Complex ambiguity

In my last post I intoduced 'complex ambiguity' as the stuff in venturing that entrepreneurs are really trying to figure out --- where no-one 'knows' the answer. The deeper the change and the earlier the stage the greater the complexity and the ambiguity. My earlier tumbls about pentagram and that one designer have tweaked me that it's akin to the creative process. Like designing a logo. Except that venturing can be a pereptual series of logos for something that itself is somewhat ambiguous and continuinally evolving. That's complex ambiguity.

The penatagram video made me think about what it takes to build a successful early-stage venture shop, in particular one that looks at tackling big change or new frontiers. Having started a creative shop with some great talent, penntagram definitely seems to have operationalized something important.

One thing I'm sure of is that it's going to play in my thinking on early-stage transformative venturing.

Venturing and investing on the frontiers: Intial observations...

Having been doing nothing but early-stage venturing from all sides of the table for more than a decade I decided to start a series of conversations to explore what works and what doesn't.



From this initial set of conversations, primarily with investors working on 'the frontier' (social change and social tech) here are some of my initial observations.

1. Being on the frontier increases "complex ambiguity" (we don't really know what we are doing, and if we think we do it's probably a false sense of security)

• At the frontier, complex ambiguity emerges in each of these areas:
• The ultimate goal/objective is difficult to clarify in conventional quantitative terms
• The approach needed to accomplish that goal is unsure/unconventional/untested
• This leads to challenges in measurement and therefore tracking progress. It also has something to do with why stories are being found to be more effective in describing impact, progress, and learnings.
• Complex ambiguity is a source of opportunity and risk, can and should be focused, but reduction/minimization results in a corresponding reduction in potential
• There is a strong connection to the notion of 'requisite variety' in general systems theory and it's application to organizations that is worth pursuing
  
• The root questions then seem to lie in what we need to understand in terms of goals, approaches, and measures in order to be able to determine our interest, track performance, and orchestrate support.

2. Effective handling of complex ambiguity requires particular attention on requisite competencies and internalized responsibility.

• Competencies required to handle complex ambiguity are not of the conventional functional variety
• What they are is an important question going forward
• Complex ambiguity should in no way confuse or obscure the need for the conventional competencies required by the venture
• E.g. Just because you're trying to change the world doesn't mean you don't need to get the accounting done.
• Responsibility for handling the 'complex ambiguity' can be carried only by those that are committed to sorting it out AND are sufficiently connected to the fields related to it
  
• E.g. a conventional business partner is not likely to strive to achieve anything beyond what is specified and required - which implicitly means they are not actually dealing with the 'complex ambiguity'
• Commitment to 'sorting it out' is strongest in the person(s) that is (are) deeply connected to the purpose/values of the organization
• 'Sorting it out' is accelerated through explicit attention, should be oriented around taking action, and cannot be at the expense of the viability of the venture
• This critical balancing point is the key determinant of the ultimate success of the organization. Too much of a focus on the ambiguity and nothing happens, too much focus on viability and the potential impact is diminished.
  

3. Successful investing on the frontier is subject to the same challenge of handling complex ambiguity.

• Considering the points in 1 and 2 above in the context of managing a fund on the frontier is another stream of inquiry
  

4. Successful investment practices on the frontier address complex ambiguity among investees.

• Some examples include:
• Actively building networks of connections around and among investees. A network of venturers on the frontier are more likely to share and have access to appropriate competencies for venturing on the frontier and are inherently all engaged in exploring complex variety. Optimization of this is a significant opportunity.
• Focusing the ambiguity down on core goals such as employing the unemployed (e.g. partner with those that have/run complementary businesses that could benefit from that employment). What does this do the potential and how where/how is the responsibility internalized?
• Minimizing/simplifying legal agreements helps to internalize responsibility for the relationship between investee/investor (encourages greater dialogue)
• Supporting entrepreneurs to make time for exploring their purpose/goals/approach.
  
• Creating events to bring together venturers on the frontier.
• Mixing conventional and mission-based investment team members.

Going forward I want to probe further into:

• where risk is most often perceived going into a deal?
  
• where does risk actually end up coming from?
• what activities have led ventures on the frontier to success?
• how did those activities come about?

