This paper is a summary of an Aspen Institute sponsored in-depth roundtable session, written from the perspective of one informed conference observer (Bollier). The participants are leading thinkers in the many complex areas this paper covers (economics, systems theory, human behavior, human futures, information technology evolution, etc) and are listed on page 57. A selection of their key insights shared in the paper are listed below:

A "push" economy is geared towards mass production, anticipating consumer demand, and routing resources to the right place at the right time, to create standardized and mass produced products. By contrast, a "pull" economy is based on open, flexible production platforms that are used to orchestrate a broad range of resources. Instead of producing standardized products, "pull" model companies are demand-driven, and assemble products in customized ways that serve specialized or local needs, usually using "rapid" or "on the fly" processes.

Several global corporations are moving towards "pull" methods, and away from "push" models; ie., Toyota, Dell, Cisco, Li & Fung. These companies employ different variations of Value Network models, that share information about overall network performance and best practices for serving specialized needs, among hundreds or even thousands of partner companies that make up the network. This creates an intra-network knowledge commons. Some companies also work closely with Open Source Software projects, thereby expanding their "pull" network, and expanding their knowledge commons into a broader Open Commons via Open Source Software project contributions. Thus, "pull" business models also tend to be Network Value-Increasing, and Commons-based business models as well.

"Pull" models can also be platforms for creating "increasing returns dynamics." This is due to "pull" models being based around loose and flexible networks that are already configured to scale as growth occurs. So, growth does not incur the huge overhead costs in administration that "push" models must contend with. Pull platform key characteristics include modular and loosely-coupled networks, open channels that better harness the passion and commitment of innovation communities. "Pull" platforms also will tend to influence public policy with regards to education and innovation, as more companies tend to gravitate towards the "pull" models.

The areas where "push" models tend to succeed in business are in areas where people do not know what they want, and prefer to shop from pre-made selections (Ikea, Home Depot). However, there are even "pull" models to found here, in the form of user-driven innovation, such as mountain biking, extreme skiing, hot rodding, etc. In these pro-amateur niches, customers don't necessarily know what they want, but do want to be a participant in the "pull" network that creates the product.

How do you tax a product that is made in 23 different countries? "Pull" models are going to change the way that governments create policy as more companies gravitate toward them. This will influence laws about intellectual property, education, taxation and more.

"Pull" economies are not just centered around finding creative ways to "outsource/offshore jobs" away from one place and to the places where "labor" is "cheaper". Successful "pull" models have encouraged and aided "insourcing", where more jobs are created, for instance in the United States by "foreign sources (a total of 7 million cited by this paper), than are out sourced (a total of 600,000+ cited by this paper). This is because pull models seek out, not just the "cheapest" labor, but the best ways to add value to the production networks. So, they can scale to many participants around the world, regardless of local labor costs, to find the best participants needed for specific specialized productions.

The social dynamics of "pull" models are highly centered around creating relationships of trust, sharing knowledge, and close cooperation among network participants. In "pull" models, non-market value creation (tacit knowledge, intangible value) is generally steered towards a commons-based model. A commons is used as a "collective governance regime for managing shared resources sustainably and equitably." Many of these commons are made possible by networked information technologies (the internet).

Bollier suggests that "if online commons are going to be useful to business, companies will need to do more work to develop protocols for identity and reputation management". This is because the use of the commons is based around trust. It also due to the need for ways to measure qualitative value in intangible assets beyond money, like knowledge, individual performance and value multiplication, and network wide performance/value multiplication.

Roundtable participants also noted that "pull" models will pose challenges to current education regimes that are centered around training people to participate in "push" economies. One of the participants mentions that " Computers, software tools, and Internet resources make possible some radically new styles of learning. By using pull-based systems, students can function much like businesses in the pull environment: They can access resources they don't control and put themselves into flows of activity, rather than just building inventories of static, objectified "knowledge."

When the Italian government created regional governments in 1970, a multi-decade study of levels of citizen satisfaction with these new institutions revealed that regions with norms of trust and reciprocity derived from centuries of horizontal voluntary association were both economically and politically more successful than regions that lacked dense networks of civic association and relied on patron-client relationships rather than horizontal citizen associations: "Some regions of Italy, we discover, are blessed with vibrant networks and norms of civic engagement, while others are cursed with vertically structured politics, a social life of fragmentation and isolation, and a culture of distrust. These differences in civic life turn out to play a key role in explaining institutional success."

Machiavelli, writing in 16th century Florence, concluded that the success of free institutions depends on the "civic virtue" of citizens. This republican school of civic humanists was countered successfully by the liberal emphasis of Hobbes and Locke on individualism and individual rights. The U.S. constitution was designed to make democracy work with a factionalized, unvirtuous citizenry. More recently, American political philosophy has rediscovered civic humanism, harking back to John Winthrop's "city set upon a hill" sermon.

Civic communities are bound by horizontal relationships of reciprocity among citizens, not vertical relations of authority and dependency. "Fabrics of trust enable the civic community more easily to surmount what economists call 'opportunism,' in which shared interests are unrealized because each individual, acting in wary isolation, has an incentive to defect from collective action." Participation in civic organizations trains people in cooperation skills and strengthens a sense of shared responsibility. Citizens who belong to many different groups tend to moderate their attitudes as a result of their exposure to group interactions. These groups don't have to be political: choral societies and soccer clubs knit people together socially and culturally, but the bonds of trust and social networks serve as effective vectors for economic and political activity.

