Good post from Ross, which I add to my Ichiba or should I say not the KIT category for reference:

If you have any doubt that markets are conversations, literally, there is a new paper by Peter Kollock of UCLA and E. Russell Braziel of Bentek Energy on How Not to Build an Online Market: The Sociology of Market Microstructure (pdf).

Ross ends the long quote with some personal additions and I particularly want to highlight the last two sentences:

• Markets are conversations, as per Cluetrain.
• Markets contain risk.
• Conversations can help you manage that risk.
• Social software can help you extract what you need from those conversations and thereby help you manage the risk.

Unfortunately, when risk management is simply defensive, cultures punish failure which prevents learning about latent (and fat tail) risks. Managing the unknown requires making the known transparent, but to do so, requires trust.