The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXXV (PLM Part XX)

In today’s post we will further discuss the boundary of firm and markets with respect to the Petroleum Lease Marketplace of the Preliminary Specification. In this the fourth pass we are focusing on capabilities. And the question should be what capabilities are we seeking to achieve from the Petroleum Lease Marketplace and why is there a need to transition to this new model of organization, a marketplace. For that lets begin with a quote from Professor Richard Langlois’ paper “Capabilities and Governance: The Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization”.

The organizational question is whether new capabilities are best acquired through the market, through internal learning, or through some hybrid organizational form. And the answer will depend on (A) the already existing structure of capabilities and (B) the nature of the economic change involved. p. 21

What we currently have is a number of departments; Land, Legal, Land Administration, some Production and Exploration Administration and lets not forget Accounting, currently manning the store that will “morph” into the Petroleum Lease Marketplace. These formerly buttoned down departments will transition to new roles, some in new service provider firms, where they will be part of a marketplace environment. It will be within the marketplace they will “market” their capabilities to those in demand for their services.

If a profit opportunity requires a configuration of capabilities different from what already exists in the economy, the Schumpeterian process of creative destruction may be set in motion. p.21

Its a marketplace, not a department within a bureaucracy. One within a dynamic, entrepreneurial and innovative oil and gas producer. A place where the act of buying and selling and trading leases or interests in properties, making deals or building companies can and will be done.

Seldom if ever have economists of organization considered that knowledge may be imperfect in the realm of production, and that institutional forms may play the role not (only) of constraining unproductive rent seeking behaviour but (also) of creating the possibilities for productive rent-seeking behaviour in the first place. To put it another way, economists have neglected the benefit side of alternative organizational structures; for reason of history and technique, they have allocated most of their resources to the cost side. p. 6

It is interesting that one of the roles of the firm, in this revised boundary of the firm and market, is the enhanced role that coordination will take on. This next quote states explicitly the need to enhance the coordination by way of routines and capabilities.

All recognize that knowledge is imperfect and that most economically interesting contracts are, as a consequence, incomplete. But most of the literature considers seriously as coordinating devices only contracts and the incentives they embody. It thus neglects the role - the potentially far more important role - of routines and capabilities as coordinating devices. Moreover, the assumption that production costs are distinct from transaction costs and that production costs can and should always be held constant obscures the way productive knowledge is generated and transmitted in the economy. p. 14

Since contracts are one of the key end products of the activities that are undertaken in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module. It is these contracts incompleteness that will continue to demand the services of those employed in the marketplace and the firm. Services of “routines and capabilities as coordinating devices”. Making the “marketplace” a key interface of the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXXIV (PLM Part XIX)

The Petroleum Lease Marketplace module is the second “marketplace” module of the Preliminary Specification. Like the Resource Marketplace module, which deals with the resources used in the development of oil and gas, the Petroleum Lease Marketplace emulates the marketplaces that exist for Petroleum & Natural Gas Leases, concessions, etc. and the associated activities involved around those “things”. To accurately reflect on the marketplace metaphor I have to mention the user vision, which I have now done, and will not speak of it again. What is helpful in understanding the capabilities that are attained by developing “marketplaces” in the Preliminary Specification is this quote from Frederick von Hayek.

The whole acts as one market, not because any of its members survey the whole field, but because their limited individual fields of vision sufficiently overlap so that through many intermediaries the relevant information is communicated to all. ...The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement. (Hayek 1945, pp. 526 - 527)

Prices for the bonus paid on acreage. The price asked by a producer for a working interest share in a property. These are the activities that occur in the marketplace everyday. What we are doing in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace is emulating the real marketplace to enable it to grow thicker and more robust. With market opportunities being dislocated some times by thousands of miles from interested parties, the ability for market participants to meet is limited. Even with the Internet the chance of finding someone is difficult. However, with a module like the Petroleum Lease Marketplace, you have a focused forum in which to deal with interested parties. At the same time you have the means in which to transact and manage the business, develop agreements, pay lease rentals etc. The Petroleum Lease Marketplace is a software environment that provides for the marketplaces emulation.

Critical to the success of this marketplace is the further division of labor and specialization. We have discussed earlier in the specification how the Lease Rental Administration could be handled on an industry wide basis by a service provider. Other roles may be able to be handled in a similar fashion in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace. With the development of this software module or marketplace emulator, would be the market supporting institutions that would bring in the efficiencies that would enhance the effectiveness of the marketplace. Providing assurances such as when a new P&NG Lease was acquired it was known that it would automatically have its lease rentals paid by your service provider.

