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Fuzzy Signalsextracting the signal from the noise |
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Fuzzy Signalsextracting the signal from the noise |
I had a funny thing happen to me around 1996 whilst I was living in Singapore. I was flying business class to Tokyo, a good 7 hour flight, and found myself sitting next to an eccentric-looking lady, plump and very purple both in complexion and clothing. I felt like I was sitting next to a large, florid flower, somewhat artificial but in a pleasantly kitsch sort of way. It turned out that she was an astrologer based in Sydney, and an evidently very successful one to be flying business class!
Before the champagne cocktail arrived, she announced that she never gave free readings, reserving her insights into the future for her exclusive clientele. But by the time our first course had arrived, she couldn't stop talking about the significance of my birth date and time: early morning, March 21st, 1971. Apparently, according to her, I was most certainly a Bacchanal priestess in another lifetime, and that this was exceedingly rare and special. (Why is it that we are never slaves, lepers, evildoers, or anything humdrum when it comes to past lifetimes? Curious that.) I listened politely, bemused by her enthusiasm and sudden reversal of intention. And I was half tempted to cheekily chime, " hey sister, what do you mean in a past life time"! Implying, of course, that I was still carrying on hedonistic fertility duties in some secret society.
[Baachanal Priestess on old silver mug]
Since then I have never really looked into what this day means beyond my entry into the world. So to mark my birthday, I thought a little research was in order and here is what I found:
First, the scientific definition: In the northern hemisphere, the Vernal Equinox is on March 20 or 21st—this varies given the 400 year cycle in the Gregorian calendar— when night and day are nearly the same length and the Sun crosses the celestial equator (i.e., declination 0) moving northward. Translated literally, equinox means "equal night." Because the sun is positioned above the equator, day and night are about equal in length all over the world during the equinoxes.
While the first day of spring is an important seasonal change, the beginning of the creation cycle in many living systems, it is also richly symbolic. It's when the amount of dark and light is balanced, and thus a moment of equilibrium in the year. Not surprisingly, then, there are many ancient religious and traditional rites surrounding this day.
This is the Pagan Sabbat or "Lady Day" usually celebrated on or near the evening when the Sun crosses the Equator and enters the astrological sign of Aries. Mainly celebrated by Neo-Pagans. (Lots of misinformation about these folks. They are not satanists but a modern version of the Celtic Druids fused with other early nature-centric religions.)
Speaking of Druids, we also have a Welsh festival: Gwyl Canol Gwenwynol. This begins sundown, (March 20th or 21st or the day before the Equinox) Day of the Gorse. This is part of the festival of the Goddess Eostar, which is focused on the fertility rites for the early sowing. "This is often celebrated with eggs (beginnings) and rabbits (fertiity) It is now time to lay the seeds of new projects and new directions that you have meditated on throughout the cold months. Now is the time to start taking action. (A lot of traditions use this particular sabbat for initiations. New roads, a new breath.) Colours for this sabbat: Purple and Yellow." The name "Easter" was derived from this Saxon Goddess festival.
A Christian holy day, Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, is around March 25th. In the Church calendar, this is when Mary learns that she is with child. It's "announced" because her conception was immaculate, so how else would she know? Early Church organizers elected to put this date around this time, an appropriate nine months before Xmas, which was also conveniently proximate to earlier pagan spring-rite, cult of the female goddess traditions.
It is also probably no coincidence that early Egyptians built the Great Sphinx so that it points directly toward the rising Sun on the day of the vernal equinox.
Back to the Greeks: Aries, which starts on March 21st, is the first sign of the Zodiac. Aries is ruled by the planet Mars and its symbol is the ram figure, which represents offensive power. According to one website: "In Aries we move from the potential to the actual; from dormant to active participation. Desire, initiative, courage and action are words which best describe Aries. Originally an agricultural god associated with the affairs of spring, Mars assimilated many of the characteristics of Ares since battles were often coordinated at this same time of year." I think the Iraqi War Part II started around this time last year. To read more about the traits of Aries, click here. It's disconcertingly accurate, but I'm sure that's explainable in some rational way.
So lots going on around this as pivotal point in the movement of the planets, in the rotation of our earth and our social, cultural, mythological, and seasonal calendars. Interesting how these things, facts and myths and rites, all interact and influence each other.
\Pa"tience\, n. [F. patience, fr. L. patientia. See Patient.]
1. The state or quality of being patient; the power of suffering with fortitude; uncomplaining endurance of evils or wrongs, as toil, pain, poverty, insult, oppression, calamity, etc.
