diegetic entrepreneurship: a documented attempt at inventing the embodied entrepreneur (draft 01)

8/3/2019 Diegetic Entrepreneurship: A Documented Attempt at Inventing the Embodied Entrepreneur (Draft 01)

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Diegetic EntrepreneurshipA Documented Attempt at Inventing the Embodied Entrepreneur

Matthew Manos

B.A., Design Media Arts

University of California Los Angeles, 2010

Submitted to the Program in Media Design, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree ofMaster of Fine Arts at the Art Center College of Design.

December 2011

Thesis Advisors

Ben Hooker, leadShannon Herbert, writing

Mike Milley, adjunct

Garnet Hertz, adjunct


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Table of Contents

Part I: Context (p. 3-13)

I a. Diegetic Entrepreneurship - 3

I b. Gillettes Other Model (The History of the Future) - 7

I c. The Embodied Entrepreneur - 11

Part II: Serendipitous Business Plan Generator (p. 13-25)

III a. The System - 13

III b. Specificity of Audience: The Merced Project - 18

III c. Toward Automation: 1,000 Businesses - 21

Part III: Future Direction (p. 26)

Part IV: Works Cited (p. 27)


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I a. Diegetic Entrepreneurship

"Mainly they were worried about the future, and they would badger us about what's going to happen

to us. Finally, I said: 'Look, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. This is the century in which

you can be proactive about the future; you don't have to be reactive. The whole idea of having

scientists and technology is that those things you can envision and describe can actually be built.' It

was a surprise to them and it worried them." - Alan Kay1

Numbers are a hindrance on history-making. Changing history through the production of cultural shifts, an

ambition at the root of entrepreneurship, is an act that is far too radical for a quantitative practice.

Entrepreneurs, and researchers of business often turn towards numbers to see how coordination or

reallocation can be optimized to provide a great benefit to either corporate or social entities. A quantitative

and theoretical stance like this is actually crippling to the radical thinking an entrepreneur is capable of,

limiting their ability to innovate that which does not exist and change theway we, as consumers and

human beings perceive the world around us, on both a macro and micro scale. Culture-shifting

entrepreneurs open possibilities for consumers to change the way they see themselves. What is a logo?

What is a business? If a logo is merely a representation of something, perhaps it is not limited to a vector

or typeface, but instead can be understood in terms of architectural structure. In the same way, perhaps a

business is not an exporter of goods and services, but instead a manufacturer of vision, narrative, and

critical discourse. Perhaps business is a way of seeing the world from the lens of the future as a way to

understand the here and now. The latter is what this essay explores.

Larger providers will engage in a frenzy of consolidations to acquire stockpiles of re-purposable

content. Diversity declines as the little guys continue to go out of business. This ugly situation will

continue until somebody smart enough to take advantage of the opportunity creates new businessmodels with which content - real, engaging content - can flourish. Again, business innovation is as

important as technological invention. We face a crisis in content - who will make it, how will it be paid

for, and what will it be worth in a new media world? - Brenda Laurel2

In the 18th Century, just 3 decades prior to the birth of Leland Stanford, Adam Smith defined

entrepreneur as a person who acts as an agent in transforming demand into supply. This specific

definition, the concept of an entrepreneur as a supplier of what the customer wants, is in agreement to

many definitions that preceded Smith. However, this was not a philosophy that remained a static definition

of the practice. In his book, The Design of Business, Roger Martin speaks of entrepreneurship and

innovation as a way of seeing the world not as it is, but as it could be. The book goes on to argue thattrue innovation stems from the exploration of problems that can not actually be found in history, or proven

by data. Perhaps in a more extreme use of language, Erik Reis offers up another take on the practice

1 Kay, Alan. Predicting The Future. Ecotopia, 20 May 2011. .

2 Laurel, Brenda. Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001. page 93
http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htmhttp://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm


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defining entrepreneurship as the act of creating something new under extreme uncertainty.3 One could

clearly see, from juxtaposing the 21st Century definition of the field with the 18th and and early 19th

century definitions, that entrepreneurship has evolved from a practice that supplies a demand to a

profession that creates demands.

"The husband and wife who open another delicatessen store or another Mexican restaurant in the

American suburb surely take a risk. But are they entrepreneurs? All they do is what has been done

many times before. They gamble on the increasing popularity of eating out in their area, but create

neither a new satisfaction nor new consumer demand... [...] Indeed, entrepreneurs are a minority

among new businesses. They create something new, something different; they change or transmute

values." - Peter Drucker4

Peter Drucker offers a perspective that frames entrepreneurship as a rare minority of business - claiming

that, in fact, not all business is entrepreneurial. However, while not all business is entrepreneurship, all

entrepreneurship is business. This is the specific difference between invention and entrepreneurship - it is

not solely about making something new, or speculating new ideas, but instead it is about seeing those

ideas through. It is about playing them out in the form of business, creating a space for people to exist

with the idea, and have an influence on it. But if not all business is entrepreneurship, is it possible that

entrepreneurship can be seen as a method for something more than that which we currently understand

or perceive to be business? While, as I have claimed, all entrepreneurship is business, perhaps that kind

of business should exist with different values. What if the rare breed of business that results from

entrepreneurship, instead, truly was, in Druckers words, something different.

