Complexity, Innovation, Knowledge and Learning: A quantum interpretation of management

The six most difficult words: I'm sorry, I was wrong

Last weekend I participated in the wedding ceremony of my cousin in Belgium, and during the service, a text was read that contained amongst others the "six most difficult words".  And though of course this made reference to the marriage, it really revealed a number of things to me.

On my way there, I read in le Monde of April 24 a summary of a speech of David Schmittlein (Dean of the Sloan School of Management, MIT), that he held in Paris. He stated that the current crisis should be an opportunity to change the behavior of managers, and in particular to learn them to be more courageous. Courageous for him means implementing long term strategies. His speech went strongly against what is classically heard in Business Schools. He stated that we have thought for decenia that the goal of all good managers is the maximisation of the shareholder value, and the shareholders, of course, are very often just in for a short term profit.

In De Standaard (a Belgian newspaper) I read a funny title: "Mobistar disappoints: the results of the telecom operator are below expectations".  But why is nobody writing: "Interesting news: the expectations of Mobistar are above reality"? There is of course no real reason to choose for the one or the other.

And in the same newspaper, Peter Vanden Houte expressed his worries for a "capitalism that would be too much controlled". Vanden Houte is chief economist of ING Belgium (that recently was saved from bankruptcy by the Dutch Government). He did admit that Greenspan ignored all warnings about the subprimes. But at the same time, regulation should be avoided. He claims that China's success in the last decade is due to the liberalisation; or is it precisely the fact that the central organisation (yes, it is still communism) is able to build the infrastructure and protect the investment of foreign companies?  That is at least the opinion of managers operating over there. In the 60s, 40 millions of people would have died of starvation due to centralism according to him (or is it just due to a very classical orientation, that would have failed  in any system?) With ING we are very happy with the much better salaries and working conditions that the current Chinese workers have (and by the way, 40 years later). I felt a bit back in the 90s of last century.  That period is over, isn't it, and we are now trying to learn from our most recent crisis. Isn't the real risk for capitalism related to its inherent short term focus and the bonus culture, reinforcing this ? 

Note that the Business Schools are in general very absent in the debate around the financial crisis, and the reason are the six most difficult words. But if we want to avoid the next crisis, we indeed need to deliver those courageous managers, that are able and willing to think in the longer term.  We are sorry, we were wrong. And it is certainly not without reason that the Sloan School Dean says this.

Oh yes and he said something else very interesting. If the crisis invites to teach new strategies, it will equally change our way of teaching, with a real opening to the world (not just in the cases). A systemic approach, no ? Yet another difficult word. 

Work should be like a game; just like learning

As coincidence doesn't exist (recall, a quantum reality), Le Monde of this Saturday February 2 writes about Google: "At Google, work becomes like a game". The article reiterates the observations I made in my previous post: healthy food, massages, a fifth free experimentation day, etc.

In l'Express of last week (24-29 January) Bill Gates wishes president Sarkozy that he would understand the importance of education and would invest more (all) in it. But what kind of education? Does France need more ENAs (Ecole National d'Administration) or more enterpreneurship?

And at the same time I get an evaluation of one of my courses, in which I try to give my students another paradigm, based on a quantum interpretation of business and complexity theory.  Not something what somebody would call "sectarian", but in France, some do. According to some French (apparantly) Nobel prizes are given to sects. I have to admit that most of the evaluations were rather good, but that one did trigger me.

In Canopee, a French magazine on nature, discovery and ecology, I read an interview with Vandana Shiva who says that "ecology is profoundly linked to spirituality".  Without the spiritual dimension, according to her, one becomes an ecological technocrat, untouchable by the pain that mismanagement causes. Good news, I am not alone.

I do not only wish Sarkozy to invest seriously in education, I wish him to invest in learning, from the very begining (primary school) onwards.  Learning should be fun and have a larger purpose than only making carreer (and money). And in order to support him, I wish him parents that would not be traumatised about sects.  What Al Qaida is for the US, sects seem to be for France. Not everybody who doesn't agree with the US foreign policy is a potential Al Qaida member; it is not a choice of being with or against "us". Equally, not everybody who is searching for meaningfulness in life and work is a member of a sect.

