lace large groups of economic participants who are not immediately equipped to incorporate and feed those technologies into the future: that might be on account of disparity in education and wealth, institutional policies, and the availability of opportunities. Since technologies are exponential, we get a performance curve that is difficult for us to understand. In general, we tend to think linearly and this frailty in our thinking removes us from the path to the future sooner than later. What makes this difficult is that the exponential impact is occurring across various sciences and no one body can effectively fathom the impact and the direction. Bill Gates says it well “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” Does chaos theory and complexity science arm us with a differentiated tool set than the traditional toolset of strategy roadmaps and product maps? If society is being carried by the intractable and power of the exponent in advances in technology, than a linear map might not serve to provide the right framework to develop strategies for success in the long-term. Rather, a more collaborative and transparent roadmap to encourage the integration of thoughts and models among the actors who are adapting and adjusting dynamically by the sheer force of will would perhaps be an alternative and practical approach in the new era.
Lately there has been a lot of discussion around climate change. It has been argued, with good reason and empirical evidence, that environment can be adversely impacted on account of mass industrialization, increase in population, resource availability issues, the inability of the market system to incorporate the cost of spillover effects, the adverse impact of moral hazard and the theory of the commons, etc. While there are demurrers who contest the long-term climate change issues, the train seems to have already left the station! The facts do clearly reflect that the climate will be impacted. Skeptics might argue that science has not yet developed a precise predictive model of the weather system two weeks out, and it is foolhardy to conclude a dystopian future on climate fifty years out. However, the alternative argument is that our inability to exercise to explain the near-term effects of weather changes and turbulence does not negate the existence of climate change due to the accretion of greenhouse impact. Boiling a pot of water will not necessarily gives us an understanding of all of the convection currents involved among the water molecules, but it certainly does not shy away from the fact that the water will heat up.
Posted in Business Process, Chaos, Complexity, emergent systems, exponential, growth, Innovation, Leadership, Learning Organization, Learning Process, Model Thinking, Narratives, Order, Organization Architecture, scale, Social Dynamics, Social Systems
|Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence! –Buddha|
Scientific theories are characterized by the fact that they are open to refutation. To create a scientific model, there are three successive steps that one follows: observe the phenomenon, translate that into equations, and then solve the equations.
One of the early philosophers of science, Karl Popper (1902-1994) discussed this at great length in his book – The Logic of Scientific Discovery. He distinguishes scientific theories from metaphysical or mythological assertions. His main theses is that a scientific theory must be open to falsification: it has to be reproducible separately and yet one can gather data points that might refute the fundamental elements of theory. Developing a scientific theory in a manner that can be falsified by observations would result in new and more stable theories over time. Theories can be rejected in favor of a rival theory or a calibration of the theory in keeping with the new set of observations and outcomes that the theories posit. Until Popper’s time and even after, social scienc