An unplanned, emergent solution

In the cafe discussions following the last chapter, there were various speculations on various types of strategy that wouldn't need a plan. At one table, an interesting anecdote was told by Yvan Caron, who described how some fifty years previous an architect had submitted plans for the design of a college campus that didn't include any pathways between the buildings.

When this omission was pointed out, the architect told the client that he'd purposely left out the pathways because the student's would find their own best routes between the buildings. When these routes became visible, as worn tracks through the grass, he could pave them over.

Another at the table, Joe Repta, responded:

The campus of Yvan's anecdote was in fact Michigan State University, where I spent my undergrad days. I've always remembered that story as having an important message.

We see this effect in many different places today, dirt paths that cut through planted grass in places where sidewalks don't take people where they want to go. Most successful Web services have grown in a similar way, as have most computer application programs: all beginning from some minimal seed concept, minimally (and cheaply) implemented and developing according to user wishlists.

I suggest that one way to grow a set of contacts and attract relevant strengths is a cheap, quick and dirty implementation of what seems like a good idea.

Joe Repta

This anecdote, of the paths that evolved without any plan or deliberate design, captures perfectly the essence of a bottom up strategy using a dynamic solution space. An unstructured landscape is presented and then allowed to take its own shape. But, Joe Repta put his finger on the stumbling block of this approach when he suggested starting out with "what seems a good idea".

This highlights the real problem: it is easy to get a system to self organise, but, from what base do you get the system started? What should be the initial "good idea" that triggers a dynamic system into self organising? In other words, what components and framework of ideas have to be present to enable a business to self organise by means of a bottom up process?

Normally, the framework and components for a business are provided by the business plan, but, the catch-22 is that we can't create a business plan because just like the pathways between the campus buildings we can't be sure what the best plan will turn out to be.

What is needed, therefore, is the equivalent of the untrodden grass between the campus buildings: a virgin space from which a solution can emerge. We need a framework that will allow the initial ideas for a business to manifest spontaneously, similar to the way in which paths manifest on the campus grass – a solution space that will birth optimal e-business ideas.