Quotes as Design Agents

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"In those places where we're most alive, we are questions, not answers. These questions change as we age. One has to listen carefully, again and again, to detect new questions, which may announce themselves in a whisper. At any age, the questions we're asking define our growing edge. So long as we've got even a single question, we're not dead. If all we have are answers, we might as well be." Robert Fuller, Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank

I am often invited to provide quotes to people or for an event.  I love quotes. Note that each of my Journal entries begins with a quote. Each reminds me that I am not alone in my thinking; there are others musing over similar challenges and insights...  I have hundreds of quotes and each is an instruction or insight for me.  They are far more than words; they are ideas to build on and to take as instructive commands.  They give added voice to  my own thinking or to that of a group. I can remember many of the moments where "words jumped off the page" and introduced themselves to me.  Sometimes I have been lucky enough to meet the authors and thank them for their gift. Sometimes, the authors have been surprised and delighted with my insights into their words.  I have added meaning they never considered!  Good exchanges between author and myself  bring forth even more meaning. 

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Navigating in a Networked Economy: Value Webs Reach a Tipping Point

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"A network economy does not think in supply chain terms or in departmental boxes. It thinks and acts as a web of ideas, people, processes, markets, tools, environments. The parts and the whole grow stronger together. Threads weave together, forming new patterns, new connections, new capabilities. Producers, customers, and investors design, invent, build, market and sell as an ecosystem.

"Co-creation replaces the linear way of thinking and doing where each part gets it 'right' and passes it to the next part to get it 'right' who passes it on and so forth. ValueWeb communities work concurrently, changing 'hats' where appropriate, competing, cooperating ... constantly evolving to bring higher order solutions, people, and opportunities into the web." - Gail Taylor, 1998

boe2.jpgA decade ago I was introduced to a conceptual model of the networked enterprise that is now referred to as the "Value Web" model. Matt Taylor had been actively working with it and introducing it to MG Taylor clients since the 80's, but for the first time, executives and organizational leaders were beginning to embrace it. Today, in a world more fully immersed in the flows and fluidities of the networked economy, value web-like structures are becoming a mainstream means of organizing and getting things done. In the ongoing evolution and learning of how we organize and work together, this way of working is gaining fitness fast.

In essence, what I am suggesting here is that the idea of a "value web" has, after multiple tries – with each result feeding back into and changing the idea – escaped to a higher order. Whether its with the well-known, well-chronicled  Big Ideas such as Open Source, P2P and Web 2.0, or any of a vast array of less publicized but equally compelling experiments, value webs have moved from "model" to "paradigm" – a new way of seeing reality.

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Multiple Trys Over Time

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In assembling complexity, the bounty of increasing returns is won by multiple tries over time. As various parts reorganize to a new whole, the system escapes into a higher order.

— Ilya Prigogine

Remember those times where you share your excitement about a 'new' idea with your colleagues or clients and they look you in the eye and say, "We tried that once and it didn't work."  All the enthusiasm drains out of your body as you see the door closing to the unfolding of a new possibility.  Sometimes people just can't stop talking about why it won't work as they base everything on a single try. 

Structure wins.  Paradigms are strong. They are created to maintain a structure, to create boundaries, to provide certainty to reality.  Imagine if every idea was accepted and given form and authenticity! Perhaps we would all be living in Alice's wonderland! ... a good story, but maybe not an everyday, everywhere way of living that any of us could sustain. 

Every solution, no matter how good or reasonable, fails overtime. It gives way to a higher order, a new solution more fit for the times and learnings of the past. 

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