The Idea Ecology

Ecology is the study of interactions among organisms and their environment. Ideas too have their ecology.

When the environment is VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, a lone genius is unlikely to find the most elegant solution to a complex problem. A network of curious people, with deep knowledge in different domains, has a higher probability of finding optimal solutions.

Brian Eno calls such a network scenius – scenius is genius embedded not in the gene but in the scene or the environment. It is collective genius. Just like diversity is important in an ecological system it is also essential in the Idea Ecology.

Stuart Koffman has postulated the theory of the Adjacent Possible – biological systems morph into more complex systems through incremental steps and not big leaps, because in a given configuration only certain types of next steps are possible. You can’t jump straight from Big Bang to Humans. Evolution is a story of a long series of adjacent possible steps.

Steven Johnson, in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, proposes that ideas follow a similar adjacent possible trajectory. The perimeter of one idea needs to be pushed till you reach the next related or rival idea. If you want to innovate you need to expose yourself to the conversation and debate around an idea. As Johnson puts it: "Chance favours the connected mind."

To generate good ideas you need to have weak ties with an appropriate network in the idea ecology. Just like you have close friends and distant acquaintances, in the idea network you have strong ties and weak ties. The more weak ties you have the more widely connected you are in the network and there is a higher probability that you will receive more information that will help you refine your idea.

In an ecological system the inhabiting organisms compete, but they also cooperate. French sociologist, Emile Durkheim has called humans Homo duplex or the two-level man – one level of the ordinary individual and another level of the sacred united, where we feel collective anger of a war, collective joy of end of a war, or collective grief of a natural calamity.

To solve the complex problems we face today and to flourish as a species, learning how things work in an idea ecology - a right mix of independent and collaborative thinking, is an essential life skill.

From Solo Artists to Knowledge Jockeys – The Story of Human Learning

Learning is in our DNA. All creatures learn and adapt; it is at the very core of evolution. Psychologist James Baldwin suggested that an organism’s ability to learn new behaviours affects its reproductive success and therefore, over generations, through natural selection, becomes part of the genetic makeup of that organism. This is called the Baldwin Effect.

The crows in Tokyo are a good example of this. They found an ingenious way to get themselves a meal by using the city traffic to crack open walnuts. Realising that picking the walnut pieces in the midst of the traffic was too dangerous, the crows figured out a new trick – use the traffic crossing instead and swoop down to pick the open walnut when the traffic stops to let the pedestrians cross! https://youtu.be/_5_DuZ8WuMM

Applying the Baldwin Effect logic here, it may well happen that future generations of Tokyo crows develop a walnut-cracking gene in their DNA, but this is still not the most efficient way of learning. Why? Because it is time consuming – it happens gradually over generations. And it is not widespread – the crows in London, for instance, may never figure out the “delicious” potential of Oxford Circus crossing!

Homo discens or ‘the learning man’ may have started out much like the Tokyo crows – observing, tinkering, imitating, experimenting and learning by trial and error, but the big difference, as Prof David Christian, historian and creator of the famous inter-disciplinary course titled Big History explains, is our ability to learn collectively. Advent of language, writing and printing press allowed us to codify, preserve and disseminate knowledge with very little transmission loss. This allowed Homo discens to become Homo sapiens (the knowing man) because we humans could quickly learn and build on the knowledge created by our predecessors and peers.

We learnt not only to preserve knowledge but also to disseminate it efficiently. The printing press was a milestone in this story and when it was invented, knowledge was created by subject-matter experts and filtered by editors. As a result, as David Weinberger, author of the book Too Big to Know explains, knowledge was scarce, but it was settled. Perhaps this was also why knowledge came to be associated with loftiness and eventually led to putting “the knowledgeable one” on a pedestal. One strong theory of learning as transmission of information – wherein the teacher is a sage on a stage and the learners are passive recipients of knowledge – evolved from this.

Homo sapiens sapiens (those who know that they know) learn through guided doing, inquiry and reflection. Eventually, this led to creation of knowledge through guided discovery and exploration, in which the teacher is a coach and a co-explorer and the learners are active participants who construct their own meaning.

And now with internet transforming the knowledge landscape once again, our theories and processes of learning are in the midst of yet another evolution. Today, anyone can publish – which, as Weinberger explains, has made “knowledge” unbounded, overwhelming and uncertain. The very complexion of knowledge is changing and it is becoming more messy and uncertain. 

To deal with this abundant and fast-changing knowledge the way we learn also needs to change. The process of learning needs the added dimension of becoming social and participative besides having the conventional component of inquiry and reflection. Collective learning and sense making enhances the rate at which an individual learns and keeps the learners’ learning curve steep, which is imperative when knowledge is exploding.

Learners today are like performers in the Indian classical music tradition: they are bound by broad guidelines, but otherwise their music is all improvised. It’s up to the learner to figure out how a musical piece could be rendered – blending with the accompanying artists, sometimes taking the lead and performing a scintillating solo piece, sometimes stepping back to let others shine and sometimes performing a jugalbandi (a challenging duet).

In the 19th and 20th centuries learners were like solo artists but in the 21st century learners need to become knowledge jockeys who can take fragmented pieces of knowledge from different disciplines and blend them as a coherent whole that shapes a new synthesis.

Cut to the Chase with Ramesh Vala OBE, lawyer and philanthropist

Can the desire for social good go hand-in-hand with the thirst of ambition?
It takes an Order of the British Empire to tell us how that is a rhetorical question.
This week, in Cut to the Chase, we offer you thoughts and insights from Ramesh Vala OBE, on not just doing good, but doing it well. http://bit.ly/rameshvala

Cut to the Chase with Chef Saby

What's cooking in Cut to the Chase today?
A gourmet chat with one of Delhi's most acclaimed chefs, the trend-setting, award-winning Sabyasachi Gorai, popularly known as Chef Saby.
Read if you're considering a profession in the kitchen and see if you've got what it takes to brave the heat! http://bit.ly/chefsaby 

Cut to the Chase with Indranil Chakraborty founder, StoryWorks

With 21+ years of experience in the corporate world including working at Unilever as Global Brand Director, Indranil Chakraborty decided to strike out on his own in 2013. He moved to Goa and founded StoryWorks, the first Indian company that focuses exclusively on business storytelling. In this conversation, among other things, he tells us that a big driver for entrepreneurs is not having a boss!

http://bit.ly/indranil 

Cutting to the Chase with rock band, Indian Ocean

Super-cool, ultra-alt and ubër-indie music band Indian Ocean has always made songs in which a flute sounds as at-home as a fully amped electric guitar. They gave birth to an all-new sound that went onto create progenies for generations after. Advaita, most famously.
You’ll find them at the helm of cutting-edge concepts often – both in the worlds of music and activism – and today, you’ll find them in their groove, on Cut to the Chase.

http://bit.ly/indianocean_music

Cut to the Chase with Ste Drayton, Chief Digital Officer, Watch me Think and former Head of Online, WWF

This week in Cut to the Chase we chat with Ste Drayton, Chief Digital Officer at Watch Me Think, a UK-based start-up. Ste was earlier with WWF’s global HQ in Switzerland, where he worked for 14 years, leaving in 2011 when Head of Online.

If you have aspirations of employment or entrepreneurship in the digital space, this interview is for you. http://bit.ly/stedrayton