Nothing is completely irrelevant LO5662

Enrique Fuentes (eofuente@campus.mor.itesm.mx)
Thu, 15 Feb 1996 17:48:08 -0700

Replying to LO5570 --

I hope I'm not jumping into the rapids without a paddle...

On Feb 12, 7:30pm, emergent@sirius.com wrote:
> Replying to LO5499 -- Mike McMaster's...
> >The point of my work is freedom and effectiveness. Hence my statement,
> >"That frees creativity, innovation and breakthrough to happen anywhere in
> >an organisation."
>
> I posit that creativity cannot happen at the center if (where) there is
> homogeneity. Creativity requires the tension provided by heterogeneity.

>From what I've heard, it's at the center of an organisation where we find
most heterogeneity (in term of the information and task diversity that
passes through it's communication channels), therefore, creativity is
possible even at that level...

> snip
> >
> >The model that I strongly disagree with is one of equilibrium and
> >disequilibrium. No living system is in equilibrium as I understand them
> >and equilibrium. This is where the economics has gone severely wrong
> >through most of its history. There is not market equilibrium nor even a
> >tendency for that to occur. I think that much of biology has sufferred
> >from a similar mistake - using linear, physical models to understand
> >living processes.

I think that the problem here is semantic in nature. A living system IS
allways striving for a continuous equilibrium, but only arrives at
intermediate states for relatively short periods of time... It sounds a
bit contradictory, but we are talking about a state of DINAMIC
EQUILIBRIUM. The whole biological system is oriented towards this state,
and basically any ecosystem works the same way.
> >
> >If a system is in equilibrium (presumably therefor non-living, in my
> >interpretation), then I agree that it takes a disruption "from the
> >outside" to generate anything - not just creativity. But the model I am
> >working with emergence. Here we are dealing with systems that tensions
> >and balancing requirements built in to their organisation. The challenge
> >is not to disrupt them but to access or nurture their inherent forces of
> >emergence.

I beleive that the type of organisation that is capable of learning has to
understand this concept and be able to respond to change in the
enviornment quickly (based on an efficient flow of information and task
delimitation), searching to establish, as quickly as possible to the new
situations it has to face.

I'm going to use a very simplistic example from every-day life: If you can
recall to memory your first "close call" when you began driving, you will
probably rember yourself shaking all over and almost unable to drive for
quite a while.... With time and after many of these "close calls" your
response time (recuperating a state of "nervous equilibrium" became less.
You still tremble, but it only lasts a couple of minutes and you can
resume your driving quickly.

I think that this happens with organisations, you begin to create
"protocols" or "frames" to respond to certain situations and you become
better at dealing with them as you go along, that is, your state of
equilibrium is recovered more eficiently.

The concept of the environment in equilibrium can only be present under
two conditions, in a dead system or an extremely entalpic one that
consumes incredible ammounts of energy. It is not impossible to achieve,
but it may require a state of mind that most people are not yet willing to
accept.

Enrique Fuentes. eofuente@campus.mor.itesm.mx

--
"Enrique Fuentes" <eofuente@campus.mor.itesm.mx>

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