Graduation Research Report

Yannick Ciocanel

Business Innovation - Inholland University of Applied Sciences

For Gaianet
Ecosystem Mapping Project

“Network Navigation for mutual need fulfillment and
co-creation in the New Earth Ecosystem.”

Table of Contents:

Table of Contents:        3

Introduction:        4

Research Questions:        5

Question 1:        5

Methodology:        6

Desk Research:        7

Qualitative analysis:        7

Quantitative analysis:        8

Interviews:        9

Qualitative analysis:        9

Quantitative analysis:        10

Surveys:        10

Qualitative analysis:        10

Quantitative analysis:        11

Question 2:        15

Methodology:        15

Interviews:        16

Qualitative analysis:        16

Quantitative analysis:        17

Surveys:        18

Qualitative analysis:        18

Quantitative analysis:        18

Desk Research:        20

Qualitative analysis:        20

Quantitative analysis:        21

Question 3:        22

Methodology:        23

Expert Opinions:        23

Qualitative analysis:        24

Desk Research:        24

Qualitative analysis:        24

Quantitative analysis:        27

Benchmarking:        28

Qualitative analysis:        28

Quantitative analysis:        29

Surveys/Interviews:        31

Qualitative analysis:        31

Quantitative analysis:        31

Discussion of Bias and Ethics in the Methodology        32

Patterns, Conclusion & Next Steps:        33

Bibliography:        34

Appendix A: Full Analysis Methodology        37

Appendix B: Desk research on the legalities of data sharing        41

Appendix C: Datatables on mentioned success and initiation factors for collaboration from interviews (Question 2)        43

Appendix D: Full list of Barriers to Synergy by Oliver Bream        45

Appendix E: In depth desk research on network navigation standards        45

Introduction:

Gaianet is a pioneering social network organization where service-driven individuals connect to co-create, grow, share and receive the resources needed to create the projects, products and services that shape a harmonized world for all life on earth (Keenhen, n.d.). They specify that they are supporting regenerative design, decentralized governance and ownership, systems focused on stakeholder well-being and supportive of the self-actualisation of their users. Gaianet supports both individual innovators and projects (Gaianet, n.d.). Individuals can find self-actualisation with a new tribe and purposefully aligned projects inside of the currently invite-only community platform "MightyNetworks". Project leaders are supported in finding knowledge, workforce, partners, funding and other resources throughout their project's lifecycle to stimulate collaboration and accelerate successful implementation (Gaianet, n.d.). As a network with access to many interesting partners working on new technologies to enhance collaboration between what Gaianet calls "NewEarth" projects, Gaianet is in a unique position to bridge the gap between communications technologists and the new earth innovation community. (Keehnen, 2021)  

The New Earth ecosystem is internally defined as the collection of mission-aligned projects who support the transformation of humanity into a paradigm of unity and regeneration. Projects cover the entire spectrum from conscious communities to regenerative solutions for food and water, housing, education, distributed governance, value exchange, technology, wellbeing, arts, culture, infrastructure and self-actualization.

As part of this initiative, they have taken on an Ecosystem mapping project in which NewEarth project profiles have been recorded in an extensive database. The project aims to understand the barriers to awareness and collaboration, the members of innovation projects (in the NewEarth Ecosystem Database) are experiencing. This means they are looking into the hurdles that may be in the way of emerging sector innovation-project leaders and team members to service each other’s needs and collaborate. The primary objective is to understand which needs are most important and most feasible to solve. This is partially dependent on finding out which technological developments are available and accessible for Gaianet and their end-users. Therefore they are also looking to find out more about the current status & design principles of emerging communications innovations and the possibilities of experimenting with partners’ innovative tools to enable co-creation between members of innovation projects in Gaianet’s database. To enable the project to be user-research, -co-creation and -testing-focused, Gaianet also aims to explore the most effective ways to motivate their end-users (innovators in the database), team members and project advocates in co-creation throughout the full design cycle. They assume the user story that “New Earth Co-Creators” want to see the most relevant opportunities in the New Earth Ecosystem so that I can access and provide the right resources and co-create with resonant projects.

Research objectives:

• 1. Definition of end-user needs in co-creation with each other
• 2. Understanding & defining indicators in the first contact between New Earth Co-Creators which may lead to successful co-creation
• 3. Analysis of existing network navigation tools and their Technology Readiness Level (TRL) to leverage to service user needs

ve been recorded in an extensive database (Gaianet New Earth, 2021).

Research Questions:

Primary Research Question:

How might Gaianet engagingly raise awareness amongst NewEarth Ecosystem project members of each other’s needs and gifts to facilitate co-creation?

Hypothesis: Project Members in Gaianet’s NewEarth Ecosystem database need simple & engaging network navigation tools that create awareness & access to the most relevant “gifts”, others in the NewEarth Ecosystem have to offer, enabling mutual need fulfilment & synergistic co-creation.

Subproblems:

Question 1:

1. Awareness of each other Needs and Gifts
1.1 Subquestion:

How might Innovation project members best overcome the most important barriers to awareness and collaboration they experience in their efforts to access networking gifts?

Hypothesis: Project members need a simple tool to view and access an overview of projects relevant to their needs and purpose.

Core Assumptions:

1. Database project members want to collaborate with others
2. There are barriers for them to overcome
3. Current methods to collaborate are complex
4. Current methods are not in tune with personal needs, and purpose
   
   

Relevant Related Questions:

• How might Gaianet best empathize with the most important barriers to synergy project members experience in their efforts to access network opportunities?
•  How might Gaianet iteratively map & prioritize significant barriers to co-creation between NewEarth Ecosystem Database project members?

Methodology:

The original plan for the surveys and interviews conducted was to cover each of the sectors listed in the wheel of synergy (a taxonomy used to comprehensively classify industry sectors (Golding, 2017))  4 times to cover different types of stakeholders involved in the “new earth ecosystem”. It became apparent that in the limited amount of time for the project this was not feasible. Therefore the target was readjusted to 24 primary data points (adding surveys and interviews together). This target was exceeded by 6, data points with a total of 30. Only 11 of the 25 survey participants did not participate in the 19 interviews conducted and analyzed and 14 of 19 interview participants also filled out a survey. As can be seen from figure 1, all sectors of the wheel of synergy are covered relatively evenly between 7.1-11.2%. Furthermore, figure 2 shows the diversity of roles covered in the survey data to aim for a more representative sample of the different stakeholders in the ecosystem. As the new earth ecosystem has a clear definition and the data covers a range of stakeholder perspectives within the ecosystem. For more information on the representation of stakeholders and projects in the ecosystem please refer to the  With clear recurring data and survey questions being answered with clarity and emerging patterns the data provides a decent snapshot of the current situation within. Whilst some questions appeared at risk of habituation bias, short format answers were complemented by qualitative answers in the interviews which often came from experienced and well-networked individuals in the ecosystem. The timeframe of the data collection took as long as originally planned but was delayed by two weeks of preparing clear survey and interview questions and establishing the selected To approach with care, the most “resonant projects” received a personal approach through established telegram connections and personal connections in Gaianet. Therefore there may be an inherent selection bias in the data, as those people selected are more aligned with Gaianet’s overall vision and standards of sophistication. As personal and enterprise-related questions are being asked, many fields in the survey were impersonal and all data collected is kept strictly private to project members unless permission is granted otherwise. All interview recordings were conducted with the full permission of participants and are equally privately secured. For more information on the legality of data sharing concerning social network databases please refer to the desk research. Complementary desk research resources were selected based on academic recognition and found in established databases. Furthermore, cutting-edge industry examples of similar and adjacent efforts were also taken into account to balance ecosystem internal views.