2. The act or power of calmly or contentedly waiting for something due or hoped for; forbearance.
3. Constancy in labor or application; perseverance.
4. Sufferance; permission. [Obs.]
5. (Bot.) A kind of dock (Rumex Patientia), less common in America than in Europe; monk's rhubarb.
6. (Card Playing) Solitaire.
Syn: Patience, Resignation.
Usage: Patience implies the quietness or self-possession of one's own spirit under sufferings, provocations, etc.; resignation implies submission to the will of another. The Stoic may have patience; the Christian should have both patience and resignation.
Why this theme today? It converged upon me unavoidably after a boozy, stimulating lunch with a new friend in a cosy brasserie, Chez Gladines, in the 13 arrondissement in Paris (30, rue Cinq Diamants.) We agreed that patience is what we both needed as we waited for the context supporting our "next thing" to emerge; for our ideas to coalesce, form and germinate in productive ways. As George Polya, a mathematican once joked, “The first rule of discovery is to have brains and good luck. The second rule of discovery is to sit tight and wait till you get a bright idea.” Of course, we are not passively waiting, but we are in the incubation and preparation phase of the creative renewal cycle, with all of its trials and tribulations... And then, as it often happens, when I got home I got bombarded again with the patience theme from two different places, both of which, funnily enough, were two English music icons. Yes, I'm talking about George Michael and Brian Eno. When something is your Dharma, your current lesson, it's amazing how your perceptual filters work!
First, the easy bit. George Michael has come out with his latest album called Patience. Interviewed on BBC Radio 1, he called it this because "this is exactly what the world needs the most right now." It was also a self-reference, an inside joke, alluding to the length of time it took him to produce this album. But the most interesting headline? George won't be producing any more commercial albums. He's "Through" (which is also a title of one of his new songs.) The pop star is tired of the pressure of working under the creative strictures of a record label, and wants more artistic freedom—another small sign that the current cultural production model in the entertainment industry is broken. Instead, George will be using the Internet as his distribution channel, and will donate any proceeds to his charities. As he frankly put it, he clearly doesn't need any more money. Rich enough, thanks very much. So we'll see what happens there. Could be interesting... or not!
Second, I tripped upon Brian Eno's fantastic lecture from the Long Term Thinking Series produced by the Long Now Foundation. (I mentioned the Long Now briefly in my "Getting into the Dirt" blog, an organization Brian was part of creating.) The goal of the series: to build a coherent, compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking, to help nudge civilization toward Long Now's goal of making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare." Confirmed Speakers so far include: Brian Eno, Peter Schwartz, George Dyson, James Dewar, Rusty Schweikart, Daniel Janzen, David Rumsey, Paul Hawken, Laurie Anderson, and Danny Hillis. These lectures are highly, highly recommended.
Brian's thoughts, as usual, were deep and profound. His lecture is about why the Long Now Foundation exists, and why they are building a 10,000 year clock. At first glance, this seems like a wildly eccentric gesture. Why build a clock that will live inside a mountain in Nevada and chime just once every year for ten millenia? But there is a deep message and method behind this madness. The objective is to create a new form of thinking about time. As everyone knows, things are getting faster and faster, the existensial costs of which are looking increasingly dire. For most people, "now" is next week and the future is next year (at the most). There is very little encouragement, especially in business these days, to set long term objectives and ambitions. Even in academia, research is being driven by short term metrics and intellectual fashions. Serendipitous research is in decline. But those slower-moving layers in a healthy civilization—infrastructure, governance, culture, ecological systems— need long term investments to function well, investments that often take generations. So we are discounting our future, reducing our intergenerational equity, and thus the number of options available through this narrow sense of time. We need a Longer Now, a extended sense of the present. First Nations bands in parts of North America do this: when they make decisions they think backwards 7 generations and forward 7 generations. This kind of practice is rare today. Most people and institutions reflexively dismiss long term, "blue sky" projects as being silly, futile and not very practical. So the Long Now foundation has emerged to celebrate this kind of long term thinking. A key part of this strategy is to build this 10,000 year clock. By building something real—something beautiful, functional, durable for 10,000 years—they hope to create an icon that makes people think differently. Charismatic ideas and icons have done this in the past. Think about Notre Dame, the pyramids of Giza, the temples in Ankor Wat; they helped humans see themselves as being part of something much bigger than themselves. The Clock of the Long Now is their contemporary answer to such consciousness-expanding artifacts.
[From The Clock of the Long Now by Stewart Brand]
As Brian and Brand stress—and this is a strong theme in my work —the critical thing we need is to understand the difference between the things that need to be done slowly, and the things that need to be done quickly. In short, we need to recapture some civilizational patience. We need to slow down, on some fronts, to go faster and further as a species.
