BusinessJazz

Embracing errors revisited

2012-01-05T13:29:00.000Z

In this great presentation on TED, Stefon Harris and his band play a beautiful improvisation, and then reflect on the nature of mistakes on the bandstand. A beauftiful exposure of the principle of embracing errors in jazz, which I refelcted on earlier in this blogpost.

New research publications

2011-12-21T22:27:00.001Z

Over the last few months, I have been working on a number of PhD research publications that I wanted to share here. I hope you will enjoy them and find them useful.

First, a new summary of my dissertation plan, which I prepared for a three day workshop in action inquiry. It can be found here: http://www.milesahead.eu/publications/dissertationproposalsummary

Second, a paper for a course with Dottie Agger-Gupta, that builds on an earlier idea posted here, the Miles Davis test. The paper is called 'Beyond Turing: using organizational improvisation to explore human-machine interaction'. It takes us beyond the simple either-or debate of the Turing test, and uses the case study of Pat Metheney's Orchestrion to muse about improvisation between man and computer. See: http://www.milesahead.eu/publications/informationsystemsbeyondturingusingorganizationalimprovisationtoexplorehumanmachineinteraction

Third, a paper I made for a course on Love and Death in Modern Western Music Drama. In this course, which was created by Fielding's house philosopher Jeremy Shapiro, we are watching five great operas and one music drama (Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea, Bach's St-Matthews Passion, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Strauss' Salome, and Berg's Wozzeck), and around each work we listen to podcasts by Jeremy, and we read relevant philosophy, biography, musicology, sociology, and history to think about the themes of love and death. With a small group of fellow students, we engage in conversations about the topics, and for each opera, we author a short paper. Obviously, I use the opportunity to learn about this form of art, which was unknown to me, and I try to merge it with my knowledge of jazz and business. The first paper is called 'Musings on Monteverdi and Nietzsche: A fusion of opera and jazz? See: http://www.milesahead.eu/publications/musingsonmonteverdiandnietzscheafusionofoperaandjazz

Fourth, a brief paper that summarizes my systems perspective as a result of a nine week overview course on the subject with a group of fellow students and David Willis. See: http://www.milesahead.eu/publications/anoverviewofsystemssocietyculturecommunity

Finally, I created this visual overview presentation for a workshop with my research supporters. It summarizes some of the findings from the first few years of the research, and looks ahead at the dissertatoin phase. Use adobe's zoom function to navigate and read the details. See: http://www.milesahead.eu/publications/visualresearchupdateforsupporters

Farewell to Barnett Pearce

2011-11-07T14:05:00.000Z

Barnett Pearce was one of the most remarkable human beings I have met in my life. The first time that I saw him, he was attending the Final Oral Review of Jane Peterson's PhD dissertation as a committee member. I was struck by his presence, and while most people in the room seemed (at least lightly) upset by Jane's uncovering conclusions, Barnett seemed to remain present and engaging. Who was this man?

A year later I find out as both Keith Melville and Fred Steier mention his work with CMM as possibly interesting for my own doctoral journey. Two coincidences make one synchronicity, so I play tag with Paula and Petrina who have an appointment with Barnett and meet him face to face for the first time.

Now, a good two years later, and after a long struggle with cancer, Barnett has just passed away, leaving his family, his friends, and his colleagues with a deep and confusing mixed feeling of suffering and love. Let me share my brief account of learning from and with this beautiful human being.

Barnett, in concert with a large and tight network of colleagues and friends, developed CMM: the Coordinated Management of Meaning. CMM is a communication theory and practice that lets its users take a communication perspective. Taking a communication perspective means that we do not only look at what communication means, but specifically look at what communication DOES.

Communication, for those who take this perspective, is action and is consequential. Every act of communication is part of the creation, maintenance, and evolution of our social world. According to CMM, our relationships, selves, and social structures like families, organizations, and institutions, cannot and do not exist without the daily interactions of communication. Once we take this communication perspective, we can see how we are both governed by, and empowered by communication. At our best, in each moment of making our world through communication, we can balance the logical force at play, to integrate the wisdom of the past, with our vision for the future. CMM provides a coherent set of methods and tools to visualize, analyse, and design communication from this communication perspective.

CMM is important, because it gives us practical and analytical tools to work with that help us to actively improve our creative communication. In Barnett's words, communication should help us evolve "forward" and "upward," (Pearce, 2007, p. 9) evolving to our better social selves. One way of doing this (as he would put it) is through the use of his innovative communication tools. In over 40 years of research and practice, CMM has become respectable with both scholars and practitioners.

Learning CMM starts with a small step - for example attending a seminar in which CMM is practiced - but has huge consequences: once you become aware of communication as action, and the social world as largely constructed, you can't go back. (Well actually you could, but who would really want that ;-). CMM offers heuristics to model and analyze speech acts, episodes, dynamic hierarchies of contextual meanings that both influence and are influenced by the stories we create; the daisy, a model to look beyond the narrow self to explore what other voices play out in a story LUUUUT a model to visualize the tensions between stories told and stories lived, and how the untold, untellable, unheard, and unhearable stories in between stretch and determine our sense of relationship, etc. etc.

Most striking about Barnett was how he himself reflected, or better, embodied, his own work. In the seminars I had the joy of joining, where he taught us the basics and the advanced of his method, he was always present, living his own story, and thereby immersing us into it in ways that indeed changed our social worlds. From my perspective of a jazz-life improviser, he provided me with the minimal structures to practice and design improvised conversation. And he has helped me grasp how I can start practicing the improvisation of better social worlds in my work and life.

Thank you Barnett, farewell, and to be continued...

Pearce, W. B. (2007). Making social worlds: A communication perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

The beautiful "mission statement" of action research

2011-08-23T21:49:00.001+01:00

For my work as a scholar-practitioner, I am drawn to action research, as that culture of inquiry fits with how I am in the world, and because it offers a wide variety of sources and approaches for integrating research and practice. One of the texts that struck me most is the definition of action research that Reason and Bradbury provide in the 1st edition of the Sage handbook of action research:

"A primary purpose of action research is to produce practical knowledge that is useful to people in the everyday conduct of their lives. A wider purpose of action research is to contribute, through this practical knowledge, to the increased well-being - economic, political, psychological, spiritual - of human persons and communities, and to a more equitable and sustainable relationship with the wider ecology of the planet of which we are an intrinsic part."

Sheer beauty, and beauty, as we know, is truth. ;-)

Improvisation, systems, and the Miles Davis test

2011-05-04T14:41:00.001+01:00

Recently, I have been participating in a doctoral seminar on new media and systems. With my improvisational mind, I have been exploring thoughts about improvisation and systems. One way to look at the intersection between improvisation and systems would be to invoke a thought experiment that we could call the Miles Davis test. The Miles Davis test could function as a successor to the Turing test. To illustrate what the Miles Davis test is, let me first illustrate what the Turing test is. The turing test was a test invented by Alan Turing in 1936. He wondered if computers could 'think'. A computer would pass the Turing test if it succeeded in making another human being think that she were actually interacting with another human being instead of a computer. In two high profile cases, computers might have succeeded in doing so. Firstly in 1997 when an IBM computer (in second instance) named Deep Blue beat the then world champion in chess Gary Kasparov. And recently, when another IBM computer named Watson won the American gameshow Jeopardy beating human competitors at this famously analogue game. The fact that only recently a computer could beat people playing Jeopardy points to what the Miles Davis test is getting at.

In the Miles Davis test, a computer would pass, if it made a music loving human being believe it was a human being improvising music live.

So IBM, what about that challenge?

The funny thing is that when I mentioned this test to a fellow PhD student named Eric Matheny, he pointed me to Pat Metheny's Orchestrion project. In this project, Pat Metheny, inspired by the player piano of his grandfather, created an orchestrion. An orchestrion is an ensemble of instruments that can all be played by providing inputs, like a computer prgram or physical playing roles. Pat's orchestrion is a 21st century variant on the old orchestrions which he can play either through playing live on his own guitar, or by programming it electronically. In a short film on his website, Pat explains the idea and gives a good impression of how his 21st century orchestrion works.

The beautiful thing about it is that Pat's orchestrion seems to blur the line between human-system interaction, because Pat plays all the instruments through his guitar himself, yet at the same time improvises 'with' the instruments. Thereby providing a reflexive approximation of the Miels Davis test. Or at least, somehow confusing the linear notion of that test and challenging it with an even more complex experience which might just be showing that IBM's Deep Blue and Watson, like his orchestrion, were programmed by human beings, and that is the only reason why they can fool us. Not by 'thinking' of themselves?

What are your thoughts....?

A video of the Kongsberg Bop Business event

2011-03-17T21:37:00.000Z

I just found a brief video that was made of the Bop Business event in Kongsberg, Norway, where I gave a keynote and a workshop in September. This day, which was organized by the directors of the Kongsberg Jazz Festival, Norway's leading jazz event, brought together people from the world of art and business to discuss closer collaboration. I was really struck by how well organized and energized the Norwegians were in exploring this.

An article in the integral leadership review authored by me.

2011-03-17T21:04:00.001Z

As some of you know, one of the theories I draw on in my research and practice is Integral Theory, originally developed by Ken Wilber. Actually, it is one of the two things (the other is Frank Barrett) that drew me to Fielding's PhD program in Human and Organization development. Fielding is one of the two American Universities that have a direct collaborative relationship with the Integral Institute, originally founded by Wilber to study his philosophy and to develop its practice.

Therefore I was happy to attend a workshop in Santa Barbara last January called the integral leadership panel. After the workshop, Russ Volckmann asked me to write up some 'notes form the field', and these have now been published in his montly professional magazine the Integral Leadership Review.

If you're interested in Integral Theory, and you are curious about my review, you can read the article by clicking this link.

Integral theory as experience

2011-01-18T11:09:00.000Z

At Fielding's winter session, Jerry Snow facilitated an integral leadership panel. A key theme in the session was the difficulty of integrating Wilber's integral framework and everyday experience. As I suspect many struggle with this idea (I sure have) I thought I'd share this key theme that emerged form the panel. It really helped me better grasp the interplay between integral theory and practice, and I hope it works for you too.

The key theme that I noticed emerging from the discussions was the relationship between integral theory and our actual, undivided, experience. Many of the questions we had posted as part of the introduction ended up on the intersections between the four quadrants. This led Clint Fuhs, who was on the panel, to comment that before the quadrants were formed, integral theory was focused fully on practice and method. He reminded us of three principles that formed the basis for the emergence of the integral map: inclusiveness, emergence, and enactment. The quadrants, levels, lines, states and types emerged from reflecting on practice, and so could also thought of as mirrors for our experience. By using this mirror in alternating between reflection and practice, we learn to integrate reflection and practice in the moment. In this way, we can train ourselves to become increasingly aware of the tetra-arising of all facets of existence in every moment, and we can choose to better balance our being in the world with all aspects of integral.

Patterns and the shoreline

2011-01-16T03:42:00.000Z

One of the key learning that I take away form Fielding's winter sessoin in Santa Barbara is the notion of the pattern as an emergent phenomenon. I feel that much time is spent on the coordination of structure and the perception of what structures are. In the integral leadership panel early in the week, we discussed Wilber's AQAL framework. All scholars present saw the framework as a refelction of practice and experience, not as an ontological structure. In follow-up sessions I noticed a reflective care for the pattern of communication, or the groove so you wish, emerging in the moment.

What struck me though is the concern people held for different interpretations of structure. And even outside these inspiring conversations in the Fielding community, I - and I would suspect my colleagues - are often trapped in patterns ourselves.

Now what if we were to hold the image of the beautiful Californian shoreline as an exemplar of a pattern? It is clearly there, yet never the same. Ideas expressed on the shoreline are washed away in time, like our speech acts, resolving back to memory only by the patterns that connects land and sea, in an ever changing ebb and flow. Would such an image capture the paradox of stability and structure on the one hand and the ever changing nature of reality on the other hand? I sure like to think so.

In Santa Barbara

2011-01-10T00:09:00.001Z

I arrived in Santa Barbara yesterday for Fielding's winter session. After a good flight and bus trip, I am now setup in my room and preparing for the week to come.

This morning, I started by running around town. I ran this route. (Hold and drag the orange guy in top left corner on any point in the route to see what it looks like.)

There are quite some exciting meetings on the program here that I will attend. In addition to a number of meetings, there are informal network meetings, lunches with faculty, final oral reviews, and committee meetings worth attending.

Monday

On Monday, I will run the beach with Fred Steier, my mentor and dissertation chair to catch up and prepare for my committee meeting. In the evening, I have dinner with colleagues from my anchor group, a small band of fellow PhD students that I am part of since the start of the program.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, there is a meeting of the integral leadership panel. This is a group of scholars who work intensely with Ken Wilber's Integral Theory. The panelists are Anne Acosta, Clint Fuhs, Alexis Nicolaides, and Nancy Wallis. Jerry Snow will facilitate the meeting. I hope to learn how these people apply Wilber's thinking in their work, as it informs mine.

After the meeting, I have my first committee meeting. With Fred Steier as the chair, Frank Barrett and Jeremy Shapiro as the faculty readers, and Dan Maxwell as my student reader. I will engage in dialogue with these wise men about my dissertation concept paper, which I composed of the wiki blocks here on mindz.

The afternoon will be spend on an in-depth review of the dissertation process, so I get a good overview of what's to come in the last two years at Fielding.

Wednesday

Wednesday is composed of two nice workshops. One on Shakespeare and leadership, and the other on music, consciousness and society. In Fielding a lot of research is done on the convergence of the arts and sociology. These workshops bring together scholars and practitioners who engage in discussion and knowledge sharing around these fascinating topics.

In the evening, there is a reception for the founding of the CMM institute, which formalizes the legacy of Fielding Professor Emeritus Barnett Pearce, who with his colleagues, worked for almost 40 years as a researcher and practitioner in communication to create the tools and concepts of the Coordinated Management of Meaning. An approach to communication that looks at what communication does in addition to what it means.

Thursday

Thursday starts with a meeting of the ISAKO concentration. ISAKO is short for information society and knowledge organizations. A specialization that I have chosen to do as part of my PhD. The faculty and students interested in these topics get together to exchange knowledge and identify new developments worth researching.

The rest of the day is spent around CMM. Many people from the CMM network get together to celebrate Barnett and work on advancing the methodology in research and practice.

Friday

Friday continues the CMM event, which lasts two days.

Saturday

Saturday morning, I get together with four students and Barnett Pearce to discuss how we can use his method in our dissertations. After this meeting we will engage in a collaborative research module to learn more about the advanced application of CMM in research.

The afternoon is for a workshop with Jeremy Shapiro and Miguel Guillarte on reading philosophy, where we will look at postmodernism and Kant.

Saturday is also graduation day, and I look forward to seeing some of my colleagues receive their title.

Sunday

Packing and travel time.

To be continued… Sergej

Introduction for the concept paper: the Kind of Blue story

2010-12-14T23:16:00.002Z

Today, I did some work on an introduction for my dissertation concept paper. Inspired by the paper of a colleague, Dan Maxwell, I would like to start with a story. The story of the Kind of Blue recording is an exemplar fo what I am looking for in my research. A first version...

On March 2, 1959, Miles Davis was assigned a recording slot in the 207 East 30th street studio on Manhattan by his Columbia managers. The building, an departed Greek orthodox church, was a recording studio with a unique atmposphere and sound. Miles had worked on rough sketches of what he wanted to do that afternoon, and was anticipating the arrival of the musicians he had invited to the session (Kahn, 2000).