Interview Coding:

1. Otter AI transcripts were generated
2. Interviews were manually Highlighted for relevant references
3. Highlights were summarized accurately into summary paragraphs
4. Summaries were coded by the 4 interview questions
5. Coded phrases were analyzed statistically and qualitatively evaluated per question
6. For:
   - Sub question 1 → results from Interview question 1 were used
   - Subquestion 2 → results from Interview questions 2, 3 and were used
7. For the full transcripts and questions refer to appendix H and for the full insights processing refer to appendix J

Justification:

The interviews were first highlighted, then the highlights summarized and the summaries coded as the interviews were very long format and answers were not easily identified as belonging to one question or another. Therefore the summary step served to make the workload realistically manageable and the phrasing identifiable for sorting into the different research questions. It should be noted that summarizing the highlights may cause the risk of slightly altering responses in an attempt to highlight the most relevant information. The precaution taken against this was to paraphrase as much as possible in the summary process.

Desk Research:

        Qualitative analysis:

Existing efforts:

Existing research about the needs of new-earth co-creators comes from previous industry developments in the fields of social media, enterprise social networks and impact platforms. Much of the industry developments in terms of technology and organizing frameworks emerged from the groundwork laid in the fields of information technology and communication science, complexity science, network science, graph theory and platform science. Laws like Metcalf's law characterizing the value of a network as the proportional square of the number of connected users and the limiting allee threshold showing overcrowding as the limit to network growth highlight the difficulty of optimal matching (Global, 2022). Graph theory (Clemente, Martins & Mendes, 2014) and advanced matching algorithms have allowed platforms with profile and project databases to develop social media and enterprise social networks (Liu et. al, 2019)  also known as collaborative networked organizations which include virtual organization breeding environments, professional virtual communities as well as goal-oriented production and opportunity networks (Camarinha-Matos et. al, 2019). Such platforms facilitate a wide array of purposes and services, from advertising to workforce matching, to network coordination and resource exchange. One of these purposes is the mapping of networks and their assets, which several projects have attempted to do comprehensively for regenerative and decentralized initiatives with varying approaches. These efforts have highlighted the multidimensional purpose of mapping in the context of network navigation, as varying visualizations of the information available about our networks bring forward different perspectives and relevant focal points of orientation within the bigger picture of a network (Theodore & Lapalme, 2022). Some Gaianet members and contacts have been involved in such efforts and the documentation of mapping projects, establishing platform bridges as network weavers connecting multiple networks (Johnson, 2022). Their often limited scope, developments in the area of network interoperability (see question 3) and a cultural shift towards socially and environmentally impactful enterprises are giving rise to networking tools which take into account the purpose and autonomy of their users to filter the most relevant data across multiple networks and databases. It should also be mentioned that traditional employment research platforms such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor share some similarities with network navigation efforts and their matching features and database structure may serve as an industry reference. Platforms have shown to act as governance tools of networks, as their rules provide behavioural frameworks (Ansell & Gash, 2017). Examples of these efforts are Catalyst.Network, Open Future Collective, Integrity.earth based on Clique.IO, Nestr.IO, Hylo and Holo. More examples can be seen in the benchmarking section of the third research question. Despite new tools and attempts at mapping, cutting-edge research often remarks the lack of insight into personal behaviour and needs of members of social enterprise networks and projects following the triple bottom line philosophy, meaning our specific research question is inadequately addressed by existing research  (Camarinha-Matos et. al, 2019).

For more desk research regarding the legal implications of collecting project and personal data for needs matching please refer to Appendix B.

Quantitative analysis:

A study taking a look at small business needs in general with a relationship to the triple bottom line found that the greatest motivators to strive for more social and environmental impact remains cost cutting, followed by moral obligation and concerns about the impact (Depken & Zeman, 2018). The small businesses studied also saw financial incentives for social and environmental impact as the most important thing to learn more about, followed by ongoing education programs, formulating green mission statements and data collection methods (Depken & Zeman, 2018). Whilst small enterprise needs in collaboration are  This speaks for needs in the financial and educational domain being most important to small social and environmentally minded enterprises. Statistically speaking, interfirm research and development partnerships have steadily risen in the west from the 1950s until at least the 2000s (Hagedoorn, 2002) showing how the need for collaboration has been steadily increasing. Attitudes towards collaboration have often been stifled by barriers to Synergy (Global, 2022) and national protectionism (Heims, 2016). Gaianet considers such barriers to collaboration one of the core issues standing in the way of emerging regenerative and decentralized resource management concepts.

        Interviews:

        Qualitative analysis:

The interview process revealed much about needs in the ecosystem, their relationships and what is in the way of having them fulfilled, such as the need for financial resources in an ecosystem with limited institutional support. Findings showed a recurring disillusionment about how easy it is to collaborate due to differing personal norms, values and cultural principles. This clarified that the assumption that ecosystem members want to collaborate is correct, but limited to the capacity of- and relevance to the project. Therefore a strong recurring pattern has been the need for internal alignment with the values embodied by projects in the new earth database, as internal alignment can lead to synchronistic which often led to collaborative projects emerging. There were several complaints about the ease with which collaborators find and screen each other using existing tools, events and basic networking strategies. They are often random, impersonal and overly complex as assumed by Gaianet. Overall there was a strong positive sentiment towards an initiative to make needs and gifts of projects more accessible with many adjacent projects emerging from the research, in need of organising frameworks for collaborative endeavours.

        Quantitative analysis:

This diagram highlights all the potential needs to fulfill, mentioned throughout the interviews and lists the top five needs as follows:

1. Human Capacities (developers, specialized skill sets, knowledge gaps, volunteers, aligned technicians, legal support, logistical support)
2. A learning experience for finding internal alignment and balance with co-creator relationships across platforms
3. Filtering relevant patterns of information for meaning-making (complexity management)
4. Self-organized coordination & mapping
5. Finding vision-aligned projects

Surveys:

        Qualitative analysis:

The survey data provides a variety of stakeholder perspectives within the ecosystem. Only two out of 25 survey participants did not make it through all the 44 input fields which is also a decent indicator of interest in the initiative. To validate the hypothesis for simple and engaging network navigation tools, participants were asked to show their resonance with a potential user story for our thesis which received an average response of 9.04. This unexpectedly high response rate shows that the research seems to have hit a nerve, as most participants also demonstrate they feel part of the New Earth ecosystem as defined by Gaianet.  Based on an analysis of the strengths named in the responses, the most common strengths are related to professional skills and services facilitated by a high degree of professionalism and cultural experience, a strong commitment to purpose as well as advanced networking-, matchmaking- and co-creation facilitation skills. Further strengths named are with regards to specific technical skills as well as cognitive and organizational models (legal infrastructure, governance models, organizational flow, financial services, whole systems approach, integral approach). Lesser mentioned yet also common are more tangible strengths such as knowledge, creative content, tools, education, safe spaces, resources, events, community building and proof of concept/impact. In line with the research into strengths, most of the capital in the ecosystem is social, experiential, intellectual and spiritual. Cultural, financial and living capital are evenly represented whilst material capital is least represented. This may indicate a need for the latter and highlight the comparatively low financial, living and cultural capital in the ecosystem. The total of these makes up only 38% of the capital in the ecosystem. The most commonly mentioned gifts in the ecosystem are mentorship, lecturing/educational services and consultancy. This is closely followed by openness to co-creation/synergy and value exchange. Further gifts include facilitating connections and relationships, community building, platforms, technology and data. Finally, there are also offers of knowledge, content, vision, surveys, events and standards.

