Self-organizing Fire Ants.
______________________
Great Optimism,
Dutch Driver
Dept. of Communication
McMurry University
Abilene, TX
Hm. Telephone: 915.698.7217
email to:
ddriver@cs1.mcm.edu
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 09:01:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: "joyce@thinksmart.com" <
jwycoff@rain.org>
Reply-To:
owner-wake-up@thinksmart.com
To: Good Morning Thinkers! <
wake-up@thinksmart.com>
Subject: Good Morning Thinkers! August 18, 1997 (feel free to forward)
Wake-up, Brain ... it's Monday again!
"To reform means to shatter one form
and to create another;
but the two sides of this act are not
always equally intended nor equally successful."
-- George Santayana
Terry Richey with Timberline Strategies in Santa Fe sends out an "annual
report" to his friends and clients every year. One of his reports has
a series of short stories bound into a book he calls "the accidental,
observations on the nature of business creativity."
"Accidentals are," he states, "the points where we can most effortlessly
choose to move from ordered thinking to creative thinking. They are
the delicate bridges to new ideas and insights. Listening to
accidentals separates the simply well-run from the brilliant business."
Our favorite story from Terry's little book is #3 fire ants, excerpted
below:
The Santa Fe Institute leads the scientific world in exploring the
emerging new science of complexity. The organization hosts a series
of lectures each year for the non-scientist on topics of study at the
Institute. As part of the series, Deborah Gordan, an Institute fellow
from Stanford University gives a lecture on her work with fire ants.
I sit in the darkened auditorium expecting to learn more about this
new science. Instead, Deborah and her fire ants become an accidental
that significantly changes my approach to business.
Fire ants are the tiny red type that live in the desert. Deborah
spent a year observing the activity of one mound of these ants. She
found that the ants coming out of the mound had four different jobs:
cleaning (keeping the top of the mound clear of clutter), gathering
(going on missions and returning with food), and security (fighting
off threats). Each ant specializes in one of the jobs and she
confirmed this by painting a tiny color dot on the back of each.
Over 50,000 dots! Yellow dotted cleaners always cleaned. Gathers
could be seen in teams with their green dots moving away fom the
next.
Then Deborah introduced obstacles, frustrations and threats to the
orderly world of the fire ants which she calls "perturbations." She
began by placing a stick across one of their trails. Later she added
intruding insects, fire, and even lack of water. Fire ants responded
to the perturbations by changing jobs as needed. When a stick was in
the path, security ants joined the maintenance ants to clear it.
When there was a shortage of water, cleaner ants left the nest with
the gatherers to search a wider area. An ant that specialized in
cleaning somehow knew it was needed at another task and adapted.
In fact, this is the phenomena that Deborah came to study: complex
adaptive behavior, one of the foundations of the new science of
complexity. She and her fellow researchers are learning how
systems self-organize and adapt to change. Many of the principles
of adaptive behavior correlate whether the system is the commodity
exchange, the bloodstream or ant colonies. (Even marketing departments
and management teams!)
Deborah Gordon was an accidental. I could not have expected to
enrich my consulting practice by attending a lecture on ants. (If
I had been thinking more linearly, I would have gone to hear a lecture
by Tom Peters.) But in fact, that night began a cascade of insights
that would provide me with new tools and new approaches to my work.
And a greater respect for accidentals.
Terry Richie can be reached at
74671.3111@compuserve.com, website:
www.rt66.com/overlook.
*******************************************************************
Innovation Network -- Convergence 98: Implementing Innovation
2/23 - 2/26, 1998 - Santa Barbara, CA
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