When they arrived, they set up and settled for the recording. Miles made them feel comfortable, and then handed out the sketches he had made for the songs. This moved them out of their comfort zones. Even though the music they had played live together had evolved in a new direction, and some of the pieces built on ideas they had developed together, here were some ideas that were never played before, in new forms. Very different form the extrovert, fast paced, and overfilled bebop of the day. Space instead of pace, circular rhythms instead of freight trains.

They recorded right here and then. Miles walked around, giving instructions while they played and while the tapes ran. Nudging the music in directions he wanted it to go, and providing his team with turns and ideas. Two days of recording led to Kind of Blue. The best selling jazz record of all times, a paradigm shift in jazz music, and an example par excellence of what I want to focus on in my PhD research.

On that days, a network of independent organizations (individual jazz musicians, each with their own brand and reputation) got together with a specific purpose (record with Miles). Miles enabled them to find a groove, both as a team in what they wanted to achieve, and in the music they performed. This groove happened on the micro level, between the jazz musicians during those days, in the music and in the collaboraiton, and it created a disruptive innovation on the macro level of the jazz scene, the birth of modal jazz.

Miles Davis succeeded in helping to make shifts like this happen some five times. What is it that creates the circumstances for a team of individuals to achieve a groove, and make a disruptive innovation? How can we use the rich domain of jazz improvisation to learn how the groove comes about and how this groove happens in other teams. How can we learn to take this groove from the micro level of the team, to the macro level of the organization? And the network? These are the questions that are central to my PhD research.

Kahn, A. (2000). Kind of blue: The making of the Miles Davis masterpiece. New York: Da Capo Press.

Paper on form, style and influence

2010-12-07T23:33:00.002Z

On my website, I just published a new research paper for my Fielding PhD on form, style, and influence. The objective of the paper was to reflect on the philosophical context in which I do my research, and to come up with practical applications to deal with the reflexivity of the subject of improvisation. To me it felt strange that a dissertation about improvisation should be written as an extended argument. So in this paper, building on findings from second generation cognitive science, I propose the restoration of the aphorism as a rigorous scholarly writing form. I believe the aphorism is especially suited for exploring new domains and generating research questions, while the argument is especially suited for answering research questions. So a dissertation that tries to embrace more of the research project than the answers only, could use the aphorism as a rigorous structure to expose the more ambiguous wanderings of the scholarly journey.

The paper provides an overview of aphoristic and argumentational forms, and provides examples from the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Adam Smith. It ends with a reflection on the responsibility of scholarship that is aware of its potential influence through form.

Click here to access the paper.

The Perfect Arch and the Imperfect Art

2010-11-20T20:41:00.000Z

Today, I was thinking about the paradox in the name of our new company PerfectArch. In PerfectArch, we want to help our clients create beaufitul organizations in the face of complex and dynamic challenges. We employ a way of working based on three interrelated circular processes of conception, evolvement and sustenance. We base our work on five knowledge pillars: strategy, prototyping, governance, architecture, and software development. All this seems a very structured way to achieve our ideal, the PerfectArch.

The Perfect Arch was a design ideal for architects in ancient times. The search for the pErfectArch was like the search for the holy grail. People could envision the Perfect Arch with ease, obtaining the ideal in practice however, proved an impossibility. Both in nature and in arhitecture, the true Perfect Arch is an illusion.

My contributions to PerfectArch will draw on ideas of improvisation. Like the perfect arch, there is no such thing as the perfect improvisation; at least not as an achievable objective. The paradox inherent in both the perfect arch and in the perfect improvisation is that they are already, always perfect how they are. Not as an achievable objective, but as a temporal way of being. Crafting arches and improvising music are both ways of being with a rough edge. Architects and musicians that work from a vision, and who stretch their imaginations work in the emergence of form in the moment. They make the most of what is present, and in doing that, they deal with complexity and dynamics.

In his beautiful book The Imperfect Art, cultural writer Ted Gioia mentioned that visionary jazz musicians, enjoy an aesthetic of imperfection. So maybe achieving our Perfect Arch might also require us to embrace the aesthetics of imperfection as well.

To be continued....

Jazzinbusiness talk in Norway

2010-10-03T20:37:00.001+01:00

Last week, on 30 September, I was a keynote speaker at the Bop Business seminar in Kongsberg Norway. Participants in the event were the organizers of the Norwegian jazzfestivals, business, and government, and their objective was to re-examine the traditional sponsor relationships to see if there are additional ways to be valuable with each other. Pål Fidjestøl, the organizer of the Kongsberg jazzfestival and the initiator of the event, had invited me to share the experience and ideas arising from working with jazz and business for the last five years.

I arrived in Kongsberg on Wednesdayevening. The city was founded in the 17th century, after two goatherds had found silver in the mountains. The king of Denmark, who ruled Norway at that time, quickly established it as the capital to be of Norway, giving the city its name, which translates as "King's Mountain". When the silver seemed to dry up later, Oslo became took over the capital role. The grand design of a capital is still apparent in the large church in Komgsberg, which is a bit oversized for a town of 25.000 people.

The city was able to transform itself into a technology innovation hub when the mines were closed and is now known as the most innovative technology towns in Norway. The inhabitants have mixed feelings about this as they have switched form silver to weapons. Apparently the guns from Kongsberg are worldfamous.
And Kongsberg has also transfromed into a city of culture. With the most avant garde jazzfestival in Norway, it seems to be on the leading edge of that beautiful artform.

The seminar was opened by Shabana Rezman, the first female muslim comedian in Norway. Quickly followed by a speech from Jacob Lund who works for DnB, A Norwegian Bank. Jacob is responsible for the largest sponsorbudget in Norway. He eplained how sponsoring has evolved from a sports only thing, to an integrated apporach across sports, culture and social events. The key of his message was that anyone in need of sponsoring today, should really be thinking of his bank as their customer. What does the customer want? What does he need? What is valuable to him or her, and how can I make my product align with their needs? Even though his speech was in Norwegian, I could clearly see that he was surprised at how slowly sports, culture and social causes were making that shift.

After lunch, I held my talk, which evolved around four questions: how did I get from business to jazz? What is jazzinbusiness? What have we learned so far? And where could we go from here?
I shared my personal story as the strategist with e-office who learned that his language was too technical and systemic to get important conversations going in the organization, and how Charles Savage, while coaching me pointed out the arts as a possible source o inspiration. And I shared the chain of serendipituous events that led me to Frank Barretts work in organizational improvisation, from there to jazzinbusiness and from there to Fielding. I then showed our short promotion clip and explained how we use some of Frank's principles in the workshop. I shared our learnings, which, in addition to shifting minds in organizations, also seem to shift the mind of jazz musicians. We now have a repertoire of business standards that may well evolve into a new jazz style....

After explaining the possible power of the language of jazz to integrate and advance differing worldviews, I finished with some questions that open up a landscape of possibilities for Norwegian jazz, business and government to continue their collaboration: How could jazz contribute to the next shift? Which businesses will profit from being involved first? What other metaphors might help us face our challenges? And: what will your contribution be?

The day continued with presentations of research findings about sponsoring and the view of another big local sponsor: FMC technologies. I helped finish the event by facilitating a round of jazz café (inspired on the world café) to help everybody synthesise their learning into conclusions or questions.

A great event with some wonderful people. I really admire the courage of the originators of the event and hope that they will succeed to let something beautiful emerge from this.
To be continued...

An exploration of research methods

2010-09-09T21:45:00.000+01:00

A value network provides a way to analyze and design the business model of independent organizations, collaborating towards a common objective. A groove refers to a shared state of consciousness between the musicians in a jazz band, improvising at peak performance. In my PhD program with Fielding Graduate University, I want to learn from jazz, how we can help people in value networks achieve a groove. This paper explores approaches, methods, and techniques that could serve to answer such a research question.

Both before and after joining the Fielding PhD program, I have been reading widely in search for ways to approach my research. As a result, I have collected a mix of methods. I have followed a mostly intuitive journey while gathering this mix of methods, and until now, I have not retraced my steps for a structured analysis of what I've found. As a result, just using what I've found might yield unsatisfactory results from a scholarly perspective. So, I will use Fielding’s 753B Knowledge Area (KA 753B), to learn more about methods, and to bring structure to my research.

As I assess my earlier readings, the following elements to craft a conceptual framework emerge:
- Philosophy; specifically epistemology
- Cultures of inquiry; or applied epistemologies
- Approaches
- Methods
- Techniques

Figure 1 shows one of many ways to visualize the relationships between these ideas. In this figure, the large green ellipse represents the domain of philosophy. In it, the red crinkled sub domain represents epistemology, and the blue - sometimes overlapping - areas represent cultures of inquiry. The red shapes represent methods, while the green dots represent techniques. using this conceptual drawing to make sense of the landscape of research concepts, approaches might be routes or ways to travel across this map, given a specific research purpose.

Figure 1: landscape with methods in context.

What I tried to visualize here is that in my mind, epistemology is a sub domain of the broader category of philosophy. While cultures of inquiry may be part of, or surpass both epistemology, philosophy and each other. Methods on the other hand, are used, starting from a specific culture of inquiry, while at the same time, different cultures of inquiry could be using the same method in their approach. As Bentz and Shapiro say, techniques are dictated by method and not vice versa (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998), so the green dots are always connected to red shapes, while any technique might be used in several different methods.

The purpose of this blurry image is to convey the complexity I find inherent in discussing this subject, and to humble me not to fall for a clear cut image that ensures me I have found some universal truth. Clearly, there is white space outside philosophy, and even within all the other elements, there seems to be place for new cultures of inquiry to emerge and new methods and techniques to develop. Now how does this image help me approach the purpose of this paper?

I think that the relationship between my research question and the conceptual framework is reciprocal. On the one hand, certain research questions point towards certain approaches and methods. On the other hand, I hold certain beliefs and convictions about how the world works, and these convictions point towards certain philosophies, epistemologies, and cultures of inquiry. So the image helps me make sense of this complex and reciprocal relationship as a starting point for my research approach.

Now let me use the image to take a journey. This journey starts by a brief rephrasing of my current philosophical and epistemological starting points. Then I will briefly explain integral methodological pluralism (IMP), a culture of inquiry emerging from Integral Theory, a philosophy that I am drawn to. Third, I will examine my research question in some detail to identify specific challenges inherent in the question itself. Fourth, combining the ideas of IMP and my research question, I will look into some specific approaches, methods, and techniques that might serve me on my PhD journey. Finally, to wrap up the paper, I will take a step back and reflect on my results.

Read on by opening the attachment.

Bentz, V. M., & Shapiro, J. J. (1998). Mindful inquiry in social research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

New promotion video marks collaboration with speakersacademy

2010-05-28T20:28:00.000+01:00

We have just released a new promotion video. It can be found on our sitehomepage www.jazzinbusiness.nl both in Dutch and with English subtitles (click the UK flag on the top right.)

This release also marks the start of our collaboration with the speakersacademy. A professional organization, mediating between us and our clients. Speakersacademy has more than 12 years of experience with matching speakers to audiences. We look forward to a long and exciting relationship.

Two new papers on value networks complete a series of three

2010-05-28T19:56:00.003+01:00

I have just published two new PhD research papers on value networks, as follow-up on the earlier overview paper. This completes my organization studies PhD section. On to systems...

The earlier paper, which provided an overview of value networks in organization theory is here: http://www.milesahead.eu/onderzoek/publications/valuenetworksinorganizationtheoryanoverview

The first new paper is a value network case study of Mindz and Seats2meet, one of my research sponsors. This case study analyses the business of Mindz and Seats2Meet, an online social network and a meeting lounge for self employed professionals, using Christensen’s, Allee’s, and Stabell and Fjeldstad’s theories of value networks. It concludes that the three theories are complementary for analyzing the systemic nature
of multi-party collaboration and recommends additional tools to provide an integral perspective on value networks.To read this one, click here:
http://www.milesahead.eu/onderzoek/publication/threevaluenetworktoolsinconcertacasestudyofmindzandseats2meet

The second is a fictional interview with Gregory Bateson on value networks. Bateson was a multidisciplinary thinker in fields ranging from anthropology, psychology, and family therapy, to biology, communication theory, and cybernetics. I became acquainted with his work in a telephone interview with Fred Steier during the enrollment for Fielding Graduate University. Fred has been intensively engaged with Bateson's work during his career. As a result he co-edited a special double issue of the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing for Bateson’s centennial. While I was reading Bateson myself, I became impressed by the range, the depth, and the beauty of his thought. So when Fred agreed to work with me on this paper, I obtained the opportunity to learn about value networks through Bateson’s lens, supported by an expert in his work. To read this one, click here:
http://www.milesahead.eu/onderzoek/publications/whatwouldgregorybatesonsayaboutvaluenetworks

I look forward to your thoughts!

To be continued...

Launching take five... free leading

2010-02-07T19:38:00.000Z

Jazzinbusiness participated in the co-creation of a unique leadership development program, focused on personal transformation. Together with five experienced entrepreneurs, who have backgrounds in training, coaching, consulting, and the martial arts, we brought together 100 years of experience and created a 16 day program, of which 9 days in Nepal. Part of the program is jazzinbusiness on 30 March. In addition, the program offers a combination of Western science and Eastern wisdom, and a co-mentoring relationship between our participants. The program is currently aimed at Dutch leaders, and more information about the program can be found here.

Options for an in depth paper on value networks

2009-12-07T20:42:00.000Z

From the overview that I provided of the emergence of value networks, I now outline several different possible takes on my in depth paper in value networks: 1. an analysis of value networks in jazz; 2. an integral perspective on value networks; 3. a structured metaphor analysis of value networks; 4. an analysis of value networks through the lens of organizational improvisation; 5. a virtual interview with Gregory Bateson on value networks.

1. An analysis of value networks in jazz. This would bring the source domain of the metaphor for organizational improvisation into the realm of value networks. Analyzing how the value network of jazz is comprised of different roles, engaging in exchanges of tangible and intangible value, would provide us with a starting point to compare how jazz functions as an industry to compare with the target domain for the metaphor and see similarities and differences between the two domains. I could draw on autobiographies of people and organizations in jazz, and of course on musicological work Even though that would provide a benefit in enabling better scoping of the applicability of the metaphor in other domains, I now think this might be of limited use, as it takes the source domain of improvisation too literally. Jazz is an industry in its own right, and most source material of the metaphor of organizational improvisation focuses on the act of improvising together in a small jazz band as the source domain to infer from.

2. An integral perspective on value networks. I could use Ken Wilber’s framework to take an even further step back from the themes identified so far and analyze value networks through the lens of Ken Wilber’s five patterns (Wilber, 2000, 2001, 2006): individual and collective – inside and outside perspectives, stages of development, lines of development, states of consciousness and types. The benefit of taking this route is that we get a view of value networks that explicitly takes into account both the systemic elements and the human, spiritual elements that I have identified earlier as one of the challenges in adopting the value network perspective. Also, we would get a map of value networks that makes more sense of its place in societal and cultural development lines, such as the one identified earlier by Castells (2000), from agricultural to industrial and informational. A possible downside of this route is the extensive amount of introduction the integral framework seems to require which in turn may result in an overview picture with relatively little depth.