From there I'm eager to dig into exploring potential areas for practices and shared services that could improve the success in investing on the frontier. Possibly framed by this matrix, the goal would be to find one thing to start experimenting with:

• Investor Axis
• Exploring complex ambiguity
• Requisite competencies
• Responsibility allocation
  
• Deal process
• Venture support
• Solution Axis
• Internal practices affected
• Internal practices envisioned
• Outsourced/shared services affected
• Outsourced/shared services envisioned

This sure has been fun so far and I'm curious to see where it goes... particularly as it turns to action.

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The rest of the macroshift.

Continuing on my previous macroshift post, here are my reflections from the remainder of Ervin Laszlo's book Macroshift.

For me the rest of the book was a lighter read with some simple observations relating to the mindset shift that is called for and clearly already underway. Here are a couple of framing quotes to set the stage:

"In the past, a more adapted civilization evolved over several generations; the rythym of change was relatively slow. This is no longer the case. The critical period for change today is compressed within the lifetime of a single generation."

" A Chineses porverb warns, 'If we do not change direction, we are likely to end up exactly where we are headed.'"

That last one could be classified as 'duh' but it truly is amazing to look to our civilization and how little we get that, particularly in the face of clear indicators that our trajectory is unsustainable and has brought our civilization into a critical state of instability. In the face of the examples presented in the book of the unsustainable relationship among people and generally with the planet, it moves to exploring the new mindset to be created drawing from Ghandi's quote "Live more simply, so others can simply live."

From there comes the call to forget the following obsolete myths/beliefs:

• "Nature is inexhaustible"
• "Nature is a giant mechanism"
• "Life is a struggle for survival"
• "The market distributes benefits"
• "The more you consume the better you are"

along with the following lesser beliefs:

• Order through hierarchy
• The ideology of Westfalia
• Everyone is unique and separate
• Everything is reversible
• My country, right or wrong
• The cult of efficiency
• The technological imperative
• Newer is better
• Economic rationality
• The future is none of our business

"Values and beliefs determine the way we perceive the world and suggest the ways we prioritize the responses to our perceptions. They affect almost all areas of our judgement and behaviour."

From here comes the call for a 'planetary ethic' that is described simply as: "Live in a way that allows others to live as well." where 'others' refers not only to humans but to all the plants and animals and all the living beings that make up the planet's web of life. This ethic asks also that we meet our responsibilities in the personal, business, and civic or political spheres.

"Logos-inspired evolution was materialistic and conquest and consumption-oriented. The alternative to it is evolution centered on human development and development of human communities." This quote frames the remainder of the book which suggests we are moving from:

• a focus on ends of conquest, colonization, and consumption
• which were served by technologies that use and transform matter, that generate the power to operate matter-transforming technologies, and that whet people's appetite, create artificial demand, and shift patterns of consumption.

Replacing those ends are the means and ends of connection, communication, and consciousness.

Some of the specific mindset shifts uncovered include:

• The shift from competition to reconciliation and partnership
• The shift from greed and scarcity to sufficiency and caring
• The shift from outer to inner authority
• The shift from separation to wholeness
• The shift from mechanistic to living systems
• The shift from organizational fragmentation to coherent integration

So to summarize, what I took is that we are seeking to emerge a planetary ethic of:

• "Live in a way that allows others to live as well"

and the means and ends of:

• connection;
• communication; and
  
• consciousness

And to cap off this post, I'll end with one of the final quotes that described the spirit of this for me:

"To live with and not against each other, to live in a way that does not rob the chances of others to live as well, to care what is happening to the poor and the powerless as well as to nature calls for feeling and intuition; for sensing the situation in which we find ourselves, apprehending its manifold aspects and creatively responding to it." There's a lot in that one as I reread it.

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Macroshift (Ervin Laszlo) --- Doomsday or Breakthrough?

I'm only through the first two chapters of Ervin Laszlo's book Macroshift, but thought I'd better post these snippets before I get caught-up in the flow of the week.  I came across this through a client who pointed to this as the best description of what their work is responding to.  I couldn't agree more... and know a few others that will feel the same way... and am hoping more people will join those ranks. 

The Four Phases of a Macroshift are the core theory and pretty easy to follow and digest.  They are also applied directly to our current position here.

Interestingly the book has helped me articulate the relevance of social media to my focus on transformative venturing and restoring balance among people and the planet... and it's that social media represents the first time that technology is encouraging a deepening of connections between people - a key reversal in the trend that technology has been playing since the industrialization wave that has shaped our society into the position it is in. 