        Quantitative analysis:

Using the framework of “Barriers to Synergy” (Global, 2022) provided by fellow research partner Ollie Bream, it was possible to determine that New Earth Ecosystem members resonate with the framework, validating the assumption that barriers to synergy exist. Only a few additional barriers were suggested and may also be fitted into one of the existing categories as they have to do with commitment, shared decision-making, dissonance and personal development. The greatest barrier in the ecosystem appears to be egoic desire & private satisfaction, where individuals seek to gain the personal glory of out-competing each other in the pursuit of a shared goal. Whilst this is especially difficult to address several interview insights show that the most advanced cultures within the Gaianet ecosystem search for ways to leverage egoic desires through positive incentive mechanisms and mitigate its negative effects through open-mindedness and holocratic organization in which hierarchies and competitive behaviour are a disincentive. Further relevant barriers are especially operational conformity, as new working methods leave a lot of room for personal learning and development, mediascape obscurity, validating the current complexity of networking tools and atomisation of agency which highlights the current isolated approaches to regenerative and decentralized projects in the ecosystem.

When asked about sought after benefits from collaborating most commonly participants answered they require information knowledge and expertise sharing which is in line with the interview and survey findings about user needs. Furthermore, they require scaling impact and resource access support which falls in line with the need for financial and material resources but highlights the value of impact before access to constituents and funding. In addition, co-creating innovations and raising community awareness are sought-after benefits of collaboration. Additional benefits mentioned are often from a meta-perspective such as avoiding duplication of effort, discouraging the competitive mindset, making sense of the bigger picture and pooling resources to accelerate change.

Although the graph shows funding and investors to be the greatest need in the ecosystem, there are several specialized skills listed which, when added together, appear as the most significant need. These are followed by finding people to serve in their co-creation and help with work capacity. Finally, there is also a physical hub, resources and frictionless coordination listed.

List of needs identified that need to be fulfilled by the design (thereby they are also the design criteria of the solution):

It should be mentioned that internal needs were less frequently reported in the surveys than in the interviews which may come from the reflective nature of the interviews. Nonetheless, the differentiation between the two may serve as a tentative basis for design components which address access to internal needs and external needs specifically and in balance. The alternate industry perspective that commonly exists is that social networks learn from user behaviour what network suggestions may be most profitable for their advertisers whilst they browse the platform freely with overwhelming access to information. The emerging perspective from the data is that network navigation is dependent on project internal factors, knowledge gaps, values, skills and alignment towards a shared vision. How exactly this process takes place is a place for future research in psychology and practice with network navigation tools. The needs listed here have an inherent bias towards the cultural standards expected in the new earth ecosystem. However, the trends in regenerative projects, decentralized governance and impact networks and the sophisticated innovative approaches in the ecosystem give reason to suspect their needs represent a snapshot of a vision for the future of purposeful networking solutions. This is concluded with a respectable degree of uncertainty due to the limitations of the dataset, leaving room for follow-up research into the design questions.

Question 2:

2. Motivating Co-creation
Subquestion:

How might Innovation project members be motivated in a continuous co-creation process of the project design cycles & outcomes?

Hypothesis: Project members need to be made aware of the tangible value they will continuously receive and contribute by engaging in the project.

Core assumptions:

1. Project members are not easily motivated and engaged in co-creation
2. Awareness of opportunity and appreciation of contribution can motivate co-creation

Methodology:

Question two of the Ecosystem Mapping Research plan benefited from the same primary research methods as Question one, in that 30 total participants answered 25 surveys and participated in 19 interviews (14 ecosystem members participated in both). This is 4 more primary data points than originally hoped for. Selection bias may limit the value of generalizations from the data. Still, the data does provide a solid starting ground for an assessment of indicators of successful co-creation in the target audience, given the vast experience in co-creation the ecosystem members had to share. Interview results in particular were able to confirm both core assumptions underlying the hypothesis of this subquestion. Whilst this and other data collected spoke for the value of the hypothesis, the research outcomes highlighted that the hypothesis was too general to be practical. A more in-depth analysis of motivating factors for co-creation is laid out as a result of this analysis. Alternative motivating factors to those deduced from primary research were explored in the desk research, where cutting-edge research and industry expert material was analyzed and compared with primary research outcomes.

For details on the interview coding method and justification please refer to the methodology of question 1.

Interviews:

        Qualitative analysis:

The process of reaching out to new collaborators:

Interview results highlighted aspects of the process by which people in the ecosystem reach out to new collaborators. Collaboration tends to emerge from socialization, in the form of social media communication, word of mouth and events. Referrals of socially active project members who act as representatives or “co-creation engines” can be gatekeepers and facilitators of co-creation. Being clear about what you want from collaborators can help naturally filter information to find relevant opportunities for collaboration through a series of reported “synchronicities”. This is necessary as finding highly specific skills is reportedly difficult. To support the process many ecosystem members underwent a process of internal alignment supported by various tools and frameworks such as an “alignment map”.  From there alignment around shared goals can produce organic self-organization provided there is enough room for experimentation and exploration amongst participants.

Drivers to reach out:

Ecosystem members reported that finding people with a strong work ethic can be a significant driver to reach out for help. This goes hand in hand with trying to find complementary skills when collaborating on a problem and the most useful information for a particular situation in a project. Other less problem-based drivers may be the resonance people feel with another project’s vision and mission, a need for purposeful business relationships and the urge to invest in people project members believe in and want to see succeed in their mission.  

Common Expectations:

Some common expectations held by ecosystem members for successful collaboration were openness, inclusivity and an absence of perceived pressure to achieve. Some prerequisites are a vulnerability to share from the heart, the clarity and alignment of intentions in the collaboration and the relevance of the interaction. In the co-creation process, people expected others to be considerate of problematic barriers, ready to try and overcome them, and committed to regular action.

Pros & Cons in first contact:

Below positive and negative experiences in the first interaction are contrasted to highlight what may and may not lead to successful co-creation after the first interaction with a potential co-creator.

        Quantitative analysis:

What makes collaboration successful?

Most commonly interview participants cited compatibility of complementary exchanges of value as sharing of some sort of capability, capacity or human quality with ten mentions. Less often the more vague term “resonance” was chosen five times as a successful indicator which is described “as a selective, momentary success or self-adjustment that stands out against the background of the predominantly silent, instrumental” (Wikimedia, 2022). The next two more tangible qualities were mentioned, trust and the ability to converse, both four times. Another noteworthy mention which was brought up three times was a shared goal between participants.
To see the full overview refer to the tables in Appendix C.

What inspires the initiation of collaboration/co-creation?

When it came to inspirational factors contributing to ecosystem members reaching out to potential co-creators it was mentioned six times that the shared values and intentions played a role and 5 times that purpose and mission alignment were the driver pointing to the defining moral characteristics of humans being the key driver of co-creation. Furthermore, three mentions went to the impression of overall openness to connect. Other noteworthy mentions include transparency, an appearance of balance, resilience and flexibility and finally synchronicity which is defined as “coincidental events (...)  that appear meaningfully related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). For more detail please refer to the tables in Appendix C.

Surveys:

        Qualitative analysis:

The most commonly mentioned values across the survey include honesty, openness and integrity. There are many more mentioned, the most recurring is transparency communication skills and internal skills such as detachment, dedication, accountability and leadership. A general sentiment towards shared values, interests and curiosities exists which is quite in line with interview findings.