There are many advantages to emulating the Petroleum Lease Marketplace in the Preliminary Specification. Just as there are advantages in the Resource and Financial Marketplace modules. Attempts at exchanges and other technical solutions have been tried before but they don’t have the “business” aspects that a “marketplace” has. What we are replicating is a business unit, not creating a technological solution. A significant difference to the users and producers who use the marketplace today, and will use the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module if it provides further value in their use of the actual marketplace.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXXIII (PLM Part XVIII)

As we had noted in the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification. The capability for the producer to scale back their production in the face of poor commodity prices was possible. In the Resource Marketplace module we were talking about the implications of shutting in production would have on the costs of production. That is by moving to the “decentralized production model” from the “high throughput production” model, deeming the costs of production as variable, therefore costs decline in line with revenues. It is in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module that the capability to reduce production is acquired through the "Marginal Production Threshold Interface" and is the subject of this blog post.

The operational decision making authority lies with the Joint Operating Committee. And we have discussed in the past how the decision may be made to reduce production by 15% or some other amount to help return the commodity markets to balance. With the desire to move to a “decentralized production model”, where all of the costs are variable and therefore suspended with the production, the decision to shut-in production completely, or just partially is something that should be possible through the "Marginal Production Threshold Interface".

The interface would provide the means in which the partnership could agree to the criteria in which production would be suspended. We see today with Natural Gas prices in North America, a situation where no one is making any money. The ability to incinerate capital is something that the oil and gas industry is famous for and I would suggest they begin to actively do something about their poor reputation. When prices meet the criteria that the partnership have agreed too to curtail production. Then the operational steps to reduce the production will automatically be put in place when those criteria are met. Whether that is manually issuing the order to reduce the production, or if the systems are automated, the system is automatically triggered when the criteria is met.

The ability to collaborate and agree among the partnership falls within the domain of the Petroleum Lease Marketplace. Having all of the Joint Operating Committees that you have an interest in located within one interface in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace will provide you with an understanding of what your production profile will be at various price scenarios. This can be provided through a “what if” scenario page within the interface. Extensions of the prices and volumes will also calculate what your pro-forma revenues will be. Assumptions can be made on the costs.

If each producer within the industry was able to manage their production in this manner there would be less destruction of capital and less volatile commodity prices. The ability to manage prices by spending capital, or not, is a very blunt instrument that leads to over and under production at the extremes. This mechanism will enable the producers to stop producing the marginal production and save the reserves for the day when they can be produced at a profit. A little faith in markets is all that is required.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXXII (PLM Part XVII)

We begin now with our fourth, or capabilities, pass through the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification. This will consist of reviewing Professor Richard Langlois’ research on organizations involving Dynamic Transaction Cost Economics, Modularity, the Boundary of Firms, Innovation and Capabilities among many other things. I thought that for today it would be appropriate to review the interfaces that have been introduced so far, and then tomorrow begin with Professor Langlois material.

The following are the five interfaces that have been introduced in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification.

Capabilities & Commitments Interface

An interface that details the capabilities, that are by agreement with partnership companies, either acquired or committed to. 

Long Term Capital Program Interface

Aggregates the information contained within the firms reserve and long term budgeting reports. Scrubs the data of any proprietary information. Details the information for geographic region and account detail. Publishes it in aggregate with other producers data to the service industry for their use in determining long range plans. 

Marginal Production Threshold Interface

A collaborative interface where the partnership represented in the Joint Operating Committee determines the thresholds at which marginal production will be shut-in. Based on commodity price or volume, the Marginal Production Threshold Interface will have input into the production operations to cease production at certain thresholds when obtained. 

Revenue Per Employee Interface

Public detailed calculations on Revenue Per Employee for each member of the oil and gas producer community. Private detailed calculations of Revenue Per Employee for each Joint Operating Committee you participate in. Details include trajectories for each variable. Variables include price, volume and number of employees. 

Strategy Interface

A summary of the strategy for each Joint Operating Committee that you participate in. As each JOC has its own strategy this central location provides all of the pertinent information for the user to interact, collaborate and affect change within the Joint Operating Committees strategy. 

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXXI (RM Part XXXV)

One area that we have not discussed in terms of capabilities in the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification. Is where the authority and responsibility for any field operations falls as a result of the revised boundaries of the firm and market. If we have dynamic markets providing innovative products and services to the producers and Joint Operating Committees how does this affect the authority and responsibilities that are established in the business today.

