Official Description: When Worlds Collide: The Information Economy and the Scholarly Enterprise
Kevin Guthrie, President, Ithaka

In today's rapidly evolving networked economy, is every organization - even a scholarly or academic one - a start-up? At the very least, parts of every organization need to behave like one. Kevin Guthrie will share experience from over a decade starting and establishing several not-for-profit organizations serving the scholarly community, first at JSTOR and now at Ithaka. In the first part of the talk, he will share the principles that have guided the process of innovation for those organizations. In the second part, Kevin will provide observations on some of the major forces from the commercial information economy that are "colliding" with the prevailing approaches of the scholarly community. The concept of interdependence is not new - for example, commercial publishers and scholars have been engaged in symbiotic co-existence for decades - but the emerging interdependencies across "worlds" introduce new and challenging questions of scale, control, and scope.

Live Blogging Notes From This Session

References the future envisioned in the1951 movie, When Worlds Collide (Link to IMDB)

World we all live on -- long live institutions with eduring values and modes of operation. Bowen's Romanes Lecture (2000) talk still very relevant mellon.org/romanes.pdf.

nurture independent knowledge creation but somewhat insulated and not necessarily given to rapid adaptation.

Faced with the likes of Google, Linux, Wikipedia. Entirely new industries created in the span of just a few years. Rise and fall of organizations can be dramatic. The networked information economy means a very rapid process from inception to dominance and (in some instances) failure. Companies like IBM (hardware to services) and Apple (iPod) manage tremendous turnarounds of their businesses. Book: The Perfect Thing -- about innovation and the iPod (forthcoming)

IHE(s) in business of knowledge generation is going to be hit by the effects of this information economy. In this setting, Dialog, Lexis-Nexis, mediated search by librarian was the benchmark of effectiveness. Then Google hit the landscape. All about speed, convenience.

Broad Networked Environment

• Network effect (service becomes more valuable as more people use it; rapid growth, often viral, little or no centralized effort) Examples - fax, email, open source software, social software, arXiv
• Two sided markets (two sets of customers need each others; payment systems, operating systems for software - intermediaries make it possible to bridge the two audiences. In each situation the balance is different. The challange is in establihsing and sustaining the balance in pricing/value. Is your organization an intermediare, a provider or a user?
• Wisdon of crowds (surowiecki bestseller) crowd is diverse, decentralized and independent action and has a mechanism for summarizing the "answer" Example: Google's pageRank mechanism.Are there ways for your organization to exploit this effect to the benefit of your customers/users.

II. Examples and Experience

How JSTOR and similar initiatives leveraged this network effect. His organization (Ithaka) is a not-for-profit venture capital incubator (strategic services, research and shared services) all in support of the academic community in developing innovative organizations and projects. Incubated entities -- Aluka (content from the developing world) ; NITLE (help small colleges w/o big IT support take advantage of the new technologies and keep up with pace of development) ; Portico (protected archive of e-journals). On staff at Ithaka but move them forward and move them to independence. Affiliated entities - JSTOR, ARTstor (well-established) Higher Education Community projects pursued by Strategic Services and research groups. (research studies, survey of academic librarians and faculty)

Want to enable NFP Entreprenuership -- How To Do This?

--Must define charitable mission of the enterprise (essential). define objectives; verifiable measures of delivery; helps to prioritize and guide difficult decisions in the long-term. Articulating the metrics. (NOTE: not just the financial ones)

--Make organization independent and must have a sense of entreprenuerial accountability.

--Leadership (successful venture capitalists invest in people -- not products or services) Requires 100% commitment and vested interest in the enterprise's success

--Need for Governing board or an advisory committee with multiple perspectives from a variety of stakeholders. Emphasize bringing in the perspective rather than a representative of particular sector.

--Board engagement with the process rather than Board management or "rubber stamping" of management. Both sides of the equation learns from the encounter and leaves w/ additional knowledge or expertise.

-- FLEXIBILITY!!! Don't be wedded to the plan you start out with -- plan to adapt and make changes in the process.

-- provide sufficient capital and develop solid business plan to present to the Board (get away from the grant mentality (3 year grant then look for another 3 year grant to keep going)

-- Match value to support. Expenses at the top (This is what we do and this is what it costs) and then test out revenue generation models. Variety of models is important for testing and experimentation with useful results (learn from the consequences)

--Communication of the value provided. Validate your progress, meeting delivery metrics set earlier in the process.

(he says he provided nine; I only got eight. will have to update or else get his slides)

Building the ways the bridges from the world that we're in to the one that will exist. Applause from the Audience.