|
|
|
|
The following update was written by Chris Meyer of neRVƏ, and is based on a presentation given at the 33rd International Students Committee Symposium at the University of St Galen, Switzerland, May 22nd, 2003. Chris can be reached at chris.meyer@gotnerve.com. ======================= In his book At Home in the Universe, biologist Stuart Kauffman argues powerfully that for over four billion years Nature has created and tuned the mechanisms of evolution to maximize adaptability.
In both business and biology, the outcome of these evolutionary processes can be called “emergent,” which is to say that one cannot predict how an ecology or an economy will develop by analyzing its components in isolation from one another. The continual, complex feedback loops create too many signals, propagating through too many pathways. This means that the more connected our economy becomes, the more futile will be the management approach of forecasting, planning, and executing our plans.
Instead, following Kauffman’s argument, we can respond by borrowing the mechanisms of biological evolution, translating them into management tools and practices, and tuning them to the current rates of change and volatility.
In our book, It’s Alive, Stan Davis and I translate these mechanisms of evolution into six “memes for management.” These memes are:
1. Self-Organize; 2. Recombine; 3. Sense and Respond; 4. Learn and Adapt; 5. Seed, Select, and Amplify; 6. Destabilize;
The term “meme” itself points out an essentially ecological idea: it was coined by geneticist Richard Dawkins to capture the fact that ideas behave like genes—they recombine with other ideas to spawn new ones, and they “reproduce” by moving contagiously from one mind to another.
Memes compete for attention in an ecology of people and practice. If our Memes for Management confer “fitness” on their practitioners, then the businesses that employ them will thrive and multiply.
Sense and Respond and Learn and Adapt are in some ways the most urgent for business, because the current wave of wireless connection and autonomous software is propelling them forward as part of the business environment, whether an individual business chooses to embrace them or be engulfed by them.
“Sense and respond” is a meme that has become very contagious, now that sensors are cheap and connection is ubiquitous. The past week has seen the announcement of wireless sensors that, stuck into your lawn, tell the sprinklers when water is needed, and an electric lawnmower that guides itself. And once Sense and Respond is in place, the next level of autonomy is Learn and Adapt.
Let’s take sense and respond, learn and adapt to its evolutionary conclusion. A TV ad for BMW showed a driver on an icy road with the wheels spinning, going nowhere. He uses the connected assistance service and asks: “Can you do something for me?” Then the ad shows a technician working at a computer, and she says, “Yes, I think I have an answer for you” and hits a key to download a software patch to the traction control system—and off he drives.
The on-board ABS system sensed, but its response was inadequate. So it used connectivity to “learn” something new. All of that is feasible right now, and in various forms exists today.
But, we can extend this further. Why just fix that one BMW? When we find a problem with a Boeing 737 tail assembly, we don’t fix only one plane—we fix the whole fleet. And because the fix for the BMW is just software code, and the car is connected, BMW can upgrade all of them. So because I was driving on an icy road last night, your BMW is going to be different in the morning.
This sounds pretty spooky. But it is already happening on any computer that has virus protection software. And weekly my wife’s Macintosh downloads new components of its operating system. That product is evolving in place today. We’re just not used to thinking of our automobiles as computers on wheels—but there are over 150 microprocessors in each BMW. As more of our world is made of software, the more it will sense, respond, learn and adapt, and evolve around us.
This connected capability will recast the role of the products themselves. In an adaptive economy, the products will function equally as sensors—of customer demand, of soil moisture, or of driving conditions. They will provide the feedback to the designers of their successors, reflecting the environments in which they operate, and changing their own next generation. In other words, they will evolve.
===============
For more information:
|
|
All content on this site licensed under a Creative Commons License.
|