The clearest example to provide direction to this issue is the BP Gulf of Mexico well blow out last year. The findings established that BP was 100% responsible for the cause of the well blow out, and that clearly is the way that the business is run. The earth science and engineering resources are within the producer firms, and Joint Operating Committees, to design and engineer the operations to meet the safe and profitable operations of the oil and gas facilities. Without an appropriate engineering design there is little that a vendor can do in the field with a program that is destined to fail. With the changes being made in the Preliminary Specification, where reliance on an innovative Resource Marketplace for the service industry products and services, nothing will change in terms of this responsibility. The engineering staff at the oil and gas producer or Joint Operating Committee will have more choice in terms of products and services in terms of what they can do in the field. A second point on this discussion, is also the changes within the producer firm in terms of the reduction in the bureaucracy. From Professor Richard Langlois book “The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism”.

History is never kind to historicists, of course; and the facts of the last quarter century have made life uncomfortable for those who would project the Schumpeter-Chandler model into the present. It has become exceedingly clear that the late twentieth (and now early twenty-first) centuries are witnessing a revolution at least as important as, but quite different from, the one Berle and Means decried and Schumpeter and Chandler extolled. Strikingly, the animating principle of this new revolution is precisely an unmaking of the corporate revolution. Rather than seeing the continued dominance of multi-unit firms in which managerial control spans a large number of vertical stages, we are seeing a dramatic increase in vertical specialization — a thoroughgoing “de-verticalization” that is affecting traditional industries as much as the high-tech firms of the late twentieth century. In this respect, the visible hand, understood as managerial coordination of multiple stages of production within a corporate framework, is fading into a ghostly translucence. p. 7

Management having less influence in the day to day of an oil and gas producer does not affect the authority or responsibility either. The engineers are qualified and regulated in terms of their qualifications and certifications. If they are signing their programs then they have their career on the line which to me is worth substantially more then the controls a manager may have established.

In highly developed economies, moreover, a wide variety of capabilities is already available for purchase on ordinary markets, in the form of either contract inputs or finished products. When markets are thick and market-supporting institutions plentiful, even systemic change may proceed in large measure through market coordination. At the same time, it may also come to pass that the existing network of capabilities that must be creatively destroyed (at least in part) by entrepreneurial change is not in the hands of decentralized input suppliers but is in fact concentrated in existing large firms. p. 14

Substantial change, creative destruction and innovation throughout the service and oil and gas industries. That is what is required to resolve the problems of the day. Its important to remember that doing so is as Professor Langlois states “Economic growth is about the evolution of a complex structure (Langlois 2001).” p. 6

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXX (RM Part XXXIV)

One of the conclusions in the Preliminary Research Report was that the oil and gas industry was transitioning from a “banking” mentality of earning guaranteed returns on investments, one that was based on the cheap energy era where financial survival was the key to success. To a scientifically based industry where innovating on the earth science and engineering disciplines would become the determining factors in a producers survival and success. Today those two cultures are clashing as the relics of the cheap energy era attempt to restructure to compete in the scientific frontier. Adding to this transition is the bureaucracies last ditch attempt to assert its purpose in life. Is it any wonder that a producer finds any oil and gas?

We have been discussing the capabilities of the producer, the Joint Operating Committee and the service industry and how the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification works to coordinate these. We have put the responsibility for the service industries market supporting institutions squarely on the producers. The reasons for that are for the obvious ones in that they are the primary benefactors, and they are the primary industry that collects the revenues that ultimately will be used to support the service industry. It is therefore necessary that the oil and gas producers use this money to encourage this market to grow and develop as thick and as responsive as possible. The oil and gas producers are the ones who will benefit from the innovative and competitive service industry. What is known about the future of the oil and gas producer is there are high levels of uncertainty. Developing thick markets in the service industry will mitigate some of this uncertainty. From Professor Richard Langlois paper “Economic Institutions and the Boundaries of the Firm: The Case of Business Groups.”

