Homeshores-Direct™: A Festival of World Cultures 365™

That ILO Quote on global Jobs shortages is a World Wakeup Call, whether we choose to listen or not! What we are all talking about at VoxWorld©.Coop™, and what the World is starting to address finally is the distressed calls of the "Coping Classes" - the Unemployed, the Low Income Earners, the Less Well Educated and the Ageing Populations - being the marginalised of society, the underserved, the disenfranchised, the excluded communities. While fundamentally we are all aware that Europe and USA are dealing with this downside in social services costs in very different ways eg. Greece v. Florida, Ireland v. Nevada crashes, where European countries do not have their own currencies but again unlike USA must still must carry all their own consequential social costs - it is obvious that neither USA nor Europe can afford such costs on any longterm basis in social costs, healthcare, education, etc. The scale of this crisis has risen at such a rate as to force the World (corporates, universities & governments) to sit up and take notice - Corps due to global shortage of 30 million ICT pros as well as other skilled workers; Universities as other educational forums gather momentum and Govts start to reduce subsidies; and Govt's themselves to seek to avoid bankruptcy. They have not declared any universal answer yet - forced to continue believing it will somehow sort itself out, rather than conceive of new approaches. But are they trying together anymore.? There is no real evidence of any sense of certainty, let alone confidence showing after four years of their collectively trying in vain. Meanwhile the People themselves are starting to realise the power that the Internet has placed in their hands, that there is a new way - called the Third Way, with its Social Economy, the Social Sector and its Third Sector Organisations. Most prominent among these is the Co-operative Sector with its near one billion members, and the Social Enterprises and Volunteer Groups (led by charities) which all certainly try to address the needs of the Coping Classes. But that is clearly falling far short of what is needed today, we need nothing less than New Organisational Models IF we are to engage in such a way as to create such vast numbers of JOBS on all continents, in all countries and within all Communities. While this is one great global problem, each country however requiring a different solution unique to them, one global problem that, because of internet is already well outside the scope of USA or Europe or any one country or region to solve on their own. That's the Crisis point at which we have arrived. So how can we travel this new route together, startout on this new and exciting journey to that New World that beckons, a Social Sector with its Social Economy?.

SOLUTION: One such solution is the new organisational model, the VoxLABS™MODEL©, which we have developed and dedicated to Community use, designed to underpin a worldwide International Community Cooperative Organisation (ICCO™) as we go global simultaneously at authorised VoxWorld©.Coop™ Outlets (OMEGApoints™) in Third Sector Orgs locations, as led by Cooperatives, Social Enterprise and Voluntary Groups. This is designed to stimulate demand for co-created Interactive Community Brands™ and for distribution through a created network of VoxFRANCHISE™ affiliates and agents. ICCO™ will be located in Ireland using Europe's new cross-border legal structure format - the European Cooperative Society, known as the SCE (Societas Cooperativa Europaea) and is available in 15 languages. We set out to achieve our goals through Economic Innovation rather than Technology Innovation alone, to tap into and enable the commercialisation of latent talents through new ideas and new ways for releasing their earnings potential, a veritable reservoir of talents often lying unseen and dormant among the vast coping classes worldwide to enable access for them and their Communties to the Knowledge and Innovation Economies.

To understand the roots of ICCO™ we perhaps need to look back to its origins. Looking back to that past, to where this journey all began in order for us to see the future, we can see things from an entirely different perspective of course. I started out on a career path that took me along established lines with Accountancy studies, to becoming a Management Accountant with a global pharmaceutical giant by age 21 and before qualifying as a CIMA Accountant in 1974 through what was then state-of-the-art in remote correspondence courses at night. Yet I promptly gave it all up after 5 years - having been offered what was held out to promise to be a 'glittering' global career; choosing instead to take 'the road less travelled' into the rough and tumble of Retailing, closer to people. It proved to be an envigorating, innovative, challenging route that mysteriously took me to where we are today with ICCO™ based on that same retailing knowhow - the inspiration in creating VoxLABS™, VoxFRANCHISE™ and VoxWorld©.Coop™ to serve tomorrow's new requirements of TSO Retail Outlets through reconceived shopping environments in this digital age, with Sm'artshops and Culture Showcase at "P@rlour C.A.F.E.S™: Re-imagining Your Future" concepts. 

