I’ve dedicated a lot of research over the last few years to understanding the deep trends that will define the next economy.  As I’ve written elsewhere, the global economy goes through a creative-destructive cycle every 50 years.  And now we’re in the midst of a collapsing paradigm that is soon to be replaced by something new.

In this article, I will explain what the new paradigm is and how it will impact every sector of society — including business, government, education, and basic research.  The old economic paradigm was a service economy built on the digital communications revolution that began in the early 1970′s.  It is winding down now as financial capital has decoupled from productive capital and the global speculative bubble has burst.  The financial meltdown of 2008 had many causes, but its most important result is that our major societal institutions have stalled out and the funding models that drove the whole system no longer work properly.

This systemic shutdown requires a new paradigm for economic production, one that has been incubating in the minds of lead innovators for several years now and is just beginning to get recognized as the next model for the burgeoning new economy.

The new model is the Open Collaboration Paradigm.  It goes by names like open source, crowdsourcing, open system design, collaborative production, open manufacturing, and open government. Continue reading “Open Collaboration – The Next Economic Paradigm” »