The second hypothesis, which has resonances at least as far back as Gerschenkron’s famous “backwardness” thesis (Gerschenkron 1962), is that the way an economy responds to the problems of coordinating economic development depends not only on its own institutions and capabilities but also on institutions and capabilities elsewhere. It depends not only on an economy’s own history but on the history of other economies as well. The force of this observation is that an economy at the frontier of economic development (however we care to define that) is likely to respond to the coordination problem differently than an economy lagging behind that frontier. Specifically, an economy at the frontier is arguably more likely to rely on decentralized modes of coordination. This is so because uncertainty is greater at the frontier — uncertainty about technology, organizational form, market direction. p. 18

And what we need are people thinking there way through the uncertainty. I have been a strong critic of the “best practices” phenomenon that has developed over the past few years. Copying others “best practices” reminds me of this quote from Professor Langlois paper.

Indeed, traditional command-style economies, such as that of the former USSR, appear to be able only to mimic those tasks that market economies have performed before; they are unable to set up and execute original tasks. The [Soviet] system has been particularly effective when the central priorities involve catching up, for then the problems of knowing what to do, when and how to do it, and whether it was properly done, are solved by reference to a working model, by exploiting what Gerschenkron . . . called the “advantage of backwardness.” (Ericson, 1991, p. 21).

Best practices reflect the staleness of the methods of the bureaucracy. If not for the increase in commodity prices over the past few years, you wonder what they would have relied upon for earnings.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXIX (RM Part XXXIII)

In today’s post I want to revisit the “Gap Filling Interface” of the Resource Marketplace and add some of the elements of our recent discussion of the service industry. It would be fair to state that the service, and the oil and gas industries have remained somewhat static in their makeup of how they are organized. Standardization and the division of labor seem to have stopped around the last SAP integration.

Management of the oil and gas bureaucracies have reigned over the service sector with the grace of a Roman Emperor. Putting thumbs up or down on an innovation on the basis that they have immediate need for it or not, and expecting solutions to spontaneously exist when problems do arise. This entire process of development has devolved to the point where little is being done and ranks on par with the oil and gas companies suggesting to the service industry to "let them eat cake." No money is provided to research new products, only tried and tested products and services are accepted, and only “large” firms are used. And producers actually complain about cost overruns.

As Harvey Leibenstein long ago pointed out, economic growth is always a process of “gap-filling,” that is, of supplying the missing links in the evolving chain of complementary inputs to production. Especially in a developed and well functioning economy, one with what I like to call market-supporting institutions (Langlois 2003), such gap-filling can often proceed in important part through the “spontaneous” action of more-or-less anonymous markets. p. 6

In the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification we have developed the “Gap Filing Interface”. A collaborative tool that users can input where they see a gap that needs filling within their firm, their Joint Operating Committee, a service provider or any where within the oil and gas and service industries. It is the expression of a well articulated need. Providers can then review the interface to determine if there is a service or product demanded that is similar to theirs that they can configure and provide to the firm, Joint Operating Committee or service provider. The problem that we have today is that the problem may be in Shanghai and the solution to it is sitting in Midland, Texas. With such large distances between problems and solutions we need to ensure that we have the means to focus the expression of the need in an appropriate forum where the problem and solution can find each other. That is the “Gap Filling Interface”.

The situation is similar when we look at it from the other perspective. Those that may have developed a solution to a gap that want to market it to the broader market can post it to the “Gap Filling Interface” for those to see. Again with the problems and their solutions being separated by geography it is necessary to build a specific forum to capture the attention of people for this purpose.

Ideally, with the oil and gas producers providing the kinds of industry supporting institutions that we have been discussing in the past number of blog posts. The service industry will have developed thick markets where the ability, and capability, to fill these “gaps” both in the service sector and the producer firms themselves will be immediate. That is to say, should be the objective in terms of the capabilities we should expect from the markets that we are seeking to develop.

The underlying assumption, normally unspoken, is that relevant background institutions — things like respect for private property, contract law, courts — are all in place. Whatever transaction costs then arise are thus the result of properties inherent in “the market” itself, not of inadequacies in background institutions. There is generally a tacit factual or historical assumption as well: that the relevant markets exist thickly or would come into existence instantaneously if called upon. p. 3

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXVIII (RM Part XXXII)

We have been discussing Industrial Districts as an ideal way to configure the Resource Marketplace of the suppliers and vendors. An innovative oil and gas industry has to depend on an innovative and high performing service industry. And that can only happen with the deliberate and careful building of the necessary industry supporting infrastructure from the oil and gas producers. So much of the toxic environment that exists today between the two industries is as a result of the oil and gas producers blaming the cost overruns on the vendors in the field operations. This environment is fully 180 degrees from where the oil and gas producer needs to have these relationships, and it is the responsibility of the producer to get the relationships back in line. It will be through the development of the Resource Marketplace module in the Preliminary Specification that the service industry will be able to see the legitimacy of the producers intent to build the industry supporting infrastructure necessary for innovation to develop.

