The New Sciences | Managing Leadership

Category Archives: The New Sciences

Roundup: from decidedly dopy to dubiously decisive

Friday, September 18, 2009

Excellent stories have been stacking up, with no logical place or time to link to them. So, we’re going to do a roundup today as a venue for offering these truly worthwhile resources. . .

Also filed in Capitalism, Communication, Culture, Decision-making, Group Dynamics, Innovation | | Comments (1)

Inept individuals

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

An animal behaviorist calls ants inept individuals who, somehow, are able collectively to create striking organizations which can both adapt efficiently to their own evolving needs and cycling changes in the environment, and respond effectively to most emergencies arising from natural catastrophes or marauding neighbors. Inept individuals, no one of whom has any clue as to how they all do it, but who manage to do it anyway. As for us . . .

Also filed in Culture, Design | | Comments (3)

Book Review: Sync

Friday, May 9, 2008

One of the most fascinating things about the rapid advances being made recently in communications technology is watching how they enable people of similar or complementing interests and ambitions not merely to interact rewardingly and productively – but even to find each other so that they can do so. Indeed, many of the endeavors they discover themselves collaborating on only sprung into being on their connection. It is an intriguing network of serendipitous nodes, each glowing more or less brilliantly as they draw in new members and connections. How does this happen?

Also filed in Book Reviews, Management | | Comments (4)

Hives of activity

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

A lot of really very interesting work has been done on understanding out certain organisms produce complex, highly functional organizations out of a set of simple rules. From flocks of birds to colonies of ants, it sometimes can seem as if a supra-individual entities have been brought into existence, with their own identities – even their own agendas. But, have they?

Also filed in Organizational Leadership | | Comments (0)

Book Review: Ubiquity

Friday, October 19, 2007

Those of you who have read Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan (see here for review) know that he has a penchant for illustrating his key points with exuberantly expressive phrases. In particular, he described the bell curve as “that great intellectual fraud.” Mark Buchanan, in his intriguing and intelligent book Ubiquity, also makes it clear that the bell curve has some inherent limitations that cause it to represent reality in misleading ways, and which then lead us to draw impractical conclusions. It does, of course, have a use: it helps us understand things that have regular, predictable characteristics, with dramatically less frequent but equally predictable variations from the norm. . .

Also filed in Managing Leadership | | Comments (0)

Roundup: From virtue to virtual

Friday, August 10, 2007

Sometimes it appears as though we are being overwhelmed by revolutions in the way the world works, and other times it seems as though things never really change at all. It’s the river of time: we look at ever-new water passing by, but it takes the same old form. In this post we’ll review this through items in the news about virtual business, legislating corporate responsibility, subliminal suggestion, male and female brain differences. . .

Also filed in Capitalism, Ethics, Personal Observations, Women in Management | | Comments (0)

Crying all the way to the bank

Friday, April 27, 2007

As we continue our struggle to learn how to organize our communities, develop ourselves and our children as individuals in society, and, of course, to manage our organizations, we keep creating unexpected side effects to deal with. For example, many people now entering the work force are exhibiting behaviors that mystify their baby-boomer managers, although [...]