4 Year Strategic Plan 2012

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4 Year OSE Strategic Plan – Marcin Jakubowski – Open Source Ecology – 12

.8.12

 

1. Abstract – This is a 4 year plan is proposed for the completion of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) and the building of a regenerative, autonomous, modern community. The scope of the community is a 30 acre, 30 person community in the Kansas City area of Missouri, and long-term intent is replication as a viable lifestyle for 0.1% of the industrialized world's population (growth to 1M people living in OSE Campus concept communities within 7 years of 2015). The unique feature of this community is its positioning as a learning + research and development community that regenerates local community economics via development of open source enterprise. The lifestyle model involves a 2-hour daily work requirement necessary to provide all necessities of creature-comfort living (food, shelter, energy, technology), while the rest of the time is spent on open source economic development. The technological scope of this 4 year program is reaching standards of modern technology up to metal smelting from ubiquitous, on-site resources – after providing food/fuel/fiber/mineral products from regenerative natural resource stewardship. This 4 year plan does not include semiconductor production from local resources. The intent of this phase (until year-end of 2015) is to complete the GVCS development and to provide substantial data points on the building of a modern, autonomous Global Village. This involves not only the technology base for a modern community – but also the integration of community dynamics based on collaborative production as a novel means of economic organization of communities. The basic approach is cultivating a 30-person team of pioneering developers on a ~1 year time scale, followed by rapid development of the GVCS. This work involves developing open source blueprints of powerful, proven infrastructure technologies – as well as documentation of techniques and methods for using these tools as an integrated construction kit for building community infrastructures. The open source economic development approach is intended to reduce capitalization and know-how barriers to enable viral replicability – where collaborative production can compete with other economic models.

    

2. 1.Introduction 

   1. 1.Towards the open source economy 

   2. 2.The Social Experiment 

   3. 3.Factor e Farm 

3. 2.Strategic Priorities 

   1. 1.Stabilize OSE Infrastructure (2012-2013) 

      1. 1.Improve On-site Infrastructure  at Factor e Farm 

      2. 2.Streamline Product Development Procedures 

      3. 3.Improve Organizational Infrastructure 

         1. 1.Organizational Structuring + Land Tenure 

         2. 2.Develop Branding Strategy         

      4. 4.Attain Financial Robustness 

         1. 1.Attain Financial Sustainability via Collaborative Production + Distributive Enterprise  

         2. 2.Develop True Fans Program 

         3. 3.Stabilize Institutional Funding 

      5. 5.Develop Performance Metrics and Milestones 

         1. 1.Project Completion Metrics 

         2. 2.Production 

         3. 3.Social Capital 

         4. 4.Non-Profit Sector Support  

   2. 2.Build Development Community (2012-2013) 

      1. 1. 1.Build on-site Developer Community 

            1. 1.Recruit Management Team 

               1. 1.Chief Operations Officer – Technical Developments 

            2. 2.Recruit Technical Experts 

               1. 1.Master Prototypers – 2 

               2. 2.Machine Designers – 4 

               3. 3.Information Architect 

               4. 4.Open Source CAD Solution Developer 

               5. 5.Programmer 

               6. 6.Director of Learning 

            3. 3.Develop Cross-training Infrastructure  

         2. 2.Scale the Rate of Development 

         3. 3.J1 Visa Strategy for Global Collaborators 

         4. 4.Improve Global Developer Collaboration (Flash Mobs) 

         5. 5.Develop Strategic Partnerships with Established Industries 

   3. 3.Develop Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) - 2014-2015 

      1. 1. 1.Key Milestones for GVCS Development  

         2. 2.Develop Rigorous Testing and Quality Control 

      2. 2.Improve Documentation Quality 

   4. 4.Build OSE Campus  

      1. 1.Lifestyle Investor Dream Team 

      2. 2.Pioneering vs. Replication  

      3. 3.Key Milestones for the OSE Campus 

4. 3.Budget and Personnel Plan 

   1. 1.Existing  

   2. 2.Projected  

5. 4.Appendix: Assumptions and Critiques 

   1. 1.Open Source Enterprise Profit Margins 

   2. 2.Cultural Creatives and Cultural Disruptives 

   3. 3.Unique Community Model  

   4. 4.Collaborative Production in Autonomous Communities 

   5. 5.Scalability to Large Population Centers ( 

 