        Quantitative analysis:

Question 35: What is your level of capacity for collaboration with Ecosystem?

Question 28: On a scale of 1-5, how important is collaboration for your organization?

Question 29: Frequency of Collaboration in last year

Data from figure 8 confirms a previously unmentioned assumption in this work, which is that collaboration or co-creation is something that ecosystem members are interested in. Close to three-quarters of survey participants have a medium to high capacity for collaboration, showing their openness to finding new collaborators. Furthermore, only 4.2% of participants deemed collaboration moderately important for their work, showing how it is integral to ecosystem members. Collaboration is frequent but not excessive with the average number of collaborations with other projects being somewhere above 3,3. In-depth collaboration and strong relationship-based co-creation appear most common in the ecosystem.        

Desk Research:

        Qualitative analysis:

Research on success in co-creation is much more extensive than that of network search optimisation. Many studies exist highlighting varying factors which may contribute to successful co-creation between knowledge networks, cross-sector social partnerships, open-source projects and small enterprises. One of these factors in line with our primary research is trust. It regulates the effects of different types of control and whether relationships are complementary or substitutable, with trust as a core contributor to network performance when taking social and environmental aspects of value into account for the long-term sustainable development of the network (Antoldi & Cerrato, 2022). The clarity in roles and relationships as well as leadership by facilitators can help navigate tensions and balance interests between partners and their networks (Van Hille et al., 2019). Job characteristics such as opportunities for active learning, individual responsibility, and the significance of the work for colleagues can create motivating roles (Hertel, 2017). Studies also pointed to shared risk as a way to distribute trust in an innovation network, whilst clear benefits should indicate the potential rewards. These rewards can range from fun, rewards to challenges, seeing ideas grow or even competition (Antikainen, Mäkipää & Ahonen, 2010). Whatever the network in question may be, the incentives should match the values of the group in question which speaks for a primary research approach (Hall & Graham, 2004). The size of networks plays a key role in that larger online communities offer more opportunities whilst knowledge capital leading to focused action is generated in smaller private groups (Hall & Graham, 2004. To be successful in co-creation network members and networks have to overcome what researcher Ollie Bream calls “Barriers to Synergy” which block collaborative efforts due to internal mindsets and assumptions (Global, 2022). (To see the full list of Barriers to synergy refer to Appendix D)

As an answer to such barriers, seasoned consultants at Symphonics.life have created a synergization process framework by which potential co-creators go through a process of lounging, self-locating, synergising, aligning, committing to implementation towards fulfilment, feedback and celebration to restart the cycle (Warshawsky & Harding, n.d.). 

This is similar to the way management frameworks such as Scrum (Rahate, 2018), Lean (What is Lean, 2022) or Holacracy (Holacracy, n.d.) have been used to foster flexibility and creativity in teams. Similar co-creation frameworks by other organizations also exist with the same intentions (Optivo, n.d.).

Quantitative analysis:

Quantitative analysis of co-creation success indicators are currently scarce in the literature, as little research has been done on the field of recognising potential successful professional experts for co-creation (Lin et al., 2019) and more research is needed (Han, Teng & Cai, 2019). One of the problems that exist is the sub-classification problem, that areas of knowledge are often subdivided into many further areas making it difficult for a taxonomy to classify the co-creator’s expertise correctly (Lin et al., 2019). One quantitative study of finding experts for co-creation in a social network pointed out the value of referrals, as a technique called propagation in which references between experts are used to recognise experts showed better results (Zhang, Tang & Li, 2007). Other insights from quantitative studies include the importance of social benefits and knowledge benefits to be gained from co-creating as well as personal quality and loyalty as important factors (Han, Teng & Cai, 2019).

From the analysis several design questions were distilled as guiding questions to design for co-creation based mostly on interview data and informed by the other methods from Question 2. They serve as a basis for evaluating potential solutions as design criteria.

1. Does it (the solution) enable alignment with a shared mission, values, intentions and purpose?
2. Does it help to increase human capacities? (developers, specialized skill sets, knowledge gaps, volunteers, aligned technicians, legal support, logistical support)
3. Does it enhance openness to connect?
4. Does it consider trust and security?
5. Does it include self-organized coordination & mapping of involved organizations, projects, people and resources?
6. Is there a learning experience for finding an internal alignment of purpose, capabilities and needs to facilitate balance with co-creator relationships across platforms?
7. Is there resonance in the initial contact (Deep resonance, resonating with the same vision and story, resonating with the same commitment, Shared identity, an authentic community)?

Question 3:

3. Exploring (Network Navigation) Tools:

How might Gaianet contextualize aligned partner projects working on similar problems to collaboratively experiment with emerging communication technologies in a feasible, interoperable and user-friendly manner?

Hypothesis:  Partners need a clear set of principles to evaluate concept readiness for user testing with the Gaianet Community.

Core Assumptions:

1. Such principles do not yet exist
2. Partners can find common ground in such principles

Methodology overview:

1. Partnerships with Experts
2. Desk Research & System Mapping
3. Benchmarking
4. Surveys & Interviews

Methodology:

To get an up-to-date view of the collaboration tools industry we spoke with 9 cutting-edge researchers and tool developers in the field as  the first research method. Whilst these were not formal interviews with pre-designed question structures their expertise and input helped to estimate the current state of potential network navigation and co-creation tools and learn from the state of the art in mapping, and social networking. This does create a potential selection bias in the data however our survey, interviews and desk research worked to create cross-referencing and opportunities for reflection on the validity of the data. Desk research and benchmarking were most reliable in creating a foundation for Gaianet to understand the current benefits and drawbacks of potential tools and the technological requirements driving them. The original intention to use existing benchmarks to evaluate tools had to be adapted when it became obvious benchmarks related to other functionalities than Gaianet aimed for and required insider knowledge of the tools to which they had no access. Again a selection bias may have occurred due to a lack of oversight over all the potential tools worth benchmarking and a personal preference bias may have occurred due to the evaluation based on criteria developed from primary research. Therefore tools were evaluated by how well they may serve the needs identified in the first research question according to the personal judgment of the team and the informational material publically available. Whilst survey data may not have been comprehensive, the data does provide a snapshot of how potential users currently find (and collaborate) with other co-creators in their first contact and ongoing exchanges. For ethical reasons survey, participants and experts were informed about the purpose of the research and asked for their consent. When the partner's research was not wished to be made public it was not included in the official research results and only referenced for a more informed judgment of the data included. Whilst research unvalidated the assumption that no principles for tool developers exist to evaluate concept readiness, it did show that the hypothesis still holds. Existing standards and principles are highly specific to technological aspects of the tools rather than useful for evaluating how ready they are to achieve the purpose of matching gifts and needs for potential co-creation with a user base.