" I should be clear in stating: This thesis does not explore business, it investigates entrepreneurship.

Business, like a painting, is a tangible outcome of a process, or a line of inquiry. It is a result that is

worked towards, it is expected. Entrepreneurship is the paint, the process that eventually results in

business. Occasionally, however, paint does not result in a painting, instead resulting in a mess. I am not

explicitly referring to a mess, as an act of defiance, or even a disruption. Instead, I am referring to

unexpected outcomes, tangible results that were not planned for, or that go against our intuition of what a

painting, or business, is.

" Lifestyle, Social, and Serial are the current ways of defining an Entrepreneurs intentions. An

understanding of these three approaches to entrepreneurship is crucial as we begin to examine the need

for a new category. The Lifestyle Entrepreneur is a catalyst for enterprise that is motivated by a deep

passion for the goods and services they produce. This can be often found in local, brick and mortar,

business as well as extreme niches and family owned business, passed down from generation to

generation. The principal of a lifestyle enterprise takes sincere pride in the tradition of their business aswell as the integrity of their exports, placing that love before revenue. Perhaps a more greedy category

of entrepreneurial endeavor is known as the serial entrepreneur. A serial entrepreneur is a business

innovator that is attracted to profit and tends to see a value and opportunity in everything. These are the

3 Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (New York: Crown Business, 2011), Cover Jacket

4 Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper, 1985), 21-22


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kinds of innovators that will sell something they feel no passion towards just to turn a profit. Revenue is

the primary concern. Businesses that are the result of such intentions tend to be knock-off brands, or

other products and services that lack originality and innovation. The final category within the field of

entrepreneurship is the Social Entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur is a designer of business whose

intentions are not in capital gain, but instead in the advancement of the greater good of society. A social

enterprise is one that thinks and operates as a non-profit organization would, but has interesting design in

its planning so as to be able to sustain itself and actually create a profit as opposed to relying on funding

from the government or local donors. This innovative approach to business is often referred to as good

capitalism, a response to the greed and excess the business industry is so often criticized for. While

each of these three approaches to entrepreneurship are drastically different, they each are connected in

the sense that they are reactionary. It is believed by business theorists that consumers only know what

they need after a change or event has taken place.5 Therefore entrepreneurship is always a "response." I

would like to question this outlook on entrepreneurship by suggesting a new category within the field that

is not a response, but a catalyst. Diegetic Entrepreneurship.

...if we look at the big hitters in the 20th century, like the Xerox machine, like the personal computer,

like the pocket calculator, all of these things did something else. They weren't contaminations of

existing things. They weren't finding a need and filling it. They created a need that only they could fill.

-Alan C. Kay6

The field of business, and the role of entrepreneurs need to change drastically. We have entered a time in

which we lack the capability to foresee what technological advancements and capabilities will take place

in the next 4 years. The 10 most sought after jobs of 2010 did not exist in 2004, and I argue that the top

30 jobs of 2017 do not exist as I sit at my desk, typing this today. So how do we, as designers,

understand the future of markets, and the future of business design? We make it up.

"These bespoke futures go beyond profit and loss statements, to create an opportunity space for the

imagination, enabling individuals and independent groups to create visions of the future that inspire

them. The point is to move from P&L to V&Fprofit and loss to vision and futurityfrom ROI to ROV

the Return on Investment to a Return on Vision." - Peter Lunenfeld7

In October, 2007, a bronze plaque suddenly appeared in Honolulus Chinatown. The plaque, designed in

memory of the communitys resilient response to the the outbreak of H8H2, a deadly strain of influenza

that hit the streets of Chinatown in 2016, 10 years in the future. The project goes on to play out the

scenario by installing official notices posted by the Nation Agency for Investigative Epidemiology, missing

5 Spinosa, Charles, Fernando Flores, and Hubert L. Dreyfus. Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, DemocraticAction, and The Cultivation of Solidarity. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997. page 41

6 Kay, Alan. Predicting The Future. Ecotopia, 20 May 2011. .

7 Lunenfeld, Peter. Bespoke Futures: Media Design and the Future of the Future, Think Tank: Adobe Design Center,2007. 20 May. 2011
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/lunenfeld.htmlhttp://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htmhttp://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/lunenfeld.htmlhttp://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/lunenfeld.htmlhttp://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/lunenfeld.htmlhttp://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/lunenfeld.htmlhttp://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htmhttp://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm


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person posters, and even advertisements for the entrepreneurial ventures that result from the tragedy.

The Bird Cage, a third iteration of the Found Futures: Chinatown series, was created by Stuart Candy and

Jake Dunagan as way to form dialogue around a future tragedy in the city.8

Fig 01. A diegetic bronze plaque installed in memory of the communitys response to the outbreak of H8H2 (left). A selection of

diegetic advertisements. Possible, entrepreneurial, endeavors in response to the future scenario (right).

The project leverages diegetic entrepreneurship as a method of futurology, and community engagement.

Through the design and installation of diegetic advertisements, the community is able to engage with the

future through the familiar and accessible format of business. In a way, the posters, as they exist in such

a familiar format, installed amongst others of their kind, are a different kind of augmented reality that adds

a layer from the future to our present. This layer, a new space for business development, subverts the

notion of entrepreneurship as something that seeks opportunities in our own reality, and instead imagines

a radically new space for business to live. In doing so, the project gives a new perspective, introducing

business as an entry-point into the study of the future.

