Category: Thinking out loud

Form follows function

One of the oldest explicit principles that have shaped my thinking is “form follows function”. When I joined the GTZ (predecessor to GIZ) in 2003, this was one of the first principles that my manager (Mrs Gabriele Trah) often repeated when we received proposals from our counterparts, or when we were designing interventions in a particular context. The principle proved very valuable ever since, especially when working in bottom-up development as it challenges us to always seek an appropriate level of organisation that matches the capacities of the stakeholders with the context. At the time it became one of the key principles of the Local Economic Development toolkit that we were developing with Mesopartner, the company that I am now a partner of.

At the time, I just took this principle as an universal truth, and only recently did I discover where this principle came from. While following an interesting idea down a rabbit hole, I stumbled upon a letter that Peter Drucker wrote to Bill Emmot, the editor of the Economist, in 1994. In it, Drucker corrected the editor that he did not favour smallness or bigness based on an earlier article published in the Economist. (The whole letter is worth reading, because Drucker was a really great author).

Drucker argued that size follows function. Look at how eloquently he described the appropriate form.

“The right size is one that is appropriate to an organisations function – elephants better be big, butterflies better be small”.

Peter F Drucker, 1994

As far as I can tell, this is where the principle “form follows function” comes from. Drucker gave credit to D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson for this idea, but Drucker seemed to get the credit for this precise formulation.

Drucker, P.F. 1994. Correspondence from Peter Drucker. In Emmot, B.Personal Communication. The Drucker Institute. From https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/dac/id/1177/

I found this sentence valuable because promoters of innovation, entrepreneurship, or economic development more broadly are often strongly biased towards smallness and against bigness. Yet, some kinds of innovation are better suited to bigger organisations than to smaller organisations, or the other way around. Also, as technologies and industries change, what is more suitable for a larger or smaller organisation also changes. For instance, a large retailer can better overcome the logistics, infrastructure and supply chain challenges in a country like South Africa at the moment. But this might change as technologies, markets and infrastructure changes.

Actually, in the same letter, Drucker argues that even within a large organisation it is necessary to figure out how to create smaller organisational units that were better able to respond to the challenges they were created for. His argument was that the appropriate form is determined by the function to be performed. Perhaps this is where the subsidiarity principle comes from (pushing the decision to the most appropriate and proximate level of decision making) but I would have to do a little more digging about this first.

I would add that Druckers form follows function seems like universal hearistic, but it becomes powerful when we recognise the context. What are the functions and forms that are most appropriate in this particular context. In general, Drucker also questioned the whole form of the public versus private sector as much as he questioned assumptions about size. The business school he helped to establish and many of his publications on management kicked against the conventions of small versus big, public versus private, state versus market.

In my work, where I support groups of people to make sense and innovate, I have to remind myself often that “form” and “function” are both equally important, and that there is a tension. Wherever you start, form or function, you have to go to other, and then back, and then also consider the context. It is not only about determining the best arrangements (form) for decision making, sensemaking or innovation, but that function, the job-to-be-done is also important.

This is often where my clients struggle the most. They have a preference for the form, and the exact functions and what it would take to perform these in a particular context are unclear.

For example, in a conversation with a senior manager supporting innovation in the mineral processing sector, I was told that their organisation funder had specified the exact number of small businesses that they had to either create or support in their activities in promoting innovation in the mining sector. The form was specified before the appropriateness of the form in relation to the functions were clear. In another meeting last week, a senior public official said that we have to prevent that larger retailers use e-commerce and their ability to negotiate with suppliers to destroy small retailers.

To use Drucker’s example, we often want bees to perform elephants or vice versa

The kinds of problems that must be solved (the functions to be performed) should frame the thinking about what kinds of forms would be appropriate, within a specific context. This is what Drucker wanted us to ponder. Furthermore, we have to remember that as technologies, markets and contexts change, the appropriateness of different forms will also shift. In mining innovation, the regulation and compliance costs are probably important factors that shifts the balance towards bigness. Perhaps as technologies and red tape change, the balance might shift in favor of smaller units of organisation.

Have you used the “form follows function” principle recently in your work? Did you start with form, or with function, or did you manage to think of both? Can you share any experiences where assumptions about the preferred form did not consider the functions that were required within a particular context?

Credits:

The image of Peter Drucker is from Wikimedia. It is attribued to Jeff McNeill, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The correspondence from Peter Drucker to Bill Emmot is from the Drucker Institute. https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/dac/id/1177/

Working in between domains and contexts

As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mesopartner this year, we have been reflecting with each other and some close collaborators about our role in development. It has been a gratifying and humbling experience to hear what others think about our role (as Mesopartner) and how they reflect on their roles. Some of my friends, who were previously clients or colleagues, also reflecting on their changing roles as they shift from fieldwork to management or from one country to another.

One theme that has crystallised for me is that we often work between contexts in economic development. We connect local energy with ideas from far away, try to bridge the gap between the private and public sectors, foster feedback between interventions and beneficiaries, and connect ideas and domains that should be connected but are not. Even when we work in a large development organisation, we often work to identify and close gaps that we detect in the environments that we work in. Our focus is beyond and between organisations and not within. Building our team, our brand, or achieving our direct results is secondary to building the confidence and the capabilities of those that we call “counterparts”, “stakeholders”, or “beneficiaries”.

