I’d love to see some basic research on the benefits of openness. I wonder if openness measurement can be done out of context – it seems that users would respond to openness quite differently depending on their perceptions of the corporation, trust, etc.

Alternatively, it might be possible to avoid the underwriter risk of geek insurance by asking the individuals who want the openness in the first place to do the underwriting. Not sure exactly how this might work… a perhaps a $2M kickstarter project funded by the users? Some sort of crowd-sourced insurance policy held in union by a company’s entire customer-base?

In the long run the vector of history (everything networked, everybody more empowered, more participants contributing, companies turning into talent aggregation systems, abundant data) points toward paying deliberately for value wherever it appears, including places where it’s mashed up with other value. This involves some kind of micro-accounting (rather than micropayments), and the means for paying … somehow. Because the will to recognize value, and not just risk, is there.

Right now we have large companies like Google hogging the spotlight by looking for second and third order “because effects” off hacks like Android and Google Earth, but stay stuck in the past when we realize that those second and third order effects involve (so far) making money the old-fashioned way: through advertising, which is still woefully inefficient, and works mostly by shifting waste off paper and airwaves and onto server farms, screen pixels and the rods and cones in the backs of our eyes. The advertiser may pay only for click-throughs and not for “impressions” made in the same campaign; but making fruitless impressions (noise, actually) is still a waste, still guesswork, still costly and inefficient, still a problem to be solved, and not only on the supply side. The demand side needs to provide feedback, make its intentions known, become involved in the economy in ways other than by paying for goods and whining in public when service goes bad.

Geek insurance is bulk payment for aggregated value. Better yet, it recognizes the presence value in the first place. Not just risk of bad acting.

Value-for-value, which by the way drives fund-raising for non-profits, as well as the familiar commercial economy, will prevail. Abundant data, especially held personally out in the Long Tail, will make calculating all value easier.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by timhwang: Blogg’d: Can geek insurance persuade businesses to adopt open data standards? (http://j.mp/4DuB4U) (thx @khopper @dsearls @spyrex)…

Your thoughts on Geek Insurance are pretty awesome and were fun to think about.

I do agree with Ben, above, though: how can an insurer (or several insurers, and even re-insurers) reasonably account for risk which we don’t have the hrd data and past history on? Speculative insurance like this is definitely something that established insurance companies will shy away from (especially in this time of less- and un-certain economies).

Furthermore, how do you (or the insurance companies) convince the other companies to buy the insurance? There seems to be some serious anti-selection risk to account for in that those companies which are not so worried about losing heir respectie shirts via this geek-risk are not going to be so interested (at least at first) in protecting themselves from the dangers, so the insurance companies will be losing out on the “good risks”.

Another thing that comes to mind is the collection side…how will a company who has bought into geek insurance prove that their losses are as a result of this problem, and not mis-managemet, poor decisions, economic badness, simply not being the best choice in their sector, or other reasons? The potential long, drawn-out fights inherent in these sorts of disagreements can easily last long enough and cost enough in legal fees and lost time spent by involved executives with their “usual” work with the buiness that the business might fail before they’re even close to getting their geek insurance benefit. How can insurance companies make all payments swiftly but also righteously?

I look forward to your thoughts.

On your post – some great thinking about an important issue. I definitely feel at times that we are being asked to jump off a cliff and expect a genie to pop out on the way down.

Your geek insurance idea has promise – I like the thinking. THis quote caught me as one-sided though:

“Interestingly enough, if it turns out that we are in fact right … geek insurance should be, in fact, enormously profitable as a business”

But – what if we are wrong? Very simple in the extreme case – insure a number of companies who pay a little, then they all fail and you can’t pay out all of the policies. You would need some huge underwriting for big, reputable firms to try this – and these guys would be notoriously risk-averse in approaching a new insurance business. A Catch-22. Interested to hear others thoughts on the subject.