I had an very interesting but slightly disappointing meeting at the Creativity World Forum 2008 in Antwerp, which ended today. I met a guy who founded a company which seems to be very close to being a Virtual Corporation, but somehow it seems one can have a company with worldwide activities, with ad-hoc project groups, non-hierarchical relations, internet based collaboration and responding with great flexibility, but without using any virtual environment, be it Second Life, ActiveWorlds, Forterra or Qwaq.
Jan Van Mol (see picture) is the founder of a company which has its own version of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a method where the public at large is asked for ideas and suggestions, hoping to get original insights and solutions. In this case, Jan developed a structure where the “crowd” is an elite group of creative people.
Jan’s company, Addictlab, gathered about 4,000 artists, fashion people, marketing specialists, technologists, internet geeks and scientists. They come form all over the world, Jan himself is Belgian but lives in South-Africa. Addictlab publishes twice a year a book, Addict.
In the latest edition a number of those creative people gave their take on emerging technology. Imagine the creative power of artists, scientists, technologists, fashion people thinking about an emerging technology such as nano-technology. The book is sponsored by the Belgian research group IMEC and is the result of collaboration with institutions such as the MOMA in New York City, the Design Incubator Centre of Singapore and Domus Academy Italy.
The books and numerous exhibitions give visibility to the 4,000 specialists. They work together on consultancy projects (on branding or product development) using Addictlab’s site. For instance, Addictlab was asked to give input for the high speed train project Thalys (which links Brussels and Amsterdam with Paris). About 50 people (no train designers, but artists, technologists, a cook etc) thought out of the box and came up with 1,000 ideas, finally 273 ideas were further developed and presented to Thalys. The ideas ranged from very immediate actions supporting the brand to deep interventions in the structure of the company running this train.
All this is very interesting, and Addictlab exists for 11 years now. Jan told me it still feels very much like a start-up company, and he intends to give it more structure by working with more permanent labs, for instance focusing on energy, emerging technology, chocolate (!) etc. In this way he wants to keep the flexibility of the organization as it exists now but adding more permanent structures.
It is important to realize that the 4,000 specialists are not on Addictlab’s payroll. They work together in ad-hoc groups on specific projects and now maybe also in more permanent labs. So the fact that these groups are ad hoc and involve worldwide operations make Addictlab an obvious example of a Virtual Corporation.
I guess the legal possibility to have a virtual incorporation in the State of Vermont came too late for Addictlab, but another aspect intrigues me: although the Addictlab people use all kinds of internet tools to communicate and collaborate, there is no systematic use of any virtual environment to create a sense of community, to add a watercooler-dimension for informal contacts inside the organization (people standing around the virtual watercooler and exchanging gossip and socializing).
And yet, Addictlab seems to be doing just fine. Remember: these are creative people, very new media inclined – for instance have a look at this document on their site about Urban Nomads. Which of course makes us wonder, are virtual worlds necessary? The obvious answer is: of course not. They a fairly recent phenomenon, especially for professional collaboration. People did collaborate nicely before virtual worlds and they still do so.
So do make virtual worlds collaboration easier? Yes and no. Yes because of the watercooler argument, the serendipity, the fact it becomes easier to have a fun and creative discussion. No because of the technological demands (connection, hardware, firewalls) and mostly because of the difficulties to convince people to give it a try.
But than again, the question is not whether virtual worlds are necessary or just make things easier. They make things deeper. The online collaboration with people you never met in real life, the feeling of having a group together is much deeper there than on Facebook for instance. So maybe Addictlab should try it out, and let me know how it worked out for them!
Roland Legrand