You might wonder why I think this is even worth sharing. This is such an obvious statement about development. Well, I think this is important to ponder because so many of the management instruments used in development originate in the corporate sector, where in theory, everyone is working in the same organisation towards the same goals. Just think of measurement instruments, planning methods or knowledge management. These concepts often assume that everyone is in the same boat heading towards the same shore.

But this is not true in economic development. When we try to get the private and the public sector to cooperate, they might now temporarily share a boat, but this is not likely their preferred means of getting to a destination. One might prefer a windsurf or a sailboat, while the other might prefer a cargo ship. We work between these domains and preferences, so our methods, logic and management approaches should reflect this “in-betweenness”. Suppose we want anything to stick or be taken up by anybody we work with. In that case, our methods must add value to their organisation’s goals and complement the kind of natural skills, resources and internal systems they have in place. Whenever we ask them to take up something that is not aligned or natural to how they usually work, we should not be surprised if, in the longer run, our ideas are not taken further.

As I have been reflecting on this for a few months, I have evaluated which of our instruments are temporary or specific and which ideas and concepts can be taken up and used in many different contexts. (I will shortly write about the Sensemaker survey that we used to collect narrative fragments of how our work in development matters and is changing). The way we facilitate conversations between stakeholders seems to have more value than the actual constructs we use to gather information or support decision-making. Perhaps the fact that we actively strive to get people together that usually move in different orbits also stands out. Some other ideas that stand out are the importance of creating moments in teams or even in temporary collaborations for people to stand back (from action) to reflect on where they are going, and whether whatever they are doing is having the desired effects.

Often the principles and the heuristics that we use have more value in the long run and different contexts than the methods or approaches we use. However, principles and heuristics are only transferred to the people we work with when used or applied in a specific context. Going forward, I will be paying more attention to the heuristics and principles that are valuable in the in-between contexts. I will also pay more attention to making it explicit how the ideas we work with can be adapted for different contexts and applications so that what works “in-between” can also be used to improve how things work within organisations.

Mesopartner’s 20th anniversary celebration in Berlin

On Friday the 7th, we celebrated Mesopartner’s 20th anniversary in Berlin.

Finally, the day we had planned for months had arrived. We were joined by many friends and collaborators who could travel to Berlin to join us, and well-wishes streamed in from all over. The venue was our favorite Hotel Grenzfall, where we hosted our Summer Academy in the preceding days.

Thankfully, Ulli had something to say when Natasha surprised us with “Say something”

Natasha Walker moderated our programme with her usual energy and grace. This meant we could all participate in the programme with our guests.

Annelien shared a video she and Britta (our resident photographer) had prepared using our favourite photos collected over 20 years. You should watch it if you have not already seen it.

You should watch the video! Click on it!

Die Gorillas, an improvisation theatre group, collected sentences and words from the audience about what it is like to work with Mesopartner. They then used these words and lines as impulses in their theatre performance. We were all in stitches! Seeing how they twisted and interpreted the jargon and phrases we use all the time was so funny.

Saying any of the following phrases would get any of our guests giggling: “competetitititiveness!”, “collaborate, collaborate, collaborate“, “bottom-up” and “we are pirates saving the world“.

During our celebrations, we also took an hour to reflect on “What matters now?” using a warm data lab format. This was an excellent way for us to reflect in more intimate groups about essential issues confronting all of us. I participated in discussions about spirituality, science, ecology and art. We held this in the lovely garden of the Hotel Grenzfall.

The warm data lab in the garden of the Hotel Grenzfall

The formal programme ended with more improvisation theatre, where we shifted our attention to food, drink and laughter until the early hours of Saturday morning.

This was a special event for me. Whoever thought that a guy from the Freestate Province in South Africa could one day be part of such a remarkable company and network? Who thought our small multinational microenterprise would have such an amazing network of friends, and collaborators all working to improve how economic development is done around the world?

For me, it is all the grace of God.

Thank you to everyone that joined, sent their wishes, or toasted our 20th anniversary with us!

To everybody who could not join us, but wanted to, we say “Cheers!”

Thank you Zdravko for traveling all the way to join our celebrations. You are a mentor and inspiration to us all.

How institutions, technologies and companies co-evolve

This is the fourth post in this series about economic evolution. In this post, I will look at the co-evolution between companies and the broader institutional environment they form part of.

Towards the end of the 2nd blog, I mentioned that the design spaces within firms (and organisations) interact with different design spaces beyond their boundaries. The available “technology” modules within any organisation, private or public, interact with and are shaped by technology the modules available in the institutional landscape. The technology in the preceding sentence should be understood as “knowing how to do or achieve something specific consistently”. For example, think of the trust system needed for two companies to transact with each other. Perhaps they rely on the social institution of social relations. This worked for most economies for a long time. But with increasingly sophisticated products and services and also the more impersonal nature of many transactions, contracts and their enforcement through a legal system is increasingly important. To further make impersonal transactions smoother, standards, performance criteria and branding are all social institutions that have evolved to enable transactions.

These institutions, including the norms and the organisations that provide related goods and services, evolve with the economic transactions they enable. In some cases, the institutions lead the evolution by providing the economy with new knowledge modules or services. In other cases, unmet demand might lead to an institutional response. Yet in another case, policymakers might design policies to shape the institutional offerings or the demand patterns.

The broader institutions and economic activity co-evolve.

I want to take this further by focusing on the meso space and how this space co-evolves with industries, locations or communities.

