I came across one of Bruno Giussani's blogs, Lunch Over IP, a few years back and have enjoyed reading his thought-provoking posts ever since. He just posted The Value Chain 2.0: Bringing in the Consumer , an essay by Xavier Comtesse (mathematician, author, and Geneva-based Director of Avenir Suisse, a think-tank) and Jeffrey Huang (Professor and Director of the Media and Design Laboratory at the Swiss Institute of Technology EPFL in Lausanne).

I've been thinking a lot lately about the business/production models of successful companies like eBay, Flickr, et al in this knowledge based economy that swirls around the generative, participatory technologies that are beginning to thrive in the world wide web ecosystem. The value of their business models is based, in part, not in what their factories produce, as they have none, but in what their consumers voluntarily contribute and share. This is such an enormous thinking twist for the industrialized mindset of my generation's brain. And, frankly, as an educator trying to think outside the box, this makes my head hurt. But it still fascinates me.

In their essay, Xavier Comtesse and Jeffrey Huang state:

Value chain 2.0 takes into account the active consumer in the production of value, across every level of a company’s activities. [emphasis added] Henceforth, we call the active consumer the “ConsumActor “ to indicate this reality.

The ConsumActor acts along two dimensions, as a:
- creator of context (action)
- creator of content (knowledge)

The whole essay is a rich exercise in "thinking different," which, of course, I love. But, always the educator, I'm asking myself, "What are the implications here for best practices in education?" Leveraging student "consumers" in the production of value as creators of context and creators of content... This blows my mind as these ideas significantly extend my former questions: "Who owns the learning in your class? Who is doing all of the thinking work in your class?" Now, add, "Who is creating the value in your class? Who is 'actioning' knowledge creation?"

Though some educators seem to suggest this, I suspect it would be naive for us to assume that the students alone are capable of doing this. If they could, we wouldn't need schools as anything beyond a baby-sitting service. No, as Value Chain 2.0 indicates, this is a complex joint venture.

The hard part for our profession, is figuring the implementation out. What does this look like?

I'm with Scott McCloud, who issues a brilliant challenge in this post on the alarmist empty rhetoric of bystanders. (It's just way too easy to criticize the hard, often thankless work of our educators.) He basically asks, "What else you got?" If we could just get the finger waggers to join us in figuring out what implementing very complex and exciting ideas like those offered in Value Chain 2.0, that alone would be no less than a kind gesture and perhaps even a tremendous help. Criticism and fear are too cheap and easy.

Using today's tools, what does leveraging the participatory generative creative potential of your students look like in your school setting? How can students substantively participate in the creation of context (action) and content (knowledge) in our present techno-centric world? What can "school" learn from eBay, Flickr, Amazon and the like? We need these discussions in school.