I can now see looking back that those tracks that were further laid post 1998 when, as keynote speaker in opening a two day Conference in London attended by 300 MNC's, where we were all together looking into the future to see what we all could see. In Ireland at that time the Celtic Tiger was starting to sharpen its claws as it got ready to embrace a future unseen Property Boom. Worldwide, the press was agog with something called the Internet and WWW, the World Wide Web and failed to see what lay underneath in the imminent crash two years later. Meanwhile the Conference itself was using frontier technology to stream proceedings back to extranets in hotels and to VC's in New York; the corporate P/E multiples in the private sector at that time were flying ever higher as assetless Service Providers created and monitored every SEC share price move; the World's VC's were in total command, ordaining everthing that moved, usually born and bred in Silicon Valley, a name with no town!. Having already experienced the sheer freedom born of a worldwide lift-off into a new era promising a paperless office since the early '80's with Apple & Microsoft, and we were just coming to grips with the sudden emergence of the Amazon and eBay revolution back then, Yet! nothing had prepared the world for what was to follow next - the DotCom Crash of 2000, which in retrospect was about announcing the end of the old world we knew and with it ushering in the new world of Social Media that started to emerge in fact in that same year of '98 with Google as followed in 2004 by Facebook. Warren Buffet was, most importantly, later to famously  describe this early period as being of 'unparalled wealth transfer, not wealth creation' and therefore of no interest to him.

Dramatical new technological developments and instant communications meant that everyone got to play too, to get in on the act, and one easy byproduct that caught imaginations was online poker and spread betting - which grew and grew until it bacame known as Derivatives by any other name. Corps and even Banks themselves were drwn in like a moth to the flame - those who once decided whether you or your idea 'were bankable' for generations were themselves captivated into backing enormous but  assetless ventures on a whim and fancy while Governments watched-on in wonderment, without any real understanding of what they were shoring up for their people to later bear. Thus the ugly spectre of Sub-Prime was born and inevitably, in 2008, it led to the Global Crash of Property Markets, Stock Markets, Pension Funds....and the Banks themselves - all the bubbles burst, the whole house of cards came tumbling down around an unsuspecting public's ears. Reflecting this changing of the guard today, the prestigious Fortune 500 corporations that then had a lifecycle of 75 years has since crashed to 15 years on average span and is on its way to perhaps as little as 3-5 years. About 80% of those Fortune 500 Corps of '98 never made it, they are out. corporations and the universites and the governments that woo them for Job creation are suddenly all out of step, no longer in control as they lack any real solutions to the scale of the global Jobs Crisis, the scale set out by ILO in quote above. Gov't have yet to embrace the Digital World so they don't see the vast opportunities and where they do they are equally afraid of losing control over taxes through erosion.

Then less publically the famous MNC, Multi-national Corporations, died quitely too, to be replaced by the less easy to grasp concept of GIE - the Globally Integrated Enterprises; fleetfooted and less committed to any country or community as they are. It marked the beginning of a new and exciting era not yet grasped or understood by the public at large - and brought with it a hidden opportunity for Interactive Community Br@nds™. In that moment of 2008 the West was Lost according to Dambisa Moyo in her acclaimed book of that name: "...the most important story of our generation is being pushed aside: how America's rapidly growing population of the unskilled, unemployed and disaffected threatens the nation's wealth and stature....a pending calamity...a path of economic decline" aka, brough about by ignoring those same Coping Classes. Inaction is not an option here, action is an urgency. For most thinkers it marks the decline of Capitalism as we know it; for some it lead to the rise of Communitarianism with embracing of community & cultural values and for others it will perhaps heralded the arrival of Co-op Capitalism, the latter being the subject of an earlier lengthy discussion in Cooperative Group (LI). Whatever the ourcome and end result - the ring of trust is broken, a New Era is born. For me that was coming in 1998, was signalled in 2000, was officially set in train in 2008 and  happened in August 2011 with arrival of the next generation Internet, known in Tech World as IPv6, when only 2% (the Big Corp world) were switched-on and we witnessed emergence of what is known as the "Internet of Things" emerge, with all its vast implications for business and the lives of people and their Communities. We already know from Big Corps experience that this new era is not about hardware or products any more, but about Services - traded services. This is a dramatically changed world where in one action, not alone the GIE's (MNC's) can sell but anyone and everyone can sell too..... and to anywhere in the world...at anytime.....and just as easily as they can do in their own local Village.