The meso space is a design space where interventions are designed to address the persistent patterns in the economy. Most microeconomic transactions occur via markets, hierarchies or networks, and each of these forms of allocation have strengths and weaknesses. All three can fail. When a particular kind of failure persists, this can be called a market failure, management failure (for hierarchies), government failure (in the case of public services failing), coordination failures or systemic failures. The meso space is where stakeholders intentionally intervene to address or respond to persistent failures.

Because it is sometimes not helpful to use labels like market or government or systemic failures, we often describe these patterns as “patterns of underperformance”. These are the patterns we often see when we look closely at an industry, value chain, location or national economy.

Some meso interventions may be targeted at a particular industry, a technology, a region or a specific pattern. In contrast, others may target whole policy areas like industrial, technology, trade or locational policies. While most meso interventions are supposedly intended to deal with negative or problematic patterns, there is no reason that meso interventions can also be designed to leverage positive characteristics. That is exactly what many tourism or investment promotion strategies aim to do.

Meso interventions might be a policy, project, programme, service, or organisation. Sometimes an existing organisation might launch a new service or provide additional functions to address a particular pattern of underperformance in the economy. This, in turn, might result from a particular ministry deciding to create a policy to address a particular issue, like deciding to invest in an incubator to develop particular solutions the company might be interested in. I know this might sound unclear, but when a policy or strategy is specific in its focus, we describe it as a meso instrument. In contrast, macro policies and strategies are more generic and are not specific to an industry, technology or location.

The public sector is a dominant actor in the meso space. However, in most countries, the public sector does not act like one stakeholder. There are different government departments and publicly funded agencies, at different levels, all with different jurisdictions or mandates. Just like coordination failures can occur in the private sector, coordination failures within different public functions can paralyse a country, industry or location.

However, not all meso policies and interventions are about the public sector trying to be the benevolent private sector supporter. Companies can also design policies that shape the economy around them. For instance, a large manufacturer might have policies to develop their supplier networks, to make the location where they are based more attractive, or to support particular public interests. Not-for-profit or non-governmental organisations can also have development policies to address particular economic patterns. So meso policies and programmes can be designed or implemented by the public, private or civil sectors.

While some economic development practitioners are often biased in favour of addressing market failures, the meso space must often also address government and other systemic issues. For instance, the meso space is often critical to designing or implementing programmes to reduce inequality, provide more effective public goods, reduce coordination problems, maintain and expand critical physical and digital infrastructure and address other social priorities.

Suppose a persistent pattern of decline plays out in a location or an industry over time. For instance, let us imagine that the city centre and its key economic activities are in decline. It is unlikely that this pattern of decline can be addressed by only the public sector implementing a few projects. Most likely, the pattern can only be arrested by mobilising many different public, private and civil organisations and then pursuing projects together for extended periods. Interventions aimed only at the private sector are unlikely to work by themselves, as renewal and investment in public organisations, civil and social infrastructure would mostly likely also be required. The location will change as the economic activities of enterprises and the supporting institutions co-evolve. In most cases, this is a process that takes time.

This example illustrates how industries and institutions co-evolve. As the city centre declines, social institutions and networks might also decline. At the same time, new informal economic activities might arise in the place, but this might lead to an acceleration in the decline of formal economic activities. Renewal in public, private and civil organisations might be needed to reverse this trend. At the same time, investments in public infrastructure and attracting private investment are needed. These kinds of initiatives will shape the incentive landscape for investors, individuals and entrepreneurs, just as the kinds of investors, individuals and entrepreneurs might play a role in deciding where to start or what to do.

It is impossible to fix persistent patterns of underperformance in the private sector through the private sector alone. This is at the heart of systemic change: the recognition that firms and their meso landscape of interventions, programmes and organisations co-evolve. Sometimes we start with the firms and then try to invigorate the meso landscape. At other times, we may start with the meso landscape and try to make it more resilient, innovative or valuable to the private sector, the community or the location. But we also have to think both of the micro level where transactions take place via markets, networks and hierarchies, as well as the meso landscape where incentives, investments and coordination takes place. Any systemic intervention would typically involve coordinating the development efforts of the public, private and civil sectors over extended periods.

The challenge is that co-evolutions are not designed ex-ante, although it is possible to catalyse changes in the public and the private sector if there is enough willpower and incentives for change. Every small change creates further opportunities for change by making knowledge or technology modules available. Any idea or modules that become available in the economy, even if it was meant for a specific purpose, becomes part of the substrate of ideas that others can use in new combinations to innovate or transact. This may lead to a further changes in public policies, or to further changes in the institutional landscape, which in turn may lead to additional services or technologies becoming available to the economy.

This is how industries, institutions (both norms and organisations), technologies and locations co-evolve. They contribute knowledge modules or functions to the economy, that others can combine with to create value. And so it goes on.

If you think of the context where you are working, can you see examples where changes in the private sector (performance) lead to changes in the meso landscape or the other way around? Where did new or adapted services from the public meso programmes shape a location, industry or technology? Can you think of any unintended consequences or benefits, in other words, that was not designed intentionally but happened because of preceding changes?

Alternatively, where did changes in the private sector result in adaptation or changes in the public sector?

Lastly, can you think of examples where a civil or not-for-profit organisation’s behaviour (or interventions) resulted in public and private sector changes? How did the system co-evolve as a result?

You are welcome to share your thoughts in the comments below. Or just continue sending your comments to me by email or social media. I value your comments and suggestions.

