Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness
Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

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Friday, August 29, 2003

Swarmth

I can't stop thinking about Stowe Boyd's article on swarm intelligence in July's Darwin magazine. It just opened a whole new way of thinking about networks in organizations, learning, and adaptability. It's a great primer on swarming, and the logic of "bottoms-up" decision-making. Consider:

"Bottom-up decision-making is based on a belief in adaptation: a large number of minds, perhaps thousands of minds, working in parallel, assimilating small bits of information and producing many small analyses, that lead to others being influenced in their analyses, and so on. A fractal decision-making process, where the activities at one scale directly reflect the activities at another."

I was just reminded again after seeing Erik van Bekkum's blog response to Judith Meskill regarding NASA and communities of practice. It's not a matter of KM practices, it's a matter of letting go of some level of control to allow the intelligence of the organization to surround a problem, chatter across all the communication channels, and listen until clarity emerges.

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