The same could be said at a micro scale as well. At an individual level, in response to question, "how has working on a 10,000 clock changed your perception of your own life-span?", Brian said some things that helped explain my attraction to this project. He said when you spend part of your day to include living 10,000 years into the future, the rest of your day is quite different. Your perspective is quite changed, and indeed, this is the whole point of this exercise. Changing scale makes a difference. He also said that it takes the pressure off a little when you feel like you are part of a more longer continuum of human life. This reduces the pressure to be constantly performing, to be in action all the time. Amen to that! I've been looking for some rationale for relief!
There is also something profoundly inspirational and deeply moving to work on these long term projects. Brian tells the story of when he was in a garden in England just recently, a garden that was reaching the peak of its beauty. This was a garden, however, that must have been planted over 200 years ago, with its creators knowing full well that they would never reap the full benefits of their efforts. Brain, however, muses that they must have died happy knowing that they had created something beautiful, something that would outlast them and benefit future generations.
The Long Now is something I've signed up for in the choice of my career. I find it inspiring, challenging, important and fulfilling to work on projects much larger than myself. It puts my ego in proper check and allows me to be patient, but not passively so. It gives me permission to think big but within perspective. So expand your Long Now and contribute to something that your children's grandchildren might benefit from. You might find it quite satisfying.
To build off of my Bangalore blog, in the "The Great Indian Dream"(NYT, March 11, 2004), Tom Friedman describes India's current success as the culmination of a "unique techno-cultural-economic perfect storm." The elements comprising this somewhat camp metaphor include:
1) Strong cultural emphasis on education, which has created a huge pool of engineers and skilled labour.
2) English language capabilities which was "an accident of history and the British occupation of India."
3) Time zone arbitrage: designers in America can expect output the next day given time zone differences.
4) Skillful at "glocalization": India excels at blending local and foreign elements, a syncretic capability that spans its long history.
5) Luck in two respects: overinvestment in undersea fiber-optic cables during the dot come mania, thus enabling cheap data transfer; and the unintended consequences of Y2K, which gave many Indian software companies a reason to exist as western companies looked for cheap suppliers for solutions.
In sum, in Friedman's view, the good news is that there is only one India out there...
"The bad news, from a competition point of view, is that there are 555 million Indians under the age of 25, and a lot of them want a piece of "The Great Indian Dream," which is a lot like the American version. As one Indian exec put it to me: The Americans' self-image that this tech thing was their private preserve is over. This is a wake-up call for U.S. workers to redouble their efforts at education and research. If they do that, he said, it will spur "a whole new cycle of innovation, and we'll both win. If we each pull down our shutters, we will both lose."
I know it's trendy to talk about India in this way, and part of me loathes such fashion, but for the record I have been a one-woman marketing band for India since the mid 1990s. Fresh off the plane in 1998, I tried without success to push a learning journey to India. China was all the rage, fair enough, but only part of the picture. Practically speaking, it was a hard sell getting executives to take 10 days off to go to India, but many executives have done this since... and now the tide has come in. Oh well, one small consolidation, if a little plaintiff and puerile, is that at least I know that my early indicator sense of what's important in the near future is well-functioning. I have finally enough years behind me to do this kind of perceptual analysis. Of all the developments and ideas that I have had the most energy around, how many of those were where the world was going? How many were ahead of the curve? A good number (almost all) of them, I'd have to say. That pattern is quite clear now—namely, that pattern recognition is something I'm particularly good at, which might explain why I ended up in this business. I flatter myself, of course; we all like to say we're right and there is a particular psychological term for this, something like "retrospective sense-making." Or, as Gladwell frames it in his excellent article, "Connecting the Dots: The paradoxes of intelligence reform" (The New Yorker, March 10, 2003.)
Fischhoff calls this phenomenon "creeping determinism"—the sense that grows on us, in retrospect, that what has happened was actually inevitable—and the chief effect of creeping determinism, he points out, is that it turns unexpected events into expected events. As he writes, "The occurrence of an event increases its reconstructed probability and makes it less surprising than it would have been had the original probability been remembered."I think the paper trail I've left, and the documented period of feeling completely alone, out on a limb, in selling a particular idea, might prove my case, even from a disinterested point of view. Besides, there is no sense in being a good signal spotter if you can't capture the value of this skill. I've got a lot to learn in this respect. I think I suffer from the classic "too early to be relevant" dilemma, and may have other problems around finding the right language to communicate these things. Who are the best people you know who bridge this dilemma? Who are the people to learn from? And how do they do it?
