GUIDE FOR PARTICIPANTS - this text was prepared for the four workshop participants: Ken Fairclough, Indy Johar, David Pinto and John Backwell as a discussion document, in advance of the Endgame Economics workshop that took place on 5th September 2012. Support team is John Wood, Ivan Nascimento and Ana Lisa Alperovich.

BEFORE THE WORKSHOP:

Please think about these questions :

• 1. What is the purpose of money?
• 2. How can we re-design money to make it work better?
• 3. How will you use the recording of this workshop? (question for the organizers)

THE ARITHMETIC BEHIND THIS WORKSHOP
Our trading culture has long encouraged us to put values on individual resources. So it is easy to forget that we cannot get meaningful abundance by storing enormous quantities of a particular resource (e.g. gold). We only get it by combining qualitatively different things in an appropriate way. This idea is the primary focus of this workshop. Whenever a particular combination delivers more, or better, outcomes than its parts (added together) this is called synergy. But we tend to see synergy as less important than 'resources'. Traditional economics was based on the logic of non-renewable resources. Imagine owning 2 barrels of oil and deciding to sell half of your stock to a stranger. Although you have received money for the transaction you have 'lost' a barrel of oil. Over the last few hundred years, economic thinking was based on the logic of non-renewables - i.e. the Law of Diminishing Returns. Fortunately, as long as the sun shines, we can defy this law, because our solar income subsidises our energy requirements and enables to think about 'renewables'. For example, where oil is a non-renewable resource, ideas are infinitely renewable. This means that they are bound by the Law of Increasing Returns:

If 2 ideas are combined, how many new ones do we get?	(answer=1)
If 3 ideas are combined, how many new ones do we get?	(answer=3)
If 4 ideas are combined, how many new ones do we get?	(answer=6)

WHAT DO THE COLOURS MEAN? - the colours mean nothing. Participants are arbitrarily assigned a colour (we thought that numbers or letters are too hierarchical).

THE MISSION - the main aim of the workshop is to find new synergies, which we usually find when we cultivate difference. However, synergy is everywhere, so we tend to overlook it. It can emerge at all levels and it can permeate our boundaries of understanding. For this workshop, some important synergies come together as the effectiveness of your teamwork. This means that the search for durable synergies may merge with the temporary synergies of your actions. This is why it is difficult to achieve within conventional hierarchical teams.

FLAT-STRUCTURED TEAMWORK IS DEMANDING - hierarchical teams are efficient for some tasks, but we believe that novel synergies are easier to locate within flat-structured teams. How much influence will you have over your group? Although you account (numerically) for 25% of your group of 4, you will be present and active for 50% of the proceedings (i.e. three of the six meetings). Also, as you will have worked in partnership with 100% of the group your ideas, conduct and attitudes may have an influence that permeates through the whole quartet. This is why some radical optimism is useful.

TIMETABLE
The schedule of activities simple. A 15 minute briefing session for the 4 participants ensures that everyone can focus onto the task in hand without hesitation or confusion. Each participant has a 15 minute bisociation sessions with each of the other three, in turn. This means that there are 3 parallel sessions.

MORE PRACTICAL OUTCOMES - to take initial ideas beyond the abstract idea of synergy you may like to reflect upon the basic needs of an island community. Thinking about food, shelter, mobility, energy, or clothing may be a way to harness ideas that may be incomplete or intangible.

DURING THE WORKSHOP
Please combine your responses to these questions with those of your (3) partner/s to discover new, beneficial synergies (at least one for each of the 3 encounters). The ultimate purpose of this metadesign workshop is to generate new idea/s that can be applied, usefully, in a practical context. Its principle aim is enable four participants to co-create synergies. However, some people find its tetrahedral format difficult to grasp, perhaps because it looks deceptively simple.

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METHODS - We will adapt the Creative Quartet format as the basis for six meetings between four invited experts. Each participant will meet with each of the other three in a 15-minute bisociation workshop. The 6 meetings will be run as a sequence of three pairs. The purpose of each meeting is not a truth-based discussion or debate - it is a practical, creative search for a new economic paradigm. We aim to develop a language that will respect (apparent) incommensurables and to find practical synergies within, beyond, or between them. The most important keyword here (see below) is synergy, which is an (undervalued) form of abundance that we can get by combining existing resources.

WORKSHOP PROTOCOLS - These 3 meetings are very short. Please conduct yourself as though they are your final act. This means being relaxed, breathing properly, watching and listening carefully to your own body and how it reacts to the situation. It also means listening carefully to the body language and words of your partner. Try to forget the normal habits of discussion - debate, rational sense-making, rhetorical point-scoring. You are licensed to say anything that comes into your head (it usually helps you to be more creative). But this also applies to your partner. Respect your partner's beliefs and perspectives with the same respect in which you hold your own. Use this balance to find new possibilities (e.g. new ways of saying things / things you like / good experiences / fun / complementarities / unexpected combinations / 'problems' that can be reframed to seem benign, or that cancel one another out).

keyword	brief definition
Bisociation	Avoids the polarizing effect of debating ideas by generating new ones
Debate	Tends to set up oppositional relations that can erode synergy.
Entredonneurship	Our word was intended as a counterpoint to 'entrepreneurship'
Holarchy	A leaderless, non-hierarchical, self-organizing organism.
Languaging	The means by which living organisms adapt and survive.
Manifold abundance	Reminds us that we can innovate on behalf of many beneficiaries.
pre-purpose	A collective, unconscious purpose that is yet to be identified.
Paradigm	An established order that steadfastly maintains its own identity.
Paradigm change	Strategic, simultaneous changes that catalyse a new order.
Radical optimism	Systematically imagining beyond what is deemed possible.
Sympoiesis	The socially transformative component within co-creativity.
Synergy	A term describing the combinatorial nature of abundance.
Tetrahedron	Try to imagine this as 4 interconnected individuals (your group)
Wu wei	The self-reflexive art of acting at an auspicious time/place

POSSIBLE IDENTIFIERS FOR SYNERGY

• a) When things just go together.
• b) Imaginable, desirable combinations.
• c) Spotting complementarities or compatibilities.
• d) Creation of affinities (e.g. precise culinary compatibilities).
• e) Existing synergies that derive from a combination of other synergies.
• f) New synergies that might emerge by combining existing synergies.