Expert Opinions:

List of expert collaborators and their recent organizational affiliation:        

• Bret Warshawsky & Andrea Harding from Symphonics.Life
• Oliver Bream from Social Systems Lab
• Joost Shouten from Nestr.io

• Adam Apollo from Holochain.org

• Carolina Carvalho from 7vortex.com

• Vincent Arena from Catalyst.Network

• Travis Grant from the Auravana Project

• Ryan Mottou from SumApp

Qualitative analysis:

As these expert interviews were conducted semi-formally there was no pre-existing interview structure as this may have interfered with the natural emergence of potential co-creation possibilities. Therefore there is no quantitative analysis of the insights besides the benchmarking of the tools they individually represent found in the benchmarking section. The most significant qualitative insights discovered are listed here. First Travis Grant raised awareness of the existing standards for networking and co-creation tools and how attempts exist in making these universal to socio-ecological need fulfilment but little coherent agreement currently exists on such efforts. Brent and Andrea clarified that the digital infrastructure for regenerative and decentralized data management is not at industry standards in traditional industries such as tourism. Joost Shooten informed the research about the potential of decentralized network organizations to professionally collaborate through a shared workspace. Adam Apollo highlighted how new blockchain-based software may be used to navigate professional networks and establish trust between the nodes. Carolina Carvalho informed of the downfalls of existing mapping tools, especially regarding the interoperability of the mapped data. Vincent Arena’s approach to folksonomy, interoperability and meta-ontologies created a perspective through which the gaps between different frameworks and taxonomies for regenerative ecosystem mapping may be bridged. Ollie Bream was able to provide insight into the attributes of different impact platforms and some indication of existing efforts towards their interoperability. Finally, Ryan Mottou laid out some of his past experiences with ecosystem mapping and the benefits that may be achieved through the intentional design of the ecosystem navigation and community inclusion.

Desk Research:

Qualitative analysis:

To contextualize this project from a technological perspective it is important to understand the initial framing of the conversation around network navigation tools. The three inspirational drivers of the project were; 1. the emerging attempt to map a network's gifts and needs in a way that is accessible and relevant, 2. The need for co-creation between impact networks, and 3. Recent industry growth and developments in impact platforms, network technology and interoperability. Following from this our broad working definition of network navigation tools is:

A network technology which allows a user to navigate a network's gifts and needs in a way that is accessible, and relevant and may lead to co-creation between individuals and their respective networks.

The scientific and commercial fields that have led to the development of such tools include network science, platform science, complexity science, computer science concerning commons frameworks and global standards, advances in interoperability and the widespread popularity of social media and project management tools in the last decade, accelerated by the lockdowns since 2020.  

Gaianet & partnership positioning:

Gaianet & Partners envision a future in which open-source standards for open-interoperable databases & frameworks allow transparent accountability (Grant, 2020) & collaborative alignment (Arena, n.d.) on a macro-economic scale. Given the assumption that no accurate standards of evaluation exist for network navigation tools, this research is aimed at identifying criteria by which emerging projects can identify how well their network navigation tool fulfils existing user needs and benchmark their readiness for adoption. Some of the discussion around Network navigation tools has also arisen from some of the existing initiatives in the orbit of Gaianet, working towards the vision of network navigation from various angles. Research inspired by partner tools, current user behaviour, industry standards as well as scientific & technological developments will hopefully provide the project with a clear design manifesto, which can serve as the first step towards co-creating benchmarks and standards for social network mapping-project interoperability.        

To contextualize network navigation tools and test the hypothesis that guiding principles do not yet exist, reference standards for tool development were researched in depth. A short overview of the existing standards can be found in the table below. A discussion of the nuances of the hypothesis can be found in Appendix A and the in depth research for reference standards can be found in Appendix E.

        Quantitative analysis:

Quantitative analysis of social networking benchmarks, interoperability and potential network navigation is very complicated if not impossible for the scope of this project due to the lack of overseeing efforts tracking the progress in these fields statistically. The best effort to achieve statistical oversight can be found in the benchmarking section which focuses more specifically on tools. To fill the gaps in statistical oversight a dynamic list has been created in the software Kumu, as a reference tool for developers to access tools to create network navigation methods.

Link to Kumu overview of standards for developing network navigation tools:

Standards for Developing Network Navigation Tools • Untitled map / Untitled view • Kumu

Benchmarking:

Qualitative analysis:

Whilst there are many options for network navigation on the market, few can be said to have taken a general and purposeful approach which facilitates co-creation between projects based on gits and needs. There are many “near fit” solutions, but often the purpose and the business model appear to be at odds. A good example is Google, through which users believe to find relevant information for their needs, but are presented with the most advertised information instead. Similar platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook suffer from a business model which does not make the most profit when fulfilling their supposed value but benefit from showing information irrelevant to their users. More purposeful solutions such as ChangeX or the Open Future Coalition have a clear vision, and lack user engagement to fulfil their purpose effectively. This makes it difficult for emerging networking technologies to compete with the power of large social networks. Nonetheless, there are some promising approaches which at least provide a basis for the purposeful matching of gifts and needs for co-creation with a long-term outlook on interoperability such as Nestr.Io and Catalyst.Network.

Quantitative analysis:

The above figure 11 shows the comparison of how different tools perform in fulfilling either the internal or external needs defined by the first research questions. Scores given are based on an explicit user test in which a team member checked for each of the needs in sequence and how well they could be fulfilled. As can be seen the most promising tools for the internal need fulfilment of ecosystem co-creators are SumApp, Kumu/Weavr, Holo, the Google Suite and Nestr.io. To check which criteria they best fulfil, check with the internal needs defined in question 1 or refer to the excel sheet in Appendix G.

Using the Technological Readiness Assessment adapted for software (Armstrong, 2010) a rough estimation of the readiness of emerging tools was possible. The analysis covers tools which have a small user base and exist for less than 10 years. Here it can be seen that certain tools such as those proposed by Auravana and CoDo, although promising conceptually, have a long way to go technologically before being testable with a user base. None of the emerging tools seems to have fully debugged, systematically tested software except for Kumu and Mighty Networks, which appear to have the most experience and utility out of the emerging tools. For practical purposes, it seems Catalyst and Nestr.Io show the most promise, given their technological readiness and high scores in need fulfillment benchmarks. Other noteworthy mentions on these grounds may be SumApp and the OpenFutureCoalition.

Surveys/Interviews:

        Qualitative analysis:

For the analysis of contextualizing tools only one of the interview questions was of relevance, the question “How did you find each other?” with regards to successful past experiences in co-creation. When asked, these tools were one of the lesser-mentioned methods of finding potential co-creators. Traditional networking methods such as events, direct cold calling, and referrals were more commonly mentioned. This puts the value of tools for network navigation into perspective and poses the question of whether tool development should be the focus when trying to match needs and gifts within an ecosystem as the user experience seems to point towards peer-to-peer methods of referrals being the most commonly used.

        Quantitative analysis:

When it comes to the first contact between potential co-creators the survey responses in figure 13 show that tools used most commonly are based around some level of instant connection and direct one-on-one communication as is the case with Telegram, email and zoom. Whilst this data shows how potential co-creators may use tools to initiate their co-creation it leaves some room for interpretation concerning how users find each other in the first place.

When asked about the tools used in ongoing co-creation-based communications, survey participants still referred to instant text and voice messaging applications such as Telegram and Discord most commonly as seen in figure 14 above. The Google suite is the second most popular co-creation tool amongst survey participants, presumably due to its ability for shared document creation.

Discussion of Bias and Ethics and the Methodology

For a full breakdown of the bias and ethics of each aspect of the methodology refer to Appendix A. The most significant bias may have occurred from the selection bias in interviews and surveys, given the ecosystem members are culturally in line with the vision and values of Gaianet. Nonetheless using desk research to validate primary research findings helped to the degree that confirmation bias did not cover up conflicting hypotheses. Given a limited time and resource scope, not all possible desk research concerning the research questions could be taken into account. Primary research participants may also have tried to appear particularly ethical when answering questions and some questions framing may have guided them to validate rather than invalidate inherent assumptions. This can be fatal for the design process which is why continuous data collection is necessary. As all primary research participants gave voluntary informed consent about the research process and the way their data would be used, ethical considerations of the research methods restricted the time and energy sacrificed to our endeavour and the possible influence interviewers may have had on their views in the conversations. With regards to changes from the originally planned methodology, the only difference that occurred was the usage of Kumu rather than Roam research as a tool for mapping emerging standards due to the improved accessibility of the platform. Other than that all planned aspects of data collection were achieved and even exceeded with more primary data points than expected and more expert input than initially set out for.