[Ganesh, Hindu God of Fortune and other things]
Speaking of the English language—which is quite wonderful in its breadth and depth, its syncretic ability to absorb new words from different places and vernaculars—I thought I would offer some favourites, courtesy of my Word-of-the Day email service.
potvaliant (POT-val-iant) adjective, also pot-valiant
Showing courage under the influence of drink. Such courage is also known as Dutch courage. [From pot (vessel) + valiant (courageous).]blunderbuss (BLUN-duhr-bus) noun
1. A short, wide-mouthed gun used to scatter shots at close range.
2. A clumsy, blundering person.benighted (bi-NYT-id) adjective
1. Intellectually, morally, or socially ignorant; unenlightened.
2. Overtaken by night or darkness.
[From be- + night + -ed.]
Or if you prefer to be more polite and complimentary try:
toothsome (TOOTH-suhm) adjective
1. Delicious.
2. Agreeable; pleasant.
3. Sexually attractive.
[From tooth + -some. A related word is handsome, from hand + -some,
literally easy to handle or manipulate.]palmary (PAL-muh-ree) adjective
Of supreme importance; outstanding; praiseworthy.
[From Latin palmarius (deserving or carrying the palm), from palma (palm).
The branches of the palm tree were carried as symbols of victory in ancient
times. The name of the palm tree derives from the resemblance of the shape
of its frond to the palm of a hand.]
English-speakers may smugly talk about the dominance of their language in global business today, but will English continue to be the future lingua franca?
Probably not— accordingly to a recent study in Science Magazine. "English in Decline as a First Language, Study Says" by Stefan Lovgren, Nationhttp://zhongwen.com/z/x46.htmal Geographic News.
"Graddol argues that the world's language system is at a crossroads, and a new linguistic order is about to emerge. The transformation is partly due to demographics. The world's population rose rapidly during the 20th century, but the major increase took place in less developed countries.Long gone is the idea, first suggested in the 19th century, that the entire world will one day speak English as a "world language." In fact, the relative decline of English is continuing. In the mid-20th century, nearly 9 percent of the world's population grew up speaking English as their first language. In 2050, the number is expected to be 5 percent."
"Today, Mandarin Chinese is well established as the world's largest language in terms of native speakers. The next four major languages—English, Spanish, Hindi/Urdu, and Arabic—are likely to be equally ranked by 2050, with Arabic rising as English declines.
But it is the languages of the rank just below—such as Bengali, Tamil, and Malay—that are now growing the fastest."
"While many rural languages are going extinct, new urban hybrid languages may help to maintain global diversity. Hundreds of new forms of English have already been spawned around the world.""In the future, the study predicts, most people will speak more than one language and will switch between languages for routine tasks. Monolingual English speakers may find it difficult to fully participate in a multilingual society. Native English speakers—particularly monolingual ones—have been too complacent about the status of their language and the lack of need to learn other languages," Graddol said.
English will still dominant the language of science, but just as Latin was taken over by English in the 17th century, this may also happen in the world of science at some point in the future.
Time to dust off my Mandarin text books.
So last night at dinner, when I had to explain what brought me to Singapore in the mid 1990s (which I won't bore you with for now), we started talking about the conditions for creating a vibrant "high tech" cluster, the classic incarnation of which is Silicon Valley. Since two out of four of us at the table were were accomplished technologists—Toby, my software engineer cum sweetheart, and his boss, the CTO of Applications at Apple computer—this might have been a bit presumptuous. And indeed it was. But my experience is that, while often contemptuous of analysts like me who look at the "bigger picture" in all its fuzziness and abstraction, technologists are not always good observers of their industry. Most lack distance and thus forget to ask the big questions. As Marshall McLuhan paraphrased a Chinese proverb, "I don't know who discovered water, but it sure wasn't fish."
Fortunately the company I was in had both micro and macro pictures in hand. Unfortunately for them, I still gave myself permission to wax on about the essentials in creating a high tech cluster, which is something I did study and then later practice as a venture capitalist in Asia. Summarizing the best research on the topic, I argued that it was important to get all of the basics right: proximity of world-class research universities, a flexible labor pool, the presence of venture/risk capital and other professional services, a high quality of life and attractions for talent, etc. But the thing that made the most difference was that illusive and tricky thing called "culture." San Francisco has always had this, dating back to its embryonic Gold Rush days. It's always been a place where the rules could be transgressed, and where too much history wouldn't get in the way of trying new things. (One of the most interesting talks I heard was from the historian J.S. Holliday connecting the dotcom bubble to earlier experiences like the Gold Rush. Culture is often very local! See his fantastic and beautiful book, Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California.)
[This is actually taken during the Klondike Gold Rush in British Columbia, but I liked the picture so much that it won out over others.]