In regions that lack networks of civic engagement and widespread norms of trust and reciprocity, citizens have to resort to hierarchy and force to resolve conflict, but even hierarchical law enforcement organizations prove less effective with a mistrustful citizenry. "Light-touch" government in more civic regions works better because it is aided by willing cooperation and self-enforcement among citizens.

The Northern Italian cities – Genoa, Pisa, Venice, and later Florence – took off in the 11th and 12th centrues in part because the contract and extension of credit were new legal strategies for creating partnerships and raising capital: "In the new practices and organization of business activity, risks were minimized, whereas opportunities for cooperation and profit were enhanced."

As Europe emerged from feudalism, the bonds of personal dependence (lord-vassal) grew weaker in the northern regions, but in the south of Italy they became stronger. Northern populations learned to be citizens, southern populations remained subjects. "In the cities, a horizontal arrangement emerged, characterized by cooperation among equals." The guild, confraternity, university, and the commune – a guild of guilds – reflected the new ideals in new institutions.

Mutual aid societies flourished in pre-unification Italy (circa 1850),-- pragmatic institutions in which cooperation conveyed benefits upon contributing individuals in a changing society. Italian cooperatives grew out of the mutual aid societies.

"Networks facilitate flows of information about technological developments, about the creditworthiness of would-be entrepreneurs…. Innovation depends on 'continual informal interaction in cafes and bars and on the street.'"

Social networks allow trust to spread transitively. Trust increases through use and becomes depleted if not used. Social capital, unlike conventional capital, is a public good, not the property of any of the individuals who benefit from it, and must often be produced as a by-product of other social activities.

"Norms are inculcated by modeling and socialization (including civic education) and by sanctions." Norms that support social trust evolve because they lower transaction costs and facilitate cooperation, conferring benefits upon cooperators. Reciprocity is the most important norm, and can be balanced (or specific – the quid-pro-quo) or generalized (diffuse). Communities in which the norm of diffuse reciprocity is high can more efficiently restrain free-riding and more easily resolve collective action problems. Networks of civic engagement increase the potential cost to defectors who risk benefits from future transaction. The same networks foster norms of reciprocity that are reinforced by the networks of relationships in which reputation is both valued and discussed. The same social networks facilitate the flow of reputational information.

"The civic traditions of Northern Italy provide a historical repertoire of forms of collaboration that, having proved their worth in the past, are available to citizens for addressing new problems of collective acdtion. Mutual aid societies were built on the razed foundations of the old guilds, and cooperatives and mass political parties then drew on the experience of the mutual aid societies."

"Stocks of social capital (trust, norms, networks), tend to be self-reinforcing and cumulative. Virtuous circles result in social equilibria with high levels of cooperation, trust, reciprocity, civic engagement, and collective well being. These traits define the civic community. Conversely, the absence of these traits in the uncivic community is also self-reinforcing. Defection, distrust, shirking, exploitation, isolation, disorder, and stagnation intensify one another in a suffocating miasma of vicious circles. This argument suggests that there may be at least two broad equilibria toward which all societies that face problems of collective action (that is, all societies) tend to evolve and which, once attained, tend to be self-reinforcing."

Social theorists of the late nineteenth century, such as Comte, Durkheim, Marx, Spencer, Tonnies and Weber, along with anthropologists of indigenous peoples have argued that with industrialization, modern societies will inevitably experience a decline in the norms that protect communal life. Throughout the twentieth century, in place of these norms, markets, states, and contractual obligations emerged as the appropriate means of dealing with common property. Nevertheless, recent scholarship on common property has shown that users are successful in distributing benefits "equitably, over long time periods, and with only limited efficiency losses." Three papers on the commons, by Wade (1994), Ostrom (1990), and Baland and Platteau (1996), have sought out facilitating conditions for sustainable common-property institutions, albeit through different empirical methods. Their overlapping principles are a good starting place for crafting successful institutions for collective action, but their work can also be used as a stepping ladder to more rigorous studies and predictive conclusions.

Wade argues that environmental risks help push people toward interdependence and defending their crucial commons. He also points to limited numbers of users who are not scattered over a large area, proximity between users and resource, clear boundaries of the user group and resource, easy detection of rule-breakers, graduated sanctions, low-cost exclusion technologies and recognition of local authority by central government as other facilitating conditions. These conditions are duplicated in much of the other literature on commons.

Ostrom lists eight design principles and qualifies sustainability on the legitimate acceptance of rules and obligations of the institution by subsequent generations of users. For her interests in long-term sustainability, Ostrom looks to successful long-standing institutions for her guiding principles, rather than starting with theoretical, causally-linked variables and then picking her sample. She cites as important principles, along with Wade, clear boundaries on user group and resource, homogeneity among users, locally-devised rules that are easy to implement, graduated sanctions and recognition from the central government.

Baland and Platteau confirm that regulated common property systems can be just as efficient as private property systems. They list principles that overlap with those mentioned above, also including past experiences of cooperation, external aid and strong leadership. They do not delve into how different factors might interact with each other, but instead list them as facilitating conditions in general.

Missing from the three articles is extensive attention to resource characteristics. For example, climatic information would be a significant factor in possibility of regeneration of an agricultural resource and the migratory patterns of a herd would be serious limiting factor for its local management. Small group size might not be a facilitating condition in certain situations, considering the "mobility of the resource, and volatility and unpredictability in the flow of benefits from a resource." Contextual factors like demographic conditions or local market demands, while not emphasized in any of the three articles, can be crucial factors in the viability of a commonly managed resource.