Can TR Be a $20B+ per Year World Brain?
As delivered to TR executives on 18 February 2016. There is no evidence anyone brought this memorandum to the attention of the TR CEO. It merits comment that when Michael Bloomberg was Mayor of New York, he answered my letter and hence got it — all evidence suggests that his mail at Bloomberg LP is being filtered to his detriment. These ideas were offered to Bloomberg via mail over a year before J.P. Morgan cancelled their Bloomberg Box contract.
Executive Summary
This memorandum offers a roadmap for taking TR toward $20B a year or more as a World Brain generating revenue from 20% or more of the online and offline knowledge that exists, instead of the current 1%, while creating the standard open source information-sharing and sense-making tool-kit that does not exist today. Instead of premium pricing for access to entire articles in a limited set, TR can achieve an order of magnitude increase in revenue and profit by achieving fractional pricing at the paragraph level from a much greater whole.
Potential building blocks include a World Brain Institute and the registry of every mind of note as well as an Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) Innovation Center focused on creating Smart Cities whose physical elements contain no excess water, fuel, toxins, or bulk. This roadmap also protects TR’s tax-related revenues by proposing that it become the first to offer entire countries an Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax solution that allows for the elimination of all other income, corporate, and assigned taxes. Finally, this roadmap positions TR to be the essential partner to all organizations that desire to eliminate the 50% waste that is characteristic of most industrial-era processes and products, providing a mix of holistic analytics, true cost economics, and OSEE helping to transforming all domains of human endeavor. In passing, the possibility of buying – or eradicating – Bloomberg LP, is mentioned. Elsevier and other counterparts to TR will become casualties of the TR-engineered transformation of the world of information into a universal World Brain service in which every mind is part of the TR network. There is a huge United Nations aspect to all this.
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TR is making its money today from 1% of 1% of 1% of knowledge – at best. This is to say, of what is known, 1% is written, and of what is written, 1% is published in peer-reviewed journals that are the bread and butter of the TR profit model.
Although TR very wisely bought the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) and understands the web of science, it has never understood how to expand so as to not only monetize the indexing of all knowledge outside of journals (e.g. white papers and field knowledge), but geospatial visualization and paragraph level citation.
A World Brain in four parts — two parts make money (.org is a for-fee reference service and .com is a for fee research service) while two parts harness, harvest, and indirectly monetize all human minds (.net registers them and tracks them, .edu teaches them and makes them more productive as both individuals and collectives).
The World Brain Institute is “driven” by the integration of holistic analytics, true cost economics, and Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) manifested in a new PhD program, School, serious game, and center.
Market Discussion
Up front: published information is too much too late. The gold is on the edges, TR is missing that gold. There are at least four profit lines within this larger idea, itemized here:
01 Migrate from making a substantial profit on 1% of the information sold at the article level to a much greater profit acquired via fractional pricing at the paragraph level across all information
02 Create and own the “standard” open source tool-kit, exascale cloud processing, geospatial foundation, and related aspects of achieving holistic analytics and true cost economic accounting for all
03 Using the above, become the only service able to help legacy industrial organizations scrub the 50% waste that characterizes all of their supply chains
04 Using the above, and adding Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE), become the only service truly focused on meeting the needs of the five billion poor whose annual income is four times that of the one billion rich – become the fractional arbitrager monetizing all open source knowledge.
In the UK, Lady Lynn Rothschild and her idea of Inclusive Capitalism are a strong signal in favor of this idea. So also the Silicon Valley and European Black Sheep Billionaires calling for Redemptive Capitalism. The Nordic countries and The Netherlands as well as India and Singapore are particularly interested in these ideas, but have not achieved the critical mass necessary to take official action.
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PwC UK has produced some excellent work in relation to the true costs of any given supply chain. When combined with the customary focus on supply chain risk, this work calls into question – demonstrates the financial and cost true cost – of supply chains that are burdened with human costs (e.g. leukemia for workers creating smart phones, child labor at slave wages) and natural capital costs (e.g. virtual water, fuel, toxins emitted). Adding geospatial visualization brings forward the benefits of decentralized production and services.
Put most simply, the TR model, profiting handsomely from controlling access to 1% of the relevant information, is mirrored in the larger capitalist model that focused on profiting from service to the one billion rich who have an annual aggregate income of one trillion dollars.
The five billion poor have an annual aggregate income four times larger – four trillion a year – but they buy different things (e.g. $2 ceramic “coolers” buried in the ground) and have different service needs. This is the next generation of profit.
Technology Discussion
It is no longer enough to provide access to a limited selection of sources and services. The opportunity – and the need – is for a local to global network that provides not only access to all relevant information in any language and any medium, but also authentication of individuals in each network (e.g. badged law enforcement officers, certified PhD graduates, bonded private investigators, etcetera). At the most fundamental level, the data level, there is a need for an integrated open source tool-kit that permits information access, sharing, evaluation, and integration across all boundaries. This does not exist today. At the same time there is a need for a compelling local to global analytic process that includes in the cloud a sufficiency of processing power (exascale, does not exist today) for making sense of all relevant information in geospatial and time relation. TR can develop a means of casting a wide net and then serving as a validator as data moves up the food chain, with TR monetizing each upgrade. Finally, a human-central process must be provided for registering and connecting all humans to one another, with the rights of anonymity, identity, privacy, and security fully protected in diverse forms.
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These graphics are provided for orientation, without discussion. They represent a quarter century of work by Robert David Steele. Learn more at http://tinyurl.com/Steele-Future.
Benefits to TR
TR will achieve first to market advantages in innovation, intelligence, information technology, risk and waste reduction premiums, and rapid market share increase as it becomes the launching pad for 21st Century information, engineering, governance, and economics. While there is no upward limit, a preliminary goal of $20B a year by 2020, up from $12B a year today, is proposed. If TR succeeds in pioneering OSEE, equity holdings in the new 21st Century economy TR makes possible should be substantial. TR will become the arbiter of Risk over Time (RoT) and ROI on preventive and sustainable investments by governments (peaceful preventive measures) and corporations (true costs known).
TR will displace all other information services including professional journals by creating the first integrated mix of peer-reviewed publications and written papers (only 1% of which are published) along with structured preserved and validated commentaries linked to publications at the paragraph level, all in one massive map of science, social science, philosophy, religion, and local information – all of it in a massive cloud with exascale distributed processing power, every datum with a geospatial attribute enabling the visualization of all information across space as well as time. Automated machine translation in each of 31 languages at first, 183 languages within ten years, will be standard.
How This Partnership Will Work
Robert Steele seeks to be a partner, employee, or contractor. The terms are a detail. What matters is the achievement of understanding at the highest levels of TR with respect to the possibilities, and then a commitment of TR leadership for a full-scope effort of no less than two years. Ideally Robert Steele will devote the next twenty years of his life to creating, marketing, and managing the World Brain as a service of common concern for all ethical public and private organizations desiring to be evidence-based enterprises creating sustainable profit by avoiding any waste of natural or social capital.
Costs
The minimalist cost is a contract to gain exclusive control of Robert David Steele, his ideas, and his network. Intermediate costs from TR can vary from $25 million to $125 million per year. Overall this initiative is designed to leverage other people’s money and be a net earner from year two onwards.
Build and Launch Timeline
90 days to core partnership group; 180 days to first planning conference; one year to first offering inclusive of the legal and operational formation of the World Brain Institute, School of Future-Oriented Design & Hybrid Governance, OSEE Innovation Center, and ideally, cadre for the first Multinational Decision-Support Centre to be located in Denmark, with mirrors in NYC (UN) and Quito (UNASUR).