I had my own personal wake-up call some years ago, although I continued to develop the models while engaging an ever wider circle of people in conversations globally to get nearer to the real Jobs crisis on the ground in order to develop ever better solutions. Having set out in 1991 to design, innovate and develop radically new solutions for retailing Small & Medium Enterprises (SME's) products and services - I still traded the resultant new point-of-sale creations around the world - on all continents and across over 40 countries in over 5,000 outlets - but under private Corp labels until 1997. And by '98, having come to the stark realisation that the corporate world road was no longer one for me, I set out on, as then announced, a very different road to follow my instincts in development of a complete new business model dedicated to E-Communities - one that would/ could/ should/ ought to ultimately deliver what I called in that London Conference an "Interactive Community Brand™" (ICB). The ICB's I envisaged were designed to be delivered by a new type of business which I then called and Independent "Consumer Service Provider™" with new Standards through a VoxFRANCHISE™ Sm@rtshop™ concept - envisaged as a collaboration of service providers dedicating to serving the Consumers. Having tried in vain to engage global consultants, the MDB global development agencies, the telcos, the global brands in this endeavour - I found they were wedded to their existing private & public sector trajectories, however much the warning clouds grew louder over the years; having tried in vain to engage the global service providers and lost several more years trying every way - I found they were wedded to the SEC and the rage of the S/E multiples - which was then the fast-buck world before the notorious Derivatives were born. Having developed a new model for Airport DutyFree by 2001, with its unique ground-breaking culture showcase and smartshop concept - I could see the writing on the wall for any private sector effort, social cause didn't matter a jot as it was only big money that counted in the private sector everywhere; the private sector would never facilitate such a perceived gamechanger as that of a Consumer Service Provider™, because they lived in a rarified world that would not release any hold they had on their 'captive customer', a very different world indeed from even today. The private sector's big idea of what was 'social' soon emerged from 'pro bono' and morphed into a  sense of corporate social responsibility (CSR), again a very different notion of what was and is still urgently required today in a workable, scalable solution for a billion people...."with one in three workers worldwide – or an estimated 1.1 billion people – either Unemployed or living in Poverty" (ILO)

Finally I reralised that an entirely new way, a new mindset, a paradigm shift was desperately needed and by 2003 all the best forward thinkers could see that a private & public sector Crash was almost inevitable; though they argued whether it would be as bad as the 30's, or would take us back to the Gold Rush days - this time How the East was Won - some said very forceably then that it could even be the biggest change in up to 400 years with nothing short of an entirely new Organisational Model required to win back trust. So from the ashes of several decades of Retail creativity, Point-of-sale innovation, Global Expos from London to Las Vegas, Global Trading experience - I wholehearedly began to embrace the Social Sector (the Third Sector), something that was to become the passion of my working life thereafter. Firstly, having envisaged and registered VoxLABS™ & VoxFRANCHISE™, as a virtual E-Business Model & related Retail Franchise, I set out to develop them and bring them to fruition for benefit of SME's among TSO's and their Communities everywhere; then secondly, by 2005, I had come to realise that IF the social sector & its service providers were ever to capture a fraction of its potential it fundamentally needed a new network of dedicated Retail Outlets - indeed new retailing formats in shop in shop dispensers and displays, virtual retail networked interactive kiosks and culture showcases - to capture the imagination of consumers for them to learn to trust and embrace any such new notions. So I registered VoxWorld©.Coop™ and accelerated these developments to meet an ever increasing need that did not seem to be solved elsewhere - not with the global capacity and capability required, confirmed as it was by MDB's who scoured the world for same - as the entire VoxWorld©.Coop™ concept was aired at International Conferences until 2005, and later it was selected as one of two Greening of Business models for presentation at UN ESCAP's Greening Growth Conference in Bangkok  by ABAC University and which immediately led to an invitation to UN General Assembly on Migration in New York, 2007, as endorsed by World Bank. Many exciting possibilities emerged but the Conditions for get-go were still missing. We were now facing into a much changed Digital World, for which Cooperatives and TSO in general were not ready much like most SME Orgs, were finding it extremely difficult to embrace. So I connected with Digital Agenda Europe throughout 2011 and became a stakeholder in one of the Big Idea Communities at Schoolnet with Digital Literacy & eInclusion - attending its Workshops and First Digital Agenda Assembly in Brussels before seeing it Going Local into all 27 EU Countries in past year.

NEXT - What is the intended Nature and Structure of what we are about to engage in with online Interactive Communities Br@nds™ worldwide?

The NATURE of the emerging New Organisational format(s)?: Enabling e-skilled Jobs and Traded-services generation at Community level, right down into the Villages - for entry to a Communitarian, Co-op Capitalism-driven world....in an era of Transformation from 'Wealth Transfer' to a new era 'Wealth Creation' through added value creation and at Community level; each Community and its Brand distinguished as it is by its individual Culture, and protected by its Language.

The STRUCTURE of the emerging New Organisational formats? It is called an International Community Cooperative Organisation (ICCO™), an originating as a first European SCE (Societas Cooperativa Europaea) as available in 15 languages - the European Cooperative Society format.