Introduction

 

Open data, collaborative production, open source software – open everything – is an emerging global trend.1 Open Source Ecology is part of this movement – with its particular focus on developing open source blueprints for civilization.2

 

OSE is developing the Open Source Economy as a means to transcend artificial material scarcity. All trappings of modern life rely on natural resources – rocks, soils, plants, water, sunlight. The industrial system transforms these resources into usable products like cell phones and bread. Artificial material scarcity is the condition where in the absolute abundance of natural resources, their distribution remains poor. This is because the tools of industrial production are expensive and centralized. Our goal is to do an industrial bypass – making the mechanisms of production accessible on a smaller, more localized community scale – literally – enabiling communities to create wealth from the dirt beneath their feet. We are about opening up the tools of industrial productivity to shift the balance of power from the global to the local. This is the nature of the next economy – the networked, open source economy.

 

The Social Experiment

 

To demonstrate the feasibility of the next economy as described above, we are building a real community. Access to information, as enabled by global spread of the internet – allows for unprecedented concentration of knowledge in the hands of individuals. With such a possibility, it is natural to ask whether such distribution of knowledge – and therefore economic power – could result in an entirely different model of social organization, transcending the negative effects of globalization. The new model revolves around an open source economic trend of collaborative production. This is an opportunity that could have significant global effects.  – as well as other structural economic and political problems. Our hypothesis is that by addressing the issue of material production and distribution in a fundamental way – we can generate new organizational and social structures.

 

The range of applicability of the GVCS includes lowering the barriers to entry to various forms of productive enterprise. The key assumption is that efficient production relies on access to both information (Intellectual Property) and capital (machinery and infrastructures of production). The aim of the GVCS is to lower the barriers to both.

 

By our experience with developing the GVCS, we aim to develop a generalized, open source product development methodology. This methodology would create a parallel economic system with globally-collaborative product development to reduce competitive waste. The OSE Campus-type facilities are intended to be virally-replicable centers of open collaboration and open innovation – which provide a viable alternative to proprietary development.

 

Factor e Farm

 

Our intent is to build a physical facility for open source product development – covering all best practices of industrial/infrastructural productivity – consistent with environmental regeneration and social justice.

 

We don't stop at the level of a theory or an internet platform – we are building a prototype comunity that blends advanced, human-scale eco-industry with social dynamics designed around autonomy, pursuit of mastery, and higher purpose. This experiment is Factor e Farm – a 30 acre facility designed to demonstrate how the GVCS can be used to build a small-scale civilization with modern comforts  – using open source technology fueled by 100% local resources. We are showing the limits of how to turn dirt and twigs into advanced civilization.

 

We admit clearly that the above goals are audacious – but they are worth the effort. This is an invitiation for you to join.

Strategic Priorities

 

1. 1. 2.1Stabilize OSE Infrastructure (2012-2013) 

      2.1.1 Improve On-site Infrastructure at Factor e Farm 

 

We are an off-grid facility except for an internet land line. To date, we have built a 4000 square foot workshop and HabLab, a 3000 square foot, 10 person living unit - HabLab.3 Our existing infrastructure can  marginally accommodate 12 people year-round, and it is powered by a 1.4kW photovoltaic panel array with a backup gasoline generator. We intend to migrate to pelletized-biomass fueled modern steam engines for the bulk of our power needs by 2014, and we aim to migrate to solar concentrator electric and wind power by the end of 2015 as these machines are developed in the GVCS. We are also considering biogas electric power generation as well as a connection to the grid.

 

We have 240V single and 3-phase power in the workshop running from a 50kW-hr battery bank. Finishing work is still needed for HabLab. Water and electrical infrastructures need to be completed for existing buildings. Site landscaping, access roads, utility trenching, and winterization need to be done. For materials handling, we need to build a loading dock for truck access. We have a 1/3 gallon per minute well, and we are considering drilling either a backup well or digging a 100,000 gallon pond for our bulk water needs. We are considering an ozonator4 as our main pathway to potable water.

 

To accommodate a full team of 30 people on-site, further living accommodations will need to be built. We are considering 2-person studio OSE Microhouses5 for the mainstay of our accommodations, while r. We need to build a storm shelter which could also double up as a root cellar.