" The development of a practice that merges the words possible and business together raises

questions about the use and relevance of business as a medium. What if business, as a discipline, is not

representative of a response to current needs and desires, but instead a means of communicating

concepts derived from future scenarios?

Imaginary thinking, the envisioning of narrative structures that are played out straight in ones mind

or actions, is a necessity in the field of business. Without invention and risk-taking, the world becomes

synonymous to a treadmill. I argue that the innovation process can be pushed to a radical extreme, a

level none of us can possibly foresee or imagine. This requires a substantial risk, calling for the

entrepreneur to not be one with capitalistic and financial obsession, but instead an innovator of fiction to

inspire and frame futures that we can understand and work towards. To succeed in this age of

technological innovation that has proven to spread faster than a bad rash, we really have no choice but to

work in terms of fantasy. I should be clear in my definition of success here by stating that success is

measured here by the impact of change in a cultures understanding of theworld around them. If that

8 Stuart Candy, The Bird Cage, http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/bird-cage.html (Oct 2007).
http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/bird-cage.htmlhttp://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/bird-cage.htmlhttp://futuryst.blogspot.com/2007/10/bird-cage.html


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substantial impact of change includes a revenue, then so be it, but that is not the priority here. Diegetic

Entrepreneurship takes what is expected of the future, and turns it on its head in order to change the

ways in which we understand the world, and the way we understand the future of business design. It is a

method of story-telling through imagining new business and a tool to help imagine new innovations within

the business industry in order to craft the culture of the future, or critique the culture of the present.

I b. Gillettes Other Model (The History of the Future)

King Camp Gillette was a brilliantly conflicted figure amongst the greatest entrepreneurs in the 19th and

20th centuries. Gillette is best known for the invention of the razor, which pioneered a brilliant new model

of business, The Razor and Blades Business Model, and Freebie Marketing, both strategic business

tactics still in use today.9 While working as a salesman for the Crown Cork and Seal Company, Gillette

saw great opportunity in the design of a product that served its purpose, and then was tossed in the

trash. One-time-use products that foster long-term, repeat, customers. While shaving his face one

morning with a razor that lacked a strong edge, the idea to create a thin sheet of razor blade came uponGillette, thus giving birth to the Gillette razor we have today.10

Fig 02. Patent illustration of the Gillette Razor, the product that Gillette is best known for, today (left). Portrait of King Camp Gillette.

This image is used often when describing man in his books (right).

Perhaps a lesser known side of Gillette is the fact that, aside from being a successful business man, hewas also a utopian socialist, an entrepreneur with a strong disgust towards the competitive nature of the

capitalist model that dominates North American economics. This passion inspired Gillette to be a prolific

9http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free

10Biography: King C. Gillette: The Man and His Wonderful Shaving Device, by Russell B. Adams, Jr. (Boston: Little,Brown & Co., 1978).
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_freehttp://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/gillette.htmlhttp://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/gillette.htmlhttp://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_freehttp://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free


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writer of books that sit between the genres of fiction and non-fiction. Gillette was an obsessive planner,

writing hundreds of pages that aimed to highlight every last logistic element and business plan for his

utopian vision. In his first novel, The Human Drift, Gillette wrote about the chaos of contemporary

existence, and a prospectus for the alternative world he dreamed of building to fix it.

"...the drift of commercial affairs is moving with constantly accelerating force toward a common focus,

that focus being the final control of the commercial field by a few mammoth corporations... there is a

rapid increase of those who are masters or proprietors; and thus, in combination with the rapid

improvement in machinery for displacing manual labor, is the main cause of depression in business.

Hard times are here to stay, and our intervals of good times must become fewer and shorter as the

years pass. This must result in increase of poverty and crime, such crimes as have their birth in

desperation, and send a thrill of horror throughout the world. Shall we wait till the dagger falls, or is it

our duty to recognize the danger which threatens, and avert if we can?"11

Interestingly, the concerns expressed in this segment arguably raise the idea that Gillettes writing may

have served as a vision for the future of the United States of Americas current economic crisis, as

brought to the forefront as of late by the Occupy Movement.

" The Human Drift, as a text, represents an advocation of a new style of industry, and new social

planning. In it, Gillette goes into intense, obsessive, details about his vision. The world of Gillette, named

The United Company, was designed to exist in the Niagara Falls. During the time in which Gillette

conceived of this alternative world, the first large electrical generating facilities at Niagara Falls, utilizing

the alternating current system of Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, were being built. Inspired by

this, Gillette plans for a world powered solely by the electrical currents produced by the falls. The space

itself is designed to accommodate the entire population of America at the time, with room for an

expansion to include 30 million more inhabitants, a plan to allow the space to adapt as population grows

in the future. As competition is the biggest enemy, in Gillettes eye, The United Company was proposed to

be designed in a way that terminated the possibility of competitive business by establishing one

establishment per product. Distribution plants were planned for 100 cities across the country, with good

distributed in an exact ration to the population itself. Gillettes vision for the cities of America established

the hope of eventually disintegrating all cities, drawing the population to the manufacturing centre itself in

order to create the only city on the North American continent. Overall, Gillettes vision called for an

extreme mechanization of our current systems - extreme efficiency that aimed to lead to result in more

wealth for the society as a whole, to share equally. By the people, for the people. Of course Gillettes

vision never came into fruition, but aspects of it have appeared, perhaps without direct intention or

realization, in the work of modern entrepreneurs, and business theorists." In the Innovators Dilemma, Clayton Christensen argues that, to truly innovate, the entrepreneur

has to partner with the consumer to create a space for collaborative discovery. This relatively modern

theory (dating back to the late 80s / early 90s) draws parallels to the vision of Gillette, in that it recognizes

success not as the result of one individual, but instead as a collaborative effort.

