Why I’m Intentionally Losing Money in this Tough Economy

The Markets Institute

You might note that I haven’t posted for a while. While I would like to say that I’ve been busy at the Winter Olympics, the truth is I’ve been heads-down on the launch of a new non-profit, non-partisan research unit, The Markets Institute.

The idea for the Institute came from the incredible amount of data continually collected by Moddition. While we focus on clients, to do what we do, we literally have to track virtually every industry, every sector, from their ideas to the final sales of their products and services.

With all that incoming information and analysis that goes into extracting useful understanding, there was a great deal of value that could come from looking at the big picture, rather than just at solutions for a specific client.

In this case, I had two ways to approach this. Following Moddition’s own cardinal rules, I could create a new set of information products that cover the issues and the solutions, and sell them to businesses. This would leverage what we already have in place to create new income streams.

However, I chose another direction.

I realized the answer was in something I had done for many years at the Institute for Security and Intelligence (Stanford, CA) as a Senior Research Fellow: identify emerging issues and challenges, develop solutions for them, and educate the appropriate constituency on implementing the solutions.

Instead of packaging the research and solutions for sale, I created a non-profit unit that will present the information to the general public. Moddition will fully fund the Institute, so there is never a concern about fund raising.

My CXO friends who live by Ayn Rand may not appreciate the decision. But the truth is, our national economy is in a most precarious state. There is no small number of new challenges on the horizon as well. The next number of years will be tenuous at best, and success, let alone a recovery, depends in great measure on learning the new rules. Rules that even now are being discovered, rather than written.

That being said, the big issues we cover need to be released openly. I view it as a duty to help us get through these times, and get to where we need to be in the future. I want to ensure that future is about success, not succumb.

After all, you can’t sell if there are no customers to buy.

Check out the Markets Institute at www.MarketsInstitute.org and our first analysis project on how new buying behaviors are using social networks and leveraging social media to quickly hype deals, build hope, and then abandon deals in a flock, at www.MicrobubbleEconomy.com.