One key quote in this is:

"The insight emerging from this four-phase dynamic is simple and straightforward. Macroshifts are triggered by technological innovations that destabilize the established structures and institutions of society. More adapted structures and institutions await the surfacing of a more adapted mindset in the bulk of the population. Consequently, a macroshift is a transformation of civilization in which technology is the driver and the values and consciousness of a critical mas of people the decider."

Anyone get a feeling that social media is going to play an important role?

I highly recommend buying the book - it's a much easier read that the last book I posted on.  In the meantime... enjoy... here are some of the other highlight quotes from the first two chapters.

+++

"... a vital point: the future is not to be forecast, but created."

"... where desire, transformed into the masterful administration of the unforeseen, makes for a selection between a scenario of breakdown and scenario of breakthrough."

"Today's transformation is not just economic, it is a civilizational process."

"The message of this book is that ours is an era of total-range evolutionary transformation that could, and ultimately will, go beyond economic globalization to pave the way toward a shift in civilization."

"Just as the present has emerged out of the past, the future is likely to follow from conditions in the present. After all, where we are going has much to do with where we have been."

"Given the unsustainability of many trends and processes in today's world, the dynamic of development that will apply to our future is not the linear dynamic of classical extrapolation but the nonlinear chaos dynamic of complex-system evolution."

"A macroshift is a bifurcation in the evolutionary dynamic of a society - in our interacting and interdependent world it is a bifurcation of human civilization in its quasi totality."

"...'catastrophic bifurcation'. Here the system's relatively stable 'point' and 'periodic' attractors are joined by 'chaotic' or 'strange' attractors. These appear suddenly , as chaos theorists say, 'out of the blue.' They drive the system into a supersensitive state, the state of chaos."

"The slightest distrubance would shift the evolutionary trajectory of the world's weather from one of the wings to the other. The weather, it appears, is a system in a permanently chaotic state - a system permanently governed by chaotic attractors."

"Living systems maintain themselves in the physically improbable state far from thermal and chemical equilibrium. ... Living systems do not move toward equilibrium, as classical physical systems do, but maintain themselves in their improbable state by constantly replenishing the energies and matter they consume with fresh energies and matter obtained from their environment."

"When a human society reaches the limits of its stability, it becomes supersensitive and is highly responsive to the smallest fluctuation. Then the system responds even to subtle changes in values, beliefs, worldviews, and aspirations."

"The evolution of the dominant culture and consciousness - the way people's values, views and ethics respond and change - determine the outcome of the system's chaos leap (the way its developmental trajectory forks off)."

"The macroshift moves toward a successful conclusion if, and only if, a critical mass of people in society evolve their mindset: if they generate and embrace values, worldviews, and ethics that mesh with the conditions that were inadvertently spawned by the technological innovations of their predecessors."

"The present time was associated with local space, and the future was seen as a continuous recurrence of the rythms experienced in the present. The seasons were known to follow each other, but there were no new seasons; all times had already been experienced."

"These communities had a high level of integration. The individual was an essential part of the clan or tribe, which in turn was embedded in nature and governed by cosmic forces. Nature and humans did not exist in separation, much less in opposition. Humans had empathy with all they encountered. ... In the seventeenth century Europe's mechanically colored Logos culminated in the concept of the world as a giant machine, which was elaborated by Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei. Newton's mathematical demonstration of the universality of the laws of motion confirmed galileo's pioneering insights and provided a basis for embracing a world concept that became the hallmark of the modern age. ...The universe was a divinely designed clockwork that was set in motion by a prime mover and then ran harmoniously through all eternity. It was believed to operate according to strict laws of nature. A knowledge of these lawss was said to enable the rational mind to know all things past, present and future. ... and as Laplace was reputed to have commented to Napoleon, God was a hypothesis for which there was no longer any need."

"... countless civilizations failed to survive, victims of changing conditions to which they could not adapt. This failure is not one we can contemplate today."

"If our Logos-dominated civilizations fails to adapt to the conditions it has itself created, the entire economic and political structure of our world will come crashing down."

"... the macroshift from national industrial societies toward a globally interdependent yet locally diverse world."

"It is the flexibility and creativity of the people that creates the subtle but all-important "fluctuation" that decides which of the available evolutionary paths the macroshift will then follow."

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The early days of the Internet - an original CBC news story.

I just caught this in Beth's Blog



Wow... how far we've come, in such short time, and yet how relevant the social observations remain today.