3. A structured metaphor analysis of value networks. This route would examine the (unconscious) use of metaphors to conceptualize value networks and the terms that constitute the field of networks and organizations. Based on the work of Lakoff and Johnson (Johnson, 2007; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), a method to structurally analyze metaphors is emerging. For example, Andriessen and Gubbins (2006) identified the metaphors used to conceptualize social capital in three key publications. I could build on their work and look specifically at the link between metaphors used to conceptualize the value networks vocabulary with the question which metaphors would be helpful or not in achieving the purpose of the method for organizational change. Also this would build on the challenges identified by Allee in her first publication, and help us rediscover some of the key patterns underlying the shift in organizational theory that value networks embody.

4. An analysis of value networks through the lens of organizational improvisation (Kamoche, Cunha, & Cunha, 2002). In contrast to the route proposed above, this route would assume that the metaphor of organizational improvisation already embodies many optional answers to the issues faced with value networks, such as blending different worldviews, balancing autonomy and interdependence in inter-firm collaboration, balancing structure and autonomy in the organization of value networks, alternating between planning and emergence in strategic planning. The benefit of this route is the amount of material already available and the specific ventures of authors in organizational improvisation into strategy and organization. The key outcome here might be specific source domain notions, like minimal structure for maximum flexibility, the different roles, competencies, objectives and other elements that together create a groove, and a correlation of those metaphorical aspects with specific value networks challenges identified in the literature and in this paper.

5. A virtual interview with Gregory Bateson on metaphor and value networks. This route would bring a creative and artful dimension to the paper. It would provide me with the opportunity to explore creatively what Bateson might have said on value networks and metaphor. This route would help me explore in depth the opportunity to use more of his integrative work (Bateson, 1979, 2000) in my scholarly journey. Notions that Bateson would probably mention in relation to value networks are patterns, and metaphor. He might also challenge me and the community of practitioners to avoid what he calls “loose talking”. Further, he would bring rich and multiple perspectives, ranging from anthropology to cybernetics. A risk in taking this route, is that I may understand some of what Bateson says intuitively, but I am no expert in his work, which might turn out to be a major handicap. However, I would sure like to see what comes out of this.
After choosing and pursuing one of these routes to an in-depth paper on value networks, I intend to make a case study of Mindz, an emerging value network organization of free lance professionals and one of my research supporters.

Andriessen, D., & Gubbins, C. (2006). Defining social capital: A systematic analysis of metaphorical conceptualisations. Paper presented at the 7th international conference on organizational discourse: identity, ideology, and idiosyncrasy, Amsterdam.

Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity (1st ed.). New York: Dutton.

Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind (University of Chicago Press ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Johnson, M. (2007). The meaning of the body: Aesthetics of human understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kamoche, K. N., Cunha, M. P. e., & Cunha, J. V. d. (2002). Organizational improvisation. London: Routledge.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.

Wilber, K. (2000). A theory of everything: An integral vision for business, politics, science, and spirituality (1st ed.). Boston: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (2001). The eye of spirit: An integral vision for a world gone slightly mad (3rd ed.). Boston: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world (1st ed.). Boston: Integral Books.

Gartner Says Social Network Analysis Can Help Enterprises Achieve a Pattern–Based Strategy™ that Leverages Relationship Information | ValueNetworks.com

2009-12-03T12:06:00.001Z

Gartner Says Social Network Analysis Can Help Enterprises Achieve a Pattern–Based Strategy™ that Leverages Relationship Information | ValueNetworks.com

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Value Networks: The State of the Art

2009-12-01T22:57:00.000Z

After introducing their terms, the authors continued their individual research and practice. Christensen continued work on innovation. The concept of the value network remains an important notion in his work, however, he has not explicitly evolved the idea beyond its original conception. Stabell and Fjeldstad, even though cited widely, have not evolved their thinking further. Only Allee remained focused on the topic and published her thinking as well as her experience as a practitioner in a series of publications (Allee, 2000, 2008, 2009; Allee & Schwabe, 2009; Allee & Taug, 2006; Venezia & Allee, 2007; Waddell & Allee, 2009).

In her most recent article, Allee (2009) identifies the organizational issues and challenges with value networks. First, her definition of the value network today is:

“A value network can be defined as any purposeful group of people or organizations creating social and economic good through complex dynamic exchanges of tangible and intangible value. Tangible exchanges are formally structured or contractual interactions directly generating revenue or funding. Intangible exchanges consist of all the informal, often ad hoc – yet critical supporting exchanges of information, support, and benefits”.

Allee outlines how value networks have evolved to provide a holistic view that closes the gaps between other organizational analysis methods, such as processes, social networks, tangible and intangible asset utilization and value conversion, system dynamics, and formal organization structures. The key challenge Allee sees in further development is to prevent and overcome the split between people and systems. If network analysis cannot be paired with firm performance it runs the risk to keep the split between people and systems in place. In order to address this risk, Allee challenges practitioners to focus on three key activities to aid the implementation of value networks: supporting roles, managing intangibles and supporting the learning curve.

Supporting roles means that we learn to separate roles from individuals. If we see that one person can fulfill multiple roles and one role can be fulfilled by multiple people, we bring a dynamic notion to the way people get work done, which better fits with the purpose of a network than with the stability of a job description. The job function keeps its value as a “home-base”, providing the safety to venture into the flexibility of roles.

Managing intangibles is still something that is rather preached than practiced. Once we see value networks mature in organizations, we see people starting to negotiate their contributions in both tangible and intangible terms explicitly. Also, people learn how to create, measure, and monitor relevant indicators for tangible and intangible impact and value creation.

Supporting the learning curve means a concerted effort to help people grasp the language of networks. Without support and training, organizations risk losing out of many of the lasting and real benefits of value networks in their organizations.

Another indication of the state of the art of value networks is that a growing number of scholars is addressing the issues, building amongst others on Allee’s notion and an increasing number of publications uses the term value network without resorting to sources or explanations or even a definition. On the one hand this seems to indicate a maturing of the concept and an assumption that a broad group of readers would understand what is meant. On the other hand, the questions and challenges Allee points out – and I support those based on my experience as a practitioner – indicate that we still have a long way to go and a number of issues to solve if we desire to see value networks support human centric organizations which combine the best of relationships and interactions, with processes, performance, and results.

Allee, V. (2000). Reconfiguring the value network. Journal of business strategy, 21(4), 36-39.

Allee, V. (2008). Value network analysis and value conversion of tangible and intangible assets. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 9(1), 5-24.

Allee, V. (2009). Value creating networks: Organizational issues and challenges The Learning Organization: Special Issue on Social Networks and Social Networking, 16(6), 427-442.

Allee, V., & Schwabe, O. (2009). Measuring the impact of research networks in the EU: Value networks and intellectual capital formation. Paper presented at the European Conference on Intellectual Capital, Haarlem, The Netherlands.

Allee, V., & Taug, J. (2006). Collaboration, innovation, and value creation in a global telecom. The Learning Organization, 13(6), 569-578.

Venezia, C., & Allee, V. (2007). Supporting mobile worker networks: Components for effective workplaces. Journal of Corporate Real Estate, 9(3), 168-182.

Waddell, S., & Allee, V. (2009). An eight-step action research network analysis approach to complex global systems: The case of global finance. Paper presented at the Applications of social network analysis annual meeting, University of Zurich.

I was invited to join the E100

2009-11-26T11:07:00.001Z

I am proud to say that Debra Amidon invited me to join the E100, a worldwide network of scholars and practitioners who have shown knowlegde leadership. See: http://www.entovation.com/entovatn/mission.htm

I see this as an acknowledgement of my work with a growing network of thought leaders in new ways of work, innovation and organizing, and my dedication to both scholarship and practice.

Some of the other E100 have become close friends and colleagues over the years, like Verna Allee, Debra Amidon, Charles Savage, Karl-Erik Sveiby, and Oliver Schwabe.

Some other known leaders in the network are Leif Edvinsson, Edward DeBono, Tom Malone, and R.A. Mashelkar.

My little page with quotes is here: http://entovation.com/kleadmap/Sergej-van-Middendorp.html

The value network in context

2009-11-11T23:58:00.001Z

There are many authors who address the current age as a transition from a more secure, predictable world to a complex, dynamic world. Broad perspectives are offered by authors like Ken Wilber, who provides patterns of stage development in individual, society and culture (Wilber, 2000, 2001, 2006), or Duane Elgin (1993), who provides a broad overview of the staged development of cultural consciousness over the ages. Others, like Paul Seabright (2004), go back to trace the origins of collaboration in our species and try to make the link to modern economic life. A number of authors specifically address the current transformation in society and culture from the network perspective. White (White, 1992, 2008) examines the structures that help networks emerge in social interaction, Castells (2000) brings forward a broad sociological examination of the network society, Taylor (2001) takes a philosophical perspective on networks and complexity, and Benkler (2006) puts the network in the context of economics and politics. For the purpose of this paper, I choose to focus on the last four authors who address the network form directly from different perspectives. Even though these four do not represent the complete picture, they help us take a step back and make sense of the wider context in which the value network emerges.

Harisson White (White, 1992, 2008) in his book Identity and Control proposes that our everyday lives create the illusion of stable institutions of society, while in reality individuals continuously struggle to form their identity in the midst of chaos, by asserting efforts of control. An identity in White’s terms is different from an individual as it is constructed through the interactions, which in Whites perception are often made up of contingencies and contentions, with other individuals who try to do the same. Control in his vocabulary, is not meant as domination, but rather as finding your place – or footing- among other identities. Since everyday life is so complex and improvisational, sociology often focuses on the stable institutions in society. White argues that “Sociology has to account for chaos and normality together” (p. 1). In his work he proposes an extensive and specific constellation of terms that help us make sense of how social formations emerge. Most relevant to the idea of value networks in White’s thinking is the starting point that real life is chaotic and that individuals are continuously looking to make sense of this chaos, using identity and control mechanisms. Since value networks can also be seen as our effort at control, White helps us to remain rooted in the chaos in which the networks arise.

Manuel Castells (2000) in his book The Rise of the Network Society, brings together many sources in a comprehensive sociological work. In line with White’s observation, he notices that in a time as turbulent as the one we find ourselves in today, individuals regroup around primary identities. He specifically notes religious identities as something people turn to when other structures of security seem to dissolve in a complex worldwide net of related trends. As global networks of information and people influence how people, both individually and in groups, are subject to the purposes inherent in networks beyond their immediate control, “our societies are increasingly structured around a bipolar opposition between the Net and the Self” (p.3). Castells brings forward rational ways to go against the possible deconstruction and nihilism inherent in the trends that compose this worldwide transition. For example, he offers a very distinct definition for what he calls the information age, as opposed to the industrial age. Of course, knowledge has always played a crucial role in any age. However, the information age distinguishes itself because “the action of knowledge upon knowledge itself as the main source of productivity” (p.17). Castells aims to provide us with a multiperspectival overview of the social, cultural and economic implications of the information age. And he specifically focuses on the social structures that emerge as its underpinning: the network. The power of Castells’ work with regard to inquiring into value networks is that it provides a very comprehensive set of examples, stories, backgrounds and details, and - most importantly - a rational account to make sense of the societal condition in which these new organizational forms emerge. In a down to earth, almost historical-factual account of our day and age, Castells differs from the other authors in his tangibility, which is a welcome addition to the more abstract, philosophical, and economic perspectives on offer.

Mark Taylor (2001) in his book The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture, takes a philosophical perspective. He contrasts the network with the grid and argues how the network is emerging as the complex pattern supporting the notions of postmodernism and post structuralism, while the grid represents the modern, humanistic, scientific approach to culture that went with modernism and structuralism. The network represents the complexity and emergence of today’s life. Drawing from many sources in philosophy, art, cybernetics, and psychology he paints a picture of an emerging network culture as a way of living with the increasing complexity brought by our evolving culture. Taylor’s perspective contributes to value networks thinking by providing a philosophical perspective, specifically by bringing in art as a means to make sense of complexity. This links the notion of the network to recent findings in cognitive science that propose that aesthetics is the foundation of all human reasoning (Johnson, 2007; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999), and it provides a philosophical bridge between the domains of network organization and art inspired metaphors like organizational improvisation.

Yochai Benkler (2006) in his book The Wealth of Networks, takes an economic perspective on networks and examines the value creation logic inherent in social production networks which have emerged as a result of the increasing amount of information and the support of ever cheaper and connected information technology. As a result of the emergence of what he calls the “networked information economy”, as the successor of the “industrial information economy”. Benkler observes that the availability of ubiquitous information technology to almost everyone drives the creation and sharing of non-proprietary information. Motivated by politics, religion, or passion this type of information has always played a more important role in people’s lives than proprietary information used in the industrial economic mode of production. Furthermore, and mostly unintentionally, today everyone can reach the information produced and infer patterns of importance by clustering search results on almost any topic. His third observation is that ever more of these efforts at information creation are intentionally collaborative and involve ever larger groups of individuals. A key example of this collaboration is the creation of open source software in a global network of individuals and firms like Linux and other open source software. Benkler provides us with an in-depth exploration of the merger of the two models of production and their consequences for our traditional economic thinking. In the remainder of the book, he discusses the consequences for cultural, societal and political systems. Benkler helps the inquiry into value networks by providing an economic view on production in today’s society which is broader than the specific theories examining the networks on the inter-firm level.

The powerful similarities that underpin the works of these authors confirm our need for scholarly work in understanding value networks and more practical experience with their application. Now that we have taken a step back and looked at the wider context in which the value network emerges, let us examine the state of the art in value network thinking in my next blog.

Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Elgin, D. (1993). Awakening earth: Exploring the evolution of human culture and consciousness (1st ed.). New York: Morrow.

Johnson, M. (2007). The meaning of the body: Aesthetics of human understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.

Seabright, P. (2004). The company of strangers: A natural history of economic life. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Taylor, M. C. (2001). The moment of complexity: Emerging network culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

White, H. C. (1992). Identity and control: A structural theory of social action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

White, H. C. (2008). Identity and control: How social formations emerge (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wilber, K. (2000). Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy (1st pbk. ed.). Boston: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (2001). The eye of spirit: An integral vision for a world gone slightly mad (3rd ed.). Boston: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world (1st ed.). Boston: Integral Books.

Synonyms for value networks

2009-11-09T11:11:00.003Z

The term value network does not stand on its own. It is part of a wider emergence of a network based view of organizations that emerged from different scholarly and practical perspectives. Here I name a few terms that have emerged in the literature of the last decades that are - at least partial - synonymous to the notion of value networks:

- Networks and organizations (Burt, 1980, 1992; Granovetter, 1973; Nohria & Eccles, 1992; White, 1992, 2008). Before a specific term emerged to identify networks of value creation for organizations, scholars and practitioners simply used the term network. Some key papers and books, that started applying notions from social network analysis to organization theory are referred to here. The authors of these various publications sort of worked in concert in what some dub The Harvard revolution in networks (Steiny, 2007), and a conference bringing together key scholars and practitioners was the foundation for the first handbook (Nohria & Eccles, 1992) that appeared on networks and organizations.

- Strategic alliances (Doz, 1996; Doz & Hamel, 1998; Kale, Singh, & Perlmutter, 2000) is a closely related concept that has been a research subject for longer than network forms of organization. It is worth mentioning here, as I can assume that much relevant knowledge about the emergence, form, contents, and outcomes of strategic alliances may be relevant to value networks. Where value networks is a more abstract concept, the strategic alliance, like Christensen's value network, may provide us with valuable and specific contents to think about value networks.

