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."

Metcalfe's Law implies that the value of a communications network scales with the square of the number of peers that it connects (N*(N-1)) where N is the number of network access points. Reed's Law states that communications networks that connect groups (as opposed to peers) create value that scales exponentially with network size (based on the number (2^N-N-1) of non-trivial subsets that can be formed from N*(N-1) connected groups. Reed calls these networks Group-Forming Networks or GFNs.

Reed poses the question of what exactly is value in this setting? Value in a network that provides a service to users (e.g., broadcast networks, amazon.com, content providers) is the value of that service to the customer. A communications network connects peers and value is the "value of potential connectivity for transactions". For example, customers in a telecommunications network find value in the possibility of connecting with 911. Thus, potential connectivity provides the option of transacting. GFN's provide the ability to create and join groups and the value that is provided is the ability to affiliate groups. For example, a business with a supply network has the potential of affiliating with other supply networks. Reed concludes that using Sarnoff, Metcalfe, and Reed's law, there are three categories of value that networks can provide: (1) broadcast transactions which are linear value aimed at individual users (i.e., services), (2) peer transactions which is square value from the facilitation of peer transactions, and (3) GFN transactions which are the exponential value from facilitating group affiliation. As the Internet has developed, there has been a scale-driven value shift of value based on content, followed by value based on size of membership, to value based on the best facilitation of group affiliation. Reed does not imply that any of these values replaces another, rather than all are a part of Internet value.

Reed makes a very important point from this analysis. First, in real networks, the total price that is paid for transactions can only grow linearly because it is typically the case that consumers of value have money and attention that scale linearly with N. Reed calls this a saturation process and notes that if affects all types of value which implies that all three types value compete for the same resources. Once N grows sufficiently large, peer transactions will create more value for unit of network than broadcast transactions, and that GFN transactions will create more value per unit of network than either broadcast or peer transactions. Reed concludes that GFN transactions will out-compete the other categories in attention and return on investment.

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."

Introduction

Studying long-standing institutions for governing common pool resources at various scales can provide important lessons for governing new kinds of shared resources. Privatization or government control are not the only choices. Existing regimes based on that dichotomy are being re-conceptualized. Creating an interdisciplinary common vocabulary should be a high priority.

We cannot simply transfer an institutional design that worked well for managing one type of common-pool resource in one region of the world to another type of resource in another region and expect to repeat the success.

Key characteristics for successful cooperation to manage commons:

• small size of the user pool
• stable and well-delineated resource boundaries
• relatively small negative externalities
• ability of resource users to monitor resource stocks and flows
• moderate level of resource use (the resource must be neither over-abundant nor beyond recovery)
• well-understood (by the users) dynamics of the resource

“Instantly renewable” resources are distinguished from resources that require recovery time. For instantly renewable resources (spectrum, airplane landing slots, internet) overuse has little or no impact once overuse stops. The problem is crowding rather than degrading the resource stock. The forgiving nature of instantly renewable resources yields greater willingness to experiment with new and innovative management. However, since the resource is resilient there is less incentive to take serious action.

Research has shown:

• Users who trust each other are more likely to cooperate to manage common resources.
• Users who are connected by multiple issues and over a longer period of time can use issue linkages and reciprocity to induce cooperation.

The external legal environment can deliberately or inadvertently promote or hinder cooperative self-management. Transferring responsibility to users close to the resource has been a successful strategy as long as the users still have access to funding and other tools.

Resource users will devise new institutions for managing that resource or change existing rules governing its use when the perceived benefits of the change in the rules exceed the costs associated with creating the rules and with the change of the resource use pattern. Social and financial capital do not necessarily lead to better resource management Technology enables users to monitor the resource and each other more effectively and at lower cost. Technology also allows the development of alternative resources that can affect resource use.

Eight principles for managing commons:

1. rules are devised and managed by resource users
2. compliance with rules is easy to monitor
3. rules are enforceable
4. sanctions are graduated
5. adjudication is available at low cost
6. monitors and other officials are accountable to users
7. institutions to regulate a given common-pool resource may need to be devised at multiple levels
8. procedures exist for revising rules

Conclusion

Central governance and privatization only lead to deterioration of shared resources and communities, as well as to the failure of governance at the coarser scale. This implies that the organization at the macro-level is the deciding factor. However, we have seen sustainable management of natural resources over years and centuries despite macro-level restructuring, therefore the initial implication does not tell the whole story.

The authors set out to answer:

1. What new developments challenge traditional common property institutions and how do they adapt?
2. How is the increasing scale of human action affecting governance of shared resources?
3. Can we make progress in institutional design?

Some lessons learned:

1. The increased interconnection of the biophysical across scales and institutions across levels requires adaptation to change at multiple levels.
2. The interests of resource users at multiple levels often conflict.
3. Allocation of resource rights is a political process.

Our terminology needs refinement. Words like “local”, “regional”, and “landscape” erroneously imply that these are nested entities. We still lack conceptual tools with which to integrate the biophysical and the sociopolitical across multiple scales. For example, mobile resources (like fish) require complex polycentric management. Too-decentralized governance can serve as an impediment to meeting needs of a broader society.

Perceptions of fairness reinforce a climate of trust. Success of any mechanism relies on trust to enable cooperation. When participants do not come face to face with the consequences of their actions they feel no responsibility for them. Different forms of capital (physical, economic, political, and social) are intrinsically linked and one form can be used to create others, but social capital can lead to collective action for or against the commons.

In the end, a dynamic view of property rights is likely to be more appropriate to ensure sustainable and fair use of the resource than one that is static. Creating forums for negotiation and reallocation of such rights may be more important than laying down rigid rules and resource allocations.

The competitive advantage that social networks create is called social capital. Empirical evidence shows that brokerage between interdependent groups that specialize on different things creates more social capital than simply a high number of relationships among individuals (i.e. network closure). However, brokers depend on trust, and trust is frequently viewed to require network closure. The problem with this view is that with increased network closure the value of brokers diminishes which in turn creates less social capital. Part of solving this problem is to figure out whether network closure really does produce the kind of trust that increases social capital. Burt shows that trust created by network closure might be ill-founded.

The relationship strength between ego and alter correlates with the amount of trust between ego and alter. In a social context ego also receives gossip about alter, i.e. information about alter via third parties. The bandwidth hypothesis states that gossip nework closure increases information flow reinforcing and fine-tuning trust relationships beneficial to social capital. The echo hypothesis states that gossip network closure does not so much increase information flow but reinforces dispositions. This is due to a commonly observed etiquette in informal conversations where third parties only reveal information about alter to ego that concur with ego's opinion of alter. The motivation for this etiquette are civility, efficiency, and the important role gossip plays in creating and maintaining relationships.

Analysis of survey network data of three study populations consisting of senior managers in a leading manufacturer of electronic components and computer equipment, of staff officers in two financial companies, and a bankers in the investment banking division of a large financial company shows that trust can develop within negative third-party ties ("an enemy of my friend is my enemy" or "a friend of my enemy is my enemy"), and distrust can develop within positive third-party ties ("a friend of my friend is my friend" or "an enemy of my enemy is my enemy") which is consistent with the echo hypothesis but not with the bandwidth hypothesis.

"Strong connection through third parties increases the probability of social reinforcement such that network closure creates echo, not accuracy. [...] Therefore, network closure does not facilitate trust so much as it amplifies dispositions, people cannot learn of what they do not already know" which negatively impacts social capital.