11 Gillette, King Camp. The Human Drift. page 5


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Markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed: Suppliers and customers must discover them

together. Not only are the market applications for disruptive technologies unknown at the time of

their development, they are unknowable. The strategies and plans that managers formulate for

confronting disruptive technological change, therefore, should be plans for learning and discovery

rather than plans for execution. This is an important point to understand, because managers who

believe they know a markets future will plan and invest very differently from those who recognize

the uncertainties of a developing market.12

This collaborative approach to innovation that takes place between the supplier and the customer, as

Christensen explains, allows for a voyage into unknown spaces, where communal exploration,

dissemination, and discovery can emerge. A perspective such as this, which embraces uncertainty, and

collective discovery, can benefit from the design of systems that leverage community engagement as a

medium for facilitating such exploration.

" Another modern example of an aspect of Gillettes vision in action is The Public School. The Public

School is a systemic art piece, and established institution, founded by Sean Dockray. What began as a

seemingly simple and tongue-in-cheek concept: the idea that a public school could facilitate a crowd-

sourced curriculum and open participation, evolved into a network of schools around the world. While the

institution is not, itself, an official academic institution, it does, in fact, hold classes that the public can

sign up to attend. The Public School began at the Telic Arts Exchange, another venture of Dockray, in Los

Angeles, but also resides in Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, Durham, Helsinki, New York, Philadelphia, and

San Juan. As a school with no curriculum, The Public School operates through an interface that creates a

public space for the proposing of classes, and the subsequent signing up by those who hold interest in

the subject matter. Depending on the publics interest, the class then evolves as a venue for tangible

conversation and alternative education on an infinite range of topics.

Fig 03. Sean Dockray in front of The Public School (right). Inside The Public School, at Telic Arts Exchange in Chinatown, Los

Angeles California.

Comparing The Public School to generative art, as David Elliot noted in a 2008 Interview with Dockray, is

actually quite accurate. While the resulting image of generative art can be beautiful and provocative, the

12 Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovators Dilemma (New York: Harper, 1997), 165.


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piece is not actually the artwork itself, as Elliot claims, but instead the by-product of the piece, which is

the code or process that generated it. While the classes themselves are interesting, it is really the system

as a whole, and the facilitation of it, that is evaluated as a piece of work.

The facilitator is usually someone who gets something done, the lubricant in a process to achieve

a goal. But, I think it can be more like a dirty lubricant. It can fuck up a process a little bit, make it

self-reflective, inefficient, awkward, etc. - Sean Dockray in conversation with David Elliot13

Dockray offers up a unique perspective on facilitation, framing it as an art form that flips the corporate

strategy on its head to yield interesting results. As an entrepreneurial practice, The Public School is an

interesting model that provides nothing more than a space, and a framework, relying on the audience to

define the rest. This take on business design begins to foster an interesting conversation around the

potential for the open-source movement to be successfully applicable to the business industry, and to the

practice of entrepreneurship.

" Like the Public School, Diegetic Entrepreneurship, develops a framework that relies on a system to

see the concept through. It becomes a project that goes beyond the maker to initiate an alternative force

of cognition and representation. A machine, of sorts, that creates based on the systemic initiative of the

creator. Because of the inherent mystery of authorship, the result of either process, as with traditional

entrepreneurship, bares great risk of failure. However, unlike entrepreneurship as our society currently

understands and values it, Diegetic Entrepreneurship, like The Public School, focuses on the process of

creation as opposed to the output itself.

" While The Human Drift advocated Gillettes vision for a new style of industry, and a new social

planning, Gillettes second piece, World Corporation, served as the prospectus for a company that

would be set up to create this vision. This document, written nearly 20 years after the initial text, is written

in the style of a business plan of sorts, highlighting all of the by-laws and logistics of Gillettes imaginary

enterprise, World Corporation.

"'World Corporation' represents individual intelligence and force combined, centralized and

intelligently directed. Individuals are OF the corporate mind, but are not THE corporate mind.

'World Corporation' will possess all knowledge of all men, and each individual mind will find complete

expression through the great Corporate Mind.

'World Corporation' will have life everlasting. Individual man will live his life and pass into the great

beyond; but this great Corporate Mind will live on through the ages, always absorbing and perfecting,

for the utilization and benefit of all the inhabitants on earth.'14

Gillettes vision is based around the development of a system that continues to become more efficient

and evolved based around the needs of society at the time of it's conception. The corporate mind, itself, is

not entrepreneurial - it does not create new, it simply takes what exists, and adapts it to improve society.

