clerk.

If you ever get a chance to take Professor Michael Fitzgerald of Trinity College in Dublin to dinner, take it. He would be maybe the best expert in the world to design a system to identify these types, and to nourish them instead of repel them.

Until some Einstein analogue like you solves this fundamental issue (and you understand it better then anyone else I read, although I'm not sure if you've thought about it at this meta level, in this way yet), none of the other problems you are concerned with will be funded as easily as myspace apps to sell ads to 15 year old girls.

Solving that problem is the best way to start hacking the industrial economy because it will unleash a torrent of creativity that has been restrained by illogical restrictions that cripple the people historically shown to be most likely to solve the big problems.

*How about:
five hundred people
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Thank God it's over

See. It would never get through.

what else did king's jesters in the middle ages?

reporting on the weather does not change the weather

and my captch says, but retail, or maybe it didn't

Did anyone hear about this?

Organize the world's lighting:

http://dlightdesign.com/

"A blueprint for the next industrial revolution emerges. Here’s what it looks like.

Organize the world's hunger.
Organize the world’s energy.
Organize the world’s thirst.
Organize the world's health.
Organize the world's freedom.
Organize the world's finance.
Organize the world's education."

Dear readers, replace "organize" with "control."

A blueprint for global domination emerges. Here’s what it looks like.

Control the world's hunger.
Control the world’s energy.
Control the world’s thirst.
Control the world's health.
Control the world's freedom.
Control the world's finance.
Control the world's education.

Yes, this is only the beginning - the beginning of an entity or enterprise to:

Control the world.

Frankly, I think that too much control of the above concerns is what causes the problems. Keep noodling it Umair, or take off your mask so that we can see Hitler.

Make it a haven for victimless law breakers, legalize prostitution and drugs.
Do not allow theft or assault,murder.
Become the state from hell.
Take away personhood from corporations.
Allow everyone to carry any guns.
Arm teachers and make all schools equal.
24 hour alcohol and gambling in mom and pop joints only, no big gambling.
Antagonize the USA as only a state can.