my primary focus is the development of ki work, as a better way of sourcing online work. That is, work that can be done anywhere, by anyone, at any time. it could be work by one person for another, by many persons for another, or by many for many. In each case the participants are separated in space and time and connected only in cyberspace.

the challenge comes in addressing the following questions:

• how can clients and professionals come together, initially as strangers in cyberspace, and engage in complex working and social relationships that satisfy both their needs ?
  
• how can sufficient trust be developed to sustain the cycle of each transaction?
  
• what organisational, cultural and technical structures are required to support these trusted relationships?
  
• and how can such an undertaking be commercially viable for all its stakeholders?

having come from a business background as a ceo and entrepreneur in telecoms and ict, I have had to let go of most of my previously acquired understanding of management and entrepreneurship. The skills required for creating and managing businesses that are rooted in conventional space and time (offices and factories) and run on a command-and-control basis are not appropriate for work online. here we are looking at collaborative, peer-to-peer, self-organising structures in cyber space and time – an altogether different dimension of reality.

in symbolising this difference, I now describe myself as a social entrepreneur. That means engaging in the creation of organisational structures in which the participants are willing to extend themselves for the purpose of nurturing their own and each other’s well being and personal growth - at the same time getting value, developing relationship capital, and earning a fair reward for services.

this philosophy and understanding stems from my practice of the Japanese martial art, aikido. So ki work is my way of taking aikido off the mat and into the work place.