Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Friday, January 24, 2003At the recommendation of June Holley, I recently became a member of the Plexus Institute, a nonprofit organization that "helps people use concepts emerging from the new science of complexity." [1] Earlier today, I joined in my first "PlexusCall," which was titled "Uncertainty and Surprise: Working with the Unexpected and Unknowlable" and featured Reuben McDaniel. The topic seemed promising, given my interest in promising startups, which are characterized by irreducible uncertainty.
I wasn't disappointed. Many of McDaniel's comments struck home, starting with his question, "How do we teach people to be more improvisational?" He noted that the question most business people ask is, "What do I need in order to do what I want?" More frequently, McDaniel asserted, they should be asking, "What can I do with what I have?" [2] It's the difference between administration or assembly and creation or entrepreneurship. [3] A big part of our job here at Small World Networks is to help entrepreneurs ask the right questions, in order for them to be more successful in the co-evolving world they live in.
While acknowledging that much in the world is knowable, McDaniel points out that surprise in inevitable in complex systems such as business. Our tendency is, too often, to deny surprise as a "mere" outlier, rather than learning from it. The key, however, is to cultivate surprise and organize for it. At one point in the conversation, McDaniel said, "Social interactions and the management of social interaction are absolutely critical if we are to cope with uncertainty."
Amen.
McDaniel, a musician, observed that the structure of jazz lays the foundation for endless surprise. For years, I've thought in terms of purposeful serendipity -- architecting environments in which a critical level of diversity can be allowed to interact in ways that catalyze useful outcomes. The precise product of such environments is unpreditable, but it's entirely predictable that such outcomes will occur.
Let me give you a real, very recent, example. Earlier this week, Bill Reichert, the President of Garage Technology Ventures, was the featured guest of a Pioneer Entrepreneurs teleconference roundtable. Participating were a small, diverse group of members. Although the conversation was centered around the topic of the evolution of venture capital, the most tangible outcomes of the call were the connections made between Bill and two of our members, who had interests and expertise that were directly relevant to a business issue that Bill is confronting.
As with the PlexusCall, our call helped facilitate unpreditable, yet useful, outcomes.
[1] plexus A combination of interlaced parts; a network.
[2] In this context, McDaniel used the term bricolage, "something made or put together using whatever materials happen to be available."
[3] To paraphrase my favorite definition of entrepreneurship (which I think is Jeffrey Timmons'), an entrepreneur is someone who pursues or develops an opportunity regardless of the resources currently at hand.