13 David Elliot, The Public School, http://spd.e-rat.org/writing/david-elliott-interview.html (May 2008).

14 Gillette, King Camp. World Corporation. page 45-46
http://spd.e-rat.org/writing/david-elliott-interview.htmlhttp://spd.e-rat.org/writing/david-elliott-interview.htmlhttp://spd.e-rat.org/writing/david-elliott-interview.html


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I c. The Embodied Entrepreneur

The Embodied Entrepreneur is a parallel being, a mimicry, and a representation, of the thoughts and

values of an individual that starts things. Successfully invented, the Embodied Entrepreneur will live

alone, it will require no input or maintenance by mankind, but instead will maintain mankind itself. When

humans lose the ability to create that which is new, the Embodied Entrepreneur is introduced to innovate

in our place, to take the place of some of business greatest minds to lead when leadership and vision by

the human species alone is irrelevant, and impossible.

"'World Corporation' is a business plan of absorption by conversion, - a simple means of transferring

the world's wealth from individual control to ownership and control by the people." 15

As a business plan of absorption by conversion, World Corporation is a machine, of sorts, that requires

human input. Therefore the system designs itself to be reliant on human perception and intuition, lacking

it's own capabilities for entrepreneurial endeavor and innovation in a time in which man alone may not be

capable of providing that input.

" As King Camp Gillette himself states, the progress of humanity is dependent on the birth of ideas,

and "if individual minds should cease to give birth to ideas of improvement or discovery, the progress of

man would cease."16 If this statement is of serious concern, then why does the machine itself not have

entrepreneurial capability? As in - why does the machine lack the capability to think on it's own, it strategic

preparation for this distant-future in which the human mind cripples in it's ability to conceive of the new?

"Humans are governed by two clocks: the very slow-ticking clock of human evolution and the fast-

accelerating clock of technological progress. The result of these two clocks not synching up is the

human brain (and the public policy our brains generate) is unable to keep up with the complexenvironment around us."17 - Rebecca Costa

As Research Scientists in the field of Quantum Physics attempt discovery, breakthrough is revealed in

that which is counterintuitive. For example, 0.999... is equal to 1. In this space, human intuition becomes

irrelevant because the areas explored are not comparable to that of any past experience. The same can

be said about the very distant future. Both are spaces in which common sense, alone, is considered

shortsighted. In this space as well as other domains in which expertise is not possible, like stock picking

or long-term political strategic forecasting, experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey.18 As

we continue to rapidly move towards a future, and past experience exponentially divides from present

15 ibid. page 65

16 Gillette, King Camp. World Corporation. page 152-153

17 Costa, Rebecca. The Watchmans Rattle. Quoted by The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies..

18 Luscombe, Belinda. 10 Questions for Daniel Kahneman.


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conditions, as Rebecca Costa illustrates with the two clocks of human governance, an era in which

innovation by human kind will come to a screeching halt and mankind will become an unnecessary

component, marking the end of entrepreneurship.

Fig 04. An adaptation of Stuart CandyCone of Possibility Space

19

. Illustrating the cone as a timeline as opposed to a present pointof perception in order to convey the separation of present conditions and past experience as a space that is exponential, not

observational.

But, as Steve Jobs states in an unknown interview that was aired as part of a recent PBS documentary,

the world relies on mankind to change it. Without a human cog in the global machine, the life of

individuals, and the well-being of the collective, loses meaning. Along with human input in the distant

future this thesis designs for, change vanishes to enter mankind into an era of eternal sameness.

When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and youre life is just to live your

life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun,

save a little money. That is a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple

fact. And that is: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter

than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people

can use. Once you learn that, you ll never be the same again.20 - Steve Jobs

While machines, specifically Artificial Intelligence systems, have the ability to operate autonomously, they

still require human parameters. How can machines become entrepreneurial - if man does become

irrelevant, how can systems of intelligence innovate without human input in order to dodge the impending

era of sameness? My thesis designs for this space by researching and developing an embodied

entrepreneur, with the aspiration to personally invent an entirely autonomous system that replicatesentrepreneurial behavior. The outcome is a documented attempt at creating a business that is innovated

without human input. The project creates a sealant for the hole in Gillettes vision, which is the necessity

of human input, in order to better prepare for a scenario in which our past experience rapidly loses

19 Stuart Candys original diagram, the basis of this diagram: http://diegeticbusiness.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/ad2yuelcqaahetj.png

20http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/11/30/must-watch-46-seconds-of-steve-jobs-on-changing-the-world/
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relevance in the field of entrepreneurship as a way to form a parallel dialogue with the theories of Guy

Debord, in order to hyperbolize the concept of advanced capitalism. A scenario in which "all that once was

directly lived has become mere representation."21

-

II. Serendipitous Business Plan Generator

II a. The System

The Serendipitous Business Plan Generator leverages hybridity and serendipity to create a system for

generating new perspectives on the process of creating ideas for business. The root of all digital media is

a replication or translation of analog systems and data. Often times, complex interactions and digitally-

based systems are best explained through simple materials as a way to generate ideas without the

burden of incorporating technology in the initial stages of a project. As a result, the SerendipitousBusiness Plan Generator projects development begins with a series of physical explorations, allowing for

a rapid prototyping of the infrastructure itself in order to provide a series of high-resolution insights on the

implications of the system. The first of these iterations: a walk around the city, and a set of simple rules:

1. Walk one Block. Take a picture. This is your product.

2. Walk one more block. Take a picture. This is your market.

3. Walk one more block. Take a picture. This is your location / industry.

Fig 05. Generative Business Output 01: Park Benches for Dogs at Railroad Stations

While this initial experiment in designing a SerendipitousBusiness Plan Generator yields amusing results

in terms ofspontaneityand humor, the outcomes are superficial in that they do not go beyond a chuckle.

