Soliloquies as an e-business strategy

The paradigm shift from cooperation to collaboration is not easy. It came to me by accident, when my eleven year old son asked me to help him with his homework. He had been given a piece from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" where Juliet was thinking aloud while she was contemplating the possible consequences of drinking the potion that would put her into a death like trance to save her having to marry the man she did not love. My son's homework was to read through the passage and list the doubts and fears Juliet was expressing to herself.

The heading of this exercise was "Soliloquies". It struck me that this was a very sophisticated word for an eleven year old, so I asked him if he understood what this word meant. "Yes", he replied, "My teacher told me it means people talking to themselves out loud".

A little bell rang in my head. Isn't this what people do in a collaborative learning environment? Don't they talk out loud to themselves, but, with a view that others might hear? I then imagined a play consisting of all the actors engaged in speaking in soliloquies rather than dialogue. At first thoughts this idea seems bizarre and eccentric, but, upon reflection it's not as ridiculous as it seems. Why shouldn't an audience be entertained by actors speaking aloud their innermost thoughts? There isn't really any necessity to have interactive dialogue. An audience can learn from, be interested in and enjoy a performance consisting of soliloquies focused around a particular theme just as easily as if the actors were all contributing to a common discussion through verbal interaction.

Of course, such a performance might be somewhat odd if each actor were soliloquising on a totally different topic, but, if each actor were soliloquising on a common situation or subject matter, the audience would have the benefit of many different independent viewpoints. There would be no scripted interaction that forced the views into common alignment. There would be no coercion or influence that caused any view point to change.

Each different personal perspective on the common theme would be available to every member of the audience for them to each make their own deductions and decide for themselves which of the various viewpoints they preferred. Even, they could select parts from the different view points - to arrive at a unique viewpoint of their own. Isn't this the essence of collaborative learning?

This mental model did it for me. I could see how a conventional play is fixed by the thinking of the original script writer at the time of its conception. There was little scope for change if the audience didn't like it. With a production based upon an evolving selection of soliloquies, a performanced could be changed at every new performance - simply by replacing one or more soliloquies. In this way, a performance could be made to develop: to adapt and respond to theartre goers' changing needs, allowing a performance to continuously improve and have an indefinite life.

If we abstract the essence of this hypothetical performance of soliloquies, we find that it consists of many independent units contributing to a common theme. They do not interact with each other, the only interactions are between them and the members of the audience. The role of the auteur is to judge the audience's reactions to the performance as a whole and change the soliloquies as he or she sees fit.

This provides a suitable way to consider the structure of an e-business solution. It isn't about having a fixed and stable structure. It is about having a modular arrangement where the modules can easily be changed to adapt to clients' or customers' changing needs. This may not seem a sensible approach if an audience's (or a customer's or client's) needs and expectations are known or can be predicted, but, this is very seldom the case in e-business. There is too much uncertainty, too much change, too many unknowns and the actions of competitors can be totally unpredictable when technoligy is changing so fast.

Not having a fixed plan to work with, an entrepreneur can be guided by the reactions of customers. Just like the arranger of a performance of soliloquies, the need for change can only be derived from audience reactions. If the arranger knows what the audience is responding to and where their interests are changing, the components of the performance can be altered accordingly.