- The value constellation (Normann & Ramirez, 1993) was introduced in a professional article in Harvard Business Review in 1993. Like Stabell & Fjeldstad, and Allee after them, Normann and Ramirez identify the shortcomings of the value chain's linear, industrial roots and show how firms like IKEA work in a value constellations that draw in suppliers, partners and customers to co-create value. It could be argued that this article is the first serious publication raising the issue of value networks, even though Christensen's research into the value networks of the hard-disk industry was well under way when Normann and Ramirez published this article. In a later publication, Ramirez (1999), uses the notion of value co-production, as a way to describe inter firm value creation processes.

- Strategic networks (Afuah, 2000; Ahuja, 2000; Anand & Khanna, 2000; Doz, Olk, & Smit Ring, 2000; Dyer & Nobeoka, 2000; Gulati, Nohria, & Zaheer, 2000a, 2000b; Kale, et al., 2000; Kogut, 2000; Rowley, Behrens, & Krackhardt, 2000). This term was introduced by Gulati, Nohria and Zaheer in 2000 as the summary term for a special issue of the Strategic Management Journal. It draws in scholars from the topic area from different perspectives, uniting them under the notion of strategic networks. The focus of the articles on strategic networks is mostly structural and embedded in social network analysis. The authors’ intent is to take stock of the research done so far, to propose an agenda for future research and to make a start in better understanding the networks in terms of their influence on individual firm performance.

- Smart business networks (Busquets, Rodon, & Wareham, 2009; Heck & Vervest, 2007; Shaw, Snowdon, Holland, Kawalek, & Warboys, 2004; Van Hilligersberg, Ruurd, & Van den Heuvel, 2004; Vervest, Heck, Preiss, & Pau, 2004; Vervest, Preiss, Heck, & Pau, 2004), introduced in a special issue of the journal of information technology in 2004, are defined as the convergence of intelligent communication networks and the smartness of the businesses that use them. The intelligence of networks is identified by the authors as a constant and growing factor in today's economy. Smartness of business as a temporal, situational outcome of one business being smarter than its competitors. Smart business network research is focused on how the two, intelligence of networks and smartness of business, influence each other.

- Business ecosystems (Iansiti, 2005; Iansiti & Levien, 2004; Li, 2009; Pierce, 2009), start from the assumption that in complex interrelated networks of firms, like the computer industry, the performance of an individual firm is determined in large part by factors outside the organization. To examine and better understand the operational dynamics of these networks, Iansiti and Levien (2004) introduce the notion of the business ecosystem. Drawing on the metaphor of nature, they discuss different roles firms take in the ecosystem, like keystones, niche players and dominators. Congruent with their metaphor they outline the - unintended - consequences of certain ecosystem imbalances caused by firm behavior, and they suggest ways in which firms can assert their influence on the system to create a healthy balance for the whole.

- Value webs (Akkermans, et al., 2004; Gordijn & Tan, 2005) is a term introduced by Akkermans and Gordijn in 2004. Building on earlier work, inspired by Normann and Ramirez’ value constellations, they introduce a modeling language for network organizations and offer two perspectives: the value web as the business model for sense making to stakeholders of an organization that function with a network of other organizations, and the trust perspective for exchanges in the network that generate the trust needed to engage in transactions. Their approach very much resembles the value network approach, yet it differs in its information technology starting points, and it more formal approach rooted in e3 value, a mathematical model for gauging the economic value in a business web.

- The business group (Smangs, 2006), is the final term that I would like to bring forward. Brought into the context of network organization by Smangs in 2006, the concept of the business group draws on the sociological literature on network organizations to distinguish the term from hierarchical business groups, displaying ownership, business groups in emerging markets, displaying dynamics and business groups in Asia, often displaying formal ties and relationships as well as ownership. Smangs moves forward to propose a coherent definition of the business group, that exists of three elements: a business group is a network of firms interrelated in long term engagement, while retaining autonomy. No firm holds legal or formal control over another’s actions, second, the firms engage in transactions and interactions based in the rationale of reciprocity and finally there is an intersubjective meaning making by participants in the business group and outside it that displays it's culture as a group.

Even though there are more terms emerging for the phenomenon of value networks than I can describe here, it is becoming clear that a constellation of overlapping meanings has emerged to identify the changing nature of the firm and its relationships with other firms in creating value. I would argue that the idea of the value network emerged from a desire to fuse traditional strategic management analysis with a more complex, human centered, and networked approach. The definitions emerge from fields ranging from sociology, business studies, information and technology studies, and practice. We may assume that this complex emergence is part of a larger shift in the way we perceive organizations. What is this larger shift in perspective? This is the subject of the next installment in this series.

Afuah, A. (2000). How much do your co-opetitors' capabilities matter in the face of technology change? Strategic Management Journal, 21, 387-404.

Ahuja, G. (2000). The duality of collaboration: Inducements and opportunities in the formation of interfirm linkages. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 317-343.

Akkermans, H., Ziv Baida, Gordijn, J., Peña, N., Altuna, A., & Laresgoiti, I. (2004). Value Webs: Using ontologies to bundle real-world services. IEEE Intelligent Systems(July/August 2004), 57-66.

Anand, B. N., & Khanna, T. (2000). Do firms learn to create value? The case of alliances. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 295-315.

Burt, R. S. (1980). Models of network structure. Annual review of sociology, 6, 79-141.

Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Busquets, J., Rodon, J., & Wareham, J. (2009). Adaptability in Smart Business Networks: An exploratory case in the insurance industry. Decision support systems. Retrieved from doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2009.05.006

Doz, Y. L. (1996). The evolution of cooperation in strategic alliances: Initial conditions or learning processes? Strategic Management Journal, 17, 55-83.

Doz, Y. L., & Hamel, G. (1998). Alliance advantage: The art of creating value through partnering. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Doz, Y. L., Olk, P. M., & Smit Ring, P. (2000). Formation processes of R&D consortia: Which path to take? Where does it lead? Strategic Management Journal, 21, 239-266.

Dyer, J. H., & Nobeoka, K. (2000). Creating and managing a highperformance knowledge-sharing network: The Toyota case. Strategic Management Journal(21), 345-367.

Gordijn, J., & Tan, Y.-H. (2005). A design methodology for modeling trustworthy value webs. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 9(3), 31-48.

Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. The American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.

Gulati, R., Nohria, N., & Zaheer, A. (2000a). Guest editors' introduction to the special issue: Strategic networks. Strategic Management Journal(21), 199-201.

Gulati, R., Nohria, N., & Zaheer, A. (2000b). Strategic Networks. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 203-215.

Heck, E. v., & Vervest, P. (2007). Smart business networks: How the network wins. Communications of the ACM, 50(6), 29-37.

Iansiti, M. (2005). Managing the ecosystem. Optimize, 4.

Iansiti, M., & Levien, R. (2004). The keystone advantage: What the new dynamics of business ecosystems mean for strategy, innovation and sustainability. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Kale, P., Singh, H., & Perlmutter, H. (2000). Learning and protection of proprietary assets in strategic alliances: Building relational capital. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 217-237.

Kogut, B. (2000). The network as knowledge: Generative rules and the emergence of structure. Strategic Management Journal(21), 405-425.

Li, Y.-R. (2009). The technological roadmap of Cisco’s business ecosystem. Technovation, 29, 379-386.

Nohria, N., & Eccles, R. G. (Eds.). (1992). Networks and organizations: Structure, form, and action. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Normann, R., & Ramirez, R. (1993). From value chain to value constellation: Designing interactive strategy. Harvard Business Review(July-August).

Pierce, L. (2009). Big losses in ecosystem niches: How core firm decisions drive complemetary product shakeouts. Strategic Management Journal, 30, 323-347.

Ramirez, R. (1999). Value co-production: Intellectual origins and implications for practice and research. Strategic Management Journal(20), 49-65.

Rowley, T., Behrens, D., & Krackhardt, D. (2000). Redundant governance structures: An analysis of structural and relational embeddedness in the steel and semiconductor industries. Strategic Management Journal(21), 369-386.

Shaw, D. R., Snowdon, B., Holland, C. P., Kawalek, P., & Warboys, B. (2004). The viable systems model applied to a smart network: The case of the UK electricity market. Journal of Information Technology, 19, 270-280.

Smangs, M. (2006). The nature of the business group: A social network perspective. Organization, 13(6), 889-909.

Steiny, D. (2007). Book Review: Identity and Control, H. White., 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2008). Social Networks, 29, 609-616.

Van Hilligersberg, J., Ruurd, B., & Van den Heuvel, W.-J. (2004). Potential of webservices to enable smart business networks. Journal of Information Technology, 19, 281-287.

Vervest, P., Heck, E. v., Preiss, K., & Pau, L. (2004). Introduction to smart business networks. Journal of Information Technology, 19, 225-227.

Vervest, P., Preiss, K., Heck, E. v., & Pau, L.-F. (2004). The emergence of smart business networks. Journal of Information Technology, 19, 228-233.

White, H. C. (1992). Identity and control: A structural theory of social action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

White, H. C. (2008). Identity and control: How social formations emerge (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Allee's value networks: the first paper

2009-10-29T23:04:00.006Z

In 1999, Verna Allee published a paper in the Journal of Knowledge Management (*). As far as I can see, this is her first scholarly introduction of the term. In this blog item, I provide a summary with some paraphrases of this publication.

Verna starts by identifying the role that knowledge management (KM) could play in helping us shift from an industrial worldview to a different worldview which embraces recent findings in science such as quantum physics and complexity science. She clearly displays a conscious understanding of the complexity involved in making this shift. Notably, she mentions metaphors and anologies that could either help make the shift as opposed to embracing the new thinking from an (unconscious) old paradigm, thereby reducing the possible positive effect implicit in a 'real' shift. She identifies the risk of how embracing the new tools from the old paradigm might even strengthen the old paradigm, making a paradigm shift more difficult.

Verna identifies that key scholars in organization studies find: "The core thread of insight weaving through all their work is that knowledge simply does not behave like natural resources. Knowledge and ideas can replicate and multiply endlessly; material resources do not."

This is a well known thread of thinking in KM, and it forms the basis of many knowledge management theories. The paradox is that the metaphor used to indetify the difference between knowledge and natural resource s is rooted in knowledge being a resource itself. While using the metaphor of knowledge as resource works well in explaining the difference, the issue arises when this metaphor is implicitly retained when thinking further. So after explaining how knowledge is not the same as a resource, the metaphor: knowledge is a resource, is used to further expand on how it could be managed. On first sight it seems that Verna falls into the 'wrong anology' trap she identified earlier in the paper. Lets see how this continues.... ;-)

Verna compares two new management toolsets, intellectual capital (IC), as pioneered by Sveiby, Edvinsson, and Malone, and the balanced scorecard as pioneerde by Kaplan an Norton. She asserts that the IC thinking with its focus on the facilitation of dynamic knowledge flows among categories of intangible assets, creates knowledge value that can be converted into financial value, is a more dynamic view than the balanced scorecard. (later Kaplan and Norton sort of made up for this omission with their strategy maps, which show the logical stories behind indicators and represent a way to reason about flows of value through the chart.)

A key miss in both approaches according to Allee is that they still consider the company a closed system (and I would add heavy use of the metaphor of knowledge as stuff). A systemic whole systems view of the enterprise goes far beyond the traditional borders of the solitary organization. One view that is different and more in line with how organizations really work is that of communities of practice, where groups that need to share their knowledge work to find each other, share knowlegde and collaborate to solve the day to day issues in getting the work done. Yet, even this is a company-bound idea of networks. She refers to Drucker who says society is made up of interacting organizations. There is no society without interacting organizations. An example where business is impacted by societal impact is when education is degrading. Companies start worrying about education because they have no access to the right skills, knowledge and attitides. Business is not an entity living on itself. It is dependent, amongst others, on good education systems.

Verna proposes a framework that extends IC from the firm's perspective to include social capital, which she defines as the relations between the organization and the broader social environment (society) that it operates as part of. And environmental capital as the link with the natural resources. In the framework, knowledge flows between the categories are important. Not only as flows, especially how these flows are 'converted' to values. Further, knowledge is not an expandable resource. It grows when exhanged.

Verna identifies (yes!) the issue with the knowledge as stuff metaphor and points out that system dynamics has the same foundations of stocks and flows, which as a metaphor do misrepresent knowledge in many ways. Tacit knowledge is not modelled effectively as stuff, since it behaves in a very different way. (which models it as an organism ;-) She speculates that converting knowledge to value (where does converting as a metaphor come from?) may even have to do with slow or nonlineair, initially couterintuitive (or counterrational) metaphors and ways.

Verna argues for two additional concepts to add to flow: the exchange and the field. These allow us to address the nonlineair nature of knowledge exchange and the energetic nature of the experiential aspects of exchange between people in organizations. Do we have the right field to let the desired exchanges occur?

She continues to address another prevalent model in organizations: the value chain. Its underlying metaphor is rooted in the industrial domain of the assembly line. New interpretations that take information and knowledge as inputs and services and products as outputs present a step forwards, yet it is overstretched when we want to adress specific challenges with knowledge and value creation. (so is the economic value creation only. I think that what is valued is a reflection of societal, cultural and personal values.)

Verna says it is inevitable that the value chain will be succeeded by the value network. The value network takes as a starting point that value doesn't need conversion into tangible assets to be valued or of value. Information, knowledge, support, favors and benefits all have their role as intangible values in the value newtwork, as much as negotiated contractual obligations (tangibles) and values like money. Modeling this will look like spagetthi and meatballs, yet can be as rigorous as an engineered value chain.

Underlying values like respect, trust, and reputation represent the ties with the broader social and environmental landscape in which an organization lives. Damaging these values for short term gains is ever more difficult as a result of transparancy. This points the way to societal and cultural values that underly the value exchanges in the value network. Exactly how this will turn out is still to be determined. It is clear though that a cross disciplinary approach, that draws on work done in complexity science and self-organizing systems will be a prerequisite for answering the questions.

(*) Allee, V. (1999). The art and practice of being a revolutionary. Journal of knowledge management, 3(2), 121-131.

Stabell and Fjeldstads value networks summary

2009-10-14T23:00:00.003+01:00

Stabell and Fjeldstad (*) start from the Value Chain. They have applied this model, dominant for analyzing firm level competitive advantage, in about fourteen large organizations. Most often, the logic of the value chain model misformed the value creation logic as experienced in reality. They argue that in many cases, specifically in services, the value chain model hides rather than illuminates the value creation logic. Reflecting on this, they introduce two additional models for what they call value configuration: the value shop and the value network.

Value shops are focused on a value creation logic, where resources and activities are used to solve unique customer problems. Value networks are uses as a value creation logic where relationships and interaction between inter firm entities are the value creation logic. Since the value chain doesn't cover the other configurations well, value chain analysis should be superseded by the more generic activity of value configuration analysis, which in turn makes use of the specific logic of chains, shops and networks.

Value configuration is mostly focused on the firm level, or at least from the firm's perspective. Thereby distinguishing it from Allee's and Christensen's work, which either explicitly or implicitly assumes the firm embedded in a larger system of inter-firm relationships. Nevertheless, the authors do say a word or two about value system logic in their paper.