Patterns, Conclusion & Next Steps:

In general the patterns that recurred throughout the data of the research initiative were the following. There is a clear lack of existing desk research on regenerative and decentralized project needs, co-creation indicators and standards for network navigation tools, especially from a quantitative analysis perspective. Whilst some aspects of each of the research questions have been covered by the existing literature, they were insufficient to clearly (dis)validate the hypotheses. Only through primary research could the hypothesis of the first question be answered. Of the second question, the results showed much more nuance was necessary to describe the motivating factors for co-creation, whilst the last hypothesis of the last question was proven only to the degree that no reference standards exist to evaluate tools based on the utility Gaianet is aiming for, namely network navigation (more on hypothesis and assumption validation can be found in Appendix A). Co-creator’s needs and motivators as well as network navigation standards may be evolving concepts which require further questions to validate the usefulness and accuracy of each design criteria, guiding question and reference standard on an ongoing basis. They may be applicable in certain contexts as another pattern in the data was the notion that tools, needs and motivating factors involved in co-creation may be very individual and different from case to case. Outcomes reframed as design criteria, guiding questions and reference standards may therefore serve as new hypotheses for validation. Nonetheless, the findings may suffice to prototype tools and solutions that can service some of the most pressing needs mentioned in the New Earth ecosystem, integrate some of the most useful motivating factors identified and build on the existing reference standards for tool development. To do so the design criteria, guiding questions for co-creation and reference standards should serve as the basis for ideation, idea evaluation and prototype refinement as the next steps. A clear summary of design criteria can be found in Appendix I.

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Appendix A: Full Analysis Methodology

Analysis methodology question 1 desk research:

Looking through existing research on the needs for small social and environmentally minded enterprises in collaboration one of the most obvious patterns was the lack of research done to specifically address the needs in the emergence of innovative ecosystems. Whilst this pattern is explicitly referenced in the research (Pushmananthan & Elmguist, 2022) it may also be due to a selection bias in the research databases that were available for research, namely the Inholland library, Google scholar’s search engine and partner organizations with insights into interfirm collaboration. Further research may exist, but not transparently available to outsiders of research organizations and specialized firms, which may constitute an information asymmetry problem in itself.  Whilst motivational factors and success stories have been documented, quantitative analysis of firm needs from each other have been insufficiently studied to show conclusive results. None-theless the existing research does fall in line with insights collected from surveys and interviews in which the priority of financial and educational resources as well as specialized skill sets seem to be of primary importance to such firms. As the data is somewhat inconclusive with regards to small business needs in collaboration it is suggested that Gaianet stays in touch with ongoing research developments as they emerge to support primary data with more statistically significant meta studies once publicized.

Analysis methodology question 1 interviews:

The top needs list was established as a result of highlighting key sections in the interview transcripts, summarizing the relevant sections addressing needs and noting similar and recurring mentions in a table. It should be mentioned that there is a slightly subjective quality to ensuring that recurring and similar mentions get listed properly, meaning some common sense intuition was required to correlate answers. None the less there were clear patterns as only 3 of the mentioned needs were highlighted by only one person. It is also possible there is a bias in how people present their needs in a personal conversation, which may tilt the answers towards soft and intangible needs rather than large asks for support. It was possible to determine egoic attachment, personal alignment and committed action as barriers to synergy in the ecosystem; there may be gaps in the data relating to how to address these correctly as our expert opinions do not suffice for a comprehensive estimation of addressing the psychological hurdles involved with adopting transparent, decentralized and regenerative work practices. However the cultural experience of participants still provided relevant input on this such as the idea for internal alignment mapping, experimentation to support integration of explorations, gamification and impact indicators as feedback mechanisms to support meaningful engagement and pre-screening mechanisms to build credibility and trust in the network.

Analysis methodology question 1 surveys:

To determine the final overview of the most relevant needs in the ecosystem to be addressed, we compared the number of times a need was mentioned in the surveys and interviews to create a comprehensive overview of the 7 greatest needs from each dataset. Using the data on strengths, gifts, capital, barriers and sought out benefits as guidance for patterns and similarities across the two lists, there was one overarching pattern which emerged in relation to the “most important” barriers to overcome needs. This has to do with the complexity management involved in filtering the “most important” information, collaborators and resources, which leads to the following emerging hypothesis:

“There is an external and an internal component to the barriers and needs of ecosystem members when navigating the most relevant links in their networks.”

For example the barriers of egoic desire and operational conformity have to do with internal mindsets, where collaborators expect potential co-creators to have overcome these barriers. Whereas mediascape obscurity and atomisation of agency have strong external components related to the accessibility of support and resources. Therefore the two existing lists were translated into a top five list for each the internal needs and the external needs to adjust to the finding that ecosystem co-creators need internal support on a personal and project level to be able to more clearly define what it is they seek externally and be capable of finding and integrating with relevant emerging-paradigm projects.

Analysis methodology Question 2 interviews:

From the analysis it is quite clear that moral factors such as mission, purpose, values and intentions are one of the key drivers for “resonant” and “synchronistic” relationships in co-creation. Furthermore aspects such as gift compatibility as well as learning and communication skills play a key role in co-creation experiences. Whilst the limited sample data may not be large enough to make generalized statements, the cultural experience within the ecosystem contributes to a grounded perspective on the inspirational drivers and successfactors for co-creation for which only alternate perspectives are missing to balance the selection bias and potential confirmation bias of the data. To see this please refer to the desk research section for question 2.

Analysis methodology Question 2 surveys:

Survey data was able to confirm the market demand for “golden connections” or potential matches for collaboration and co-creation from different angles. Whilst the valuation of each connection is unclear, each of the 24 survey participants looking for 3 collaborations each year would already account for 72 connections Gaianet may facilitate. Whilst it is unknown how this data generalizes beyond the New Earth Ecosystem database it may support the inquiry into services designed to facilitate such connections. More research into market viability would be necessary for value based estimates of the potential market.

Analysis methodology Question 2 desk research:

The research selected is only a small selection of the available research on collaboration and co-creation success factors and indicators. Whilst there exist many more frameworks and research insights, quantitative studies highlight a lack of research and need for more research in the field. Given the large amount of co-creation frameworks a simple search engine search will output, there is grounds to speculate on a vast variety of research insights being aggregated in private companies at the current time. Nonetheless the selected research experts are chosen specifically by the target audience; they studied and the similarities they have with the New Earth Ecosystem, to ensure insights collected are appropriate for the organizational structures and values found in the Gaianet database. To ensure research findings stay up to date and cutting edge, continuous awareness of emerging co-creation research and frameworks is recommended alongside ongoing insight collection within the Ecosystem itself.