Science and the taboo of Psi

Dean Radin gave beginning January a lecture on Science and the taboo of Psi for Google. Interesting stuff, as you can imagine.  But equally interesting are some observations of Dean about Google. Google is rated as one of the best places to work.  They have free (gourmet) food available, 24/7, lots of snack bars (with healthy food) scattered around the campus, free massage at work during the work day, a meditation room, etc. Amazing is it? Or isn't it. Should we just start opening our eyes for things that we know already for a while in science and just start applying them in our business environment ?

Evidence of a world transforming

The noetic society has recently published "The 2007 Shift Report", titled "Evidence of a world transforming". A little, concise piece of work that I would really like to suggest everybody to have a look at.

"We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history — a change in the actual belief structure of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world."

— Willis Harman, Global Mind Change

is the beginning text of the report. It attempts to describe, from a more holistic perspective, and this applied to medicin, healing, business, education, etc, a worldview that they equally label as "noetic". Based on the definition that the Leo Apostel Institute of the Free University of Brussels gave of a worldview, you might find interesting hints or answers on the following questions:

1. Who are we?

2. Why is this world the way it is? Where does it come from?

3. Where are we going?

4. What is good and what is evil?

5. How should we act?

6. What is true and what is false? How do we know what we know?

7. What preexisting theories and models have been used to answer the questions of the other six categories?

And don't forget, even if we do not want to see the world as it is, it still remains there. But you can choose how to see it. The Shift report is one that gives hope and motivation. Those that feel responsible in and for this world, are the one's that are going to help tilting it.

A queste for new management science

In a Gartner blog, on "wild and new" ideas, one of the VPs suggests some interesting developments.  "Many of the management science techniques applied in business today originated from the industrial era. Computing has put them on steroids and made them more effective (for example, via the spreadsheet). But it's the completely new techniques that could be operated only in a networked computerized era that may prove revolutionary. Management culture takes decades to evolve (whole generations of leaders must sometimes pass by before new techniques can take hold). I read about ideas like "beyond budgeting" and "real options" with interest, but recognize that very few companies are ready to take them on...yet."

An interesting new light on both the role of IT and the one of managers.  I sometimes say that we haven't seen anything yet.  Once we are going to combine the learning capacity of computers, with the (though different) learning capacity of managers, we are really going to see some exponential learning taking place and a new kind of management might emerge.  But in the mean time, managers just try to copy the computing power of computer, in which they are of course very weak.  Computers and managers all together underperform seriously. 

Information ecology: a biological view on information

Do we really need to mail around gigas and gigas of information that hardly anybody reads?  Do we have to construct huge databases that in day to day management serve very little? Or can we invent another, more ecological way of dealing with information flows.  Information ecology is a concept that already exists a while, but that has never (as far as I know) really been visualised.  One of my MSc students in France (Matthias Adler) did an interesting study, using agents, about the emergent character of information ecology.  Maybe we should call it the biology of information.  Interesting to read, and again in order not to wait for a journal publication, here is the thesis (first draft article) version

Emergence, Agents, Knowledge and Innovation

Already a while ago, one of my Masters students in the Netherlands (Cindy Jooren) submitted a very interesting thesis studying the role that knowledge management plays in improving the innovative power of a company.  Searching for emergence and networked interaction, she used agent based simulations.  She did the research in the company she worked for, and therefor it took some time before we could make it public.  In order to wait no longer for a full article publication, you already have access to the thesis version here.

A quantum interpretation of business

I am very proud to inform you about the publication of my latest book: "Complexity, Learning and Organizations: a quantum interpretation of business", published with Routledge.  I have pre-announced it already a few times, but now it is all clear and available on the market.  Fun reading ! and I guarantee you that it will change you view on reality.

A mature science of consciousness

The Dalai Lama, in his new book titled "The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality", argues for a serious research investigation into consciousness. He might not be the first to do so, and hopefully not the last either, but I think his challenge is a real one for the scientific community. On November 12, he addressed a convention of neuroscientists in Washinton DC, where it was appaling that some of so called scientists refused this dialogue.  Science has always and only progressed in dialogue and discovery of new roads.