Now culture conversations can regress quite quickly into meaningless pap, just huge generalizations that have little application; more dangerously, the culture card can be used as a slightly cryptic, deterministic and thus ultimately racist weapon. So let me be clear: I'm talking about "high tech" culture, which is a specialized subset, and not an ethnically based one. And as research has shown, these cultures can vary significantly even within a country. Annalee Saxenian wrote the definitive book explaining why Silicon Valley took off while the Boston cluster took a back-seat. (See Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128
Her thesis was that Silicon Valley rose to the top of the technology game globally because of a particular high tech culture that had (1) a tolerance for risk and failure, both on the part of entrepreneurs and investors; (2) highly interactive social networks, that is, techies who traded ideas and information relatively freely in informal settings... and techies who moved quite a bit from company to company, often going to the competition, in the ebb and flow of their shifting interests, successes or failures with startups and/or established firms. So knowledge bases and social networks were constantly being diversified and refreshed, and collective learning more readily diffused. In other words, creative destruction was allowed to happen, without many top-down and bottom-up constraints (e.g. regulations and social norms.)
Yet back in Singapore, Bangkok or Jakarta, we had both of these things happening. Every time we did our talk on this topic, especially to the government officials in charge of creating their high tech base, their "information super highway" to use the buzzword of the times, I'd often scan the audience to count the number of perturbed, discomfited looks. We'd go through our Power-Point presentation, "10 Factors in Creating a Sustainable High Tech Cluster" (or something trite like that) and #10 would always be "culture". The key points would be tolerance for failure and information-sharing. And always, if bold enough, we'd get a polite but categorical rejection of our culture argument. The gist of their response was usually: we are fine with items 1 though 9—got that shopping list completed— but 10 is just not possible. "Losing 'face' in our culture through any kind of failure", they would conclude, tip-lipped but secretly fearful that we were right, "is just not an option." "We'll find a different way more appropriate to our cultural values and traditions." End of conversation.
The Asian exceptionalism theory, however, died after the Financial Crisis 1997. And lead proponents of this view, like Singapore, are now obsessed with creating the conditions for knowledge-intensive industries to thrive, which includes stimulating a higher appetite for risk-taking. This is why they are "teaching" creativity and have revamped their education curriculum. (An old university professor and mentor of mine, Lee Gass, was part of this.) This is also why they are trying to build an arts industry and more "edgy" atmospherics like neon lights; why they are attracting world-class research, and allowing more personal freedoms, albeit in carefully planned increments. But culture is very hard to change, especially in the course of a few years. Most of the creative Singaporeans I know are still in places like New York or San Francisco. [However more on Singapore another time; I still have lots of admiration for their ability to reinvent themselves, which they have done repeatedly over time.]
India is more interesting, if only because it is a billion people strong versus a city state with just three million people. The recent hype about white collar worker flight to India is almost certainly overblown. The Economist recently did a survey on this, "India's Shining Hopes" (Feb 19/04), and concluded as much. We also get disparaging critiques from within like this article by G V Dasarathi, "Bangalore: Silicon Valley or Coolie Valley?" (March 01, 2004). He writes:
"Silicon Valley companies are based on 'know what.' They know the market, they know the technology and they know what products to make to earn money.Coolie valley companies are based on 'know how.' They do the software coding for other companies that have the 'know what.' If you tell them what to do, they know how and will do it for you.
Silicon Valley companies invest huge sums of money on R&D. They generate new ideas and are constantly developing new ways of doing things.
Coolie Valley companies have nothing called R&D. They do not generate any new ideas."
[The rant continues...]
Silicon Valley is all about the excitement of creating things out of nothing. Companies like HP actually started in the garages of their founders.
Coolie Valley does not know the meaning of creativity. Some companies are started by people who quit other companies and take some of the parent firm's software development contracts with them.
Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs bet on people, ideas and inventions.
Coolie Valley's entrepreneurs bet on certainties. They start a firm after getting software development contracts."
I think this is unduly harsh and lacking perspective, sounding more like a cynic with an axe to grind. Sure, the author is an Indian working in this business and I am not. While I take his points seriously—and the Indian high tech community should not be complacent—I think India's situation is more complex than this. Not coincidentally, Annalee Saxienan is also a resource for understanding why. Her recent research is focused on studying Indian and Chinese social immigrant high tech networks, and these are the difference that will make the difference in the long run. As anyone who has spent time in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are many successful high tech Indian entrepreneurs running around from many walks of life. And being the global society that it is, it's not surprising then that these same Indians are maintaining ties and links to their home country. Many are going back. Some are keeping a foot in both worlds, recycling their knowledge and leveraging their experience of both places. Sound familiar? See "Brain Drain or Brain Circulation? The Silicon Valley-Asia Connection."