 

Our workshop has 12 working bays and can easily accommodate 12 fabricators, limited only by welder power. Currently, we can run up to four 200AMP welders at a time for 6-8 hours per day at full duty cycle.

 

Our agriculture program is in its infancy and it needs to be developed to provide a year-round, full diet to participants. We have a 300 tree fruit and nut orchard, a garden, cow, chickens, and greenhouse. We have recently recruited a Farm Manager, and we will be performing a full site survey. We aim to produce a site Master Plan and Food Production Plan by the end of 2012.

 

The main need for the site survey is to facilitate the development of an erosion control plan consisting of keyline plowing, berming, water catchment ponds, and any other earthworks.

 

1. 1. 1. 2.1.2Streamline Product Development and Testing Procedure 

          

The existing method of development requires these steps:

 

1. 1.Design – generation of 3D CAD, Exploded Parts Diagram, Fabrication Drawings, and Assembly Drawings. 

2. 2.Design review for fabrication, modularity, and lifetime design 

3. 3.Build 

4. 4.Extensive Field Testing 

5. 5.Documentation 

    

Improvements of the open source product development procedure involve defining and recruiting  the optimal development team and developing a robust development process. The intent is to scale the development process to 2 parallel projects being developed with full rigor on a one month prototyping time scalei by mid-year 2013, and 6 parallel projects by end of 2013.

 

The major roadblocks that we have is the lack of team and absence of an open source CAD solution, which prevents meaningful collaboration from happening.  Proprietary CAD solutions limit our process because it is impossible to provide CAD software to a large, distributed, global team. Furthermore, there are significant cross-platform and backwards compatibility issues – casualties of proprietary development. To address this, we plan to develop an open source CAD solution.

 

Until that time, we plan on recruiting 4 machine designers to scale our product design effort to 5 machines per month. We estimate 1 week prototyping cycles from complete plans.

 

The proposed team is a total of $24k/month budget. The financial sustainability of this team hinges on securing $20k/month in production earnings for the 4 Machine Designers + Master Prototyper

 

This means that we can expand, sustainably, to 4 Machine Designers/Master Prototyper in December, 2012. Currently, we can place the Machine Designers, Info Architect,  Director of Learning, Information Architect, Video Director ($24k total) into the Kauffman grant.

 

1. 1. 1. 2.1.5Attain Economic Robustness 

         1. 2.1.5.1.Attain Financial Sustainability via Collaborative Production + Distributive Enterprise 

 

Our social enterprise model relies on collaborative production for the core of its scaling strategy. While we have used the 1000 True Fans program (600+ supporters at present) to crowd-fund early-stage development – this route does not scale. For viral scalability, a bootstrap funding mechanism is required to enable other groups to replicate our work.

 

Our answer to this financial sustainability and scalability question is developing a collaborative production enterprise model. The nature of this model is cross-training FeF participants to engage in intensivel, 1-day production runs in which 8-16 people swarm on the production of a GVCS machine under the guidance of a multi-skilled Production Director.

 

1. 1. 1. 1. 2.2.2.1Recruit Subject Matter Experts 

 

Successful development of the GVCS requires that we recruit Project Managers or Subject Matter Experts capable of developing the 50 GVCS tools on monthly prototyping cycles. Such prototyping cycles require Design and production of Fabrication Drawings and Assembly Instructions (1 month), followed by Prototyping (1 month). To achieve this, a team of 6 Fabricators/Machinists and 6 Machine Designers/Engineers are required for prototyping, and 6 Product Testers are required to take the machines through rigorous field testing.

