Making Connections: Early Adopters, Generosity & Loose Transactions

I hope you enjoy this post. I’m exploring some ideas on innovation, generosity and transactional friction vs transactional freedom.

I was on a phone call doing some pre-event networking for #sobcon in Portland.  Liz Strauss said I should talk to Lara Feltin of Biznik.com.  A perfect example of a generous act. Lara and I had no clue why we should be talking. that was Lara’s and my challenge. Liz just had a hunch it would be highly valuable. Liz was right! She often is.

Lara and I got talking about early adopters and creating a generosity culture. Then I made the connection:

• Early adopters are more generous.
• Generous people are more adoptive/adaptive.

Generous people are more willing to accept new ideas and concepts. They live in a flexible space of give and take. They don’t have hard boundaries to their possessions or their ideas. They are willing to invest for no reward because they have learned doing so brings bigger rewards.

It’s like the difference between continuous and discontinuous innovation. Making a continuous connection gives you slight gains. By way of contrast, discontinuous connections bring you potentially huge leaps. they don’t always payoff – there is risk. They work better when two like minded people connect.

Early adopters are generous:

• They are giving of their time and attention
• They are trusting of a founders vision – giving the benefit of the doubt
• They are forgiving of flaws and deficiencies
• They are willing to share their network and connect their friends and associates
• They seek value not clarity
• They are generous to believe the details will be filled in over time

What the two have in common is a loose transaction. The idea of loose and tight transactions began to emerge and align well with my initial observation. We’ve all heard Gladwell talk of the value of loose connections. The idea of loose transactions seems worth exploring.

Tight transaction need everything to be in place:

• People need to see value and clarity up front
• They want proof of ability to pay
• The transaction is complete almost like a checkpoint Charlie handover
• There is no trust!
• There is no tolerance of the unknown
• There is little flexibility

Loose transactions require no immediate resolution to all the details. These are the details that normally prevent things from happening. You need to be generous, to be an early adopter to be comfortable in a loose transaction. Both parties need to be willing to operate within a loose, generous framework.

People let go of the detail, when they trust the rewards will come.

Are you a loose transactor? Do you see the connection between generosity and early adoption?

This makes a lot of sense to me. How about you?

Image Credit:  clickflashphotos  via Flickr.com and Creative Commons

Nick Kellet (142 Posts)

Nick is co-founder the social curation platform Listly, that combines crowdsourcing, content curation and embedable lists to drive high-level community engagement, live inside your blog posts. Connect with Nick on Twitter · Linkedin, Facebook and G+ and follow his writing via his other guest posts and on his blogs at NickKellet.com and blog.list.ly