Why should people collaborate with a cafe owner?

Viewing the activity of a cafe from the cafe owner's perspective, it is easy to forget that any collaborative associations would be dependent upon all parties involved needing to be able to see a substantial personal gain for themselves. After all, everyone in a cafe will have many alternative opportunities and options outside of the cafe environment; any that arise inside of a cafe owner's cafe will have to compete with those.

This may seem obvious, but, what is not so obvious is that a situation seen as a good opportunity by the cafe owner, may not seem such a good opportunity to other people in the cafe whose collaboration is needed by the cafe owner for the opportunity to be taken advantage of. To put it bluntly: "Why should the people in the cafe want to collaborate with the cafe owner? What benefits are on offer that would be preferable to alternative offers of collaboration they might have from elsewhere?".

An answer to this question might be that the cafe owner has a good idea that the others want to be part of. However, this is a top down approach because it necessitates starting with a good idea. The cafe owner then has to convince the others that it is a good idea and because invariably there will be unknowns and uncertainties the reality of the good idea will be on very shaky ground. Almost certainly, it would not be convincing enough for any of the people in the cafe to give their full and whole hearted commitment.

Certainly if the cafe owner obtained funding and ensured that everyone could share in that funding there would be many willing collaborators. But, again this would be a top down approach because to obtain the funding in the first place the cafe owner would have to have had a good idea and a convincing plan that persuaded the funding body to provide the funding. The skill of an entrepreneur is in resolving just this kind of problem.

The clue to resolving such situations is the duality of the cafe concept. To a cafe owner, all the contacts are in his or her cafe. But, to all the people in the cafe, the opportunity appears in their cafe: with the cafe owner being just another person in their cafe. This duality is illustrated in figure 8.12

This duality effect means that once an opportunity is revealed, it appears as an opportunity in all the personal cafes of everyone who is a party to that opportunity. Nobody can thus lay claim exclusively to the ownership of an opportunity once it is revealed.

At first thoughts, this state of affairs might suggest it would be unwise for anyone to reveal an opportunity they had discovered. However, the whole point of having cafes is to arrange collaboration with people who can provide needed assets or resources that a cafe owner is missing. This makes it imperative to reveal an opportunity, to have any chance of securing a collaborative association that will enable an opportunity to be taken.

The appropriate strategy therefore is for anyone who discovers an opportunity to reveal it to those whose assets and resources are complementary to their own and at the same time declare their own assets and resources that would be valuable in taking advantage of the opportunity. Each then (in their own conceptual cafes) might recognise each other as ideal collaborators.

This of course raises the question of trust, but, as explained in the second book in this trilogy, trust in the context of Information Age strategies isn't about loyalty and honesty, it is about trusting people to act sensibly in their own best interests.

If you present an opportunity to someone and they run off to do it without you, it simply means you are playing with a weak hand and deserve to lose. Your position wasn't strong enough to justify yourself as a key collaborator to them. You cannot blame them if they think they can take up the opportunity better without you. You cannot blame them for doing this, anymore than you can blame a poker player for winning a pot with four aces against your four kings. You are just unlucky in that the hand you presented just didn't hold the right cards to win the game.

A sensible entrepreneur will anticipate this situation and will not waste time or effort in presenting opportunities to others when they aren't holding a key position that would be essential for the success of a venture. This is where the concept of the super individual comes into play. Although you might not have all the necessary assets, resources and skills yourself, you might have a suitable collection of contacts that do. This puts you in a position of being a key collaborator who would be vital to the success of a venture.

Of course, you might still get someone who will cut you out just to get a larger share of the pot, but, that would be because they will be playing a zero sum game. You are better off without them and losing to them straight away would be a benefit. After all, opportunities come along very much more frequently than sensible players whom you can rely on to know how to play the game.