Specific SME areas include focus on Mechatronics and related areas:

 

1. 1.Power Electronics – Inverter, Welder, Induction Furnace, Plasma Cutter, Laser  - Universal Power Supply 

2. 2.Electronics – machine controllers (CNC machines and automation), 3D scanner 

3. 3.Wind Turbine Design – 50 kW Wind Turbine 

4. 4.Hydraulic Motor Design – Hydraulic Motors, Cylinders 

5. 5.Electrical Motor/Generator Design – Eectric Motor/Generator, Open Source Stepper Motor 

6. 6.Agricultural Machine Design – Combine, Hay Rake, Hay Cutter, Spader, Microtractor, Baler, Universal Seeder 

7. 7.Mechanical Engineer – Machine Designer – Tractor, Microtractor, Bulldozer + Hammer Mill + Well-Drilling Rig + Universal Auger + Trencher +Backhoe + Cement Mixer + Sawmill + CEB Press + Loader + Pelletizer 

8. 8.Industrial Laser Designer – CNC Laser Cutter 

9. 9.Industrial Robotics Design – Industrial Robot 

10. 10.Mechanical Engineer/Machine Design  – Ironworker Machine 

11. 11.Precision Machine Design – CNC Multimachine, CNC Circuit Mill, 3D Printer, CNC Torch Table 

12. 12.Industrial Engineer – Bioplastic Extruder 

13. 13.Engineering Polyglot – Extraction of Aluminum from Clay 

14. 14.Solar Engineer – Solar Concentrator 

15. 15.Mechanical/Automotive Engineering – Modern Steam Engine Designer, including Heat Exchanger and Gasifier Burner 

16. 16.Agricultural Engineering – Dairy Milker + Bakery Oven  

17. 17.Metallurgist – Metal Rolling, Press Forge, Wire and Rod Mill  

18. 18.Automotive Engineer – Open Source Automobile, Open Source Truck, Power Cube 

 

1. 1. 1. 2.3.2Key Milestones for GVCS Development  

 

Key Milestones for GVCS Development are:

1. 1.Demonstrate $20k/month Collaborative Production business model based on the GVCS by Q1 of  2013. 

2. 2. Scale GVCS development to robust development of 6 projects at one time by Q1 of 2014. 

3. 3.Recruit 6 SMEs for 6 parallel projects at the beginning of Q1 of 2014 until project completion by Q1 2016. Stabilize project management personnel (6) and documentation team (6) by Q1 of 2014. 

4. 4.Add each additional beta release to our collaborative production product line within 3 months of the beta release – as proof of economic viability of each product. 

5. 5.Scale production earnings to $80k net/month from our 4000 sq foot Workshop by beginning of 2015. 

6. 6.Develop induction furnace with  a capacity of 2 ton/day virgin steel ingot production from scrap metal by mid 2014 

7. 7.Roll metal stock, rods, rebar, and wire from ingots by end of 2014 to ASTM standards6. 

8. 8.Develop solar concentrator and modern steam engine power sources by Q1 of 2015. 

9. 9.Develop 1 ton/day aluminum smelting capacity from clay by Q1 of 2016. 

 

1. 1. 1. 2.4.3Key Milestones for OSE Campus 

 

1. 1.Stabilize living and working infrastructure for 12 developers by Q1 2013. 

2. 2.Stabilize permanent population of FeF to 12 people by Q3 of 2013. 

3. 3.Demonstrate 400 square foot OSE Microhouse construction on a timescale of 5 days with 3 workers at $3k for superinsulated, autonomous, natural building. 

4. 4.Increase and stabilize population of Factor e Farm to 24 developers by Q1 2014. 

5. 5.Achieve food, fuel, and electricity production autonomy by Q1 of 2015. 

6. 6.Achieve $100k/year net earnings from nursery stock, edible landscaping services, eco-tours, workshops, and B&B services. 

7. 7.Demonstrate that the entire GVCS 50 can be replicated at a cost of $10k + labor once the GVCS is available for seeding its first replication. 

8. 8.Develop a land stewardship social enterprise for expanding the OSE Campus concept to other locations by Q1 2016. 

    

3.0 Budget and Personnel Plan

 

 

 

Budget for next 10 months

 

EXISTING SOURCES, as of 12/8/12	AMOUNT
Shuttleworth Project Funds	$228,500
Shuttleworth Grant Salary	$67,588
New Bank Account	$28,000
SESLOC remaining funds	$44,463
True Fans Donations	$50,000
TOTAL	$418,551

 

Expenditures for the next 10 months (to July 1, 2012)

 

ITEM	AMOUNT (US$)	BALANCE (US$)
		418,551
Pond Digging, ¾ acre	6500	412,051
OSE Microhouse 1 & 2	8000	404,051
Video production computer	1300	402,751
CAD Director	12,000	390,751
Staff	260,000 for 10 months	130,751
Materials + tooling, 20 prototypes	100,000	30,751

 

Budget Rationale

 

We are putting in a budget of $24k/month for staff. We are including 3 months for the CAD Director to define and organize funding for an open source CAD platform via Kickstarter, with expected returns of $250k to support 3 full time programmers and a CAD director.