[Bangalore at sunset, relatively smog-free for a change.]
While the bulk of high tech work is service-oriented, while they are doing the dirty backoffice laundry for the industry in India right now, this is more about meeting a market demand in the present and less about the future industry structure. I think while India has many problems, some of them daunting, the most crucial and hard to replicate variable—the ability to innovate, think creatively, and take entrepreneurial risk—is abundantly present in India. The competitive pressures in such a large country ensure this; with scarce resources and money, many Indians have to be innovative out of necessity. That much is self-evident after a few weeks in India. Even if just 2% of the population become high tech innovators, in numerical terms, that's many times more people than Silicon Valley combined. I think the scale of India is something most commentators can't fathom.
I think the biggest problem, as this plaintiff article shows, is the inferiority complex Indian techies seem to have. The biggest problem is not talent, but their mental maps about what is possible. Being a Canadian, I can certainly empathize: we have always had a complex against the bigger and better Americans. Having spent time in India and having studied its history and politics, I can also appreciate why people are cynical, preferring to discount the possibility of a more positive future. (This habit of mind is also a legacy of British Rule, which is perhaps another Canadian-Indian connection. We were colonized too, remember.) It's emotionally easier to handle resignation rather than dashed hopes. And we've seen many new beginnings before: beware in nature, “cynical in her sunrises” wrote Nietzsche. All of that aside, I think this obscures the Long View and some of the major structural things in India's favour. I think India will enter the truly innovative phase of its high tech future within the next decade at least, if not sooner, assuming no major meltdowns occur along the way. Indians are creative, resourceful, innovative, and highly networked. At least some of the Indians returning from their overseas success will not be burdened by restricted horizons, and will be keen to transmit their learning to their home environment. Many stories of this exist already—and this cross-fertilization of both aspirations and acumen will be India's "Regional Advantage."
Check out the Spring 2004 issue of Strategy + Business. Lots of interesting stuff, including a Thought Leadership interview with Philip Bobbitt, the chap I've been mentioning who wrote The Shield of Achilles. (Notes on this weighty masterpiece are in "The Problem: The Subtlety of the Problem" blog entry.)
Here is another highlight, "Power Laws & the New Science of Complexity Management" by Mark Buchanan. He is the author of Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks (2002) which is one book of many in recent years popularizing network theory.
Understanding social networks and network dynamics, a subset of complexity science or non linear dynamics, became fashionable after Al-Queda came crashing through our perceptual radar screen. Networked organizations turn out to have a very different logic than hierarchical ones! Of course, this field of study has been around for a long time and has cousins in many different scientific and social science disciplines, which makes understanding and aggregating the collective insights generated thus far a big project. Even so, we need more people digesting and making-sense of the implications of this emerging literature for business and policy. We need to start translating these ideas into practical tools and processes so that people can make better decisions for the future.
(Another large project waiting to be funded.) This article is a baby-step towards that end, and here are some things that stood out for me:
"Does the specter of ever-increasing complexity mean senior executives must succumb to rising unpredictability, uncertainty, and loss of managerial control? Not necessarily. During the three decades of its development, complexity science has not only chronicled the phenomenon of interdependence: It has also opened paths to understanding and handling its challenges. Although complex systems are frequently unpredictable — inevitably so, in many instances — they also exhibit precise regularities. Relatively simple patterns, known as power laws and observed in disparate settings from astrophysics to evolutionary biology, as well as in human society, suggest strategies by which well-managed organizations can deal with uncertainty and navigate the discontinuities of contemporary business.Modern science has moved well beyond a fixation on exact prediction and control; it has learned to accept unpredictability as an unavoidable and, at times, even beneficial aspect of the world, as a resource that can sometimes be harnessed. Businesses can also learn to adapt to complexity, in ways that can help them both reduce risk and expand opportunities."
Buchanan then goes on to describe several failures, such as the infamous sinking of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), attributing their demise to relying too much on narrow risk assessment tools such as "VaR". These tools are increasingly failing us because their underlying assumptions are based on "normal" distributions or bell-curve statistics where unusual events are very rare and deviate from the mean. ( The Economist recently covered similar ground in their "Survey on Risk", Jan 22/04.) Bell-curves work best in describing predictable realities, when the components of the system are acting independently from each other. But many systems in life are complex and interdependent and full of unexpected shocks and events. These systems tend to follow power law curves with "fatter tails". (There is a nice graph showing the difference.)
"Power laws reflect a pattern of organization and change that is typical for complex systems. Hence, familiarity with their properties offers some clues to the expected character of any complex system — including the modern business environment. Systems that follow power laws defy our intuitive expectations in surprising ways."
