Page - (000051) - in Knowledge and Networks

41 serve diverse labor markets in the context of increasing socioeconomic polarization, the type of system I advocate is one that should have the support of local and federal governments and other public and private organizations to sustain continual employ- ment through a web of solver networks. There is an existing model for such support , although the solvers in this model are fi rms (not individual people) and the goal is economic, not social. The previ- ously mentioned Agile Web was formed and operated under the auspices of the state-funded Ben Franklin Technology Partners at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. The center works with federal, state, and regional agencies, universities, and the private sector in a mission to achieve technology- based economic development. Prior to the formation of the Agile Web, the National Science Foundation funded an “Agility Forum” at Lehigh University, which laid a foundation for the development of the Web. The funded conceptualization and planning of the Agile Web occurred over a period of 2 years. Consider the possibilities if federal, state, and regional agencies, universities, and the private sector were to reconfi gure goals so as to value the social in the course of achieving economic ends. There are precedents for such reconfi guration, although not specifi cally in the context of open innovation and related network strategies (Gibson-Graham & Cameron, 2010 ; Gibson-Graham, Cameron, & Healy, 2013 ). One is the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation (MCC), which was founded in 1956 in Spain’s Basque region with funding by business owners, institutions, workers, and municipal government. The MCC persists through the present as a business group based on democratic governance and a privileging of social and community objectives. Although it developed as a regional industrial complex span- ning manufacturing, fi nance, distribution, housing, services, research, education, and training, it now has operations worldwide. Another model was Tony’s Blair’s “Third Way” programs in the United Kingdom in which the U.K. government pro- vided fi nancial and bureaucratic support for the development of “social enterprises ” defi ned with reference to social and community objectives. In Australia, the Victoria government allocated 9.2 million dollars to a community enterprise strategy, and with the Brotherhood of St. Laurence supports 42 localities in the development of community enterprises. This selection of exemplars in different contexts demon- strates the plausibility of government and various local institutions and actors taking a proactive and supportive role in the systematic development of enterprises ori- ented to social and community goals. J. K. Gibson-Graham and Jenny Cameron ( 2010 ) have indicated that some social enterprises are remunerative and some are not; some “fail” yet serve an important role in providing a platform for the partici- pants to move on to other enterprises, and in that sense, can reasonably be under- stood more as successes than failures. My concern here is for remunerative and continual employment in mediated crowdsourced project work in the context of open innovation and related knowledge problem that closed networks need not engage. As previously indicated, however, closed networks have other problems, and further, changing conditions have required increasing openness. The task then, is how to engage the new realities constructively, creatively, and effectively. 2 Reversing the Instrumentality of the Social for the Economic