Analysis methodology Question 3 Experts:

As mentioned, the limited number of experts may contribute to a selection bias and culture in the data and may leave out alternate perspectives which are more compatible with traditional social network approaches and governance approaches to interoperability. These approaches could only be covered to some degree by desk research. There is a clear lack of insight into the inner workings of some of the partner tools taken into consideration as the interviews did not create the space to fully explore backend complexities such as taxonomies and interoperability related subjects. None-the less some of these gaps may be filled in follow up with the tools most aligned with Gaianet’s intentions and with maturity levels advanced enough to use immediately. Patterns that emerged were regarding the technological readiness of some of the tools being very low and untested in practice, as well as a large gap before the vision for interoperable mapping and networking can be fulfilled. With each expert taking a different approach it remains unclear whether current efforts will converge as a patchwork of coherent solutions, or more platform isolation may come from these efforts. However with this topic being highly present, intuitively the trend in the industry seems to be plattform convergence.

Analysis methodology Question 3 Desk Research:

One of the clearest patterns emerging from the desk research is that principles for benchmarking tools in terms of interoperability & readiness for user testing do exist for partners to reference. This pattern invalidates the original hypothesis that they do not yet exist and are still needed to create room for an alternative hypothesis; that partner developers need a clear access path to find the most relevant principles and standards for their purposes. Evidence to support this comes from the fact that there exists no universal agreement on such principles for network navigation and that tools that exist for co-creative exchange of gifts and needs appear to be far behind industry standards of applied data management. An alternate perspective would be that efforts that are emerging as a patchwork of principles may suffice to create useful tools and agreement between select tool developers in a way that users may already be serviced. Successfully established tools such as Catalyst.Network, Open Impact Coalition and Hylo may represent evidence for this perspective. Selected research articles may contribute to a large gap and bias in the data as not more available research on this broad subject could be taken into review than was available from the Inholland library-databases and Google scholar search engine. Further research and oversight will be necessary to steadily work beyond this selection bias and to create oversight and accessibility of relevant principles for partner developers.

Analysis methodology Question 3 benchmarking:

Whilst these benchmarking assessments have their limitations due to the subjective standards applied and a clear lack of insider knowledge about the tools, the assessments give a first inclination of where tools are in their developments and which tools may be of the greatest interest to start collaborating with. As it is a decision between using somewhat subjective benchmarks and no benchmarks at all, this methodology is appropriate if flawed. Alternate perspectives especially in terms of need fulfillment may be expected from within the development team of each of the tools, as personal bias may contribute to a more positive self-estimation. As a result of the benchmarking efforts it is clear that emerging tools are still lagging in terms of technological readiness but appear to be more directed at some of the needs discovered in the first research question of the project. Therefore it makes sense to partner with emerging tools as opposed to the existing ones which service fewer of the identified needs.

Analysis methodology Question 3 Surveys & Interviews:

From the surveys and interviews we can tell that the first contact and ongoing co-creation is facilitated mostly through instant messaging, voice call and shared workspace platforms. Whilst there is a clear selection bias and much more research would be necessary to statistically validate the trend, it does give an insight into the most popular tools used by Gaianet’s intended audience. Whilst alternative perspectives exist on which Human resource software and social media marketing software is most useful, the framing in terms of communication for the sake of co-creation has not yet been explored in the literature. The questions asked also do not specifically dive into the tools used to find specific “gifts” to have needs fulfilled. This may have brought alternative tools to the forefront such as LinkedIn, Facebook and other hiring platforms.

Appendix B: Desk research on the legalities of data sharing

The influential EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is of key importance to global data-sharing initiatives, due to its unparalleled global influence, global territorial reach, and its eye-catching fines (Phillips, n.d.). Identifiability has made anonymization a particularly compelling compliance to avoid regulation by data protection frameworks entirely by anonymizing personal data (Thuermer, Walker & Simpler, 2019). New de-identification techniques have emerged, including differential privacy, k-anonymity, homomorphic encryption, secure multiparty computation, and secure enclaves. The large-scale data-sharing initiatives should carefully consider whether and how to implement techniques to minimize identifiability at each stage of the data life cycle, and should regularly review their approach considering developments with respect to both the technical and legal state-of-the-art, paying particular attention to evolving GDPR case law and guidance released by the regulators themselves. In effect, data localization’s effect is currently less pronounced. Despite the increasing number of localization laws, their scope is generally limited to relatively narrow sectors. Transfer restrictions are intended to be compatible with the continued flow of personal data across borders and tend to apply broadly to all personal data that is subject to a given data protection framework, such as in the GDPR. Meanwhile, an adequacy decision by the European Commission has deemed the data protection framework to which the data will be subject at its destination with respect to the level of protection provided by the GDPR. However, it can only justify transfer to the relatively limited number of countries for which an adequacy decision has to date been granted. Privacy Shield, a self-certification framework administered by the Department of Commerce, superseded the GDPR’s global application. In the absence of an adequacy decision, the GDPR’s transfer condition may instead be satisfied by providing “appropriate safeguards”. Another alternative is “derogations” that can be used to satisfy its transfer rules as a last resort. These include explicit, informed consent of the people whose data is being transferred. The global personal data-sharing initiatives should focus on minimizing their legal and practical risks, rather than insisting on eliminating them altogether (Thuermer, Walker & Simpler, 2019). Although such initiatives should not hesitate to mobilize techniques to reduce the identifiability of the data they process, in most circumstances meeting the GDPR’s threshold for complete anonymity will be impractical, at least without abandoning most of the initiative’s intended benefits. In this context, consideration will have to be given to the optimal approach to satisfying the GDPR’s transfer requirements, and in determining whether the GDPR will apply to the project directly, or whether it will instead be subject to a transfer mechanism such as the Privacy Shield (Phillips, n.d.). For more relevant details on industry standards for data sharing such as commons and open source refer to the desk research for question 3.

Appendix C: Datatables on mentioned success and initiation factors for collaboration from interviews (Question 2)

Appendix D: Full list of Barriers to Synergy by Oliver Bream

• "Operational Conformity " - "If it doesn't look familiar, you are doing it wrong!"
• " Resource (Pseudo) Scarcity " - "There is only so much to go around!"
•  "Competitive Interests" - "We deserve more than they do!"
• "Mediascape Obscurity" - "I googled it, turns out we are the only ones doing this stuff."
• "(Probabilistic anticipatory assumptions) " - "I do my bit to realize our predetermined fate"
• "(Discursive Dissonance) " - "I am working on sustainability, not regeneration!""",
• "(Egoic desires & private satisfactions)" - "I want to be the one who did the thing!"
• "(Atomisation of Agency) " - "All of our isolated interventions will aggregate just fine!"
• "(Compartmentalisation of Scope) " - "Piecemeal work stands a chance against network regimes."

referenced from (Global, 2022)

Global Sustainable Futures Network. (2022). Gsfn 2021. Youtube / GSFN 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fja6Z8vTUzI&t=2229s.

Appendix E: In depth desk research on network navigation standards

Existing Benchmarks and Standards:

The research into benchmarking network navigation tools was able to identify the result of similar and related efforts in the past. Whilst the goal of the contextualization efforts of this project is focused on evaluating the technological readiness of emerging network navigation tools, not only benchmarks of technological maturity have been considered but there are also standards, protocols and areas of development which have been used to evaluate technological aspects of networking technologies, their utility and interoperability (Sim, Easterbrook & Holt, 2003)

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There are several social challenges which may hinder the development of network navigation benchmarking tools. On one hand, software benchmarking, in general, is a fairly recent phenomenon, with NASA’s technological readiness benchmarks only having been adapted for software technology in 2008 and improved in subsequent years. (Armstrong, 2010). Evaluating software readiness is dependent on non-hardware factors such as languages, architecture, design methods, agents, protocols and support/testing systems which often require internal access or knowledge of the software to benchmark a tool appropriately (Armstrong, 2010). Therefore developers create toolkits, calculators and programs to serve developers to benchmark their tools. The convergence of network navigation tools towards facilitated value exchange and collaboration between individuals in their respective networks has been a recent development which only recently has found momentum as a result of the success of social media and professional network management tools (Camarinha-Matos et al., 2019).  Thereby existing benchmarks have historically focused either on social network technology in general or with a specific focus on social media or enterprise social networks (Lee, n.d.) Although these do provide a basis of evaluation for existing social networks and their graph or matrix data models, the emerging paradigm of tools are positioned with specific utility in mind. Additional evaluation criteria may be required to evaluate whether the aspects of “complexity management” and “mutual value exchange” between users are facilitated well by a tool or not. Filtering information to find matching offers and needs in a self-organized network is not the intended utility of every social networking tool. Optimized matching of relevant information may consist of a set of higher-order characteristics such as network size (Mao et al., 2020) and the willingness to collaborate in the network.

