I have again been subjected to an ad for a product touting "ROI". I always enjoy when these things wander off into magical promises involving imaginary numbers, making the organizational value of a product/intervention/innovation/course/trained unicorn look more causally attributable, measurable, and monetizable than it really is.
What's the ROI of trust?
What's the ROI of the conversation that prevents a terrible decision?
What's the ROI of the person who knows exactly who to ask?
What's the ROI of a culture where people share what they know instead of hoarding it?
Why do we pretend those things don't have economic consequences?
Is a dollar figure always the most useful way to understand them?
What will happen to our notions of "ROI" as we stop counting widgets and look for ways of better evaluating social, adaptive, and distributed work, and understanding the complexity of systems?
Flashback: David Ferguson & I developed this handy calculator some years back. I stand by it, but he made me take out the unicorns.
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