The method, instead, seems to develop a method for crafting really bad, yet potentially viable, business

models. By basing it in reality, the project becomes trapped byknown, familiar,spaces.

" In response to the concerns raised in the initial exploration, the second iteration of the

Serendipitous Business Model Generator takes more ownership of the content that is connected by the

21 Debord G.E. (1967): thesis 17, 42


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user of the system through the development of a card game. The mechanics of the system introduce

three decks of cards: Industry to Modify, Scenario, and Horizon Element. The content itself, adapted from

the outlook reports of ARUP, the Institute for the Future, and the New Media Consortium, aims to

introduce futurist methodologies that foster foresight and innovation into the generator as a way to

remove participants from the present tense.

Fig 06. Serendipitous Business Plan Generator card game version #1. Paper prototype.

Upon conducting an initial round of user-studies, it is made clear that the context provided in this mock-up

of the card game is not enough to foster interesting results in the design of these business proposals.

However, on account of there is little to no content / context provided in this prototype, this is nota

surprising discovery. Through further conversation with the participants, an interest in competition

(winning vs. losing), multi-player mechanics, and the thought behind the aesthetics of the system

emerges. At this point in the development of the project, it is assumed by the participants that the system

is a game as opposed to a starting point for the automation of entrepreneurial thought.


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Fig 07. Pokemon Cards, an example of a CCG, or Collectible Card Game, serves as an inspiration for the interface of the next

iteration of the Serendipitous Business Plan Generator. Each card consists of a large graphic, a title, and descriptions of the use and

capabilities of each card. Consumers purchase multiple decks in order to collect specific cards of desire, and assemble their

collected items into a deck ready for play against opponents.

To ground the third iteration, I decided to make a site-visit to Game Empire in Pasadena, a recently

opened board and card game store. During the visit, and after several conversations, I purchased a

series of card games with the intentions of taking them apart to analyze their structure. I became

interested in the conditions that made these games challenging, addicting, fun, and satisfying. Through

my conversations with store employees and enthusiasts, I was reminded that there are a vast array of

mechanics to choose from. However, the most attractive mechanic that I found in my research was CCG,

or Collectible Card Game, a genre that requires a high degree of strategy, customization, and narrative.

Fig 08. Serendipitous Business Plan Generator card game version #2. Borrowing from the interface of Collectible Card Games,

SBPG v2 consists of 90 playing cards, with 30 cards per deck. While this initial prototype includes a point system, that aspect of the

game was later removed due to a lack of interest in the competitive nature of the game.


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The second iteration of the generator consists of three decks, slightly modified form the initial system:

1. Scenario: the conditions in which our business is being started

2. Opportunity: the emerging technologies / phenomenons that will be leveraged in our venture

3. Modify Element: the existing business, product, or industry that will be modified / developed

Fig 09. After a successfulfirst round of user studies, I chose to shift my focus for the second round away from the design audience,

and invited my colleague Kelvin Hoto participate. Kelvin received his MBA from UCLA, is the Executive Director of My Own

Business Inc., and is a Board Member of the Social Enterprise Alliance.

The rules of operation: Draw one card from each of the three decks to form your business. While the

generator can be used by an individual, it isrecommendedto play with an advisor / partner. The key / rule

is that your generated business be made tangible by writing a business plan, no matter how strange or

unfortunate your combinations may be.

After providing instructions on how to use the SBMG, the pool of participants, which includes both

seasoned entrepreneurs and colleagues in the Media Design Program, are provided with a template for

writing a business plan. Together, we walk through each section of the plan to play out the following:

1. Company Name

2. Executive Summary

3. Products / Services

4. Market Strategy

From video game hospitals to cyborg apartments, the cards generate serendipitous business that is

outside the realm of expertise of each participant, allowing the system to enable creation in unfamiliar

spaces. In doing so, the system begins to reveal itself as having an underlying potential to design new

ways of thinking, an aspect of the generator which is crucial in moving toward the further development of

the project as an autonomous system.


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Fig 10. Three out of the 20 business plans that were generated throughout the user studies. Participants were given a simple

business plan template to fill out by hand. The mode of representation was limited to words.

The sum of each of these iterations and focus groups result in the cultivation of two parallel strategies for

moving forward with the creation of content for the final deck of cards. The first: facilitating bizarre

innovation. To get results with deeper layers of meaning and unpredictability, the opportunity decks

content is re-considered, allowing for strange opportunities that have yet to exist, such as Reversed

Entropy, as a way to accommodate the unknown while generating business plans that are not

conceivable by man alone. The second: mundane proposals. Contrary to this strategy, but parallel in

relationship to the concept of embodiment in the field of entrepreneurship, the content of the deck can

also be designed to produce more mundane, ordinary, business plans as a way to suspend disbelief

around the business plans themselves, and the root of their authorship.