Image credit: Image created by DALLE on 22 February 2023. The prompt was to create a drawing showing the relationship between urban planning and universities.

The modules that evolve

This is the third post in this series about economic evolution. In this post, I want to focus more on the modules that the evolutionary algorithm act upon that I mentioned in the previous post.

Ideas are the most fluffy evolutionary material that spreads between people and organisations. These ideas spread via formal means (like education, formal communications, management decisions or regulations) but also via less formal means like the media, stories, people moving between places and social networks. We pick up ideas as we move around in society, and often we combine these ideas with our own to create completely new idea combinations. I always ask people I interview where they got their ideas for innovations from, and I have heard the most amazing stories of how they took an idea developed in a completely different context and made it work in their own situation.

Tracking how ideas spread in society is tricky, partially because we cannot always remember where we heard or saw something that triggered a thought.

In the first post, I explained that Nelson and Winter (1982:14) preferred to use “routines” instead of “ideas” in their theory as the material that the evolutionary algorithm act upon. Routines are relatively stable ways of arranging physical and social technologies to perform certain functions. Even if they can come about in an arbitrary form, organisations tend to replicate routines internally, and other organisations also copy and adapt routines that appear to work well.

Eric Beinhocker (see the 2nd post) argues for using “modules” as the primary material on which the evolutionary algorithm acts. He agrees with the co-evolution between physical and social technologies but adds that there is a third design space, namely business plans.

“A module is a component of a business plan that has provided in the past, or could provide in the future, a basis for differential selection between business in a competitive environment.” A module is made up of configurations of routines from the physical, social and business plan design spaces.

Beinhocker, 2007:283

Continuous decisions about the composition of these modules must be made in any organisation or company. These routines and modules can be pretty unstructured, but the theory holds that the better-performing modules will be replicated within and beyond the organisation. In contrast, the less-efficient modules or routines will become obsolete when replicated less. However, even inefficient or unproductive modules can persist due to stubbornness, sunk costs, pride or ignorance.

A challenge we face is that the many internal marketplaces (within organisations) where different concepts or module formulations are pitched against each other do not work effectively. In addition, companies relying on inefficient module configurations can still thrive in uncompetitive marketplaces because the markets cannot select better-performing alternatives.

Over the years, I responded to this issue through the instigating innovation series and my teaching at various business schools.

Those organisations that constantly develop or search for new modules or tinker with their existing modules because of anticipated changes in the broader environment can be described as having dynamic capabilities. Dynamic capabilities cannot be bought, it is built through the intentional behaviour of entrepreneurs, managers and employees. David Teece is one of my favourite scholars studying dynamic capabilities, and here is his definition:

Dynamic Capabilities are the firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external resources/competences to address and shape rapidly changing business environments. 

Teece et al., 1997, 1990

Teece must often repeat building dynamic capabilities is about achieving abnormal results over the long term. The capabilities part is about the investments in abilities, skills, routines and relationships that are enduring AND that are distinct from what competitors may be doing. The dynamic part refers to the ability to adapt and proactively create market conditions that favour the company. It is about an internal culture of change, experimentation and recognising what works (and what does not work). Why I took this detour is that we need to find ways to foster dynamic capabilities in developing countries in both the public and the private sectors. We have too few organisations actively trying to create new modules that are then adapted based on how they perform in the marketplace.

Back to the main thread. Investments in modules create path dependency, especially when all the investments are along a certain trajectory. In the software and services sectors, companies can change direction faster than in the manufacturing or public sectors. This is mainly due to the way fixed capital is invested in plant, equipment and infrastructure. Once committed to a specific configuration of modules, it may cost a lot of money to change direction.

Whereas routines can often be observed and replicated between companies or contexts, modules are often harder to observe and copy. For example, we can visit a factory and see some physical and social technologies arranged in routines. We can observe how raw material, processes, people and workflows are organised on the factory floor. However, the modular knowledge units combining physical, social and business plans are harder to observe or measure. The hidden parts include the internal incentive structure to innovate and resolve problems, the past learning about what did not work and should never be attempted again, etc., how the factory is connected to suppliers, clients and headquarters, and so on. Some parts of the modules are harder to observe because they weave together past decisions, strategies, funding mechanisms, and future expectations using combinations of physical and social technologies. The machine standing there or how people work together is just the visible tip of the module (or configuration of modules).

The irony is that even management may not realise how much tacit knowledge is involved in the logic that weaves the many different modules combined in a single unit of an enterprise in the modern economy.

From an innovation perspective, there is something else to note about how these modules are created, adapted and disseminated in economic system. The ability to identify, absorb, create and deploy these modules is cumulative. Think of lego bricks. The more modules a specific company has access to or has tried before, the more variations it can create, and the more creative solutions it can select to try in the marketplace.

When this happens over many companies in the economy, markets and users can select from more variety, and better ideas are replicated and amplified in the economy. We know from the research by Cesar Hidalgo, Ricardo Hausmann and the Centre for International Development at Harvard, that these winning knowledge modules can be mapped in the Productspace. (I have a hidden section on my blog site where I have documented some of my experiments and visualisations with this approach – you can access it here).

The experience of selecting combinations or transferring modules to other business areas is cumulative. Companies building modules drawing on different or technological knowledge are better positioned to create entirely new innovative architectures because they can draw on modules from divergent knowledge domains. In contrast, companies that can only manage knowledge modules drawing on narrow knowledge domains are more likely to become specialists. The narrower the range of modules, the higher the risk of being disrupted by other competitors that can build modules on a wider front.

