During our meeting today I sensed a divergence of views on decision making. In my opinion, this comes from a difference in culture, some being accustomed to the open culture and others spending more time in the institutional world. This is very normal and I think that our goal is to bridge these two worlds, to reconcile these differences, not to erase them, since bridging means connecting while remaining anchored on both sides.
The question then becomes what are the things that require a group decision and why?
The answer is different if we consider it from the institutional point of view of from the open network point of view. Our challenge is to reconcile both.
Clay Shirky is known to be one of the first academics to observe that groups have replaced planning with real time coordination of action. You can see that in this 2008 TEDx video that has influenced a lot the development of Sensorica.
We can now say that groups have also replaced decision making with stigmergy, emergent and evolutionary processes and the exercise of individual autonomy (as in do-ocracy and forking)
This is very real in the open world! Sometimes, group decisions donāt make sense, other times they are impossible, in general they slow down the process and even close or freeze it to a specific format, which reduces the ability of the organization to adapt or capture new opportunities.
I think that the best way to approach this is by starting with a concrete example.
Hereās a story from Sensorica. In 2013 we were operating as a fully transparent (public access to information in real time) and open (permissionless) venture. But a prof from HEC Montreal asked us to participate in the 2013 IGC HEC program. To capture this opportunity, we needed to satisfy the HEC requirement to keep it a secret during the months of preparation, until the beginning of the event. How can you keep a secret in an open network? We had a clash between the open and the institutional. But after some thought, we were able to bridge the two worlds by creating a new type of venture, open but non transparent.. You can see it here.