TRL:

Technological readiness levels are used as a measurement system to evaluate how mature a technology is. It was originally developed by NASA to evaluate the readiness of hardware components for usage in their technologies (Dunbar, 2015). Since their original conception, they have been adopted by NASA and external researchers to be more applicable to software development also, which is more relevant for this project  (Armstrong, 2010). The readiness levels are established to give a good indication of the technological feasibility and viability of a technology. However, assessment categories at the highest levels of maturity require internal knowledge of the solutions due to the technical detail involved with the level specifications. Calculators applied to evaluate tools commonly ask for backend specifics and previous proof of concept tests conducted.  Therefore any evaluations we create at this stage of the project based upon the technological readiness levels will be subject to incomplete knowledge of the situation and only represent the assessors best guess until consultation with the developers on back end specific implementations. An example for this would be the presence of a reuse Wizard at the highest level of the TRL.

Social Networking Benchmarks:

One of the most commonly noted social network benchmarks is LBDC Benchmark reference (Erling et al., 2015). It is technologically oriented to evaluate the interactive and business intelligence workload required for transactional and analytical queries in the data-set. It also provides an overview of data types, schemas, relations and generation processes required to run and achieve the benchmark. It provides a basis of understanding for users of graph technology to benchmark how realistic their query workloads may be and what performance they give, which is similar to other social network benchmarks that have preceded or followed it such as BG, which uniquely also measures the unpredictable data in the social network. Following such benchmarks the large-scale subgraph query benchmark was developed to benchmark queries for matching subgraph patterns (Mhedhbi et al., 2022)                                              Benchmarking queries over social network data seems to be the most common approach to the technology, as it provides a basis of evaluation for the efficacy of the underlying graph data models. Therefore there are several more existing benchmarks, such as the linkbench, built on facebook’s social graph (Facebookarchive, n.d.), or the BSMA for analytical queries over social media data (Xia et al 2014). None-the less there have also been other measurements than pure query performance evaluations. For example one benchmark focuses on evaluating a measure they call “dataset coherence”, which quantifies the structuredness of a data-set by measuring the data-types used and their properties (Spasic, Jovanovik & Prat-Pérez, 2016).

Out of the benchmarks analyzed for this research, only few had a higher-order maturity model, focused on specific utility beyond technological feasibility such as a social purpose like “reciprocal connections”. Despite existing benchmarks for matching algorithms, efforts remain fairly agnostic to measuring how well a tool provides interoperable network navigation from the user perspective. Only recently have interest-based community matching algorithms been suggested (Liu et al., 2019), with mapping methodologies being used for emergent alignment in social networks (Yuan et al., 2021)
new filtering methods taking into account information overload in knowledge browsing (Hao et al., 2014), and skill based architectures being used to enable the shortest path to opportunity in networks. Maturity models looking for the “readiness for collaboration” also exist and characterize organizations by a set of traits likely to predict collaborative behavior (Rosas & Camarinha-Matos, 2008). Potentially the closest thing to a maturity model based on effective network navigation is the SWOOP Enterprise Social Network maturity model which describes social networks which provide job fulfillment through facilitating shared problem solving and innovation as most mature in their model (Lee, n.d.) (see figure). It has clear measures such as response rate, reciprocity and diversity which provide a means to quantify successful network navigation.

Interoperability Standards:

Interoperability is a topic so vast it can be difficult to get an overview of all the aspects contributing to the exchange of information in the back end of social networks and mapping projects. Especially as different languages, models, standards and protocols exist to support different purposes and many technological advances are only accessible through academic databases. In the context of information systems interoperability may refer to “the ability of a system to work with or use parts of other systems.” (DeMark & Kozyrev, 2021). Specific to network navigation one might envision different mapping projects, social networks and platforms to share data about people, projects their needs and gifts. To achieve this; databases have to be able to talk to each other. The European Interoperability Framework identifies 4 levels of interoperability; legal interoperability, organizational interoperability, semantic interoperability and technical interoperability (Publications, 2017). At each of these levels different tools may exist to support the interoperability of social networks, their associated organizations and legal context. One of the most common tools is the use of standards. Standards may serve as a common reference between social networks to eliminate design steps and increase the chances of interoperability (Gilman, 2018). Standard setting organizations such as the ISO, W3C and more exist to proliferate such standards and many emerge on the basis of research and development within different sub-classes of the standards for example meta-data standards (Duval, 2001), open platform standards (O-def, 2022) and many more.

Taxonomy, Folksonomy & Ontology:
Taxonomy plays a major role in social network mapping, as it affects which categories of information are being stored, and in which format for users to navigate the relevant data via filters. A taxonomy allows tagging of source data and content so that users can retrieve the information from a knowledge organization system (Hedden, 2019). To do so tagged data is mapped onto categories in the taxonomy for users to filter information. Even small differences in the way that a date or name is recorded can affect the interoperability of two databases; this requires homogeneity (Rishe et al., 2000) or the same data formatting in layman's terms. One step towards homogeneity would be for multiple social networks to use the same taxonomy.  Folksonomies are a similar concept with the key difference that categories are determined by an online community tagging or labeling information with resource identifiers (Trant, 2009), contributing to a taxonomy that may be more user centric. To translate data from one taxonomy or folksonomy to another, meta-ontologies may serve to bridge the differences in specific terminology and connect similar categories for data translation (Buccafurri et al., 2016).  A relevant approach for Gaianet to consider is the Catamap Interoperable Meta-Ontology which may allow translation between different categorization frameworks to leverage other databases for the purposes of matching beyond Gaianet’s internal database (Arena, n.d.).

Schemas & Protocols and adapters:

In the open systems Interconnection model (OSI) of the internet different layers of the internet are supported by standard protocols which allow for networking across computers from the physical bit stream layer to the application layer (What is a protocol, n.d.).  The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) would be a popular example of this. These protocols allow for different data formats to be converted to common data “schemas” or common data structures, essentially the architecture of a database (Ian, 2020). Common protocols and schemas allow different databases to either build their data structures the same way or convert between them. For social network mapping specifically the murmurations protocol exists to provide a common data schema to mapping projects which may be valuable to Gaianet’s own mapping efforts (Create a murmurations Schema, n.d.) The last interoperability discussed in this analysis are Application Programming Interface (API) Adapters which may allow translation from one data model to another when accessing the data from another platform (Data Transfer Project Documentation, n.d.). A relevant example of these may be  the Data Transfer Project run by contributors such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter (About us, n.d.). Despite being used interchangeably, sometimes a data model differentiates itself from a schema in that schemas are logical organizational structures of a database whereas data models represent a way to describe the data relationships (The Trustees of Princeton University, n.d.).