Addapt is a chaordic organization, founded on two principles:
Principle C: Identify what is closed, i.e. not open.
Principle O: Be accountable for what is open.
These principles enable the community to be highly distributed and self-organizing. Below, they are applied to the addition of new members and the treatment of intellectual property within Addapt.
Membership:
Addapt's goal is to enable cooperative learning and new business development among its members. Addapt delegates judgement of member behavior to all other members. Individual behavior is self-managed via the reputation of that individual in the community.
Any existing member can refer a new member. A referral record is generated that links the reputation of the old member to that of the new member. Subsequent actions of the new member reflect upon the judgement of the recommending member. This provides an incentive for each member to be judicious in their selection of new members that will add value to the Addapt community.
For members to obtain value from Addapt, they need to collaborate with other members. This collaboration is influenced by the member's reputation in the community. But you say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to. Perception is subjective. For this reason, there is no central arbiter of reputation, each member makes the final assessment of the reputation of the person they are collaborating with.
By self-disclosure of their history and goals, members attract other members with compatible values. These members then collaborate within or without Addapt. A member who is abusive to other members will eventually be shunned by those members. Such a person is never banned. They remain free to re-earn the trust of one or more Addapt members.
Principle O commits you to disclosing your values to the community. Principle C allows you to choose whom you collaborate and do business.with. Online and real-world interaction makes each Addapt member accountable to the members they collaborate with. In this type of long-term relationship, the consequences of a participant's actions will always become known. This encourages behavior that is judged by the values of that subset of members one chooses to interact with.
Addapt strives to create a community of unlike-minded individuals. This diversity strengthens the community by reducing groupthink. However, this level of diversity cannot be managed by any top-down, hierarchical management structure. Instead, Principles O and C guide all member interactions, producing generative outcomes that fit the diverse needs of each Addapt subgroup.
Addapt members ultimately benefit from, and are accountable to, each other.
Intellectual Property
Collaboration within Addapt is based on the non-conservation of knowledge. If you and I each put a single idea into a bucket, then we can each withdraw two ideas. Even better, those two ideas may combine to produce a third idea. Knowledge is an infinite resource.
Principle C says that you should decide which ideas you want to share with the community (i.e. what is closed vs open). Principle O says that you are accountable for supporting the ideas that you choose to disclose to the Addapt community. You have the right to use any ideas for commercial purposes and you grant permission for all members to use your ideas for commercial purposes.
When viewed from a scarcity perspective, this may appear threatening to the property rights of individual Addapt members. In practice, each member finds themself with access to a pool of ideas vastly bigger than they could derive on their own. These ideas then combine and reproduce with each other to produce new and innovative derivations of individual member contributions.
The result is a highly diverse idea economy of abundance, where members are not afraid of having their idea stolen, and are eager to see their idea develop through a process of evolution with similar but different ideas. For every N ideas thrown into the community pot, there are N factorial possible permutations of those ideas.
The most visible commercial application of this principle can be found in the Open Source movement. Addapt expands this principle to the entire arena of intellectual property. Addapt members selectively exchange their intellectual property rights for Innovation Rights, the opportunity to see their ideas co-evolve with those of other Addapt members.
This level of information sharing depends on a high-trust culture, one that requires much investment in the process of communication. Definition of openness, accountability, and the clear delineation of IP boundaries are the subjects of these conversations. A cultural path is then cleared for high-speed innovation that strengthens strategic visions long before their expensive testing in the marketplace.
Addapt guides the evolution of a learning culture.