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Higlights from "Heart of Enterprise" --- the Viable System Model

I've been working my way through this tome for a few weeks and have had a number of conversations around it. It's by far the most valuable piece of work I've ever encountered on organizational design --- and for me a critical model in ventures that are on the venturing frontier (early concept stage and/or systemic co-creation -- see graph below).





Written by Stafford Beer, this book is a thorough walk-through of the Viable System Model.



The key principles can be found here, but will not likely be that helpful without gaining an understanding of the language being used - which is a big part of why this book is so dense. It's also, I think, necessary though to get at this topic in a way that is freed from the conventions that most of us have learned and understand about management and venturing --- those same conventions that seem to fail us the earlier or more systemically focused the ventures are.

A potentially helpful excerpt in terms of practical application in day-to-day decision making can be found here but again the value will likely mostly be lost without an immersion in the language, theory, and examples contained in the book.

Rather than trying to summarize those - I have a lot more digesting and experimenting to do with this before I can begin to try - I will simply list a series of quotes that most interested me while reading the book. Perhaps that will help serve as some intriguing context.

(oh and by the way... I found the ones at the end to be the most fun).

+++++++++++

"... the viability of any enterprise. This is not meant in purely economic sense; it refers to the ability of the enterprise to maintain a separate existence."

"Every viable system contains, and is contained in, a viable system. This conept of an organizational nest is crucial to this account of how enterprises really work, and is contrasted with the orthodox concept of hierarchy."

"A System consists of a group of elements dynamically related in time according to some coherent pattern. ... this System has a PURPOSE ... (which) is you the observer of the System who recognizes its purpose. ... it means that we have to agree on the CONVENTION about the nature, the boundaries, and the purpose of any System before we can agree on what is to count as a fact."

"We cannot successfully handle any system that we are disposed to manage unless we obtain an insight into its nature. That nature, as we have seen, has to do with purposes, with boundaries, and with other matters which are not customarily investigated within our institutions..."

"Every Good Regulator of a System must be a Model of that System"

"Viable: able to maintain a separate existence."

"The metasystem exists to undertake whatever functions are required to procure coherence."

"At any point on the diagram, then, these orthogonal forces (operation, coherence) interact. It is that interaction with DEFINES FREEDOM within the viable system."

"The metasystem must make some intervention, and should make only that degree of intervention that is required to maintain cohesiveness in a viable system. Cohesiveness is however a function of the purpose of the system. ... Freedom is in principle a computable function of systemic purpose as perceived."

"For, if the systemic purpose is subjective, only agreement of the heart will justify a given level of cohesion in any institution."

"... the synergistic formula must lie in the intersect of all the elemental operations."

"... the cybernetic policy of freedom: minimal intervention, in aid of cohesiveness plus synergy."

"Of STRUCTURE there is almost nothing to say, beyond the 'machine for apportioning blame' that the organization chart comprises."

"When two models of each other converge, learning has occurred."

"Money can be made available, one way or another, sooner or later, so long as the system remains (and is observed to remain) viable. That is why I have previously described the availability of money as a constraint rather than as a condition. ... the really scarce resources need for this investment are those of time, talent, care, attention..."

"Closure is the talisman of identity."

"The very notion of recursiveness embraces the notion of local closure at any given level of recursion."

"... plans should be continuously adaptive to fresh information."

"Often some aspect of a matter is measured because that is the easiest aspect to slap a number on, and by now it is the traditional and the accepted thing to do."

"Figures are useful only to the extent that we use them."

"The measures we use do not have requisite variety to absorb the variety of that which they claim to measure."

"Fact: that which is the case."

"Noise: A meaningless jumble of signals."

"Data: statements of fact."

"Information: that which CHANGES us."

"Data become information - when the fact in them is susceptible to action. How can I possibly know that I am informed? -- Only because I have changed my state."

"a manager is a human being who has refined the brain's ability to recognize patterns, and to compare the key characteristics of such patters, in the context of extremely complicated systems comprising men, materials, machinery, and money;

he has become skilled in recognizing a change in his own state, by recognizing information in the data flowing around him and in the ambient noise;

he has the motive, and has cultivated the style, necessary to transduce his own change of state into a change of stat in the extremely complicated system of which he is the manager."

"The manager's job is three-fold: to set the CRITERIA of stability... ; to detect instability... ; to change the criteria."

"The manager's requirement of measurement is that it should measure stability and instability in the system that he (this being his role) has subjectively defined."

"The manager's information, however, is his own recognition of his own change of state."