As much as we have discussed the role that Adam Smith’s theories of specialization and division of labor will have at the producer level, they will have similar impact in the field. To help these companies to better understand these principles would be the Community of Independent Service Providers who could consult to these firms and help them develop their organizations. From Professor Richard Langlois’ paper “Innovation Process and Industrial Districts”.

Because of their structure, industrial districts offer important benefits in innovation processes. For one thing, the high levels of differentiation and specialization allow firms, in the Smithian fashion, to focus on aspects of the supply chain in which they are especially competent. p. 5

To me its intuitive what Professor Langlois is talking about. In a hostile working environment its work to rule. No one volunteers anything, and everyone just does their job so they don’t get fired. The fact that the well didn’t find any commercial gas isn’t any ones specific problem. On the other hand, when everyone is pulling together as a team...

Strong ties (Granovetter, 1973) among workers, including managers, can increase the amount of information available to firms and the readiness of people to share what they know when relationships gain a dimension of friendship to counterbalance the competitiveness among firms. p. 5

Thankfully the community spirit in the field remains. The accusations by the producers that the service industries cost overruns are a result of their greed and laziness has only divided the field from the head office people in an us vs. them type of scenario. The finger pointing by the producers has been the extent of the impact on the fields community, with no long term serious consequences.

When embeddedness is strong, the creation of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998; Brown and Duguid, 2000) generates competences that, although possessed by individuals, are collective in that they are based on a set of practices that is common to all members of a community. These competences (both tacit and codified) can transcend firm boundaries and become characteristics of an entire industrial district. As Marshall (1975, 197) wrote of nineteenth century Britain, “To use a mode of speaking which workmen themselves use, the skill required for their work ‘is in the air, and children breathe it as they grow up’”. p. 6

To clarify, it will be the producer who will need to rectify this situation. They will need to build the industry supporting institutions that will enable the types of environments that will foster the needed innovation and competition in the service industry. What an innovative oil and gas industry must have is a highly innovative and competitive service industry. This begins with the interfaces and systems that we are describing here in the Resource Marketplace of the Preliminary Specification.

Relationships within industrial districts therefore lead to diffusion but also to the creation of new knowledge through shared preoccupations. Because many people or firms can work on a problem simultaneously, a number of different solutions may be found (Bellandi, 2003b). The results is a larger and stronger "gene pool" within the sector (Loasby, 1990, 117), with the further advantage that solutions that are originally regarded as competing may turn out to be complementary and well-suited to different niches within the district.  p. 7

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXVII (RM Part XXXI)

Within People, Ideas & Objects we have developed the Community of Independent Service Providers (CISP) to support the producers and suppliers / vendors with their systems needs. These independent service providers, independent from the point of view that they are not affiliated with any specific producer within a Joint Operating Committee, but represent all of the producers within a Joint Operating Committee. Are privately contracted technical and accounting service support providers. We have discussed some of the roles these people may fulfill in the discussion of the Preliminary Specification, mostly around the further expansion of the division of labor. These roles included the Production Accounting role, the Lease Rentals and similar activities. Included in the CISP would be the IT related areas of help desk, user training, accounting integration and technical support. They would also have a role in supporting the user community.

With respect to the Resource Marketplace module and the suppliers / vendors I see a strong demand for the CISP’s involvement in supporting their organizations. The interfaces to the supplier / vendor are not well specified yet. Already there are several.

• Supplier Bidding / Commitment Manager
• Ideas Marketplace Blog
• Supplier Collaborative Interface
• Gap Filing Interface
• Supplier Contact Database
• Actionable Information Interface
• Long Term Capital Program Interface
• Work Order System
• Purchase Order System
• Payment Processing Interface
• Transaction Design Interface

However it is clear they will need comprehensive systems from People, Ideas & Objects to achieve the objectives that we have set out for the innovative producer. These will require the support necessary to ensure that the supplier / vendor gains as much from the systems as the producers. These are the types of market supporting institutions that need to be developed in order for the innovative oil and gas industry to move forward. The Community of Independent Service Providers were built off concepts that were developed by Professor Richard Langlois which he called Industrial Districts, and another of our top researchers, Professor Carlota Perez’ concept of Small Knowledge Intensive Enterprises. We will be discussing these concepts further in the Resource Marketplace module in the next few days. Today I will just introduce the concept as they describe them. From Professor Langlois’ paper “Innovation Process and Industrial Districts.”

