Cover photo by Sean Stratton
Boundaryless, the makers of Platform Design Toolkit recently published update #4 for their 2020 White paper on New Foundations of Platform-Ecosytem Thinking. This research, which I’ve been fortunate to participate in as part the Platform Design Toolkit community, is exploring the leading edge of platforms and ecosystems. The Boundaryless team has engaged leading thinkers across many disciplines in a divergent process of collective insight to make sense of emergent properties in the space of organizing. Below is a summary of the update and my thoughts on it.
Ecosystems as the bridges between “no more” and “not yet”
This section of the update explores the concept that we are in a unique point in history where current institutions, models and associated paradigms grounded in industrial ways of organising based on planning and predictability are quickly becoming “no more” while emergent institutions, models, mainly around networks, platforms and ecosystems have “not yet” clearly emerged and solidified new paradigms. This part of their research seeks to understand if ecosystems can provide the fertile ground for the “not yet” to emerge, and to what extent existing organisations can leverage [them as bridges] to their emergent future.
My thoughts –
I think the answer to this clearly yes as I shared in the conclusion to my Ecosystem series back in 2016.
“I hope you see how promising and versatile ecosystems are for everyone. To someone with the Prosperity value [mindset], an ecosystem is a disruptive business model—a radical new platform to create competitive advantage, spur growth and accumulate wealth. To someone with the Community value [mindset], an ecosystem is a liberating construct—the means to share and create equal opportunity as well as distribute wealth and ensure meaningful life experiences for all. Finally, to those with the Interdependence value [mindset], ecosystems represent the breakthrough infrastructure needed to create widespread empathy, evolve capitalism consciously and enable us to collectively learn how to co-exist and endure. All of these worldviews and perspectives are valid and true. And that’s why ecosystems are so important. They are unifying in nature.”
From “squeezing juice of the fruit” to inviting curiosity and provocation.
A key premise of going from the “no more” to the “not yet” is the willingness to engage ecosystems in an open process of collective sense making that sets the stage for a collective coming into being that exists across traditional organizational boundaries. To do this, organizations must embrace a beginner’s mind and be motivated to engage in a constant process of openness and curiosity. To do this, they must move from the comfort of capturing value from proven innovations of the past and future proof their business by constantly cannibalizing it. Achieving this means doing the hard individual and organizational development work required to attain collective intelligence and coherence as an embedded attribute of organization. This places a spotlight on the required conditions for emergence of insight, meaning and development direction, which may be more grounded in divergence than convergence.
A comment of importance here —
Beyond the necessary conditions that promote collective insight and intelligence, which include individual and group development around principles like rule omega, for example—collective intelligence must be grounded in action. A desire to cohere in ways rarely seen across traditional organizational boundaries is not enough, in and of itself. Collective intelligence needs collective intent to put meaning into action.
A Kairos moment of transition
The Boundaryless research is also finding that we may be experiencing a kairos moment,—a sweet spot for the “not yet” to appear. Multiple meaning-making frameworks, whether the Pulsation of the Commons or Spiral Dynamics support this conclusion. But as Rita Gunther McGrath describes, we don’t yet know which of many possible scenarios may emerge from this inflexion point.
More thoughts —
This is further supported by the work of Strauss and Howe in The Fourth Turning, which found a need for purpose that emerges out of the crisis period in a repetitive cycle of High (stable values), Awakening (emergent values), Unraveling (escalating tensions) and Crisis (resolution of tensions) periods that have occurred throughout history. Our current crisis period is due to come to resolution within the next ten years. Whether that resolution results in a new form of society or anchors the preconditions of our extinction is yet to be determined.
Creating conditions for sense-making in the information age
Given the above context, there is a sense that the evolution of organizing needs to commit to moving beyond institutions optimized for the market nature of the information age towards institutions that are fully ready and at the same time enabling a “sense-making” age—through dynamic patterns of co-existence and evolution.
This follows with systems thinking where process-based ontology and process thinking create preconditions for new forms of organising to emerge. This is in contrast to the prevailing machine development thesis that threatens human development by impacting our ability to govern complexity and respond to crises like our current pandemic (an upcoming podcast will explore this further). This creates the need for deliberately reflecting organisations to serve us in the chaotic transition towards the post-industrial via reflective spaces for collective sense-making.
Another note here —
In addition to embracing systems thinking as a core principle of new forms of organizing, I am increasingly interested in the concept of flow networks in addition to process-based ontologies. In physics, flow networks govern how matter, energy, resources and information circulate throughout a complex system. When an element is not circulating well, the system becomes fragile. In applying this concept to business, Science Advisor to Capital Institute Dr. Sally Goerner summarizes:
“Economic flow networks form a society’s metabolic network: an interconnected web of individuals and businesses that turn resources and information into the energy and products a society needs to thrive, while constantly distributing these products via a mutually-nourishing, circulatory flow. [ ] The big discovery here is that many of the same physical laws that govern health and development [i.e.—resilience] in [nature’s] ecosystems and living systems are common to all flow networks—and therefore apply equally to human networks such as economies and societies.”
Entangled vs. disentangled: the end of externalities
In coming back to the primary point of their research on what the future of organizing looks like, they note that organizations today view “externalities” as artificially separate from or outside of the boundaries of their operations when in fact they are all part of a nested, interdependent system. This is giving rise to a need to go beyond the concept of customer experience towards systemic health [of nested systems] as the driving architectural principle of the modern organising.
A comment —
I like the concept of life experience as the emerging paradigm of nested systems because it connotes life and living systems as a holistic paradigm for experience design with all forms of life within the biosphere as stakeholders.
A final thought
I feel compelled to mention that when looking for new forms of organizing, it is common to look at the failings of current systems (ie—what you’re running from) as motivation to create the future. It’s of utmost importance, in my humble opinion, that engaging in sense making and collective intelligence be viewed as attributes and practices of future organizations, but not the essence of what they need to become. These practices are a means to an end—an end that looks like a nested, entangled system that supports life experiences where all forms of life thrive.