All this means is that large events take place far more often than one would expect. "Large disruptive events are not only more frequent than intuition might dictate, they are also disproportionate in their effect." Not recognizing these kinds of dynamics is one of the main reasons why our risk assessment tools are so weak.
And later on...
"Learning to deal with discontinuity requires more than mere diversification or efficient exploration of possible products, of course. It often — if not always — means that individuals and organizations face the difficult task of thinking differently; of breaking habits and questioning long-standing conceptual and cultural commitments. David Snowden, director of IBM’s new Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity in Cardiff, Wales, points out that “the entrainment of thinking” is a common problem. Ideas and practices that have proven effective in the past become akin to accepted norms; they acquire inertia, and often for a very good reason. On-the-fly experimentation in the real world is a dangerous thing; hence, we naturally cling to ideas that have worked before. “We do this in order to survive,” says Mr. Snowden. But this pattern of behavior also leads to serious maladaptation in times of rapid change and crisis; it is most dangerous precisely during those moments of discontinuity that define the critical episodes of change in most complex systems. "
Scenario thinking, my stock and trade, is part of the solution here, which Buchanan doesn't mention. (I'll be sure to ping him about this.) If done well, scenario thinking is an insurance policy against big surprises. Unlike conventional methods, scenario thinking is a more robust risk assessment tool because it puts those decisions within a broader context, including discontinuities and uncertainties as well as things that are "locked in" or given—obvious drivers that people need to prepare for regardless of what future emerges. Most risk tools just drop the uncertainties off the table, and shy away from anything not quantifiable. Yet many (most) things requiring intelligent foresight are unquantifiable because historical patterns are not reliable predictors of future developments.
What I find most intriguing, however, is the potential of complexity modeling (and power law analysis) to advance the scenario methodology and practice, and by extension, our ability to help the people make better decisions for the future. For starters, this thinking may help us better identify and assess "predetermined elements" or "givens", the other rather neglected building block of the methodology. Today most practitioners focus on framing the uncertainties, which is what was needed at the time, a time when hubris about predicting the future still reigned supreme. Framing uncertainties paradoxically helps us anticipate the future better. But Pierre Wack, one of original gurus within Royal Dutch Shell, was primarily interested in given. Unearthing deep structural insights was exactly the kind of strategic advantage he was looking for. Now, there is a school of thought that's highly suspect of "givens" because they believe that these are epistemologically impossible—that the only certain thing in the future is uncertainty. I agree with this view beyond a certain time frame. But within certain parameters and with a better understanding of how complex systems work, we may be able to underneath a hidden simplicity or structural dynamic that will be predictable. We already do this with systems dynamics, but what if we can get some empirical legs to this as well? Again, there will be resistance to this, but I think it's an important place to look to evolve the foresight practice. I think Pierre Wack, if was alive today, would be most intrigued with this emerging field which may help us describe our reality much better than our current mental map.
I missed the Oscars, didn’t even know they were on, until I went onto IMDB (one of the great resources on the web) to look up some movie trivia. I vaguely recall some coverage leading up to the event, the usual analysis about whether 2003 was a lowlight or highlight in comparative terms, and of course, important topics like how the Red carpet is now the new catwalk for fashion denizens—which is why many of the top stars are gifted their posh rags. Sigh.
So my thoughts were naturally triggered into thinking about filmmaking—that most scintillating, experiential, acoustic innovation in modern cultural production. In particular, I have been ruminating about the relationship between the introduction of new cinematic technologies and the quality of films produced. These two things don't always follow each other in step. In fact, more than often, this is an inverse relationship. More tech results in less quality not more, at least at first, when the first early adopters (or early followers) enter the scene. While computer generated imagery (CGI), animation, and other technical triumphs have put a lot more creative power in film-makers hands these days, the tendency towards wastefulness and immoderation takes over. Like kids in a cinematic candy shop, the more cool tools, tricks, and techniques there are to play with, the more tempting it is to go overboard, hog-wild, and max out on its newness. Artistic judgment and discernment take a back seat. (And I have to say, this is a predominantly male trait, which explains a great deal since most directors are of this gender. More directors like Sophia Coppola please!)
In a nutshell, this is a trap I'm seeing more directors and producers, and few people are talking about this, which is why I was delighted to read this excellent review of Tarantio’s Kill Bill - Volume 1 (December 18, 2003). As Daniel Mendelsohn writes:
“What few critics have remarked on is how boring all this actually is—how random the action seems, how incomplete the narrative feels, how tedious, for all their color and noise, the scenes of violence are.”