 

The prototyping rate for the 10 month period should be 3 prototypes per month. The Master Fabricator leads a team of 4-6 apprentices in this scenario. Of the 3 Machine Designers, one focuses on defining the feasibility of Design Flash Mobs. If these don't work, the Designer focuses their efforts on leading their own design process.

 

This takes us to mid-year of 2012 under the assumption of no additional funding. We are developing a $20k/month bootstrap funding strategy to begin by January, 2013. This would allow us to scale our development team to 5 additional staff: Director of Product, 3 Machine Designers, and a Curriculum Director to develop instructionals.

 

With the additional Machine Designers, our prototyping rate should increase to 6 prototypes per month, under the assumption that up to 12 volunteer apprentices are working with our Master Fabricator.

 

1. 1. 4.1Decreasnig Open Source Enterprise Profit Margins? 

 

The main critique of our business model is that the solid value generation (profit margins) that we enjoy currenly will be reduced under the free enterprise assumption of competition. We invite such open competition, and we are proposing a paradigm where non-monopolistic production works to the benefit of everybody – as indeed should be obvious if one is not indoctrinated in mainstream economic paradigms.

 

Open source enterprises have a potential dilemma of decreasing profit margins because open IP allows other to compete on a more level playing field. This is not catastrophic, and can be negotiated successfully in various ways. This has been shown by Makerbot Industries, where their competitive advantage is sourcing and production efficiency for large volumes of machines, as well as by primacy/brand recognition/social capital within the community.7 This has also been shown by DIY Drones, which remains in business even though Chinese competitors can make the product cheaper.8 This is because of  loyalty from a support and developer community – as well as loyalty that stems from local production in a California facility.

 

The OSE case is much harder, in that we use universally-available sourcing, we publish production optimization information, and we train our competitors.

 

How do we stay in business?

 

It seems that the short answer is social capital - people want our platform to succeed.. We do well with crowd funding, foundation funding, and product sales from early adopters. However, there are several strategic considerations that influence our success outside of 'good wishes' from the rest of the world.

 

As developers of products, we have economic primacy for a limited time. Currently, we are developing a milestone of $5k/day net earnings from collaborative production – with 8 people on the production team – so that we could generate $20k/month for bootstrap funding of our effort. However, we are open source and we publish both our products designs + business models (we are a [[Distributive Enterprise]]), and on top of this, we train our competitors. If our program succeeds, then the price and profit margin of the products will necessarily decrease as others join the producer pool.

 

The above is an assumption based on standard economic practice. I will consider two cases: one, where this assumption holds, and two, where the assumption does not hold and we retain the above profit margins.

 

CASE 1. Lowered Profit Margin Assumption

 

According to standard business thinking - if the assumption holds, then we can enjoy our primacy for a limited time only. That time is probably on the order of a year, as others join the producer pool and start competing businesses.

 

Our initial competitors will be other small entrepreneurs/early adopters, followed by larger corporations, perhaps when the small-scale, flexible fabrication reaches ~2% of the marker share - and larger market players begin to notice. Our strategy is to develop one machine at a time, produce it, and distribute the enterprise. Since our goal is distributing production, we are meeting our core objective. We then move on to develop the next product in line. Since the market size of the GVCS is at least $100B per year9, then a 2% global market share is $2B. If our financial goals for Factor e Farm are ~$1M/year in net production earnings, then we need to capture less than 0.1% of the early market. This should be easy over the next 3 years, as we continue to release new products, because of our primacy and social capital – such that we can self-fund the entire development effort on a shoestring budget – while still attracting several million/year in other volunteer support and from foundations - to achieve GVCS development goals (a modest ~$5M development budget).

 

This takes us to year-end 2015, by which time we have finished the whole GVCS and we enter the replication phase.