Fig 11. Final analog version of the Serendipitous Business Plan Generator in collaboration with Los Angeles based artist Ben Tegel.

Each card in the three decks has a custom illustration, each deck is color-coated.


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The final deck of cards, the participants outputs, and the preceding process of the final iteration of the

analog Serendipitous Business Plan Generator, are a preliminary investigation into the development of an

autonomous system for generating business plans. Through the series of prototypes and conversations

documented throughout this essay, understandings of how the system can best operate and function are

revealed, allowing for the development of a breadth of resources that enable the project to engage with a

more specific audience as a way to prepare the eventually-autonomous system for different levels of

engagement with the communities or individuals that will require its vision.

II b. Specificity of Audience: The Merced Project

The City of Merced, known as the Gateway to Yosemite, is home to a population of nearly 80,000

individuals, about 30% of which are currently living below the poverty line. Homes at the median level in

Merced saw a dramatic loss in value, 62%, the biggest drop anywhere in the country, according to data

from Forbes. According to Zillow, by the end of 2009, house prices in Merced had returned to the levels

seen over a decade earlier. This crisis has established a strong community of individuals and

organizations that are actively seeking rich new ways of thinking about commerce and innovation, in

order to transform the community into a rich space for survival, ingenuity, and break through.

" Several organizations within Merced decided to take action on these aspirations by developing a

town-hall meeting of sorts to bring leading voices from around the nation to lead the community into new

modes of thinking. I was fortunate enough to have been approached to develop a workshop for the

community of Merced at this gathering. The attendees of the gathering were a richly diverse audience of

about 100 individuals that collectively represented the community of Merced. From farmers to students,

all cultures and professions within the community were accounted for, making it a rich space to design a

workshop that was very specific to the context and histories of Merced. In this space, I piloted a version ofmy Serendipitous Business Plan Generator (SBPG) that was designed specifically for this gathering. The

SBPG works by juxtaposing three components: Scenario, Opportunity, and the Modify Element.

Scenario: The situation (i.e. Growth, Collapse, etc.) in which the participant is starting their business.

This element is designed to give insight into the resources they will be able to leverage for their business

plan.

Opportunity: The emerging opportunity (i.e. Augmented Reality, Cyborgs, etc.) that the participant can

take advantage of and consider when conceptualizing their business plan.

Modify Element: The specific space, industry, product, or service (i.e. Coffee Shop, Lamp, etc.) your

business plan is in conversation with, adapting, or transforming.


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Fig 12. Presenting the game mechanics, and introducing the workshop designed specifically for the community of Merced to take

full advantage of. In a sport coat.

While the Scenario and Opportunity decks were only slightly developed from earlier iterations, the Modify

Element deck was completely re-visited to speak to this specific community. For the Modify Element deck,

students from UC Merced were prompted to explore the community, and take photographs of spaces that

illustrated both an essence of the community, and prominent issues at hand in the county. By getting the

students (residents of Merced) involved in this preliminary aspect of the experience, the system became

specifically designed for the City of Merced as a way to tease out ideas and concerns unique to this

community.

" These images were placed on 10 different roundtables around the community center, and

participants were prompted to select their seat based on the space depicted in the photograph, assuming

that the participants would select based on some kind of prior experience or emotional connection withthe imagery depicted in the photo. Shortly after, the additional two cards (opportunity and scenario) were

administered to the participants along with a business plan template, and full instructions for the exercise.


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Fig 13. Each table housed a diverse group of Merced community members, working together to strategize their business proposal

for the community of Merced, using the Serendipitous Business Plan Generator (left). Throughout the the activity, I spent time at

each table to work with the participants on their ideas, and clarify any issues or concerns centered around the system itself (right).

In 30 minutes, the participants were prompted to develop a concept for a business that would exist in

Merced that considered all three of the generated components as restrictions in the making process. In

order to foster a bit of friendly competition amongst the groups, the community was informed half way

through the exercise that some tables were given the same opportunities to capitalize on, thus creating

direct competition between the groups in order to push the ideas beyond the top-level, initial, concepts.

" After 30 minutes of rapid business generation, each group delivered a pitch to the audience as a

whole, presenting the details of their business plans while their ideas were noted on a series of posters.

After each presentation, the posters were pinned to the walls of the community center, and the community

was asked to vote on the venture that would best benefit the community at large.

Fig 14. A participant pitches their groups idea to the community (left). The participants as a whole vote on the business they wish to

see come to life in the community of Merced (right).


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The problem with Social Innovation is that it puts the entrepreneur(s) on a pedestal. In doing so, the

process of innovation becomes framed as for the community as opposed to with the community, inevitably

neglecting the edges of an issue at hand, resulting in a lot of clean looking shiny things that impose a set

of values and beliefs around a communitys problems. I am interested in how The Merced Project was

able to leverage corporate innovation tactics within a specific community as a way to tease out

information about the culture of this space of crisis. Ethnographers often work with entrepreneurs in

communities to seek new markets and opportunities, but what if the end goal was not to walk away with a

set of solutions to capitalize on? The Merced Project begins to explore designs ability to shift the role of

an entrepreneur away from solving problems, focusing instead on working with a community to tease out

new problems specific to their interests. I am interested in how this trajectory could be pushed even

further through the development of a series of design interventions inspired / informed by the results of

the workshop in order to bring the ideas to the forefront of the community at large.