It is not only companies and public organisations that build up these modules. Industries can build modules. Universities play a key role in introducing recent or reliable modules into society. Some modules are described in sufficient detail that can spread via blueprints, technical documentation or software code. Members of online communities can together develop knowledge modules in a distributed way. Just think of the power of Linux or other forms of open-source software that is developed in a distributed way.

Modules can also be accumulated in a society, like the knowledge of how to organise a certain kind of festival, or the modules accumulated through dealing with certain phenomena from the environment. When people change jobs or move from a workplace, they carry with them some understanding of the modules and their sub-routines with them. However, turning some of these modules into a business unit, product or process might require investment in developing the missing business plan areas.

In some locations, office parks or regions, knowledge about certain modules may be developed or may flow more easily over organisational boundaries. Of course, this process may be fostered by developing unique public (or private) infrastructure and through social networks.

I’ll go ahead and conclude. Entrepreneurs, managers, investors and public officials have to intentionally decide where to build modules in their organisations. These modules will typically combine elements from physical and social technology design spaces with business plans. Modules will evolve as they are selected by the organisation (management) and by the market. These modules are cumulative, those that have access to more can also create more variations. Those who draw their modules together from more divergent knowledge domains may have a long-term advantage over those who specialise in building capabilities in a narrower field. Dynamic capabilities are about intentionally investing in capabilities, and continuously evaluating, adjusting and refining existing modules with new ideas from beyond the organisation. Not all the modules originate in a firm, some are present in a community, or a network or are drawn from other companies or contexts. This is easier in some places than in others.

Some questions to explore in your own context:

  • In the industries or domains that you work in, what are the modules that you can identify?
  • How are they changing?
  • Who are the pioneers that are accumulating modules from divergent knowledge domains?
  • How do they compare to those mainly focused on developing modules in a narrower field?
  • Which public and private organisations have built up dynamic capabilities? In other words, they are constantly reflecting on their performance, and constantly working on building capabilities based on their understanding of their own situation in relation to changes in the broader context. How are these organisations managed, and how does their performance compare to more conventional organisations?
  • How are the accumulation and adaptation of modules fostered or promoted in certain areas, knowledge domains or industries?

Please share your thoughts in the comments, or drop me an email.

Image credit

The image at the top of this blog post was created by DALL-E of OpenAI. asked DALLE to create a picture of a topographical landscape with valleys and peaks.

PS.

Here in South Africa, we are all developing modules of how to cope with electricity blackouts (Our government calls it “load-shedding”, which is an excellent way of describing institutionalised incompetence).

Sources:

Beinhocker, E.D. 2007.  The origin of wealth. Evolution, complexity, and radical remaking of economics`. London: Random House.

Teece, D.J., Pisano, G. and Shuen, A. 1997.  Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic Management Journal,  pp. 509-533.

Teece, D.J. 2019.  A capability theory of the firm: An economics and (strategic) management perspective. New Zealand Economic Papers, 53.

Further reading:

If you have access to journal databases, you should also look up the fantastic work of Giovani Dosi, and also Richard R Nelson and B.A Lundvall.

Updated on 5 March 2023 with minor corrections

Evolution in the economy

Economic evolution is often a topic in conversations with the teams I am coaching and the leaders I advise. It is a simple idea to explain, yet it allows for a much deeper exploration of why and how economies and organisations change. Even leaders without a background in economics or innovation can see the role they play in promoting innovation and economic development.

Evolution is a general-purpose and potent algorithm for finding innovative solutions to complex problems. It describes a naturally unfolding process in the economy that plays out at different levels as people, individually and collectively, search for and try new ideas or modifications of what they already know. At its core, evolution is an iterative process of creating variety and selecting designs that are fit for purpose and then amplifying these by adapting resource flows. While in nature, fitness is determined by the environment, in economies, fitness can be intentionally influenced by human actors.

The idea that economies evolve continuously is not new. The term “evolutionary economics” was coined by Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) already in 1898. Earlier, Karl Marx and Adam Smith raised issues that are now seen as part of the evolutionary economics school. Joseph Schumpeter’s theories of economic development had a strong evolutionary perspective. Possibly the Schumpetarian idea that is best known beyond economics is his suggestion that entrepreneurs introduce innovations that creatively destroy the equilibrium created by the predominant arrangements. Much later, Richard R Nelson and Sidney G Winter’s book An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (1982) was a seminal work that marked a renaissance of evolutionary economics.

Below is a simple illustration of the evolutionary algorithm.