 

CASE 2. Profit Margins Do Not Decrease

One needs to look at the details of the flexible fabrication business model and to the details of the GVCS platform to appreciate that the lowered profit margin assumption does not necessarily hold. Indeed, the sufficiency criteria for breaking the assumption are any single one of the following 3 points:

 

1. 1.GVCS machine production includes optimized fabrication and sourcing processes which cannot be simplified. Thus,  it is not possible to produce the GVCS goods more cheaply. 

2. 2.Certain features of the GVCS technologies make them unfit for mass production business models, and is therefore not pursued by large finance capital. 

3. 3.Economic autonomy of regions – under the assumption that the GVCS achieves its stated goal of producing the infrastructure for a complete local economy - provides no incentive for any economic player to centralize and mass-produce. Instead, such autonomy tends to enable and refocus economic activity on regional prosperity, quality of life, and cultural/scientific advancement. 

4. 4.We shift to a raplication and teaching capacity by 2016. 

 

Point 1.

 

Point 1 requires careful scrutiny, as our efficiency comes not only from the efficiency of production – but efficiency of design-for-fabrication, sourcing cost reduction via technological recursion, low overhead via autonomous operation, and the social model of production.

 

Efficiency of production includes CNC machining and automation – an essential component of the GVCS. Ergonomics of production include proper work-flow design standards. Skilled personnel are key to effective production – in the form of a master fabricator being present during production runs. We are also very selective in our admission criteria – choosing only the most integrated top 99.9% of the human population.10

 

Design-for-fabrication involves using the simplest possible design from the fabrication perspective – while retaining the necessary functionality. This involves using easy-to-source stock parts, minimum parts counts,  and minimum unique parts counts. We are able to achieve this type of design because typicially our designers are also the fabricators and users, so they have profound insights into the requirements for achieving the highest performance in the simplest possible way. This is a significant advantage compared to industry standards, where the designers are not the engineers, the engineers are not the gabricators, and the fabricators are not the users.

 

Our sourcing costs can be lower than a typical manufacturing due to vertical integration of metal production into our operations via the induction furnace and metal rolling processes. This is calculated to produce heavy machinery (>2000lb weight)  at 3/5 of the market cost of stock steel, including labor.11 Sourcing is further simplified by design-for-fabrication.

 

We can enjoy low overhead by autonomous operation. We are able to produce energy, food, fuel, housing, and other technologies.  We can reduce the costs of electricity and fuel, which can be produced on-site produced on-site via access to the GVCS, including solar concentration, biomass gasification, biogas, biomass pellets, modern steam engines, and wind turbines. We also reduce the cost of the built environment by using the construction equipment of the GVCS. As a small enterprise community of 30 people in 2015 and 200 later on – we minimize organizational complexity as part of our structuring.

 

Our social model of collaborative production, an extension of collaborative consumption, is perhaps our most significant reason for us remaining competitive far into the future.12 This model involves a master fabricator (management) who works with 8-16 apprentices. These apprentices are volunteers who are interested in becoming makers and entrepreneurs, but who are looking for more meaning than standard industrial or mainstream jobs. This model involves cross-training of the apprentices in fabrication and other skills. These apprentices engage in production runs under the guidance of the master fabricator – such that the apprentices gain skills and training in exchange for their labor in production.

 

It should be pointed out that the collaborative production model will be most effective when these supporting functions are provided: (1) curriculum and augmented reality training materials for cross-training; (2) video support to produce instructionals and augmented reality training materials; (3) product research and development to continue development; (4), design, CAD, CAM, and programming support for development; (5) branding, marketing (blogging, social media), strategic collaboration, strategic planning, and enterprise replication support; (7) physical infrastructure support, and others.

 

The social model of collaborative production may be used to fund staff on site. We are organized under a collaborative production contract – instead of having employees – to simplify organizational structure. Our enterprise model will shift to replication by year-end 2015, so it is important for our staff to be involved in hands-on production runs – while earning to cover their costs.

 

Point 2.

 

One cause of concern could potentially be that huge finance capital is thrown by another major corporation to run us out of business. We can train them. It is unlikely that a large economic agent – due to their large overhead, labor, managerment costs - and diversified skill requirements – will be able to compete with us.