The logic behind Porter's value chain is based on that of a manufacturing company. The primary activities display the linear character of the primary activities as an assembly line. Marketing and service are primary activities according to Porter since otherwise the product can't reach the customer (he doesn't know it exists) or can't keep the product running, which is also part of the value perceived. To me, it is here that the linear logic already goes beyond my grasp. The physical product metaphor doesn't help me in understanding why service comes before marketing. With the supporting activities the thinking of Porter is not clear. The authors assume that he used a pragmatic definition based on many forms functional division of departments. Logically, as I thought, these activities run in parallel with all the primary activities.

The Value Shop configures resources and activities according to a specific customer problem. The order, amount, selection and intensity of activities vary according to unique customer needs. Professional services, such as law, medicine, and consulting are examples of value shops. It also makes sense to model value chain supporting activities as value shops to gain a better perspective on their value creation logic. The value creation logic of shops is about changing states. Turning an ill patient into a healthy one, or an ignorant student into a knowledgeable (object metaphor ;-). Or creating something that wasn't there: a building, a system etc. Value creation logic is dependent on knowledge / information asymmetry between customer and supplier, it is configured to deal with unique cases, the process is cyclical, iterative and interruptable. For example if a diagnosis turns out that there is no problem to solve. There is a significant interdependence and reciprocity between activities. Each change influencing the others. Often a single professional is in charge to manage all this.

Value Networks in the definition of the authors are value configurations where the network of customers itself is part of the service or product. A telecommunication firm, a bank and an insurance form are cases in point. Provisioning the service and using the service are the main activities. Network effects define value creation logic, with giveaway strategies at the initial development stage of a value network. Also, selection of customers is crucial as the consumer of the service is part of the value perceived. (i.e. a phone call, balance between lenders and borrowers, reciprocity in an insurers risk)

The authors correlate the value creation configuration with Mintzberg's organizational design models:

"Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to develop the ideas in detail, referring to Mintzberg’s design alternatives (1979), we suggest that while the value chain requires a machine bureaucracy organization of primary activities, the value shop is organized according to either the professional bureaucracy or the operational adhocracy. The value network is often organized according to an administrative adhocracy, particularly when the technology of the infrastructure is complex and requires highly specialized development activities such as is the case with modern telecommunications." An option I hold is to explore this further, as Mintzberg influenced me in my MBA with his own tale of paradigm shift: The rise and fall of strategic planning.

Stabell and Fjeldstad refer to Norman and Ramirez' value constellations and argue that most firms when modeled in more detail won't fall into one of their three configurations. Rather, they would combine the three in different areas of their organization. This for me makes the case for using Verna's method to model any business, to use purpose or problem to determine scope, and then to use value configuration logic to identify linear chains, circular shops, and complex networks as interacting parts of the more abstract value network of the business' ecosystem.

(*) Stabell, C. B., & Fjeldstad, O. D. (1998). Configuring value for competitive advantage: On chains, shops and networks. Strategic Management Journal, 19, 413-437.

Clayton Christensen's value networks summary

2009-10-05T23:14:00.004+01:00

In this book, Clayton Christensen(*) coins the term value network to help understand why great companies can fail when new disruptive technologies are ignored because current customers don't see a use for them yet. This short term focus on customer needs, while a crucial element of any business strategy, when pursued alone leaves room for new entrants in a market to gradually pursue a disruptive technology and cause a market shift which consequently disrupts successful incumbent's business.

He uses the hard-disk industry's history to illustrate his point. Sustaining technology development in the industry. Always central to any customers need was pursued successfully only by incumbent firms. An example of a sustained development is the capacity / price ratio of hard-disks. Successive innovations needed to sustain the needed growth could only be made by incumbent firms who could invest the huge amounts needed to succeed.

However, on another dimension of hard-disk architecture: size, only new entrants succeeded. Mostly because reductions in size failed to sustain the capacity / price ration initially for existing hard-disk users. Mainframe clients for example saw no need in more expensive 8 inch disks and told their suppliers they wanted 14 inch disks. A new market for mini computers that was emerging did see the need for 8 inch disks and enabled new entrants to enter the market successfully at the expense of the incumbent who were later forced to switch to 8 inch disks for mainframes too.

Christensen introduces the notion of the value network to explain why this happens.

First Christensen introduces two known theories for failure of incumbents in the face of technology change: "managerial, organizational, and cultural responses to technological change" and the ability of established firms to deal with radically new technology."

In the second chapter, Christensen defines a value network as a third theory for why successful incumbents fail. Christensen defines a value network as "the context within which a firm identifies and responds to customers' needs, solves problems, procures input, reacts to competitors, and strives for profit." (p. 32)

He continues to say that: "Within a value network, each firm's competitive strategy, and particularly its past choices of markets, determines its perceptions of the economic value of a new technology."

This explains why firms see demands for continuous innovations to sustain the value of a key product in the value network are valuable, while disruptive products, which are not part of the value network, and which often carry a very different margin and an emerging demand, most often in a different market , does not receive attention. So resource allocation in a value network is directed towards sustaining current customer values and disregards new markets or new applications of a technology.

Companies are in a value network because their products or services, together with those of other firms deliver a solution for a market. Often these solutions are complex, nested hierarchies of products and services, like in an information system, where hardware components form computers and other peripherals, which, combined wit software and services, comprise an IT system that meets a specific demand.

In IT there are different value networks, serving different customer demands or uses. For example enterprise computing and consumer computing value networks. Christensen continues to say that differences in product - performance measures define value network boundaries. In enterprise computing, a hard-disk for example is valued because of capacity and performance, while in consumer computing it may be valued according to ruggedness and price.

On the level of each value network component, firms compete. In each value network however, the firms competing for the same component probably differ. This is a result of the effect described earlier, where the specific characteristics of the value network make it hard for established firms to change value network. That is because firms adapt to the specific requirements of their current value network, which in turn inhibits them from adapting to the quite different structure needed to serve another value network, even with the same products.

What I like about Christensen's explanation of the value network is that it clearly shows where firms compete and where they collaborate in a value network. Since his value network's key architectural component is the product or the service, and then the constellation of products and services that together, as a nested hierarchy, provides a complete solution to a specific demand, the value network is the ecosystem of firms interrelationships between complementary services and products on different hierarchical levels. The traditional competitive landscape is integrated in the model on each product or service 'node', where several firms, each with their own value chain, compete.

Cost structure also influences the difficulty to switch value network. For example, enterprise computing requires a large gross margin as sales, support and made to measure products carry large overheads. Consumer computing, in contrast relies on large volumes, standardization and e-commerce channels, which allow for a much lower gross profit margin. When executives in an enterprise serving firm have to decide on entering a 'lower' market, often first proposed by their own engineers, they find the low margin unattractive and enterprise customers, when asked by marketing people express no interest in the new technology, which initially indeed doesn't solve a problem in their scenario.

The relation between technology innovation s-curves and the value network is twofold. Within a single value network, s curves represent the the needed sustaining technology change demanded by that value network's specific boundary conditions of value perception.

While the disruptive technology s-curve cannot be displayed in a single graph, since the vertical axis must be changed to display a different usage scenario of the new technology, in which it delivers higher value way before it would do so in the traditional application. See figure below.

In summary, the definition of a value network in Christensen's terms is of value to network organization thinking since it clearly provides some boundary conditions to draw a value network within. The most obvious of this is the constellation of products and services that together fulfill a purpose. Where Christensen differs mostly form the other theories is the centrality of products and services rather than the firms or people producing them. These only come secondary (even though in my interpretation they are also part of the value network. In Christensen's terms). Compatibility with Verna Allee's model for example can be found in role description that tie in to the product or service being provided. i.e hard-disk supplier, IT service provider etc.

Christensen assumes growth, innovation and meeting customer demand successfully as implicitly valuable organizational values. I tend to agree with him. Yet the perspective of his thinking is almost exclusively systemic and managerial. Even though I don't take issue with that, his thinking may be of limited use in my personal quest to understand how we can address the successful adoption of a value network perspective from a knowledge era paradigm. In essence, his theory might sooner serve to explain the dynamics of adopting new disruptive metaphors themselves and how different worldviews compose impediments to the adoption of disruptive metaphors in existing value networks. His theory could serve as a valuable analogy, which is closely aligned with more capitalistic values of successful firms competing. ;-) Thereby introducing the risk of remaining mired in old thinking…..

(*) Christensen, C. M. (1997). The innovators dilemma: When new technologies cause great firms to fail. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Does the beautiful hide the ugly?

2009-09-04T23:08:00.001+01:00

I am becoming a fan of Nietzsche when it comes to contemplating this question. Even though the opposite seemed apparent at first sight, I think that Nietzsche believed in transcendence. Being fully awake, engaged with life as it is, beautiful in all its ugliness, to him was the Ueberlife. A way of life which exemplified an acceptance of the here and now and a full engagement with all that is. Both Beauty and Evil. Good and ugly. The beautiful ugliness and the ugly beautiful truth.

What the jazz metaphor might hide is the ugly. Although I would argue that classical music leaves less space for mistakes, jazz music seems inherently positive, allowing for mistakes, even seeing them as an integral part of the performance. To succeed, some say that jazz music cultivates an aesthetic of imperfection.

This can be viewed from multiple perspectives. On the one hand allowing for mistakes invites the ugly. Mistakes are bad, so embracing errors is embracing the shadow. This on a first view seems like healthy acceptance and integration. Yet, if mistakes become so 'good' that they can't be discussed anymore, dissociation might happen and pathology might result.

Another take is from outside the metaphor domain. What if a high level of perfection is needed. What does an aesthetic of imperfection contribute to a nuclear power plant? At least in the short term? Does the classical music metaphor fit better for that domain?

Whatever metaphor we choose, I would argue that we keep resonating with deep human emotions for any domain to ensure reasonable outcomes.

From the invisible hand to the light touch

2009-09-04T21:42:00.005+01:00

Next week, we get together with a beautiful group of people to celebrate the world day of interconnectedness. As a follow up to earlier sessions in 2008 and 2007, we will jam with metaphors to discover what new metaphors could extend and embrace Adam Smith's invisible hand, which has served us in modern times, but whose less fortunate entailments have left a footprint pressing heavily on our world.

Daan, who facilitates the minimal structure for our jam session this time asked us to prepare a short presentation about the metaphor that is central to our work and to discuss what the metaphor highlights and what it hides. In my case the metaphor is: organizing is live jazz performance. As my preparation, I chose to write. Beginning with a quote by Ken Wilber that phrases beautifully what I believe is my motivation for choosing jazz as a metaphor for organizing:

"Gaia’s main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, over-population, or resource depletion. Gaia’s main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement. . .about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot reign in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a worldcentric moral perspective concerning the global commons. And we reach that worldcentric moral perspective through a difficult and laborious process of interior growth and transcendence."

Mutual understanding is an intangible and mutual agreement a tangible. I think that Value networks - dynamic exchanges of tangible and intangible deliverables between roles engaged in a common purpose - are an external representation of the synthesis of both understanding and agreement. Value Networks represents a shift in organizing that reflects the transition in growing and transcending that individuals and collectives - in those fortunate countries that can afford so - are currently engaged in. Value Networks are the organizing model, spanning macro to micro, that goes with the transcending of industrial economics. They bridge social capital from physical contact to valuation and performance. From the light touch to the invisible hand.

However, value networks as such won't work. They may only work if they integrate with and reflect an integral, co-emergence of network consciousness, network culture and network nature. The process of aligning is laborious. What can we do to accelerate this adapting of consciousness healthily, through body, mind, soul and spirit, in self, culture, nature and society?

Recent findings in second generation cognitive science point to experience, emotion and thereby to aesthetics as the ultimate source of reason. So, instead of trying to reason our way to the next level, why don't we design our way into an artful, meaningful life of understanding, and into trusting that agreement will follow? Beauty is truth -- truth beauty... I am sure that John Keats knew these findings of second generation cognitive science intuitively; well before we discovered them empirically a few hundred years later.

Ever more people are engaged in bridging the domains of art and organizing. In poetry, music, theatre, painting, dance and literature. What is my art? My art is music; specifically jazz music. Because jazz music - as no other - represents autonomy while integrating interdependence. Jazz music represents a balancing of freedom with commitment. Jazz music represents an exploration of new improvisations with the continuous embellishment and embrace of existing structures. As Paul Austerlitz phrased beautifully, jazz is rooted in our African origins, is America's music, and represents a worldwide emergence of a new improvisational consciousness. A universal language, resonating with all senses, evoking deep emotions, providing options for exploratory reasoning, all the time connecting and integrating what has gone before.

Much work has already been done in jazz as a metaphor for organizing. So why spend more time with it? Because much of this beautiful work remains trapped in academia. How can we bring jazz into the daily awareness of work and organizing? And how can we design Value Networks that invoke relevant entailments of the jazz metaphor to help us accelerate our laborious process of interior growing and transcending? How can we live the jazz in work life? And how can we work to solve our pressing challenges and problems in mutual agreement and understanding?

Case study of Mise en Place in groove

2009-09-03T15:13:00.002+01:00

On my site, I have just published a case study of Mise en Place in groove. The report, the full text of which can be found here, describes how 200 people from Mise en Place, a Dutch temp agency, moved into a groove and then analyzes the factors leading to this groove as experienced by the participants and in a comparison with Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow and Sawyer’s theory of group-flow.

Three papers on groove

2009-07-02T14:12:00.003+01:00

I just published three interconnected papers on groove. These papers are interim results of my PhD research with Fielding Graduate University. The first paper defines groove, a collective state of consciousness in which jazz mucisians perform at their peak. The second paper analyses groove as a conceptual metaphor, in order to assess its use in other settings than jazz and provides a view of groove through the lens of Ken Wilber's integral theory. The third paper provides a theory of groove, that I hope can be used to design interventions that helps people and organizational systems increase their adaptive capability to complexity and change.

What is my introduction for Human Develoment and Consciousness?

2009-06-11T15:40:00.002+01:00

In business, people work together to achieve a purpose. In an increasingly complex and dynamic environment, much is asked of the adaptive capability people in an organization can bring to their work in order to continuously remain in tune with the purpose, the environment and their organization.

Many scholars have researched this issue. A specific culture of inquiry that has emerged with regard to these questions are those that use the metaphor of improvisation to make sense of the subject.

So far however, most of the research in organizational improvisation has focused on defining the metaphor and on observations of parallels between jazz and other forms of organizing where improvisation is relevant.

What would we need to take into account when we were to actually design and create organizations based on the metaphor of jazz improvisation? This is the question that guides my PhD research with Fielding Graduate University. In order to make sense of my question, I will first use three knowledge area's to create three perspectives on my question. The three perspectives are shown in figure one and are 1. Human Development and Consciousness, 2. Organization Studies and 3. Systems, Society, Culture, Community.

For Human Development and Consciousness, I focus on the groove, a collective state of consciousness in a jazz performance that represents an optimal experience and a desired state of mind. In a groove, the adaptive capability of people is at its highest. What human factors do we need to take into account when designing organizations for groove? To answer this question, I will first define groove. Then I will argue that the groove increases the adaptive capability of people in organizations. Finally, I will create a psychological theory of the groove, that can be used as a starting point to design interventions for organizations. In a follow-up paper, a case study of 200 people in an organization that were moved into a groove is analyzed to compare pratice to theory.

