by Marcin Jakubowski
The present challenge is to develop a working model of the Regenerative Island Project as described under Mission. In the last couple of years, this concept refined itself to a replicable open source enterprise community, in the form of an Open Source Research and Development Center. This is an entity that may be understood by the greater mainstream world, though its essence is far ahead of any institution known to humankind. This is because of its radical teleology: to make a viable sub-economy – an economy within the mainstream – operating on principles of unrestrained, open source development.
The Open Source Research and Development Center (R&D Center) and Enterprise Incubator
The R&D Center is an applied research center that develops products, business models for product distribution, and tests the models in-house by actually engaging in these business models. The focus of product development is to enable the replication of production by developing the infrastructure surrounding a particular product, thereby addressing the capitalization of business replication. OSE’s aim is to devise a technological pattern language and flexible production infrastructures – those with as little specialized equipment as possible- such that startup costs are reduced.
These are not new ideas. The case has already been demonstrated that flexible manufacturing is a viable route of manufacturing, but that highly-specialized mass production has gained dominance. This is not due to the superiority of mass production, but due to the control of monopolizing elites.
The open source R&D Center for product development is a unique contribution to human enterprise. We do not know of any precedent of an institution that works collectively as such, fueled by an idealism of human progress. The proposed Business Incubator model pushes limits even further. The concept here is that OSE provides sweat equity means, or full startup capitalization assistance, for the most advanced business concepts. As such, it brings out people with adealistic goals and provides them with all the hardware and knowledge necessary for success.
The concept behind the business incubator’s capitalization program is simple: all startups do not require money, but the goods that money can buy. If those goods may be produced via open source flexible fabrication, or services provided via os consulting, then such is a successful means to startup.
The central feature of the Incubator must therefore be an infrastructure of resources, feedstocks, tools, and machines to produce the resources, feedstocks, tools, machines, and indeed, infrastructures, for the startup enterprise. The innovative aspect of the OSE Enterprise Incubator program is that the Fellows interested in startup have the opportunity to build the entire infrastructure as part of their training program, during a period of time sufficiently long to address all aspects of a proposed startup.
The financing mechanism for startup is revolutionary. We mentioned sweat equity. Indeed, the Fellow interested in startup is advised to take advantage of the 500 Plus Plan to finance their stay and contribute the stipulated 25% for OSE services. OSE gains the additional benefit of enterprise development and testing by the Fellow, and all working models enter the pool of open source know-how that may be tapped by others for promoting ethical, ecologically friendly enterprise.
For example, if the business opportunity sought is an integrated, year-round greenhouse and farm franchise operation, then the capitalization required includes fruit trees, greenhouses, buildings, water supply, and animal stock. OSE’s capitalization services may include: (1) the Fellow building a sawmill, CEB, and plastic extruder in our flexible workshop during their stay, to take care of greenhouse and other building needs; or, the Fellow leases our equipment; (2) the Fellow grows out from seed or propagates all fruit, berry, and nut trees from the OSE genetic pool of resources; (3) additionally, the Fellow builds a freeze-dried juice powder machine, microcombine, agricultural spader, hammer mill, during their stay- devices necessary for state-of-art soil proparation, harvesting, making mulch, and preserving foods with most nutrition; (4) the Fellow builds solar concentrators, engine cycle, ancillary stove, and designs a heat storage system; (5) the Fellow combines effort with other Fellows to fund land acquisition, or OSE taps its land resources to grant permanent stewardship to the Fellow; (6) the Fellow builds their own OSCar for transportation needs during their stay; (7) the Fellow may choose to incubate a flock of fowl, adopt some goats, or other animals during their stay; (8) the Fellow may make their fuel alcohol distillation apparatus (9) the Fellow becomes a fully enabled land steward, and thus quits their contract with the military-industrial state.
The above example shows that it may take two years to complete the preparation for an integrated farm franchise- fruit and nut trees may take two years to become ready for planting out. Each technical device or item may take approximately 30 days of full time work to produce from existing open source documentation. This indicated that approximately one year would be spent in the shop fabricating the necessary technologies. Together with learning operation, techniques, plant and animal propagation- two years may suffice for a crash course. However, given the depth of the immersion experience, the Fellow will be in full control of their technological and biological environment, since the Fellow produced it all by theirself.
The costs involved are only material costs. Each device may cost approximately $1000 in materials. The Fellow has a choice of how to fund this. OSE may tap its Development Fund and lease the final product to the Fellow. Or, the Fellow may purchase materials from their own funds. Another option is to tap resource development based on the nonprofit nature of OSE work. Initiative may also be taken to generate value via barter or other means. Given that OSE has land, produce, and a productive infrastructure, a large number of productive activities may be tapped to generate value in return for other value. The economy of the OSE R&D Center and Enterprise Incubator is one of abundance, and many creative means may be taken.