II c. Towards Automation: 1,000 Businesses

The initial series of explorations, iterations, and user studies of the analog Serendipitous Business Plan

Generator provide a grounding for an additional component to the system: automation. This iteration of

the Serendipitous Business Plan Generator steps closer towards an automated system (as opposed to

the 100% analog card game) in order to begin exploring the kinds of business plans an entrepreneurial

machine might be capable of writing.

" 1,000 Businesses is a compilation of 1,000 algorithmically generated executive summaries that

are written by the Serendipitous Executive Summary Generator, a semi-autonomous web app developed

using the online MyGenGen platform. A colleague of mine, Nick Fehr, originally developed this tool as a

way to easily create single-function websites that could help you decide what sandwich to order at

Subway, for example. I decided to leverage this software to develop a set of algorithms through the

design of a series of word lists and sentence structures that generate Executive Summaries, the basis of

all business plans, and entrepreneurial endeavor.

The system works like this:

1. The algorithm begins with a sentence structure that has certain words differentiated from the rest

of the sentence through the use of {brackets}.

2. The words within the {brackets}, and the sentence structures themselves, are randomized by

pulling from a list of options for words and sentence formations that I provided in a database.3. Every time the user clicks GIVE ME ANOTHER BUSINESS MODEL, the page is refreshed, and

a new statement with randomized key words, and an alternative sentence structure, is generated.

The initial export from the generator did not successfully accomplish the goals of the project due to the

fact that the sentences being generated are so clearly rooted in an algorithm, a fact made clear by the

obvious root of the sentences authorship - they lack coherence, and are too comedic to foster a


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Fig 16. Data input process. Opportunity: The Cloud. Screenshot.


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Fig 18. The Serendipitous Business Plan Algorithm v1


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Part IV: Future Direction

Diegetic Entrepreneurshipis a documented attempt at inventing an embodied entrepreneur that is free of

human input. My goal for this thesis work is to develop a fully functioning business that is conceptualized

and launched entirely by a system I create. The process and iterative nature of the work developed thus

far has been intentionally made transparent, as a way to recognize that it is the task of inventing such a

system, as opposed to the end result of my endeavor, that is the project.In this spirit, over the next few

months, the project will continue on as a documented attempt. Each attempt acts as a stepping stone to

gradually get closer and closer to forming a company that is made by an Embodied Entrepreneur. The

project will develop through a series of phases. The results of each specific phase will inform my

decisions for moving forward to meet my goal to end the project with a functioning business.

Task #1: Create a Fully Functioning Serendipitous Business Plan Generator

I am interested in pushing my algorithm further to create a fully functioning, autonomous, system. I am

interested in what might happen if each section of the business plan is taken through the algorithm at the

same time, drawing from keywords, and potentially sentence structures, beyond my own creation. The

result of which would generate a complete business plan (market strategy, sales channels, etc.), written

entirely through a generative algorithm. Once this system is in place, I will generate 650 additional

business plans, bringing the total generated to 1,000.

-

Working in a very systemic manner, I will evaluate each of these business plans, or leverage an additional

system to do so, and work towards making it real through the development of a brand, advertising

campaign, website, and customer base. The project will be considered a success only after the firsttransaction between myself and a consumer takes place. As a result, the thesis project will culminate as a

book that makes transparent the entire process of forming the business - archiving the founding story of

my new company, and my experience of working under an embodied entrepreneurs vision.


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Part V: Works Cited

Adams, Russell B. Jr. King C. Gillette: The Man and His Wonderful Shaving Device. Boston: Little, Brown

" & Co., 1978.

Anderson, Chris. Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. Wired Magazine, 23 Feb. 2008

" .

Candy, Stuart. The Bird Cage. The Skeptical Futuryst, Oct. 2007

" .

Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovators Dilemma. New York: Harper, 1997.

Costa, Rebecca. The Watchmans Rattle. Quoted by The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

" 19 Nov. 2011 .

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New Zealand: Rebel Press, 1983.

Drucker, Peter. Innovation and Entrepreneurship. New York: Harper, 1985.

Elliot, David. The Public School. May 2008 .

Gillette, King Camp. The Human Drift. New Era Publishing Co., 1894.

Gillette, King Camp. World Corporation. The New England News Company, 1910.

Kay, Alan. Predicting The Future. Ecotopia, 20 May 2011.

" .

Laurel, Brenda. Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001.

Lunenfeld, Peter. Bespoke Futures: Media Design and the Future of the Future, Think Tank: Adobe

" Design Center, 2007. 20 May. 2011

" .

Luscombe, Belinda. 10 Questions for Daniel Kahneman. 28 Nov. 2011

" .

Panzarino, Matthew. 46 seconds of Steve Jobs on changing the world. 30 Nov. 2011

"


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Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup. New York: Crown Business, 2011.

Spinosa, Charles, Fernando Flores, and Hubert L. Dreyfus. Disclosing New Worlds:

" Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and The Cultivation of Solidarity. Cambridge: The MIT

" Press, 1997.

diegetic entrepreneurship: a documented attempt at inventing the embodied entrepreneur (draft 01)

Documents