Bertrand Duperrin's Library tagged system →  View Popular, Search in Google

"Dans un précédent billet, j'ai décrit quelques caractéristiques des projets complexes. J'aimerais revenir ici sur la question "que doit-on connaître d'un système pour pouvoir l'influencer dans la direction souhaitée", et pour cela je m'oserai à une nouvelle éloge de l'ignorance en management."

system knowledge complexity knowledgemanagement decisionmaking management chaostheory

So, the main problem in the past Enterprise 2.0 debate is likely a lack of systems thinking. We do not look at the complete picture. We do not articulate clearly enough how causes and effects are linked to each other. Consequently, our view on the phenomenon remains incomplete and we do not see some of the obvious reasons that make that Enterprise 2.0 is not the homerun we were hoping for.

enterprise2.0 adoption collaboration system systemthinking systemic

Any organization that designs a system (defined more broadly here than just information systems) will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.

In other words, lets say you are designing a complex system -- an auto manufacturing plant, a new financial market, a hospital, the World Health Organization, or a large software solution -- the efficiency of the end result will always be limited by the efficiency of how the committee communicates

communication organization system committee innovation flexibility process

It's an explanation - crystal clear, and from the point of view of systems theory - about what leverage points are, and how they can be used to influence systems. And it's a paper that should be compulsory reading for anyone in any kind of a position of power - and preferably tattooed on the inside of politicians' eyelids.

Reading through it, I got to wondering about which of the 12 leverage points described social media would fall into. The basic concept is that small shifts in one thing can produce big changes in everything - and we often use the terminology of small, incremental changes in behaviour when talking about social media.

socialmedia leverage system change informationflows information selforganization

I define Web 2.0 as the design of systems that harness network effects to get better the more people use them, or more colloquially, as "harnessing collective intelligence." This includes explicit network-enabled collaboration, to be sure, but it should encompass every way that people connected to a network create synergistic effects. So let's take Google:

web2.0 O'reilly definition collectiveintelligence system networks synergies dell ideastorm