Imagine a world where you can tackle the greatest, most challenging problems with a proven approach that leads to unmatched success. That’s the premise and the promise of the book that I co-wrote with Dr. Heidi Giusto and Dawa Phillips. We live in an age of sweeping conflict, widespread skepticism, and intense anxiety. Contention feels pervasive. A balanced discourse is like a thing of the past, and pundits constantly tell us what’s wrong with society. I know I’ve said this in podcasts before, but people complain like it’s an Olympic event — and I checked this, it’s not.

And we obsess over the massive problems that we see in the world. Negativity seems to be the norm. However, I really believe there’s hope. There’s an answer, and it starts with focusing on the solutions. When people focus on problems, they become world-class experts on “the problem.” But when they focus on solutions, they can become world-class experts on “the solution.” And we believe “the solution,” in part, to today’s massive challenges lies within the 3rd Paradigm.

Now as a reference point, a paradigm is a philosophical framework or discipline within which theories and laws are formulated. And we believe we’re entering the era of the 3rd Paradigm. And so let’s take you on a short journey through what we define as the three paradigms. Now I talked about these three paradigms briefly in episode number 835. I’m going to go into more detail here.

The 1st Paradigm is the era of competition. This paradigm was formulated within the framework of the laws of production by early pioneers of business thinking. Formal theories of management from the 1800s, like Frederick Taylor, the Gilbreths, Max Weber, and others who focused on issues like workflow, economic efficiency, labor productivity. This was the era of “scientific management,” which, interestingly enough, is the beginning of business theory; there really wasn’t much written about business the scientific management. That’s the 1st Paradigm.

The 1st Paradigm was so focused on productivity and competition that it failed to account for the needs of people in the workforce. Competition was about gaining something by defeating your rivals or establishing superiority over them. And it meant having a winner or a loser. I mean, can you imagine living in the production-oriented, competitive model today? Sixty-hour workweeks would be the norm, there would be few–if any–breaks, you’d be expected to work during much of your lunchtime. Forget about safety regulations. Children might be working. You know, in most “developed” nations, that now seems inconceivable, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common throughout the world.

So the 2nd Paradigm is the era of cooperation. The paradigm evolved over time as people learned that a strictly production-oriented approach didn’t take into account the interaction of the people involved in the process. This era was about two or more people working together towards shared goals. And the focus on acting together for a common purpose started to evolve in the early 1960s. Around this time, MIT management professor Douglas McGregor published his groundbreaking book, “The Human Side of Enterprise” in 1960, which introduced the concepts of Theory X and Theory Y. And this is stuff I teach in my management… when I taught management theory at university, these are the kind of things that I talked about.

Now, McGregor’s framework highlights the motivating role of job satisfaction, and argues that people can do their work without constant direct supervision. And he insisted that people are one of the most valuable assets driving organizational success. And I know that’s like “obvious” now. But in the 1960s, this was new age; this was crazy that people were an important part of productivity in a business. So we may be puzzled by this because the idea does seem obvious to us, but they weren’t obvious at the start of the 2nd Paradigm. This was, in fact, revolutionary management thinking in its day.

Now, during the time of the 2nd Paradigm, management consultant Peter Drucker developed the MBO process (Management by Objective), where managers and employees could identify common goals and define their areas of responsibility. This is all part of cooperation. Today’s organizations are much more cooperative. Old command-and-control methods have largely been replaced by much more openness and transparency than what we had in the 1st Paradigm. So while the cooperative model, or collaborative model, was a massive improvement from the strictly competitive, production-oriented model, it was still lacking the full potential of the human experience.

And so in the 1980s, John Naisbitt wrote in his groundbreaking book, Megatrends, that humanity is moving towards a “high-tech, high-touch” society, saying that the more technologically advanced we became, the more important was to become highly connected to people. Now, what a lot of people don’t know is, I read this book in the early 1980s. This was the genesis of my thinking about BNI and how putting together a group of people to work together for a common goal of increasing referrals in a structured process. In part, the seed of that came from having read “Megatrends” and John Naisbitt, and it’s one of the reasons why I was able to get John to contribute to a book that I did called “Masters of Networking,” because he really was the person that had me start thinking about the power of getting people together.

And this was several years before I started BNI, getting people together to network effectively in a relationship, in a professional relationship.

Now, it’s really important to note that this transition from one paradigm to another doesn’t happen overnight. It emerges by evolving over time.

So let’s go to the 3rd Paradigm, which is what the book is about. The 3rd Paradigm is the era of co-creation. Now this concept begins where cooperation leaves off. The difference between cooperation and co-creation is the difference between working together and creating together. You may collaborate on a project, but you co-create products and services. Co-creation is a significant step beyond cooperation. It’s about bringing different parties together to actually produce, improve, or customize a product or service.

While some scholars recognized the theory of co-creation in the late 20th century, it was really in the 21st century that the internet brought the concept to the forefront. Crowdsourcing has become a critical tool for engagement. Waze — apps like Waze, the navigation app used by millions of people is a good example of this concept. The widespread application of digital technology has made customer empowerment a must.

So society is rapidly moving from a passive to a more participatory consumer culture. Co-creation plays a key role in this, since today’s consumers want a say in creating new products and services or improving existing ones. In an article in the early 2000s, the Harvard Business Review talks about “Co-opting Customer Competence,” and how customers are transitioning from being a passive audience to being a more active player-becoming “co-creators as well as consumers of value.” And in this age of co-creation… and I think BNI was one of the leading organizations on co-creation, because in 1986 I formed the Board of Advisors and the Board of Advisors, made up of [BNI] members, created every single policy that exists in this organization. They either created the policy or approved the policies that were in existence, and they created many of them. They altered many of them. And so BNI has, from its early days, been the leader in co-creation.

And I believe that, in the age of co-creation, consumers want to work together with their favorite brands to ensure that products and services are adapted to meet their needs. In addition, many want to make sure that there’s a social cause related to the brand. And for those of you who don’t know, BNI, we have a foundation, we try to talk about the Foundation as often as possible. The BNI Foundation supports children in education. If you do a search on BNI Podcast, in quotation marks “BNI Foundation,” you’ll find many podcasts that have been done over the years, including several with my late wife, who was the co-founder of the BNI Foundation with me. And BNI has a social cause, and our social cause is children and education through the BNI Foundation.

So organizations engage in co-creation because they wish to foster the buy-in of stakeholder interest and increase the value through innovation. And Priscilla, that’s what this book is all about. It’s about the 3rd paradigm or co-creation. And as I mentioned in a previous episode where I talked about the book, episode 835, we surveyed 4000 people, and the book really talks at length about what works with co-creation, what doesn’t work with co-creation. And you don’t have to be a big company to employ the concepts of co-creation You can be a small company and start to use the power of co-creation into the 21st century.

And so I invite all my listeners to take a look at my book, “The 3rd Paradigm,” it’s on Amazon and in bookstores. And if you get a copy, would you please leave a review? Reviews really do help promote books and this book certainly mentions BNI multiple times and it’s great PR for the organization.