Today the Market realizes that,
in order to develop products
ABLE TO SATISFY DEMAND’S NEEDS,
it is necessary to
INTEGRATE THE CUSTOMERS IN THE PRODUCT DESIGN PROCESS.
It is understood that to develop valid solutions it is necessary to integrate the holders of needs into the design process.
The same identical concept is at the base of Democracy, and in that context it is called participation.
In more general terms, today we are becoming aware that
the satisfaction of needs
(private and “social”)
CAN BE DEVELOPED EFFECTIVELY
ONLY WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF THE CUSTOMERS/CITIZENS.
In more “technical” terms, from the Market point of view, it is no longer possible to sell products without this participation. And at a “social” level, there is a growing inefficiency of Public Administration services (and therefore, for the governing parties, a loss of consensus).
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Note that in the current form of Democracy (essentially the “European model”), Market and Government operate in a strictly integrated way.
That is currently
the good functioning of the Market is linked
to a “good functioning” of the Government.
It is therefore necessary to consider that in the current conditions of Democracy it is not enough for the Market to work to get out of the sales crisis (integrating, for example, customers in the process of designing solutions), since top-down management (autocratic ) of the Market by the Government makes any form of business innovation useless.
For this reason it is not possible
to deal solely with improving the market.
But it is also necessary in some way
to reform the Government system.
The need for disruptive market innovation and Government
Government reform – like that of the Market – in an Era of radical changes, can only be based on a disruptive innovation, that is, on a change in the principles underlying the system that you want to improve.
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For this reason it is not enough to improve the systems currently used in Government and Public Administration, but it is instead necessary to rethink these systems starting from their roots.
Basically it is not a matter of inventing something from scratch. But
it is a question of recovering lost methods over time,
and of adapting them to the new Era by integrating functionalities
into them that are now possible thanks to new IT.
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And this disruptive innovation must take place in parallel in the Government and in the Market.
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Note the development of this type of innovation in the case, for example, in decentralization.
In the Market decentralization is taking place by integrating the Customer in the Design/Production processes. Which means, precisely, a decentralization of the production system (for example, Widespread Factory).
In Government: there is always a greater demand for participation in government by the Citizens (in Europe the Movements that support these forms of government grow significantly).
The possible digitalization levels of Democracy
Digitalisation allows at least two levels of Government innovation (in the interest of Citizens):
1) the possibility of direct interaction between Citizenship and Government Institutions (to Disruptive innovation).
Thanks to ICT, it is possible to develop online platforms with which citizens can take, in real time, participated decisions with respect to the administration of the territory (the “elected” in this case are only through which the solutions taken by the citizens are presented to Government Institutions).
[see ● Solutions for Participated Government and Administration (Welfare 2.0)]
2) Peer 2 Peer: today it is possible to create online platforms with which citizens are able to organize themselves to directly satisfy a part of their needs now covered by public services (with an improvement in the quality of the Services, a net reduction in costs – and therefore of Taxes).
Democratic digitalization or autocratic digitalization
The digitization of Democracy favored by the new IT can go in a direction of better democracy (bottom-up dimension, with decentralization of the Powers); or in the direction of greater authoritarianism (autocratic, dimension of top-down government, centralization of Power).
This depends on the “democratic” conditions of the System in which the new technologies are inserted.
For democracy, we mean precisely that dimension in which the citizens are able to participate directly in the administration of local issues.
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One of the objections to the possibility of creating new citizens’ participation tools is based on the idea that the latter are not able to self-manage a part of the administration of the territory on which they live.
This thesis is, obviously, denied by the facts: historically man has self-governed himself in places like the small Towns of the United States.
This shows how human beings have the opportunity to learn by doing: they, by making mistakes and learning from such experiences, can return to being able to self-govern.
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Ultimately the technology is neutral. With it you can create real progress, or worsen the living conditions of Citizens/Customers
To give an example of how technologies can so much strengthen the current top-down dimension of the Government (autocracy), as to improve the democratic dimension, the case of web-cams placed in public areas can be evaluated.
They, where mindset and participation tools already exist, can be used by creating social security systems (with P2P systems). Where instead where this dimension is absent, the same web-cams can be used top-down to control the citizens.
See
● Solutions for Participated Government and Administration (Welfare 2.0)]
● (3) Participation: Solutions
● The problems of the current Market strategies: toward a crowd participated Marketing – CURRENT MARKETING IS NOT ABLE TO INTERPRET THE NEW NEEDS OF CUSTOMERS. Thanks to Information Technologies today it is possible to change the role of Consumer by inserting them in the product development process.
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See also:
● Bottom Up Reform Initiative: introduction
● The misunderstanding underlying the failure of the “Participatory policies”
● Participation: What it is and what is not
● The Direct Democracy (Participatory Democracy)