The evolutionary algorithm works as follows:

  • An innovator or a team creates some variation based on existing ideas. The new idea is often created by recombining what is already known (knowledge and technology is cumulative) with some new insights. Or perhaps they figure out the idea based on their understanding of a given situation (experience is also cumulative). It may even be that the variation is created through serendipity. The critical point is that the variety of possible solutions or stock of ideas increases, irrespective of whether there is currently demand for any of these ideas. For the variation stage to be complete, the idea must either be recognised by the innovator as worthy of further pursuit or knowledge of the variation must spread to others.
  • A few pioneering buyers, managers, investors, or other innovators then select an idea because it can address a need, or solve a problem, or plugs a gap in a given context. Selection implies that resources, attention or access to complimentary knowledge or networks are made available, leading to the concept’s further development. Choosing an idea that is different and unproven is a risk, but the people making the selection somehow recognise the idea’s potential or the limitations of existing alternatives. Innovative ideas are often further developed because they are selected. My late business partner Jorg Meyer-Stamer constantly reminded me “that technologies become efficient because they are chosen; technologies are hardly chosen because they are already efficient”. As the idea attracts more resources, funds, interest, talent and pioneering buyers, it becomes easier for others to select it as the concept is refined. At this point, other innovators may enter and create more complimentary variety, which makes selection even more likely as the ecosystem of related and complimentary solutions becomes more established.
  • At a certain point, the idea becomes amplified in the economy or the system beyond the ideas or designs of the original innovators. Where those doing the selection in the previous phase were taking a risk, in the amplification stage the risks are much lower as the innovative idea is understood better, is more credible and has more support.

This evolutionary algorithm plays out in the marketplace and is fuelled by incentives that shapes each stage. It also plays out within organisations where different ideas compete for resources.

There are ways that we can shape the incentives in all three phases of the algorithm.

  • We can figure out what incentives dampen variety creation or which incentives can be amplified to encourage learning about and exploring possible alternative arrangements.
  • We can explore how we can tilt selection incentives away from innovations that are less desirable towards more desirable solutions.
  • We can explore how good ideas that have already been selected (and thus developed) can be amplified.

I know that the incentives are often understood to be financial. But remember that recognition, being able to contribute, using one’s talent or simply solving a puzzle are also important social incentives. In the same way, fear of failure or ridicule, not having the resources needed, or not having the time or the permission to solve a problem are incentives that hamper innovation.

I want to end this post with just a provocative question. The institutions in our economies and the rules/cultures in our organisations are already shaping the algorithm. What innovations and alternatives are the algorithms in your system incentivising, selecting and amplifying? I would love to hear your reflection on this question.

If you do not want to post it in the comments, then send me an email or reach me on twitter.

Credits: The ideas in this post are inspired by many conversations with Marcus Jenal over the last ten years. In 2015, we had the privilege of deep diving into evolutionary thinking and its applications to economic development in a project funded by the BEAM Exchange. The ideas we have explored together have shaped my view of organisations, markets and how societies evolve.

Exploring the gaps between universities and industries

When working on technological change and the improvement of innovation systems, the topic of the different gaps between universities and industries often comes up. This is true for South Africa, but also for my work in Europe and Asia. The gaps are described differently by development projects, academics and business people, and my job is to usually figure out where the opportunity to close these gaps lies.

In my experience of trying to close some of these gaps, it is important to be as specific as possible about nature and maybe even the effects of these gaps. It is important to go to businesses and to find out what they expect from universities, while also going to academics and researchers and finding out what they expect from the industry. Often, the expectations expressed by these two groups are unreasonable and hard to reconcile. Sometimes people are simply wrong about what they think is needed or should be done.

However, these different expectations are not the biggest obstacle to closing the gap. Often the bigger obstacle is a lack of imagination of what is even possible in terms of cooperation, interaction and information flow. This is made worse by low levels of trust by one side of the other side. Also, stakeholders often have little insight into how others value certain interactions and information flows.

Over the last 14 years I have worked occasionally with a Faculty of Engineering at a University of Technology. In the image below, I share some of the different interaction patterns that we have observed over the years of closing gaps between selected departments or technology centres and industries. I am grateful to Dr SJ Jacobs who agreed that I can share this illustration.

The possible different relations between universities and industries

Of course, some relationships are more important than others. Also, not everybody agrees with the direction of the arrows that I have used in the diagram. I also know that some academics find it hard to believe that they can learn from industry. At the same time, many business people are surprised when they realise that their own companies have learned through the personal relations of their employees with their alma mater.

Even if a certain relationship adds little value in the bigger scheme of things, for the people directly involved it could mean a lot. For instance, for an engineering student to find an industry project that they could work on as a research project is a big deal, even if this may not be so important for a company or even for the academic department involved. In many post-graduate degrees, students are required to work on a real-life project, which often requires a company to give a student access to their facilities, data, senior management or other resources.

To reflect on the relations between a university and a community or a region would require another picture, but I will do that in a next project.

To be transparent, for many years I have used a simpler version of this map that was developed by the late Jorg Meyer-Stamer in the early 2000s. I include the original map below. I think many of my readers might have seen this map in RALIS (Rapid Appraisal of Local Innovation Systems) training course material or RALIS diagnostic processes.

The original map developed by Jorg Meyer-Stamer

While this original map is still useful to explain the different kinds of interactions between the private sector and a university, I found that we need a more detailed diagram if we want to improve relationships, design new services or improve the performance of programmes.

What do you use to map the relations?

What are some of the common myths or gaps that you come across often when you work on this topic?

Different kinds of technology dissemination

In many of the projects where I work, we face the challenge of gaining access to publicly funded resources that the private sector finds hard to reach. These technological resources could be in the form of scarce equipment, specialists or even in the form of codified or tacit knowledge. Often, the private sector is not even aware of the technological resources in their location or country.

I often describe three kinds of technology dissemination:

  • Technology development, which is usually project based and involves the development of very specific technological solutions
  • Technology transfer, which is usually based on a contract between the provider and the recipient that specifies pre-conditions, conditions and which equipment, processes and in some cases expertise will be transferred to the recipient
  • Technology extension, which is usually more interactive in nature. A knowledge holder, like a university department, research lab or enterprise support centre, extends their resources to private enterprises in a complementary way.

