From the MVN meeting and now from the NACUSO meeting (ZOPA even with all of my questions about it viability) my head is buzzing with the concepts of “peer-to-peer” commerce. And while it is impossible to be absolutely pristine in having an organization serve its peers – I do believe that the spirit that drives the tone or culture of a cooperative/collaborative business or more importantly the crafting of its business model and financial engines should resonate with the “peer-to-peer” perspective.

And while you might nod and say I agree Randy, the credit union marketplace and the cooperative marketplace are driven by these concepts/tones, you might challenge why that would work in today’s or the future marketplace. It is simple – it is everywhere – in today’s growing networked world where peers aggregate and demand that the essence of their own importance makes them famous, makes them “in-the-know”, and makes them part of the transaction (sometimes customer, sometimes retailer, and sometimes even the designer of transaction) then we might say they “get it”.

The question is if they “get it”, and we had it, how can we learn from the new age consumers and morph our tradition to their space and earn from it. How can we drive ourselves to deal with the realistic needs for nurturing organizations while projecting our beliefs for gains through a “peer-to-peer” focus?

Attached is a financial report written to my peers – projecting the importance of responding to opportunities, and driving into our space a commitment to our peers.

I recently had a conversation with Chip Filson, it challenged that our industries tone might be slipping far too often to our “organizational focused voices” versus “peers” voices. How do we live in an economic layer where member, credit union, and vendor equally swap our needs, solutions, and goals?

Working on a concept to teach in my board planning sessions in 2008 – would love your comments.