Tag: complexity

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Flocking + Schooling

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Complex systems often follow simple rules. Flocking and schooling are examples in nature of vast, networked information systems. It is network theory been played out in real time in the real world, in a way that organizations can only begin to imagine happening. Don Tapscott has a great video on crow murmurations that speaks to this phenomenon. I wrote about it here. In this behaviour and communication system, there is no leader or global information; but sets of local rules and interaction. The nodes, and their interconnectivity, drive the behaviour of the network. Knowing that, in complexity, there is no grand scheme … Continue reading Flocking + Schooling

Social Business, The Curious Will Inherit The World3 Comments

The Sophisticated Answer To The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Tit For Tat

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In my undergraduate studies I was paid to participate in game theory sessions within the economics faculty. The (flawed) assumption of game theory (and a lot of economics) is that individuals are rational. Anyway, The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a simple modeling tool to understand decisions, and to understand complex systems (definition: “large networks of simple interacting elements which, following simple rules, produce emergent, collective, complex behavior.”) If you need the rules of the ‘game’ – here you go. It turns out that the best approach to this ‘game’ is surprisingly simple. Tit for tat wins out every time. One of … Continue reading The Sophisticated Answer To The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Tit For Tat

Story + Narrative, The Curious Will Inherit The WorldLeave a comment

Embracing Complexity: Individuals

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Nilofer Merchant (in conversation with Carol Dweck) wants to challenge smart and talented leaders, those ‘in the know.’ Here are a few choice quotes: “[W]hat if you don’t [know]”? What changes? The things you know today are not enough. Facts change, new challenges arise, and so you can never think, “I know this” and call it done. The growth mindset then is about your ability to adapt to a world of changing circumstances. You have to be wedded to a definition of success that says we will figure it out, and keep figuring it out.” An embrace of complexity for leaders, … Continue reading Embracing Complexity: Individuals

Social Business, Story + Narrative, The Future of WorkLeave a comment

Embracing Complexity: Enterprise Social Networks

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I participated last year as an interviewee in a MSc dissertation on social information theory, and a quote from another participant struck a chord with me. The company asked in an employee survey, “Do you use the Enterprise Social Network platform?” and compared the answers of all questions of the people that answered “Yes” with the answers of those that said “No”. The “Yes” scores were roughly 10% higher in questions like “my ideas are listened to”, “I can communicate across business lines”, “I understand the strategy.” These people have sought active engagement with their workplace, the nuance and disagreements, the … Continue reading Embracing Complexity: Enterprise Social Networks

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Embracing Complexity: Office Space

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Just as in cities, offices that are complex, alive, interactive are the ones where things happen. This was proven by Thomas Allen. The Allen Curve posits that “interactions between different workers declined exponentially depending on the distance between their offices.” Indeed, “researchers on different floors almost never had anything to do with each other. This effect starts to take place when people are 50 metres or more apart.” Newer office design encourages interaction. Steve Jobs famously (via his biography) decreed that his (Apple, Pixar, NeXT etc.) offices limit the number of toilet blocks and have them in a central place that … Continue reading Embracing Complexity: Office Space

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Embracing Complexity: Cities

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I am digging complexity, and see it EVERYWHERE! Let’s start at a macro level, with cities. “Cities are like a star” says Luis Bettencourt, in a video on the SFI Introduction to Complexity MOOC. “The reactor is getting hotter…More mass – reactions at the centre are faster; the start is hotter, everything is faster.” The complex social system cavorts with complexity and trembles on the edge of chaos. Innovation, patents, GDP (as well as crime) all increase at logarithmic scale with city size / density. Visiting a city like New York, or going back home to London, I feel very … Continue reading Embracing Complexity: Cities

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A Simple Person Embracing Complexity

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So I have been reorienting myself around the idea of complexity. By nature, I consider myself a simple soul – simple design, food, routines, lifestyle. Simple can be subtle and sophisticated, but generally not complex. Conversely, I like change, and change tends not to be simple or linear. I had seen my ability as being able to simplify the complexity and disturbance of change. To subvert and avoid. I had it wrong. “I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity” So said Oliver Wendell Holmes. Complexity is … Continue reading A Simple Person Embracing Complexity

The Curious Will Inherit The World, The Future of Work2 Comments

Go Ask The Person Of Whom You Are Least Certain

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Picking on yesterday’s post on entropy, I see this discussion of the cost of moving energy / data pops up in many ways. There is a lot of good writing on how weak ties are good for you. Facebook prospers by driving ‘many lightweight interactions over time.‘ These are various embraces of complexity. It seems perverse to introduce this cost of data into one’s ecosystem, but no! Entropy is good for you. From this great Fast Co article, In information theory, “entropy” is the term used to describe how much actual information there is in any given set of data; … Continue reading Go Ask The Person Of Whom You Are Least Certain

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The Community Manager As Maxwell’s Demon

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More from my Complexity MOOC: this time a learning from the second law of thermodynamics, about entropy. Entropy is the ‘heat’ or loss created by changing energy state in a system. It can be considered the cost of that transfer. [And apologies for any holes in my understanding. It was not real education; just a MOOC :)] The idea of entropy can be transposed to information management theory, as the unpredictability of the data. Moving data, sharing information, aligning teams and organizations all cause entropy. This is a cost to the system. The second law of thermodynamics shows entropy as a … Continue reading The Community Manager As Maxwell’s Demon

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Why Complexity, Why MOOCs? Renaissance, That’s Why

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Another short reflection on taking a MOOC on complexity from the Sante Fe Institute. I am not certain I need to know too much about biological systems, fractals, and mathematical logarithm formulas, as discussed in the MOOC, but I do need to own my journey through the ever more interconnected hivemind of work. We need each other, and we need to cultivate large, random, nuanced networks of co-conspirators. We need more data, and we need support to filter and synthesize it. We need to be anti-fragile enough to deal with complexity and constant change. From a google docs report on … Continue reading Why Complexity, Why MOOCs? Renaissance, That’s Why

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MOOC 1, University 0.

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I must be stupid. I have two degrees, yet I think education is completely overrated. I vowed after completing my Masters, ‘that’s it with studying!’ As my kids enter formal schooling, I am moving the other way – less structure, less rote, fewer rules of engagement, more serendipity, less linear, more networked, more curiosity, less right and wrong, more maybe and let’s see and who knows? The one-person university Maria Popova records Frank Lloyd Wright’s lament:  “The present education system is the trampling of the herd.” Brain Pickings, she continued, “became the record of my alternative learning, of that cross-disciplinary curiosity that … Continue reading MOOC 1, University 0.