 

Further, we design products for flexibility, user maintenance, and lifetime design. This is directly opposed to the planned obsolescence business model that mainstream companies endorse. Therefore, we will carve a niche for those people who need lifetime-design equipment. If the mainstream producers decide to produce lifetime design eqiupment, they will have to change their business model, which would mean disruptive change – possibly an enlightened economy of abundance. Major psychological upheavals would occur in the human population.

 

Basically, if large corporations were to adopt our business model, that would be a win-win situation – as the world adopts a mindset of post-scarcity. That is aligned with our core positioning of creating the open source economy where advanced, collaborative, open source production increases innovation 10-100 fold and pressing world issues are solved one by one.

 

Point 3.

 

Would there be a tendency for certain small producers to grow to a gigantic scale if the GVCS is developed? It is our assumption that if production of GVCS tools is distributed, the tendency for any particular player to monopolize production is limited because with open competition,  centralization is risky.

 

The implication of free enterprise is that regions begin to build up their economies independently of global geopolitics.

 

Point 4.

Our business model relies on constant innovation. We plan on teaching entrepreneurs to replicate the OSE Campus concept. We can then generate revenue by open franchising of our brand under specific support agreements. This is intended to be our revenue stream from 2016 on, where we enjoy a 2 hour work day to create a modern standard of living, and we interact economically with the outside world primarily to replicate our efforts. The details of these arrangements need to be worked out. We foresee Factor e Farm expanding in size and increasing its training capacity to a campus for training 12 groups (teams of 4 in each group) the first year of operations as a replication facility (2017).

 

The first replications would be on site upon graduation of a first 2-year class – where the class itself would work to exapnd the infrastructure on site at FeF. The 12 trained groups would then start their own facility elsewhere on the scale of 1 year upon purchasing land upon graduation – with capitalizationi assistance from OSE. The new facility would begin a training program within 2 years of leaving FeF training – to train 12 additonal groups. Therefore, each campus generates 12 more on a 4 year time scale (2 years for startup, 2 years for immersioin training of new 12 trained groups) to generate. Thus, by 2019, there will be 12 facilities worldwide, 144 by 2023, and 1700 by 2027. That's a s far into the future as we want to look now.

 

Replication Stage

 

We have cleared $25k last year in product sales in 2011. Now we are building our productive infrastructure to net $20k/month by 2013, and $80k/month by 2014.  To date, we have several product requests per month for beta-release products without advertising. These are not ready for mainstream adoption as they require thousands of hours of testing for general adoption by the rest of the world. Initial data has shown several replications and 3 other producers began selling machines.

 

We are a diversified hybrid organization of for-profit and non-profit activity. The 2015 milestone involves a single OSE Campus built at Factor e Farm, with $80k/month earnings from production earnings, $20k/month from True Fans (Totaling about $1M in revenue) and about $4M in nonprofit sector funding (see Revenue Projections elsewhere).

 

As an organization, we aim to grow to a ~$15M annual budget by 2018. The sources for this are scaling   of production to 5 productive facilies within the USA, each for approximately $1M/year net. The rest of the funding will come from foundations and high net worth individuals. We are currently building our non-profit and for-profit infrastructure.

 

1. 1. 4.2Cultural Creatives and Cultural Disruptives 

 

Sociologists Anderson and Ray estimate that 25% of the US population are Cultural Creatives.13 At OSE, we are making the assumption that less than 1/100th of the Cultural Creatives falls into a deeper change-maker category – the Cultural Disruptives. These are people who are willing to engage in disruptive change based on not only the awareness of – but also a pro-active stance for - building deep and lasting solutions to pressing world issues. We estimate that the fraction of the population that falls into this category is approximately 1 out of 1000 people, or 0.1% of the world's population. We believe that this section of the population has cultivated the necessary mindset to obtain the required skill set for engaging in the OSE Campus model. This means that these people have the intrinsic motivation to seek and organize with other like-minded Disruptives – who also find sufficient purpose and meaning in such a lifestyle. As such, these are people who are likely to sever societal expectations and attain an integrated lifestyle. This means that our market size is approximately 1 million people in the developed world.

