A company begins as a start-up. It creates tremendous buzz and goes through a period where anything goes. There is no concern for paying bills as the company explores new rules. Below a level of fifty employees, there seems to be a lot of random behavior. Between fifty and one hundred employees, if the company has survived, this is when the sigmoidal behavior begins. At that stage the company needs bureaucracy, human resources, compliance, and so on. The company more and more becomes the bureaucracy. The innovative phase gets phased out, unlike a city. A city tolerates all sorts of crazy people walking around. No corporation will tolerate that. Companies become very intolerant to new ideas, rhetoric to the contrary. When a company starts cutting down the bloat, it no longer can be cool. The last time I was at Google I already could feel the tentacles of the bureaucracy encroaching—and Google’s awareness of the problem. There are signs of mortality creeping in. It may well be that Apple recognizes this problem and is fighting it like crazy by being open to new ideas. The question is: Is that possible?

msg

Santa Fe Institute physicist and organizational theorist Geoffrey West, quoted in “Inside Apple” (via buzz)

Yancey first introduced me to Geoffrey West and his way of thinking (cities never die, corporations mimic the life/death of humans.)

For a bit more on the topic you can watch Geoffrey West’s TED Talk on the topic.

Source: buzz

9 December 2012 92 msg
geoffrey westcitiesmore like a city than an army

Notes

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About

Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. more.

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Socialogy

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  • What Drives Us? | A draft chapter of my book, discussing motivations, Maslow's hierarchy, and fluidarity.

  • Socialogy: Interview With John Hagel | I Speak with Joh Hagel about the innovation at the edge.

  • Complex organisation arises from webs of interaction among causal factors | So, it turns out that DNA is, in fact, a great metaphor for business culture, but only after you realize that DNA is not a few hundred off-on switches, but instead a universe of unknowable complexities, that we can interact with, and understand at some abstract cartoonish level, but not control, and never fully comprehend.

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  • Innovators Get Better With Age | Companies make a mistake by relying too much on the innoations of the young, because Nobel laureats don't come into their prime until their 50s.

    • Oldie

  • Infodemics | 2009 | Passing incomplete or inaccurate information about some risk event can make people take actions that increase the damage of the event itself.

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