While it is possible to conceive of a firm that is so hermetic in its use of knowledge that all stages of innovation, including the combination of old and new knowledge, rely exclusively on internal sources, in practice most innovations involving products or processes of even modest complexity entail combining knowledge that derives, directly or indirectly, from several sources. Knowledge generation, therefore, must be accompanied by effective mechanisms for knowledge diffusion and for "indigenizing" knowledge originally developed in other contexts and for other purposes so that it meets a new need. p. 1

When it comes to field operations, you have to recall that the vendors / suppliers have been the focus of the cost overruns. This has been as a result, according to the producers, to their greed and laziness. What that does in the marketplace is exactly the opposite of what is optimal in terms of a highly efficient field operations marketplace. But then I probably don’t have to explain that to the majority of the producers these days. Professor Langlois notes that we need to strive to achieve what he calls embeddedness in an Industrial District, supported by the People, Ideas & Objects Community of Independent Service Providers.

When accompanied by close social relationships, tight geographical proximity may affect innovation in ways that are less common in more highly dispersed environments. For example, an awareness of common problems can encourage several firms, or their suppliers and customers, to seek solutions, leading to multiple results that can be tested competitively in the market. These outcomes can then be relatively easily diffused among firms in the Industrial Districts (ID) because of embeddedness in a common environment. The obverse of this commonality of inspiration and ease of transmission of knowledge, however, may be an inordinately inward focus that results in an ignorance of or disdain for innovation processes in other regions or in industries not represented in the ID. Furthermore, there may be a relationship between the degree of embeddedness in the industrial district and innovation. It has been suggested that innovation increases as embeddedness increase up to a point, and that beyond that point further embeddedness results in reduced innovation performance at the firm level (Uzzi, 1997; Boschma, 2005). Thus, depending on circumstances, participation in an industrial district can either encourage or impeded innovation. pp. 1- 2

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CLXXVI (RM Part XXX)

The question comes down to where does the current management of the oil and gas producer fit in to the Resource Marketplace of the Preliminary Specification? We have detailed how the innovative oil and gas producer and the supplier / vendor operate within the Resource Marketplace and other modules, but we have been silent on the managements role in these processes. That’s because there is no role for the non “C” class management, and that is the primary reason that People, Ideas & Objects remains in its initial phases. No money has ever been directed to People, Ideas & Object to support these developments. Any other proposal with this much value to the industry would have been funded by now. Many software companies have been funded by oil and gas managements that have no ideas but close familial or friendly relationships. This blog post is about the role management have had in ensuring that People, Ideas & Objects doesn’t get funded. Management has a vested interest in the status quo, not in a future like that of the Preliminary Specification, a future that does not involve them.

Professor Alfred P. Chandler has noted that management failed during the great depression. A time he says when the government had to intervene and increase its involvement in the economy to make up the difference. There is no reason that given a situation, management might not fail again. They also have no stake in a firm. If a crisis were to strike a firm, the management would resume elsewhere. It is the investor and debt holders who will shoulder the costs.

Chandler's review of corporate history shows the role of the merchants. Investing their capital and skills, merchants were the ones that started the ball rolling. Management currently hold the reigns, and are mindful that their options may lay elsewhere. Ownership, in the same fashion as the Merchants need to start over. Starting over begins with the oil and gas investors supporting People, Ideas & Objects and the Community of Independent Service Providers to provide an alternative means to manage their oil and gas assets. The Preliminary Specification is the beginning of that alternate means to manage their assets.

Schumpeter states that "Innovation drives economic development". For our global economy to grow, greater supply of energy is required. To meet this demand the energy producers, or energy investors, must innovate. And this role is contrasted to management as optimizers. Professor William Lazonick "The optimizing firm is not an innovating firm, indeed it can be characterized as an un-innovating firm." The costs of innovation are an investment. However, the source of the funds to support innovation are from revenues not profits, equity or debt. Or as we have stated at People, Ideas & Objects, the commodity prices are reallocating the financial resources to innovate.

As Information Technologies continue to creep into the role of management. Will they be able to continue to cut the budget to everything that offends their franchise? What will their world look like in ten years time? What will your investment look like in five years time? As time passes and no action is taken, further damages may occur that may not be resolved by an immediate install of People, Ideas & Objects software. We are still looking at several years of development time to finish these application modules. The clock is ticking.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.