 

I would like to emphasize that in the 4-year development phase of the GVCS from 2012, our target audience is the developed world. This is because the technology base necessary to develop the GVCS is not found in the developing world. Once the GVCS is developed in full, it will have its own bootstrapping technological capacity to build advanced, appropriate technology in the world – therefore allowing the concept to be replicated in areas of the world which currently do not have modern industrial infrastructures. Therefore, we predict that it will be appropriate to take the technologies to the 'developing world' in 4 years, not now. Many people currently suggest that we should work in the developing world now. This is inappropriate unless a certain level of basic industrial infrastructure support exists in a given location – such that when the machines break down, there would be a way to service them. This would bypass type 1 errors suffered by many third-world aid programs.

 

We are proposing - eventually - an industrial bypass – or technological leapfrogging – for developing countries. Our approach is developing the enabling technology in the Western World. Thereafter, we will be in a position as an organization to assist disruptive entrepreneurs in the developing world.

1. 1. 4.3Community Model: Social Sustainability 

 

The FeF community is presently a research and development community for the GVCS. The intent of this community is to become a virally-replicable (5,000 communities of 200 people within 2 years of 2015). If we assume that the GVCS tools are developed fully, the next question is whether the social model is sustainable. A sufficency criterion for the social sustainability of such a community is:14

1. 1.2 hours per day work requirement, 5 days per week. If a modern standard of living can be achieved with 2 hours of work per day, then adoption may occur based on sufficient provision of creature-comforts  and the ability of the people to pursue higher purpose in their free time. 

2. 2.Engagement in some form of integrative mind-body-spirit practice towards becoming an Integrated Human.15 Integrative practice is consistent with Daniel Pink's concept that the deepest human motivation is a desire for autonomy that enables one to pursue mastery – consistent with higher purpose.16 Since 7% of the US population practices yoga, the integrative practice condition should not be a block to building a sustainable social infrastructure for an OSE-style community. 

3. 3.Design of the community as an inter-generational community based on couples and families, as in the rest of society. This indicates that 1/8 of the population will be non-productive children, and the rest will be adults. 

4. 4.Interesting life. City centers are favored by many people because of the diversity of activity and exchange. The OSE Campus concept is built by extraordinary people and integrated humans. Therefore, it should be easy for somebody to live an interesting life in such a setting – as centers of cultural and scientific progress.  

5. 5.Open door policy for positive outside relations. Campus doors will be open for visits, workshops, training, education, and other forms of exchange with the outside community. Every OSE Campus should have a positive economic effect on surrounding areas because it is in itself an autonomous, economic powerhouse. We expect that the OSE Campus will transform surrounding communities to local food systems, autonomous fuel and energy provision, sustainable housing, robust economic productivity, and general cultural and scientific progress. 

6. 6.'Normal' Lifestyle. By current standards, an autonomous community is an extreme phenomenon. Because the community is organized around a low-hour work week and multi-generational, family-centered design – the communities will not be particularly different than other places. This is especially true if we assume that a world renaissance is forthcoming within a decade as peoples' consciousness expands via access to the internet. It is expected that OSE Campus-type communities will by their nature have a significant effect on surrounding communities – on simple economic grounds of enterprise replication by those who see the OSE Campus for themselves. This type of feedback, along with the intrinsic motivation of the community participants – will make the communities a hub for innovation. It may seem that 'transforming the countryside' is an ambitious goal – but it appears that this will indeed happen naturally. 

1http://conferences.ted.com/TEDGlobal2012/

2http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/marcin_jakubowski.html

3http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/HabLab

4http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Cistern_and_Ozonator_System

5http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Microhouse

6http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ASTM_International_standards#A

7Personal conversation wih Bre Pettis, CEO

8Personal Conversation with Chris Anderson, CEO

9http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/GVCS_Market_Size

10Similar to the fictional story, Atlas Shrugged, where leaders are being whisked out of society to create disruption in the staus quo.

11This is a non-trivial statement.  See http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Technological_Recursion

12http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/

13    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cultural_Creatives

 

14This set of criteria needs to be reviewed by loading sociologists and others with experience in community-building.

15http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Integrated_Human

16http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

iThe difficulty with such a development process involves cultural clash between OSE specifications and dominant industrial design paradigms, where extra attention is required to convert standard design to OSE Specifications. We have observed difficulties in both design parameters – especially simplicity, user-centered design, modularity - and the open IP nature of developments.