Integral perspectives in meetings: video presentation

2009-06-05T13:01:00.003+01:00

On Integral Life, Joanne Hunt presents a very powerful synthesis of Ken Wilber's work by showing the start of a business meeting through his four perspectives. Not only can we clearly see the different perspectives colouring the language and behavior of the participants. We get a look behind the scenes of each participant's experience of the meeting, when we hear their inner voices reflect on what the others are saying. A very nice and reflective way to present Ken's perspectives. See: http://integrallife.com/node/44820

Photo's from the open DVD workshop last week in IJsselstein

2009-05-27T21:50:00.000+01:00

Jazzinbusiness trailer

2009-05-15T15:48:00.001+01:00

Junior Linhares of wetrailer created this short jazzinbusiness film for us to promote our session in IJsselstein next week.

In Dutch: Schrijf je nu in voor de jazzinbusiness open netwerksessie op 19 mei! Ga naar: http://tinyurl.com/coy8sc

Jazzinbusiness open network session 19 May

2009-04-16T11:27:00.003+01:00

On May 19, we organize an open jazzinbusiness session in IJsselstein, The Netherlands. The session will be in Dutch. At the session we will record for our first DVD. Please join us by registering at: http://www.mindz.com/events/Jazzinbusiness_open_netwerk_sessie

New Fielding Website

2009-03-12T22:48:00.002Z

Fielding just launched its new website. It reflects much better what I experience the program to be like than the previous one did. Take a look and find out what this beautiful, mindful PhD program has to offer. I am really enjoying it.

More coverage of Henley Workshop

2008-12-10T23:36:00.002Z

I found a nice article on our workshop with Henley earlier this year by Debbie Lawley and Lisa Minogue-White, who attended the day in June. Click here to see the review on page 2 of their magazine.

Expertise Leadership: Expertise Leadership: Maximizing Talent with Character

2008-08-07T11:35:00.000+01:00

In this blogitem, Pascal Claeys provides us with a new perspective on the war for talent. Nice is, that Pascal refers to jazzinbusiness at the end of his recommendations as an inspiring intervention to make a step in combining character with talent.
A quote:
"If knowledge is content times expertise, then talent with the right character is the most important component of expertise. Personal leadership and business leadership are key words to achieve high performance. The world talks about the war for talent, but it should better talk about the war for talent with character!"
The full blog is here: Expertise Leadership: Expertise Leadership: Maximizing Talent with Character
Thanks Pascal!

Alex Goodall's Internet Marketing Groove

2008-08-07T11:20:00.002+01:00

Alex Goodall attended our workshop at Henley in June. He wrote a nice blog on his application of our idea's to achieve an internet marketing Groove. A quote:
"The groove has been defined as "what makes the music breath". This, and other concepts were explored and used as metaphors for business.
The idea of being in the groove can be applied to almost any discipline - including internet marketing. I would regard an internet marketer as being "in the internet marketing groove" when they have developed all skills, discipline and the focus to be able to play a tune and make good money."
The complete article is here: http://imquiddity.com/?s=jazz
Thanks Alex!

Queen and Resonance as a metaphor for internal time consciousness

2008-07-11T22:07:00.003+01:00

As you may have read in my previous post. This Monday we get together for the first North Sea Jazz Metaphor Festival. This blog post is an account of my interpretation of resonance.

Last Saturday I celebrated my 37th birthday. I really appreaciate the people with the courage to buy me presents. I equally appreciate those who give me some money to buy something on my wishlist I did not share yet...

So I decided to make a trip to the past. To 1983 to be exact. I was 12/13 at the time and the deputy director with our local newspaper thought I looked old enough to bring around newspapers. So I got my first job. I was lucky to have a yelllow waterproof Sony walkman. This, in combination with the 90 guilders a month, provided me with the meaning of life at that time.

When I turned 14, I got Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA'. Armand, my brother bought (yes bought) The Works by Queen at the same time as my mother pleased herself with Billy Joel's songs in the attic. Wow. Bruce (complete) has always been with me. But I had lost track of the other two albums...

So last week, I got them. The reason behind this? At the tributary concert for Nelson Mandela a few weeks ago I saw Brain May and Andrea Corr perform 'Is this the world we created'

It brought back the old time instantly with al emotions associated with such a powerful song. I also got Billy's album. See 'Say goodbye to Hollywood for a sample'.

So how can these fragments be so emotional to me? Bringing back a lot of the feelings of that time. Bringing round the papers. Being with myself. Skipping my classes. Thinking 'bout my life as a teenager? What is the resonance in this music that it brings my emotions from that time back almost as real as I felt them back then? It really did. Although my experience was shaped through my experience I also could really let go of it to feel into the past. How does this work?

The North Sea Jazz Metaphor Festival

2008-07-10T11:23:00.005+01:00

Monday and Tuesday 14 and 15 July a small group of us will gather in The Netherlands to create the first North Sea Jazz Metaphor Festival. Inspired by Paul Acket, who created the North Sea Jazz Festival more than 50 years ago, we will spend two days in jam sessions dialoguing and refecting on the question what metaphors we can create to help us make the shift to the knowledge economy.

In the talk leading up to the sessions we asked ourselves what metaphor would unite meaning, resonance and music.

Together with Marc van Roon and Joshua Samson, two jazz musicians who have worked with jazz in organizations for more than 16 years, with Charles Savage asking his powerful questions, with Daan Andriessens knowledge and experience with conceptual Metaphor and with Els van Noorduyn's wisdom and experience with experiential, embodied knowing I believe we have a nice lineup to explore this complex domain.

Joshua, Charles and I will build a bridge between the two festivals by going to Rotterdam on the evening of the 13th to have world class jazz inspire us for the two days.

Check here for the ideas emerging from this session.

fMRI scans of improvising musicians: what do they say

2008-07-04T00:13:00.004+01:00

Francis Notten sent me a short article from mind magazine. The article quotes a nice peace of Research by Charles Limb and Allen Braun both with Johns Hopkins University. They wired up improvising jazz pianists to the fMRI scanner and let them play a rehearsed piece and an improvised piece. When improvising, self-sensoring and limiting areas of the brain became inactive, while areas to do with creativity, expression and flow became active. The same areas, so do the researchers infer, may be active when people look for words in communication between people and with problem solving.

This may be nice research to look into when I explore the groove and when I see a need to take a more empirical perspective. My first route however, will be more phenomenological, structuralist and hermeneutic / semiotical (is that a word? ;-)

Update 4/7/2008
I now recall an experience that is a mirror of this observation. During a workshop with Hans Kunneman on meditation and organization. Hans played an improvised piece of music on the guitar, while in 'listening' mode. Right after he replayed the piece he just played. I experienced a noticible difference in perception and emotion between the two pieces of music. The improvised music touched much more deeply than the repeated piece.

Taking Turns: soloing and supporting(*)

2008-07-03T20:17:00.002+01:00

This principle deals with leadership in the performance of a song. Jazz musicians share leadership during a song by alternating between leading and supporting. The musician performing a solo is the temporary leader in that moment. The others support him as good as they can. In the case of the Bass player taking the solo, this means turning down the volume of the solo-instruments to create space for the deep, low and soft tones to be heard. For a solo instrument in the lead going crazy this may mean performing 'subsolos' underneath to strengthen the peak performance. It doesn't really matter what happens. The soloist leads, because for his instrument he is the expert at that moment. In our workshop we display this principle by playing a blues and alternating the solo's. Some four by four's between bass and drums or piano and drums may occur. The musicians actually display all principles at once in this example, since the ways solo's are distributed for a song emerge in real-time. (where we use summertime a number of times in earlier principles to help people unfamiliar with jazz to hear differences, we now assume that they are fed up with that and want to hear something else. (Not to speak of the musicians ;-) What does this principle mean for business? Even though jazz musicians understand that outside the performance who pays plays, that is the basic starting point in business. Do we let the person with the best expertise for the problem at hand take the lead? Do we, as managers, support our people when they are in the lead (as they may be more often than you think dealing directly with customers and partners) Do we see us as supportive of our colleagues? Do we appreciate differences in the instruments of our colleagues? Do we know how to support them while we may sound quite differently?

(*) Barrett, F. J. (1998). Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organization: Implications for organizational learning. Organization Science, Special Issue: Jazz Organizing and Improvisation, 9(5), 605-622.

(Ac)knowleding the guides on my journey to the Fielding PhD

2008-06-24T23:32:00.008+01:00

This fall I will join the Fielding PhD program in Human and Organization Development to explore how we can create a Groove in network organizations. My motivation for doing the PhD lies in the strong need for new metaphors to help us move towards a new perspective on work, collaboration and the economy. Charles Savage, who played a major role in guiding me to this point, calls this the Acknowledging economy (for now ;-). For me this is a nice moment to acknowledge some of the people who have helped me get to this exciting point. It may sound strange to do this while I still have to start, but getting to where I am now was a journey in its own right with many beautiful dialogues along the way. All the people I mention here have been inspiring, encouraging and supporting with their knowledge, their networks and their care for my search. I am very grateful to all of you:
Thekla, Sterre en Stijn, Roland Hameeteman, Ivo Brandjes, Tim Landwier, Liesbeth Ruoff, Chris Verhoef, Verna Allee, Jane McKenzie, Christine van Winkelen, Guus Pijpers, Gonny Vink, Oliver Schwabe, Charles Savage, Karl-Erik Sveiby, Paola de Piccoli, Debra Amidon, Margaret Logan, Peter Merle, Daan Andriessen, Daan Rijsenbrij, Sietse Overbeek, Erik Proper, Cok de Zwart, Egbert Baarsma, Frank Barrett, Menkelien Sikkema, Rik Maes, Ard Huizing, Albert Boswijk, Eric de Vries, Hans Lösscher, Peter van Baalen, Sander Hoeken, Miriam Notten, Armand van Middendorp, Paul Berner, Folkert Oosting, Joshua Samson, Marc van Roon, Laura ten Ham, Onno Hektor, Ellis Boswerger, Pascal Claeys, Michiel Meyer, Dottie Agger-Gupta, Fred Steier, Clare Morgan, and of course my research supporters: Ronald van den Hoff, Herman van Middendorp, Kalo Bagijn, Johan Burgemeester and Ronald Heerema, Roland Hameeteman and Charly van Gogh.

Jazzinbusiness experiment

2008-06-24T23:28:00.001+01:00

As Chris descibes in his review of our performance at Henley, we were challenged to improvise without visual sight. As we would expect in a serious high ranking business school our setup was checked by dr. Judy Payne. ;-) The participants' assumption was that playing blind would not be easy. The trio succeeded in improvising a song, but the concentration level was higher due to the shift to listening only. The result was audibly different from the improvisation before with visual contact. Exciting stuff.

Jazzinbusiness @ Henley

2008-06-24T22:58:00.004+01:00

The Jazzinbusiness workshop we did with Henley on June 11, was a new milestone in our development. Chris Collison wrote a very nice review of the event on his weblog. A brief quote from the article:
"We had some fun with the trio, asking them to play “blind” to test whether they use visual or auditory cues to keep in their “dynamic synchronisity”. They believed that they sensed by purely “listening” for direction, but when we placed screens between them, we all sensed that the output was less adventurous. Perhaps we need the reassurance of a multiple senses to feel comfortable taking risks?
Some messages there for anyone who has tried to incorporate innovation into a virtual meeting.
Richard Potter - one of the Henley regulars, provoked the Jazz trio to improvise a piece of music which was precisely 67 bars long, and they genuinely struggled with this, spending longer planning how they might do this than actually performing and then (to our secret delight) failing the task!
How often do we play the game of deadlines (year-ends, budget cycles, performance appraisals) and miss the opportunity to create something spectacular because we feel that we ”have to” restrict ourselves and ultimately deliver something mundane? Are we slaves to the 52 week score of the business cycle, or do we have the freedom to play by ear, and “create a new groove”?"

The full item is here. Thanks Chris!

Creative spirit in architecture, jazz and classical music

2008-05-01T21:39:00.003+01:00

On 25 March I participated in a roundtable dialogue on the 'New world of work' with the Mindz knowledge network in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Initiated by network colleagues Ronald van den Hoff, Laura ten Ham and Mariëlle Sijgers, we had some good conversations and questions around this complex subject. However - as often seems to happen to me - the best insights arose during drinks, in this case with Hein Duijnstee and Laura ten Ham.

Earlier in the roundtable, Hein had posed the question what it is that makes a building by a good architect, like Gaudi or Vitruvius stand out for everybody and is considered universally beautiful, even if the building itself may not appeal to the personal taste of the observer?

I suggested that a good arcitect literally succeeds in putting his spirit into his creation. So the building is considered universally beautiful, because somehow the creative spirit of the architect 'lives' in the building. The spirit and creativity of the architect come alive to the observer through the building. The building is thus a medium connecting the spirit of observer and creator. Abstracting from this observation we may even pose that it is not the building itself that appeals to us, but the spirit of attentive human creation.

Let's try to grasp this by looking at an example from music. Last week, I participated in a world café on meditation and organisation. Hans Kunneman and Daan Andriessen facilitated the café. Hans, who teaches guitar at the Amsterdam conservatory let us experience the difference between an improvised melody played while deeply listening and the mechanic reproduction of that same melody an instant later. Wow, you could literally feel a huge difference between the two modes of playing. As you can read elsewhere in this blog, attentive listening and questioning are the foundation of improvisation: the creation of music in realtime. So in Hans' first example, you could hear the architect at work, listening deeply, creating space for emergence of the music. You don't have to love jazz to feel that this is a universal act of creation that is beautiful as such. In his reproduction, much of this spirit disappeared. Especially in contrast with the first effort.

But what about classical music then? This is precomposed and the musicians seem to make all effort to reproduce the piece as closely as written by the composer as possible. The composer himself is not present to instill his spirit into the music through improvisation. Still classical music can be as universally beautiful as jazz. Howcome? I would think that it is not the reproduction itself that makes some classical music beautiful, but that classical music works in the same way as the buildings do: the performance of the piece serves as a medium to help us connect to the creative spirit of the composer. Mozart's spirit comes alive through the performance by the musicians in the symponic orchestra.

There is one precondition: attention. In my opinion, attentive creation is universally beautiful, whether it is the drawing of a four year old child, the composition of a seven year old 'wunderkind', or the attentive reproduction of that same composition by skilled musicians. Attention is what makes beauty.

If this metaphor is apt, it would provide me with some new, interesting ways to apply the music metaphor in organization. Direct experience of a Groove as an intersubjective spirit in team improvisation and indirect experience of a Groove made possible by the creative spirit of leaders, captured in social, organizational structures, extending the Groove over space and time. Might this serve to make improvisation and creation scalable? If so, how do we keep the Groove in this organizational structure focused towards the positive universal beauty that attentive worklife could (should) be all about?

Jazzinbusiness @ Skillcity

2008-04-04T22:10:00.002+01:00

The 14th of May, 2008, we will facilitate a special Jazzinbusiness workshop for 16 entrepreneurs from the Skillcity network. Last week I met Skillcity founder and director Ben Alfrink, who is a close contact of my v-work business partner Onno Hektor.

Ben and I have been jamming to get the invitation on their site this week. I really enjoyed and appreciated the way all of this came into being. In addition to our nice face to face meeting last week Friday Ben and I discovered we read the same books ;-)

I look forward to this gig very much, as it will provide us with an opportunity to bring our thinking and experience into the innovative ICT cluster in Utrecht Province, The Netherlands.

Skillcity members can apply through the site. Other entrepreneurs that may want to join please feel welcome and contact Ben directly.