The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a notable exception. It will be a far more enduring work because its creators knew that a powerful story had to come first, and technology was just a means to an end. This is not to diminish the role of technology. Peter Jackson, the indomitable director and visionary behind this project, said it would have been impossible to create the fantastical world of Middle Earth in any satisfactory way without them.
So as viewer, I’m incredibly grateful and excited about these cinematic innovations, and in awe of the amazing virtual realities that are now possible. The seamless integration of animated characters like Gollum with human actors was a brilliant example of this kind of ingenuity. For a very fun if profane snapshot of this, see Gollum’s acceptance speech on the MTV awards. And then there is what we can now make humans do with almost no trace of artifice. I’m talking about the wickedly super-human fight scenes and violent feats, which can be very interesting when done with a measure of artistic restraint and "choicefulness " (to use a consulting term), like we saw in the first Matrix and, say, Crouching Tiger, Sleeping Dragon. If film-making is the art of creating virtual realities that entertain and edify, suspend our disbelief and get us to imagine new worlds and ways of being, these technologies hold a lot of promise for the evolution of this media.
Of course, what we are seeing in the movie business is also part of a much broader phenomenon. Digital technologies have transformed the nature of innovation (both content and process) by dramatically reducing the costs of creative production. We've seen this transformation occur across industries and fields, everything from automotive design, to drug discovery, to a revolutionary yacht that won the coveted America's Cup. One of the best books on this is Michael Schrage’s Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate. Modeling and prototyping new ideas, approaches and processes are now faster, better, and cheaper than ever before. In the past, it cost a lot to build a physical prototype or model, so it was more risky making the early design choices. Today it costs comparatively little to change the parameters on a virtual model. This freedom enables innovators to experiment with many more possibilities and variations, fruitfully and efficiently, reducing the risk of trying new things. Thus in a strange way, enabling this kind of waste is good. These tools clearly expand our creative productive potential, and they bring many more minds and people into the process. But if the proliferation of mediocre films are anything to go by, there are downsides to this new freedom. (Another posting shall be about the impact of PowerPoint on the quality of presentations. Hint: it's been very bad. Edward Tufte wrote a fantastic article called the "Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" explaining why.)
Less is more, to quote many... which leads me to another observation: all of these cutting edge films are noticeably long in duration and getting longer. Multi-part series and three hour plus shows are becoming the norm, if my sore butt is any reliable yardstick. Not so long ago, putting out such a product would have been deemed unmarketable, not economic. But thanks to the cost advantages of digital technologies, it’s getting easier to make these long films for many the reasons I mentioned above, as opposed to the days when movies like Cleopatra broke the bank to create those special effects.
To paraphrase Schrage, with rapid innovation and prototyping possible, the challenge is managing an abundance of options. Making artistic choices is even more important not less. In the past, scarcity of time and resources were the enemy, the biggest constraint, but in a world of abundance, they resurface and are appreciated as a useful parameter driving efficiency and inspiration. Most of my best, creative ideas have come under a draconian deadline. Lack of time was my friend, even if it didn't feel that way in the moment. Otherwise, the time it would take to accomplish my task would expand like an elastic band to fit the time I had available, whether it be one week or six. Clearly, if there was ever such a thing as a “law of human nature,” a good candidate would be this: the more time you have to do something, the more time you waste doing it. There are exceptions, of course, but perhaps this “law” is the uncle to what I was describing with new cinematic technologies when in the hands of undisciplined directors.
The simple point I'm making is that the STORY matters the most. Finding better, creative, more imaginative ways to tell stories will always be an art, and will always require artistic choices. Technologies may expand the range of these choices, and this is a good thing, but we shouldn't let them wag the cinematic dog. This is not a recipe for good films. Of course, if advancing the craft and practice means a few duds, a few failed experiments here and there, I'm willing to live with this. Peter Jackson, what's next?
This is an article that came out of my UNESCO Summit on Leapfrogging the Grid in the Developing World in early February in the periodical, Nature (19 February 2004 Volume 427 Issue no 6976).
Access to all of the webcasts of most of the speakers in plenary can also be found at the World Technology Network (WTN) website, in addition to their powerpoint presentations.
I speeches I recommend are Tom Casten, Chairman of the World Alliance for Distributed Energy (WADE). WADE, by the way, has some great papers on their website about distributed energy. The "Financing Dilemmas" panel had some good insights as well. Geoffrey Ballard's talk is also worth reviewing. Ben Cook's remarks on local community perspectives were well-received, especially the message to think about this through a customer demand-perspective, from their perspective not ours.
Of course the best conversations happened over coffee, over the wonderful food, and in the smaller sessions. But here is a flavor of what happened. Insights on what I learned to follow.