"... the criteria to which the system answers, in terms of its degree of stability, derive from the criteria of systemic viability in the context of teh total viable system - and in particular they derive from the understanding of cohesion, in which... freedom and constraint are balanced to provide a workable level of autonomy."

"Improvement in the management of complicated systems will not occur until managers give up the dysfunctional concept of causality, and the search for the unique case."

Summarizing a few paragraphs here on what it means in terms of some measure for the system to say 'I am all right':
- we normally <e.g. produce>... speaks to status quo and is measured as ACTUALITY (actuality)
- our plan... speaks to intention and is measured as CAPABILITY
- we wish we could... expresses a will to advance and is measured as POTENTIALITY.
- Ratios of those then indicate degrees of stability: actuality to capability is PRODUCTIVITY; capability to potentiality is LATENCY; and actuality to potentiality is PERFORMANCE.

"... the (senior) manager... must listen to himself doing the job. Here is closure for the viable system. It also is a form of measurement. But it is self-referential, and there is no objective measure for a measurement so defined. In the viable system called 'the human being', this function is usually called conscience."

"Cohesiveness is the primary characteristic of organization."

"... the process of organizing itself creates a problem of fragmentation which only its capacity to provide cohesion can offset."

"... planning... is actually the 'glue' of organizational cohesion."

"... planning is a continuous process."

"What needs to be reiterated is that planning happens only when there is an act of deicision. This act commits resources now, so that the future may be different from what would otherwise have simply happened to us. It follows that the only planners are managers, namely those people who are entitled to commit resources."

"The argument is to say that planning is a continuous act of adaptive decision that continually aborts."

"...it is an act of decision carried out by managers empowered to commit resources to a different future. Planning is not an activity resulting in products called plans: it is a continuous process, whereby the process itself - namely that of aborting the plans - is the pay-off."

"Plans are the embodiment of intentions subscribed to at each level of recursion: since these intentions are constantly changing, and not in a homogeneous way with respect either to time or to probability..., they must continually abort. The only characteristic worth detecting, measuring, reporting, or doing anything about, is incipient instability in the system."

"The great physicist (Heisenberg) showed that to examine, to measure, to interrogate, something changes its state."

"The model we now have, contemplated at any one level of recursion, comprises two hierarchical stages - and only two. ... stage of operations inside and now, and there is the... stage that constitutes the metasystem."

"And it (senior management) should be characterized by calm."

"... infinity is a process; thus to understand the process is to understand infinity without going there."

"First: there is a very real barrier to modeling the recursivity of viable systems more than one system beyond that over which we have authority. Second: no finite model is possible, because we do not have requisite variety to make it; and all we can do is to contemplate the process whereby such models are endlessly capable of generation. And that is to define the infinite recursion; and that is to explode into self-consciousness."

"There are two features about instability that need a lot of careful consideration. The first is that instability may set in anywhere in the behaviour of the organization, and at any time. the second is that there are always pre-symptoms of the fact. Unfortunately, the typical management information system... is repetitiously reporting on stability - it is in fact challenging the manager to find evidence of this crucial instability in the welter of routine data. If, nonetheless, he finds it, he does so because instability has already set in - it is in fact too late to avert it."

"But suppose that we can acquire data about stability that can be transformed into infomration (which changes us) about the possibility, the likelihood, of incipient instability: then, and only then, do we have a chance to avert it."

"The causal model in a complex probabilistic system does not have requisite variety to predict the future. This can be said with confidence from many theoretical standpoints: epistemological, logical, even theological, as well as cybernetic - wherein the causal model cannot possibly exhibit requisite variety."

"It seems, may we not then say, that calm is a function of alertness. It comes from being poised to read the signs of incipient instability, in the quiet confidence that instability can be averted."

"The senior manager stands as he humanly is: a very finite person. But he holds many privileges, that can extend his human faculties: in expertise, through his staff and advisors; in space through telecommunications; in time through a monitored alertness to incipient instability - whenever it may come. He operates within a metasystem which, though its currency is conflict, generates a special and indeed unique comradeship."

"It is only in the infinite recursion that self-consciousness occurs. It occurs for the man himself, of course... .The senior manager has to embody the self-consciousness of the institution; even if, unhappily, he does not yet know himself... "

"But one feature of the management centre that is quite general has to e provision for the intercommunication of the senior managers that reflects the comradeship."

"It seems likely to me that people are very accommodating to a wide range of styles; what they reject in leaders is especially insensitivity and insincerity."

