3 ms·
In "Sapiens," the writer argues that "flexible cooperation in large groups" to be the primary limiting as the defining characteristic of Sapiens and the limitin
by netcan 8y ago
In "Sapiens," the writer argues that "flexible cooperation in large groups" to be the primary limiting as the defining characteristic of Sapiens and the limiting factor on the development of human history.
Early on it was proto-language enabling better cooperation within our traditional troops. Later it was abstract symbolism. Tribal identity allowed us to have tribal identity relationships with people we don't know. Concepts like "king" or "priest" allowed all sorts of things to exist which couldn't earlier. Religions, empires, armies, bureaocracies, joint stock companies...
Anyway, flexible cooperation in large groups is still a limiting factor. That's why a 4 person startup can solve problems in a week that an enterprise can't solve with 40 in a month.
In a nutshell, the specific mechanisms of enterprise slowness are interesting, but inevitable. There will always be something. There's flexibility, cooperation & size function. If you want to increase one, the others needs to decrease. Bureocracies limit flexibility, but allow copperation to happen over a larger group. Markets are flexible and scalable, but uncooperative. Startups are cooperative and flexible, but small. This last one is where we came from.
- zwischenzug 8y agoAuthor here - that's funny, I also wrote about that book here: https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/10/15/my-20-year-experience-of-software-development-methodologies/ https://zwischenzugs.com/2017/10/15/my-20-year-experience-of...
- netcan 8y agoThat's a really great post. You write well. I think this sums it up nicely: we were small enough not to need a collective fiction we had to name. I think we're of a mind on a lot of these things. Another broad concept that I think ties into this topic is "legibility."^ The "collective fictions" you guys had when you thought you had none were illegible, informal ones. Dealing with unaknowledged vagueness is something people do really well, in small groups. "Everyone should be polite and respectful" is a statement we understand, even if it's vague. If a disciplinary committee to decide if someone has been polite, then that statement is no longer enough. You'll need legibility, something like a law code. Going from hacking to RAD to agile is an attempt at legibility, a theoretically understandable and justifiable process for making decisions and writing code. ^Stolen from Venkatesh @ ribbonfarm.
- zwischenzug 8y agoThanks for your kind comments. It might be interesting to reflect on the secondary and unanticipated effects of surfacing those rules by making them legible.