In my experience of working on the gap between public technological infrastructure and the needs of the enterprises, each of the three forms of technological dissemination works in some contexts and fall short in others.

  • Policymakers and public funders often prefer technology development because it leverages other scientific infrastructure investments at research organisations and universities. From a demand perspective, it is usually only those companies that have sufficient in-house expertise to develop a specification or that can afford to commission a research or development project with a research organisation that can benefit from this approach. I have only come across a handfull of small companies that have been able to commision technology development projects like this. In most cases, the founders of these enterprises had deep expertise in the technological domain, their internal processes, materials and the markets. I am thinking of one case where a small engineering company specilasing in advanced optics commissioned a research project to develop a new control interface for an aircraft.
  • Public bureaucrats often like technology transfer because it leverages research outputs at universities and research labs. Technology transfer requires that careful attention is paid to intellectual property and that recipients are able to absorb and leverage the technology they are gaining access to. I typically try to avoid this kind of work because I have often found that there are huge gaps between how public researchers and private investors value intelectual property. But I also know of many instances where a technology was developed in a university and then transferred to private enterprises. In my experience, there is a huge gap between what researchers in universities and public research organisations work on, and what small enterprises trying to carve out a niche in a smaller domestic market needs.

In my opinion, the importance of both technology development and technology transfer programmes is often over-rated in developing countries.

At the same time, the value of technology extension is often under-rated. Out of concerns that valuable intellectual property might leak out, many researchers, academics or other officials cannot provide assistance or advice to the private sector. While I understand this concern, in my experience, many enterprises are actually searching for somebody to point them in the right direction – they are not always asking for specific technical solutions that would infringe on intellectual property regulations.

Technology extension involves services like:

  • Demonstrating how certain (scarce) technologies work, or showing how scientific and engineering principles can be appled to real world problems
  • Advising companies on how they can improve or optimise their current processes
  • Providing technical problem solving, analytical or diagnostic services
  • Providing access to scarce equipment, software (like design or modelling software) and access to scarce expertise.

What makes technology extension more difficult is that the advice provided must fit the enterprise’s context and capability. For instance, while companies can pay to get their products tested or certified, very few companies have access to a lab or technology centre where they can get design feedback to make their product more compliant or more economical to produce. At the same time, many universities and public research organisations can provide a basic analysis and design feedback service.

A challenge for the private sector is that public research organisations are often like labyrinths. It is hard to know where the expertise, capabilities, or excellence lies in buildings or behind closed doors. Often you cannot even get into these buildings without an invitation and, in some cases, security clearance. Nevertheless, I love wandering the corridors of these organisations and seeing what technologists are working on. Often there are prototypes, half-dismantled instruments or posters adorning the corridors. The people working there can tell the most amazing stories of how they had to solve a problem, make up for a missing bit, or how they discovered that X could be substituted for Y. When I ask them who in the rest of the world knows what they are doing, I am often met with a shrug, and a “nobody is really interested in this”.

When I ask technologists, scientists and engineers in public research organisations who can most benefit from their genius, I am often told that ex-students, former colleagues and their alumni are often the most valuable customers and sources of inspiration. This seems consistent with the notion that the best form of technology transfer is through the mobility of people. It might imply that I have to introduce “technology transfer through human mobility” as a fourth kind of dissemination.

Image credit: The image at the top of this blog is from an optics lab at the National Metrology Institute of South Africa (NMISA). I took the picture while touring their facilities in March 2020, just a few days before the strict lockdown was announced in South Africa.

September update

It is spring here in Pretoria. Many of the plants and trees in our garden and our neighborhood are growing new leaves. We are all waiting for the first spring rains to wash the dust and pollens from the air.

In my work, there are also new green shoots that I want to share with my readers and my friends.

  • I have been appointed as a Professor of Practice with the DST/NRF/Newton Fund Trilateral Research Chair in Transformative Innovation, the 4th Industrial Revolution and Sustainable Development hosted by the University of Johannesburg. I am grateful to Prof Erika Kraemer-Mbula and her team for making me part of their team, even if I am only a part-time member of faculty. My role in the research chair is to make the abstract and often-academic literature more accessable to practitioners and post-graduate students here in Africa, while bringing my practical experience into the academic discourse. I will also be able to further pursue my research into the role and performance of innovation intermedaries and meso organisations with the research chair. I have already participated in several calls with post-graduate students and some of the other members of faculty.
  • As many of my regular blog readers would know, I have been contracted since 2018 to do research and policy advisory work on the topic of technological disruption with the not-for-profit research organisation called TIPS (Trade and Industry Policy Strategies). We are now using the insigths gained from our research to develop analytical and process instruments, and are already applying these frameworks in the South African plastics, metals, automotive and leather and footwear industries. It is rewarding to see how these ideas can be used in practice to gain a better understanding of how business people and supporting organisations innovate, learn about new technological possibilities and develop new capabilities.
  • My first year of serving on one of the WEFs Global Future Council for the New Agenda for Economic Growth and Recovery have come to an end, and my term was extended for another year. During the regular meetings with my fellow council members I have realised how local insights into businesses, supporting organisations and the dynamics in locations can contribute to a global perspective on economic change and collective action.