"The problem is that managers are themselves, and tend to use the response they see fit and the style they see fit as if these two things were unconnected. The variety analysis leads to the conclusion that this is not so."

"The two immediate consequences of these arguments are, first that it is better to teach a manager to know himself than to know what someone supposes (without knowing the circumstances) that he ought to be; and, second, that he should understand the systemic nature of the viable system in which he operates."

"The final diagram shows us how everything is modifying everything else. Its contemplation is rewarding, because it finally demonstrates the foolhardiness of reductionism in senior management."

"If we want to classify the situations in which the manager finds himself, they are dependent on two major parameters. ... The fist of course is variety, and the second is relaxation time."

"Thus in designing a regulatory system for any given situation, the first rule is to follow every significant loop through the systemic diagram, applying the variety rules that have been elucidated. The second rule is to attend to the relaxation time of the system. ... The key point to note is that if the system has not returned to stability before another shock drives it once more towards instability, then the regulation is impossible. So is learning impossible, so adaptation, so evolution."

"The real concern is with the proliferating variety that must needs be absorbed; and with the time that must needs elapse before the iterative loops of the managerial system can assimilate that variety and return the representative point of the system to stability and the psychological state of the manager to its point of calm."

"The parameters of effectiveness... judgment, style, and relaxation time..."

"... we observe him (the senior manager) as personifying the self-consciousness of the enterprise. The clue was that he operates in the awareness of the infinite recursion."

"If the senior manager success in understanding, and legislating for, his own ambiance of calm and alarm; and if he also succeeds in classifying managerial situations and his own decisions according to the tripartite model here set out (judgment, style, and relaxation time), then he may operate closure in the sense defined. And if he does that, in full awareness of what he is doing, then he may embody the infinite recursion as a living process."

"Perception fo the infinite recursion is always the goal. Perhaps the problem is that once a man or woman has reached that perception, nothing matters any longer."

"The contention seems to be that if the informational system is properly deisnged to recognize incipient instabilities, and if there is a management cnetre in which requisite metasystemic variety is shared between comradeship, then the senior management can become aware of what it is really doing."

"... viable organizations produce themselves."

"It is extremely important, when contemplating what it is to count as the management centre, to consider the inter-recursive algedonic signaling equipmnent. Otherwise: either the management centre will go to sleep in trance-like contemplation of the self-consciousness of the infinite recursion, or it will be overtaken by anarchists from the lower recursive levels intent on alleviating their personal pain."

"The suspicion dawns that the enterprise may not only be a system that produces itself, but that this is both its definition and its purpose."

"The heart of the enterprise is embodied in its own people. Consultants cannot catalyse interactions that do not exist, or are persistently and perversely held at bay."

"Life is a process, not a justification."

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Awaiting the accounting revolution.

I've been twittering my frustrations today.  I have a fairly simple financial situation and have 2 companies that I process both Shawna's and my work through.  There's nothing complex with either of them so I've been filing the taxes and handling the bookkeeping myself since the beginning except for a short stint where I outsourced the annual filings. 

My frustration is that doing it myself is harder than it should be. Bookkeeping/accounting software is far more cumbersome and antequated than it should be, and it costs too much for things that should be free (tax table updates and payroll functionality).

Really, all that I need is a basic ability to track expenses to certain accounts, track taxes collected and paid, and as a bonus handle my payroll tax calculations.  The formulas, preferred account structures etc. are all available from the responsible jurisdictions.  I wouldn't even use it anymore for invoicing or time-tracking (I'm already using FreshBooks and Toggl) and it wouldn't even have to worry about importing bank info (I'm using Wesabe for that).  And as far as tax filings, governments are increasingly encouraging electronic filings so that shouldn't even be a big hurdle.

I'm sure I'm not alone. The small business community is growing as we move into a more creative and entrepreneurial economy and established online tools and protocols make interfacing to things like Freshbooks and Wesabe easy.  And when it costs $200-$500 for basic software to cover the range of functions, plus at least $100 per year to keep tax tables updated it sounds like a very attractive online subscription opportunity and generally about $100 per annual return.  I'd easily pay $10-20 per month for something that integrated FreshBooks, Wesabe, and allowed for online tax filings.

With all that I wonder if a big Intuit (Quickbooks) upset is in the works.  With the speed that these services have been made available and they key building blocks in Wesabe and Freshbooks... I'm hoping it's only a matter of months.  In fact, I'm hoping it's before the start of the next fiscal year - even in beta - I'd love to be testing!

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