I do not want to elaborate on the content of the book, but I do want to highlight a just observation that the Dalai Lama makes.  Completely in line with the argument between Lorentz and Einstein, that in order to compare validity of theories, the validation itself should issue out of the epistemology of the theory, the Dalai Lama in fact invites "scientist" to investigate and develop a rigorous methodology of first-person empiricism. Indeed, given that subjectivity is a primary element of consciousness, first-person empiricism (based on contemplative traditions) could contribute to this development. Are we scientists able and willing to take up this challenge and possibly progress insight in such an important issue as consciousness further?

In Glenn Aparicio Parry's words: Ironically, as Western science followed its own methodology to its extreme, dissecting the world into smaller and smaller particles, it eventually entered the mysteries of the subatomic quatum realm. Heisenberg lamented that we had reached the ends of our language in describing such a world. Whitehead said that an atom actually exists entirely in its radiations, yet there is no "thing" there radiating.

Are we able to progress and to make an attempt to bridge scientific visions and beliefs?

Towards a New Noetic Science

Bruce Lipton describes in Shift, the quarterly publication of the Noetic Society, a how a new type of science might emerge (or is indeed emerging).  Before describing what is understood by a "New Noetic Science" it is probably useful to describe what is understood by Noetic.

The word "noetic" comes from the ancient Greek nous, for which there is no exact equivalent in English. It refers to "inner knowing," a kind of intuitive consciousness—direct and immediate access to knowledge beyond what is available to our normal senses and the power of reason.

Then, what are 'Noetic Sciences'?
Noetic sciences are explorations into the nature and potentials of consciousness using multiple ways of knowing—including intuition, feeling, reason, and the senses. Noetic sciences explore the "inner cosmos" of the mind (consciousness, soul, spirit) and how it relates to the "outer cosmos" of the physical world.

The classical floors of the house of science (or should I say knowing) are mathematics as the fundament.  The second floor is physics, followed by chemistry and biology.  The current top floor is psychology.

The first floor of the house of "new noetic curriculum" is a new kind of mathematics: fractal algebra, (first labelled by Benoit Mandelbrot), followed by complexity theory.

The second floor is called energy physics based on quantum mechanics.  It was revealed that the universe is not an assembly of physical parts as suggested by Newtonian physics but is derived from a holistic entanglement of immaterial energy waves. As observers we are personnally involved with the creation of our own reality. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. (Henry, The mental universe, Nature 436, 2005)

The third floor is labelled Vibrational Chemistry. Vibrational chemistry, based upon quantum mechanics, emphasizes that atoms are made of spinning immaterial energy vortices, such as quarks. The new chemistry is concerned with the role of vibration. Via a process called electro-conformational coupling, protein behaviors can be influenced by neural vibrational fields derived from consciuous porcesses. (Tsong, Deciphering the Language of Cells, Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 14, 1989)

The fourth floor is the new biology. The new curriculum perceives of cells and organisms as integrated communities that are physically and energetically within their environment. A noetic biology will also embrace the power of epigenetics.  Epigenetics, which literally translates as "control above the genes", is a newly recognized second genetic code that controls the activity and programming of an organism's DNA. This new heredity mechanism reveals how  behavior and gene activity are controlled by an organism's perception of its environment.

The fifth floor consists of energy physchology. The environment along with the perceptions of the mind controls behavior and the genetics of biology. Rather than being "programmed" by our genes, our lives are controlled by our perceptions of life experiences. We change the focus from physiochemical mechanisms to the role of energy fields.

The renovation of the building introduces an all-encompassing field known as noetic sciences. Noetic consciousness reveals that collectively we are the "field" incarnate. (Lipton, The Biology of  Belief, 2005)

Interesting question is how all this influences our current understanding and practice of mangement.  For those reading French, I gladly refer to the full text of my Habilitation thesis, elsewhere on this blog, about a quantum interpretation of innovation.  I am also proud to announce my new book "Complexity, Organisations and Learning: A quantum interpretation of business" that is to appear in the coming months with Routledge.  And for those that want to be more active, I announce that in January, we, (Erna, my wife, and myself) start again our course "The quantum interpretation of management: from rational to non-rational forms of knowledge", that can be followed in the news and discussion section of this blog.