The singing of the birds outside urge me to also want to celebrate the arrival of the new season. Of course these green shoots had its origins in previous seasons, and I am thankful for this continuity that goes on even when I don’t pay attention to it often enough. I want to express my gratitude to God for the ongoing provision that we receive as a family, despite the destruction caused by the pandemic and the responses of governments to it. I am constantly reflecting on how I can be more effective in blessing others out of the abundance that we receive as a family and as a business. I know that writing blog posts and developing short text modules is one small way of encouraging others, and I want to commit again to thinking-out-loud with my friends and collaborators.

In the days to come I will share some reflections about innovation systems, competence building, learning and some of the other topics I have been working on in the last few months.

The photo at the top of this message was taken by Caitlin Cunningham in our garden just before sunset earlier this week.

Some thoughts on re-thinking your workspace

Originally posted on 23 April 2021, updated on 3 May 2021

Several of my friends and clients are wondering what their workspace arrangements may look like in the future. The lockdowns and disruptions over the past year have rapidly accelerated the use of digital technologies to enable remote work, to improve coordination within and between organisational functions, document sharing and connectivity. Some key experts and managers of some companies are now reluctant to resume work in the office.

Just thinking out loud, I would like to share some of the points that we often have to grapple with about the future of work and workspace. These thoughts are still taking shape, but I would like to share them with you as they may be similar to the points that you are discussing with your teams right now.

  1. We should think of it as working remotely rather than working from home. Working remotely has now been piloted at scale. Some love it and have vowed never to return to a boring corporate office. Others loathe it and cannot wait to get back to the corporate office. What leaders must consider is that not everybody will be willing to come back to the office.
  2. The future of the workspace is a hybrid between working in an office and working remotely. Corporate offices are now seen as so 2019. Leaders should engage with their teams to figure out what works best in a shared infrastructure and what works best remotely.
  3. It is not necessary for people to travel to work for a desk, internet connection and coffee. Leaders must re-think the affordability provided by working remotely and the advantages of working in a shared space. I know of organisations that can now redesign functional workspaces that meet the different requirements of individuals and teams. People want comfortable lounge areas for reading and writing, comfortable tables and chairs for collaboration, cubicles for making calls and deep-thinking work. 
  4. There is still a role for a corporate or a shared workspace. Not everybody can afford to create and maintain a working environment at home or in a setting elsewhere. Not everyone can perform their functions remotely. Some people simply get lonely and need to connect with other human beings. Others need the kind of equipment and technology that can only be provided and make sense in a shared environment. But there are other soft issues that must also be considered. Innovation culture is shaped by how different people interact and work together. Innovation is hampered by working only with people you like on projects where everybody agrees on what must be done next. Innovation thrives when you bump into somebody from another discipline or department. 
    Maybe Taylorism (defined by Merriam-Webster as a factory management system developed in the late 19th century to increase efficiency by evaluating every step in a manufacturing process and breaking down production into specialised repetitive tasks) and efficiency have shaped the design of office spaces for too long. Why not create innovative spaces that invite deep concentration (like a lounge or a library), or smaller cubicles for undisturbed work? Or flexible desks that can be re-arranged with good coffee nearby?
  5. While you are busy rethinking the arrangement of your organisation, why not consider placing teams or experts at your clients, or bringing your suppliers or clients into your workspace? The increased use of digital technologies during the past year has led to the discovery of how it is possible for teams from different organisations to work together in completely new ways. I recently listened to an interview with a CEO who explained that their organisation had not only embraced remote work but had also decided to switch to asynchronous meetings! This means that a meeting is recorded, and people who could not participate during the event could still contribute or even challenge what was said afterwards. The use of channels in applications like Slack and MS Teams makes this very easy if used properly
  6. There are also downsides to working remotely. Just because you use MS Teams does not mean your people feel that they are in a team, or that they are trusted or equipped to do their work. People are zoomed up! At least there were physical constraints that limited the number of people who could participate in a meeting back in the ”old days”. Now with digital communication tools, meetings are being held more frequently with more people participating. A friend told me that she spends her evenings working because her days are filled with Zoom meetings.
  7. Lastly, working remotely is not for everybody. Here in South Africa, creating and maintaining a remote workspace is also often determined by your race, your age, where you live, and who lives with you. Where you live determines internet speed, the reliability of the electricity supply and also how long and safely you commute to an office. We live in a leafy green suburb which is a fantastic environment to work in. But a colleague whom I work with lives in a small apartment with two other professionals sharing the same space and internet bandwidth. While some individuals enjoy working at their own pace, others need to be supervised. For younger employees the socialisation process of working with older and also very differently skilled people is critical.

I would love to hear from you about what you have been grappling with, or what you are debating to do right now. 

  • Have you redesigned your workspace, or renegotiated how certain processes work? 
  • Have you made up your mind whether you are going back to the “office”, or do you prefer working remotely? 
  • Has somebody on your team decided to not come back and to work remotely, or even worse, to resign because they prefer to work remotely?
  • Which tasks would you prefer to perform remotely and which in a physical office space?

If you would rather not reply on this blog post, you can send me an email.

Here are some interesting resources by others:

In interview #100, Shane Parish interviews the co-founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg. Head over to https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/ for more information 

In episode #784 of the HBR IdeaCast, Anne-Laure Fayard talks about her HBR article “Designing the hybrid office”

A special thank you to Natasha Walker and Sonja Blignaut for the conversations and the encouragement that made this blog post possible.

Image by DarkmoonArt_de from Pixabay