Three encounters with formative causation in one week

2008-03-30T20:56:00.002+01:00

This week I had three encounters with Formative Causation. A term coined by biologist Rupert Sheldrake. The first was unconscious and occurred during a wonderful conversation I had last thursday with Marc van Roon and Joshua Samson, both with Art in Rhythm. And Els van Noorduyn a former Olympic champion turned coach. Els talked about how she by being present and behaving in a certain way changes her environment. She creates experiences in her clients environments that fit with each specific ocasion she encounters and changes the situation by behaving in a certain way that helpes the 'complete' body respond to her.

So today, while running I listened once more to an interview between Ken Wilber and Rupert Sheldrake. His theory of Morphic Resonance states that any living organism exerts an influence on its environment through a morpic field. Morphic resonance is then a sort of memory that is inherent to these fields and that enables nearby organisms to adapt to the other. In some instances this happens very quickly, in others very slowly, but (almost?) every living thing is subject to this mechanic. His theory of formative causation enables us to envision how form thus influences behavior and change. Rupert states that he was inspired to get to his theory by Henri Bergsson's "Matter and Memory". A book I wrote down as part of a conversation about time. Hearing all this I now believe that the same mechanism may be the thing that helps us get into a Groove. The morphic fields off the musicians playing together help them 'get closer' to each other automatically, like the singers in 'As it is in Heaven' who automatically get to a harmony when they sing their 'own' tune.

Today, I took part in conversation week 2008. (Thanks to Michiel Meijer) The question on the table was "How can we be the change we want to see in the world?" (Ghandi). The lively and respectful dialogue at our table brought the idea of Morphic Resonance back to mind. Being the change we want to see in the world may well be very effective. (if very difficult ;-)

Self, Culture and Nature as quadrants and as Stages in Wilber and Cornelis

2008-03-22T00:22:00.005Z

Ken Wilber's mission is to promote the development of body, mind and spirit in self, culture and nature. I subscribe to this mission and am evolving my own vision, partly based on his beautiful work. Wilber has created an integral map ,based on the work of hundreds of scholars and practitioners. Interestingly, one of the thinkers he may have missed (because not much of his work was translated to English) is Arnold Cornelis.

The striking similarity between Wilber and Cornelis is their use of the terms Self, Culture and Nature. But the difference is that Wilber uses the terms to create a (simplified) version of the quadrants of a holon (the four aspects inherent to any event: internal and external, individual and collective), while Cornelis uses them to describe a three stage human development process. What wilber would call 'stages'. He also turns them around. Nature being the first, Culture the second and Self the third stage in his model.

Cornelis (+1999), who is a philosopher in the Piaget lineage had a great talent to make his philosophy accessible through an almost poetic use of examples and language. He also applied his stage development to the concept of time, making his work a nice link between Wilber and my questions regarding Groove that I will use in my reseach. Today, while looking for a reference to his work I came accross this website, an art project reflecting his work. Enjoy

Critique of a Flow principle

2008-03-21T23:10:00.005Z

Flow is defined as "the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields" (Wikipedia, 21-3-2008).
According to Csíkszentmihályi a Flow emerges in the presence of eight conditions. One of these is "A distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered."

My key question is what set of circumstances evokes a state of "Groove", which I believe to be a collective state of consciousness where all involved are ‘caught’ in a collective Flow. The Groove is a metaphor that stems from Jazz. Every jazz performance aims to achieve a Groove.

In my preliminary studies of Groove in jazz and other contexts (theater, rowing, business) I have found that a Groove implies that two types of time experience occur simultaneously. On the one hand there is the subjective experience of internal time (or the contemporary 'loss of time'), experienced while being involved in playing an instrument at the top of one's ability. At the same time, the song still sounds as an integral whole, which is only possible when all involved have a clear (if unconscious) sense of collective, objective, external time (as in the beat, rhythm, pace and pitch of the song).

Pascal Claeys triggered this thinking when we discussed similarities and differences between the jazz metaphor and the theater metaphor for improvisation. In his theater studies there was an improvisation teacher, who continuously focused on a grounding in external time while improvising. The presence was not complete without feeling the collective presence (date, time) at the same time.

Based on my personal experience, I do relate to the distorted sense of time described by Csíkszentmihályi, but could it be that a Flow can only emerge within an (unconscious) awareness of objective time? Or that a training to experience external time as an extra element for achieving Flow will evoke this state of consciousness faster or more often? I would surely assume so.

I assume that Flow is a state of consciousness comparable to specific forms of meditiation. Research has shown that regular meditation accelerates our growth accross a range of developmental lines (See Wilber). So learning if and how Flow is more effective (or satisfying) under the circumstance of forgetting and knowing time simultaneously may be important to understand.

Keith Jarrett trio inGroove

2008-03-21T21:19:00.004Z

Groove is a key word for my research. Last week I sent Tanno Bregonje this video to explain Groove. It is a fragment of a live performance of the Keith Jarrett trio.:

Sietse got a paper accepted at CAiSE!

2008-03-20T13:21:00.003Z

Sietse Overbeek with e-office, who was on my team before we founded v-work, had a paper accepted at this year's CAiSE conference in Montpellier, France. For those of you who are not familiar with Computer Science, this is one of the most prestigious conferences in the subject worldwide. A wonderful achievement for a wonderful PhD research that bridges gaps between cognitive science and computer engineering. The paper is called 'Information systems engineering supported by cognitive matchmaking' and will be published here once available. Congratulations Sietse!

Presentations Lared and Jong Management on slideshare

2008-03-20T13:16:00.003Z

I published my presentations with Lared and Jong Management on slideshare for those of you who want to review them. Look them up through the widget on the right side of the weblog. Of course they are not very valuable if you weren't there. Especially without the jazzinbusiness trio ;-) But for those of you who want to refer to the slides I hope this is a convenient way of finding them.

Test to find out the introduction of an article

2008-03-16T19:58:00.005Z

Since november I work with Barbara Minto's pyramid principle. Just before starting to work with it, I started writing an article with Daan Andriessen. We had already set up our basic outline. But since working with the pyramid principle, I have a need to rewrite the introduction, to make sure we have the right 'key line' for our article to work with. Funny though it seems, I feel it will be easier to find out the introductory flow by writing a number of different introductions than by rationally lining them out in mindmanager. So here we go with the first one. I aim to analyse them later to find out different ways in which we can introduce the subject.

Early 2007, we received an assignment to assess the feasibility of introducing a peer to peer banking marketplace in The Netherlands. The idea of our client was to restore the trust between people regarding money. Successful peer to peer initiatives like Zopa in the UK and Prosper in the US were the source of inspiration.
Behind our assignment lie trends that should be on the attention list of leaders in most organizations. Why is there a need to restore the trust between people about money? Why is there a market niche that wants to cut out the banks? Weren't banks meant to keep the trust between people about money in the first place? And it is not only in banking that we see this trend. Many industries face critical customers who use technology to share knowledge and who increase their power over business.
And it is not only consumers that take responsibility for their own hapiness. In The Netherlands, 4000 new consultancies were founded in 2006. That means 10 new consultancies every day for a year. It seems that talent is also redefining its relationship to the traditional organization at a breakneck pace.
Behind these trends is a more foundational shift in the evolution of the attitude of individuals and in culture. Ever more people have evolved beyond a conventional worldview and see the world either as a place of opportunity (modernism), equality (post-modernism) or integrity/holism (post-post modernism or integral)
There are many approaches available to business leaders who want to deal with the challenges. Think about Value Networks Analysis, to help balance social networks and business processes or Intellectual Capital, that helps organizations value people, relationships and culture in addition to physical and financial assets. Although a key prerequisite for any successful approach today seems to be for business leaders to let go of a certain measure of control and to restore a bond of trust with the people in and around the organization- a challenge for most - these approaches do not seem to be widely or successfully adopted.
I believe this is a problem, because without sound approaches we seem to be in for a clash between the modern and post-modern worldview that may leave both with less than before we got started. An integral view that balances both would really help people and business restore balance and move us into a new equilibrium where they can realize their goals simultaneously. Even more importantly, I believe business could play a key role in helping resolve world problems in addition to making a profit.
After studying this phenomenon for some time, my reading of Lakoff and Johnson pointed me to thinking that the slow adoption of integral approaches might be caused by the language involved. Could it simply be too technical and too much focused on the niche of academics and consultants currently working with the tools to be effective?
There may be a need for metaphors that help a larger audience gain access to the new approaches, so that they can be adopted in a larger organization in harmony.
Another thing I learned is that for any tool to be successfully adopted there is a need for an integral approach that takes into account both individual and collective aspects of organization and that needs to observe external aspects like behavior and systems as well as internal apsects like culture and emotions. An inspiring integral vision was created by Ken Wilber as a result of his studies of literally hundreds of thinkers in psychology, sociology, systems theory, cognitive science and other sciences. If we succeed in creating metaphor based interventions that enable a broad based conversation about the evolutionary shift we find ourself in now, we may succeed in accelerating this shift, while at the same time restoring some of the tensions that have emerged in parts of our systems as a result.
Lakoff and Johnsom's work teaches us that most of our systems are rooted in (unconscious) metaphors. A key result of their thinkng is that scientific intervention is actually based on design principles. Although this has been normal in medicine and engineering, this now also counts for the social sciences and the design of organizational systems. The metaphor of Organizational Improvisation offers many entailments to look at today's business challenges. It provides opportunities to talk about leadership in individuals, in teams. About structures, instruments, roles, networks, systems. It provides the opportunity to talk about individual and collective states of consciousness (Flow, Groove) and about balancing different types of time and structure.
In the article that will follow, we will explore what themes and discussions have resulted in the first four workshops based on the metaphor of organizational improvisation, so we learn what set of today's challenges is most apt to look at through this lens.
Tomorrow, I will break down the article to find out the structure and create the right introduction.

Jazz in Business live at Henley

2008-01-04T15:05:00.002Z

On June 11th, Jazz in Business performs at Henley Management College in the UK. Henley is one of Europes highest ranking business schools, and I am a grateful alumni of their program. After finishing my MBA with them in 2001, I have been in dialogue with professor Jane McKenzie and dr. Christine van Winkelen about research possibilities. We got together again a few months ago to discuss their recent work on "Critical mental capacities for effective strategic decision making in complex unpredictable business conditions". This is where the link with jazz in business kicks in. They have looked at how the arts may help us create a state of mind in which it is easier to deal with the ambiguities inherent in making complex decisions. One of the teammembers was Clare Morgan, whose project "Poetry in the Boardroom" was input for their studies. We have exchanged some ideas about the parallels between poetry and jazz as metaphors for complexity and we have found some very interesting questions there. Doing the workshop for the Henley KM forum in June will bring us together for the first time to work with these questions and I look forward to this gig very much!

Jazz in Business live at Lared

2008-01-04T14:59:00.001Z

Tuesday 15 January, Jazz in Business is live at the Lared network meeting. Lared is the company founded by Miriam Notten. She is the embodied spirit of networking as far as I am concerned. Miriam excells in living the principles of networking and she has made this into her craft. Together with a fine team she is helping her clients put network principles to purpose. In our performance on the 15th, we will try to map the metaphor of improvisation to networks in organisations. I will try to use 'time' as the lens with which to achieve that. Thereby testing some of the ideas I will look at in my PhD research. Another innovation in the format is that we will try to work with time bounded blocks in which the trio will show and tell the principles. If you are a member of the Lared network, I hope to meet you there!

Return the workplace to the user!

2007-12-11T14:04:00.001Z

For the Dutch IT channel, I wrote a column addressing the issue of one size fits all workplace outsourcing. The key message through the lens of this weblog is that every musician in a Jazz band has a different instrument to get the task of playing music done. Since a digital workplace serves people to create innovative solutions or products, the metaphor indicates that they also should be able to have different instruments. Modern workplace outsourcing, only focused on cost and safety is therefore not suited for a knowledge worker. The user should regain control over the workplace in order to achieve a groove!. The article, in Dutch, is here.

Constraint Based Workflow: Change Made Easy

2007-11-30T08:46:00.001Z

I Am in Portugal with Sietse Overbeek at the OTM Conference. Sietse has two papers accepted here. Yesterday, I saw a presentation of a paper and software from Eindhoven University on constraint-based workflow models. I instantly recognized a strong link to our thinking about improvisation. How can you make workflows flexible, while retaining control and support? In Eindhoven they have created a very user friendly interface to model those parts of workflows, where people should be able to judge if it makes sense to follow the flow or to defer, change or deviate from it. In many situations with our clients in the professional services industry, this is the only desirable mode for workflow systems. I welcome this thinking and will dive into it to see if it might help our clients in any way. For details see the abstract of their paper.

Minimal structures that allow maximum flexibility (*)

2007-11-19T19:08:00.002Z

In the fifth principle, the focus is on the nondual attitude that jazz musicians have towards the structure - flexibility dilemma. Both are an integral part of jazz music. Given the jazz musician's desire to improvise, the quest is to always look for the minimal structure that will create most space for improvisation. Structures are multiple and many. In our workshop we illustrate the principle by playing a few bars of summertime (the theme and one solo) in entirely different styles and keys that are called by the trio and the audience. How is it possible? How can musicians, by exchanging two words and a few looks just start playing? Here reality kicks in. Especially when we work with consultants or others who work in professional services. To them minimal structure at first sounds like music to their ears: "I told you we should leave more to improvisation and to ad-hoc. Autonomy rules!" However, when jazz musicians talk about minimal structure they are still talking about much more structure than we have to our disposal in business. Furthermore, they know very well what structures they don't want to think about that much (tacit) and know which ones to apply explicitly. Structures in jazz are the standards, that provide frameworks for well known songs. Substructures are the themes, chord changes, melodies, bars, tempo etc. Jazz musicians spend a lot of their time internalising these standards and structures and they have a large repertoire at the ready when they step on stage. This shared knowledge enables them to agree quickly on standards so they can focus attention on what really matters: improvisation. The great paradox is that the improvisations on the standards are what evolves the standards themselves. Structures are minimal when they make all musicians present feel safe and challenged at the same time. What are the standards in business. If we had more standards to our disposal, what could happen?

Barrett, F. J. (1998). Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organization: Implications for organizational learning. Organization Science, Special Issue: Jazz Organizing and Improvisation, 9(5), 605-622.

Distributed Task: Synchronization towards a Groove (*)

2007-11-08T21:42:00.003Z

In the fourth principle of our workshop we look at Frank’s vision on the distributed task. How do jazz musicians distribute the task of playing a song, while at the same time making sure the song still sounds as one performance. How do they know where they each have to be ‘in the song’ at what time and how do they continuously negotiate and synchronize between their individual solo’s and collective support for a soloist. How do they know where collective intros, themes and codas are? The key word here is Groove.

If an individuals immersion in time is called a jazz band's collective immersion in time is a Groove. So Groove is a sort of ‘Group Flow’. Essentially two time metaphors that are finely balanced together make for this disappearance of time consciousness. When the ‘external clock’ that dictates the rhythm, meter and beat is in perfect synch with the internal clock of the jazz musician's individual performance, flow and groove emerge. The linear time as a driving and constraining force enables time as a network of retentions and protentions to emerge for each jazz musician. Intensive use of all senses enables the letting go of time.

