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Strategy as an Organizational Coordination Protocol for the Public Sector - Vaughn Tan

Lecture Vaughn Tan

Vaughn Tan presents an executive education course on strategy for the public sector, defining strategy as 'the art of making reasoned subjective arguments and decisions about acceptable trade-off configurations when pursuing desired outcomes.' He frames strategy as a coordination protocol particularly crucial for decentralized hierarchies like public sector organizations, which face structural coordination challenges that private sector strategy theory often fails to address.

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Lecture

Kickoff

The Protocol School 2025 kickoff session introduces a three-year research program funded by the Ethereum Foundation that studies protocols broadly across history and cultures. The organizers present their 'homecoming' challenge of connecting protocol research to the crypto ecosystem while maintaining interdisciplinary engagement, positioning protocols as invisible infrastructures (like water) that shape society but escape notice.

crypto-humanities-bridge homecoming-framework interdisciplinary-protocol-studies

Tim, Timber

Talk

Salon II: ARC Regenerative Communities - 2024 Protocol Symposium

Kalia Young and Day present research on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a regenerative standards development organization, examining how its protocols and social structures enable long-term innovation and maintenance of the internet as digital public infrastructure. They argue that the IETF's decentralized, generative approach to protocol creation represents a model for pro-social technical communities seeking to build and sustain digital commons.

digital-commons governance internet-engineering-task-force-ietf

Kalia Young, Day

Paper

Capital Enclosure for Software Commons

Van Epps argues that entities extracting profits from software commons like Linux and Ethereum have the greatest incentive and capacity to co-opt them, analyzing how common-pool resources operate according to internal logics distinct from capital accumulation. The paper examines the structural tension between the anti-rival nature of digital goods and the enclosure mechanisms through which commercial actors capture value from collaborative software ecosystems.

economics governance protocols

Trent Van Epps