In the workshop we illustrate this principle by starting a song by playing the melody on one instrument, a few bars later the second instrument comes in, yet a few bars on the third. In the workshop setting, the emerging force of the music on the senses, the slow emergence of groove is almost tangible! We have also discussed the role of each instrument in Groove through the metaphor of Spiral Dynamics, Where the whole spiral is in perfect balance when Groove Emerges with the purple ‘base’ of the Bass, the red power of the drums together providing the structure for the song (blue) and instruments like the piano (yellow) integrating and building on the health of that structure. When jazz musicians inadvertently lose track of time in a song – Frank provides an anecdote of such an event in his article – The soloists have to let go one by one to let the foundational instruments solve the issue and restore the rhythm.

(*) Barrett, F. J. (1998). Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organization: Implications for organizational learning. Organization Science, Special Issue: Jazz Organizing and Improvisation, 9(5), 605-622.

Value Networks help the Enterprise Improvise

2007-11-05T21:15:00.000Z

Since 2003, I have been working with Verna Allee and Oliver Schwabe on Value Networks Analysis. I was drawn to this business modeling method by nature, since I had been looking for it since I learned about the Value Chain at Henley in 1997. The Value Chain is a powerful model to describe the activities of a 20th century, industrial producing enterprise, but somehow it always hurts when modeling service processes. The Value Network embraces the Value Chain form the knowledge era perspective. It takes people as the active agents in business and adds the intangible transactions and deliverables that really make things work. In addition you can still model lineair flows of products and tangible tranactions as you could with the Value Chain.

A frustration with the adoption rate of Value Networks eventually led me to Organizational Improvisation. To me, the Value Network represents the network of options that are present to an organization when working in realtime. When creating unique experiences with their customers and talent. Core to the network is the lineair time of the chain, that provides the foundation for the Groove that is established by the people who work with the network to create value in this very moment.

We have used Value Network Analysis successfully with client to model partnerships, innovation processes and use cases for the digital workspace, but now a case study has come-out that I would like to share with you. How does Boeing use Value Networks to move to the agility needed to sucessfully launch the dreamliner 787 airplane?

In a series of three articles on Colabria's weblog, Verna and her collegues sketch this case study. I am proud and happy for the team that they have made this large scale breakthrough with such a large enterprise and in such a profound way. Thanks for publishing this. It will certainly forward the adoption of Value Networks Analysis. Can't wait...

In the first article they describe how things got started when the flight test operation centre needed a new approach to increase its productivity in the road to testing the new dreamliner. Could it be a coincidence that one of the people involved is named 'Music' ;-)

In the second installment they describe how Value Networks Analysis was used as a breakthrough design method to map and model the flowpaths that people could collaborate on to make the new flight testing work.

In the final article they reflect on the impact of Value Networks Analsyis for Boeing.

Enjoy!

Jazzinbusiness Launch

2007-10-13T14:20:00.001+01:00

We launched! For all photo's see my picasa webalbum

Telling Tales

2007-09-22T14:37:00.000+01:00

As I present our work to audiences more and more, it starts to emerge with me that my skills in storytelling need upgrading. So I revisited Steve Denning's article 'Telling Tales' in the Harvard Business Review. I used this article two years ago as a base structure for my article on Value Networks and the Music Industry. Steve, who also wrote a few wonderful books on the subject, proposes different types and lines of stories for different objectives. What I am looking for today is a format that helps distill the essence from an article or bookpage for display in a weblog. Possibly at a later stage, these same fragments can be used in a larger article. What structure would he propose for this end?

From his list I see three motives and structures that I use when blogging:
- Sharing Knowledge
- Transmitting Values
- Sparking Action

For this blog I focus on sharing knowledge and sparking action. Which it occured to me while writing this I often use in combination.

Steve, himself a seasoned knowledge manager sees sharing knowledge as focusing on lessons learned from problems rather than the best practice. I used this approach in my Value Networks Article. I focussed on the response of the music industry to Napster, arguing that the mental models used prevented the incumbents form grasping the enormous opportunity present in the 'incident' they were trying to stop. This enabled outsider Apple to recreate itself from a computer maker to the market leader in online music. I often see this approach to storytelling in journalism, where an article that tries to convene abstract knowledge starts with a short story of the application.

I guess that there is a difference between the point Steve makes and the journalist's skill. In the journalist's case, the story seems to function as a metaphor or framework to read the article through. There doesn't seem to be a rule that says it should be a story that describes a problem solved. This rule fits better with Edward Tufte, who writes that when communicating knowledge we first need to be particular (i.e. a story or a practical example), then generic (the theory or framework behind the story) and then particular again, driving the point home by showing another practical application or story.

So this brings me to the following basic structure:
1. Starting point is the knowledge I try to communicate.
2. General structure (Tufte): Particular, Generic ,Particular
3. Specific structure (Denning): Focus on mistakes made and show in some detail how they were corrected, with an explanation of why the solution worked. This actually comprises particular and generic in Tufte's structure and opens the option to complete Denning's structure by adding the second particular.
4. When sparking action, this second particular needs to be a story that according to Denning "Describes how a succesful change was implemented in the past, but allows listeners to imagine how it would work in their situation."

Sources:
Denning, S. (2004). "Telling Tales." Harvard Business Review.
Tufte, E. R. (1997). Visual explanations : images and quantities, evidence and narrative. Cheshire, Conn., Graphics Press.
Middendorp, S. v. (2005). Business Ecosystems and Value Network Analysis. Intellectual Capital Magazine. 1.

Jazz at New World Symphony

2007-08-20T21:52:00.001+01:00

I'm back after some wonderful weeks off. I put myself on information sabbatical during the vacation, so I have to get used to typing again ;-)

Charles Savage pointed me to this e-week interview with the CTO of New World Symphony. A high speed network based on Internet 2 that uses the basic internet infrastructure, rather than 750K bespoke systems, to deliver high speed video conferencing. The interview illustrates how this technology is put to value in Music Education, where top-professors and top-students are difficult to get together in space and time. The new technology is so good that it enables new forms of collaboration.

Of course it is great to see that classical music is the example at hand. The interaction between student and mentor however is best seen through the metaphor of improvisation. The high resolution, low latency and good sound really facilitate real-time virtual learning of a difficult and tacit nature. If you can do this with music, you can do it with anything complex and intangible that need getting done by and between people.

I look forward to exploring this further next week when we all have meetings with Charles in The Netherlands. I envision us doing a jazzinbusiness workshop with some famous guestplayers virtually present for a client who wants to apply the principles to virtual collaboration. ;-)

Talking to Fielding

2007-07-19T10:20:00.001+01:00

Charles Savage, a wonderful colleague and mentor helped me arrange some talks with Fielding Graduate University. I have been working on a research proposal on Organizational Improvisation over the last year and am now exploring places where such a PhD research might best be done. Fielding is a university that was founded on principles of self steering and communication as Arnold Cornelis would put it and has an integral vision on what a PhD should constitute in the 21st century.

I first looked into them at Charles' suggestion half a year ago and found that Frank Barrett, whose article set me on this journey was faculty there. A few weeks ago, while reading Ken Wilber's Theory of Everything, I googled for an 'Integral University' which indeed happened to exist. This also pointed met to Fielding. Beautiful synchronicities in my experience.

I had two conversations with Dottie Agger Gupta, the associate dean of their Human and Organizational Development faculty. My sense now is very much that this could be a good place to move forward with. I am now creating an 'ideal' PhD journey description.

I will combine my question with this journey and a prospectus to see how we can get this financed. I feel that for me personally, for v-work and for business in general could prove a very valuable exercise... If you want to find out more drop me a line.

To be continued.

Provocative Competence (*)

2007-07-19T10:02:00.001+01:00

Frank Barrett illustrates this principle with the story of Kind of Blue. This legendary jazz recording was taken in two sessions in the fifties. Miles Davis had asked some of the great musicians he knew to get together for a recording session. They had one hour before recording and Miles didn't allow time to practice. They were shown some basic schemes of the songs Miles had in mind. Some of the songs were in schemes never played before by jazz musicians. The recording is one of the best know jazz albums of all time and introduced a new style into jazz. What made these people perform so well? Miles knew who he had asked and was confident that under the kind of uncomfortable pressure he had facilitated they would perform at their peak. And they did! A contemporary way of saying it is 'kill your darlings'. Once you feel comfortable with something you are not learning and growing, because learning and growing 'hurts'. Jazz musicians try to get out of their comfort zone on every occasion. Be it in the sessions they show up at or in the songs they play, once they start feeling comfortable they start moving to the edge of their current skills and knowledge. Paul Berner illustrates the principle in our workshop by first playing a basic walking bass. Playing this he calls 'fulfilling his job description'. This is all he has to do to get paid at the end of the gig. But it is not extrinsic motivation only that makes him a jazz musician. Doing just what a bass player is supposed to do is not what constitutes life to Paul Berner. See this impression of one of our try outs where you see Paul illustrating this principle. What does all this mean for knowledge workers? Who says you are one? Is it an attitude to life and work rather than a job? What is the knowledge workers 'manifest'? Why is it so difficult to step out of your comfort zone? Questions we need to address before claiming responibility for our work life...

(*) Barrett, F. J. (1998). Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organization: Implications for organizational learning. Organization Science, Special Issue: Jazz Organizing and Improvisation, 9(5), 605-622.

Armand solo!

2007-07-12T22:04:00.001+01:00

My brother Armand, who is the drummer in our jazzinbusiness trio produced a clinic DVD this week. A short YouTube video displays him at a drumsolo and gives some impression of his skills as a jazz drummer. I love it and look forward to our next gig...

Check the video out here: http://www.youtube.com/user/armandvanm

Embracing errors as a source of learning (*)

2007-07-12T14:06:00.001+01:00

The second installment in my description of Frank Barrett's principles and how we work with them in our workshop. Edited somewhat, so they may differ from the originals at impronomics.wetpaint.com

Jazz musicians see three types of reactions to errors where most organisations mostly see only two:
1. Errors out of carelessness, which are not acceptable, both in jazz and business.
2. Errors as a source of learning, which are accepted in both jazz and business.
3. Errors as a source of innovation, which are mostly unknown in business, but are more common in jazz.

The difference in the approach to type 2 errors between business and jazz is that business accepts errors for learning, but is focused on phasing out errors over time. In business, the focus on type 2 errors is on phasing out. Jazz musicians (having the safety not to fly a plane ;-) accept that errors are integral to performance. Jazz musicians see even further...

In type 3 reactions, jazz musicians treats errors, or rather - unexpected events - as triggers for innovation. Unexpected twists and turns may open pathways to new discoveries in music. Anecdotes in Barrett's article tell that errors have led to new interpretations and styles in the music. In our workshop Folkert improvises a melody that fits the audience and tries to make mistakes on purpose (which is quite difficult ;-). He then shows the different ways to resolve errors into embellishments, variations or improvisations of the music at hand. What would happen if we saw errors as unexpected events in business? Can we postpone our judgment and ask what's there to discover or learn from an unexpected event? Can we let others make their own errors to learn from and make them more integral to business performance?

(*) Barrett, F. J. (1998). Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organization: Implications for organizational learning. Organization Science, Special Issue: Jazz Organizing and Improvisation, 9(5), 605-622.

The performance in The Hague

2007-07-12T13:56:00.001+01:00

Last thursday we performed jazzinbusiness in The Hague. It was the first time we had to spueeze the workshop in 20 minutes. We had to improvise quite heavily to achieve that and ended up in 30 minutes after all. Just too long for the condition: a graduation ceremony, where we were in between the participants and their goal: obtaining their degree. We now know that this is the shortest timeframe to perform our act with desired impact. Folkert did a brilliant job in rounding up the workshop and provoked an improvised example about chaos. Improvisation is by some defined as a capcity to extract structure from chaos quickly. So that adds a new one to our vocabulary.

Reactions were very positive. While we had quite some evaluation points, our audience experienced a brilliant workshop. Getting that feedback was a relief, but at the same time a confirmation of our progress over the last year. We can learn, while our audience doesn't suffer for it.

Retrospective sensemaking (*)

2007-07-05T10:02:00.001+01:00

As promised, I will repost some of our experiences with Frank Barretts principles in our workhop here. This is the first installment. I have edited the entries, so they may differ from the ones published on our wiki at: http://impronomics.wetpaint.com/page/Notes+on+Frank+Barrett

Relying on retrospective sense making as form.In order to perform music in real time, to improvise, a jazz musician can't plan ahead. But how can complex music be performed in the moment? What can you do? In the workshop Armand explains it like this: Asking questions and listening deeply are the two basic skills at play here. In addition, you have to trust yourself and the moment. If you dare just start asking yourself a musical question, a question that is provoked by the moment, the question itself will provoke an answer if you listen carefully. Then, maybe you revisit your question and make an embellishment on it and maybe you give a slightly different answer. Could the answer be hiding a new question itself if you listen deeply enough? And what's the next step? Before you know it you are immersed in a solo, improvising, exploring the musical edges of your instrument, supported by your fellow musicians, who encourage you.

Clear is that it comes to listening closely and asking questions. What is the standard in our culture? Is there a balance between asking questions and answering them? Between talking and listening? How are we trained? What are we doing to accept complexity? Are we giving more room to the questions we need to ask and to listening deeply in our organizations? Do we trust that our knowledge and skills will get us through, or do we need to control things in advance? Do we trust the moment and the fact that we will learn where to go just by starting? We could learn from the courage and skills in questioning and listening that the jazz musician displays. We could start to find a balance by taking this attitude as our starting point. By accepting that we do improvise most of the time and by focusing on basic skills that are at play there. As Paul Berner, our bassist says: The song will tell you what to play.

What are your questions? Do you listen deeply?

(*) Barrett, F. J. (1998). Creativity and improvisation in jazz and organization: Implications for organizational learning. Organization Science, Special Issue: Jazz Organizing and Improvisation, 9(5), 605-622.

Michael Jones

2007-07-05T09:55:00.000+01:00

Sander Hoeken pointed me to Michael Jones. As a consultant and trainer he found that his audience was most responsive when he played the piano. When somenone asked why he dind't play the piano continuously then, he started doing so. He connected with Peter Senge's team with MIT in Boston to form thoughts on music, leadership and dialogue. Very much the path you see in the colaaboration between Frank Barrett and David Coopperrider and their work on metaphor based interventions and Appreciative Inquiry.

You can find Michael's site here: http://www.pianoscapes.com/index.html and the website for the Dialog project at MIT Sloan: http://www.dialogonleadership.org/

Presentation at Den Haag University for Professional Education

2007-07-05T09:42:00.001+01:00

Today, we will present our jazzinbusiness workshop at the graduation ceremony for communication at The University for Professional Education in The Hague. Given the time and the scene - 20 minutes and 100 people in the audience - we will do a short version and be somewhat more in 'send' mode. I am excited to learn how this will play out with a larger audience and if we succeed in creating the connection with the audience. Keep you posted.

Proud!

2007-07-05T09:32:00.002+01:00

Todd Wheatland, who asked us to help his team with Kelly, was quite baffled by our Jazz in Business training. He provided us with the following evaluation and recommendation. Needless to say that I feel quite proud of where we stand today!

"The jazz metaphor really works. It aligned strongly with our three day working session in Paris, touching on relevant topics for our marketing organization. Your workshop also challenged our thinking on how we collaborate as a team of professionals from across Europe. At the same time you also demonstrated remarkable knowledge of marketing and organizational strategies. The combination of live music, business examples and practical training is a surprising combination. I can recommend Jazz in Business to anyone."

Todd Wheatland
Director - Marketing, EMEA
Kelly Services

Been off, but not off peak experiences

2007-06-11T23:12:00.000+01:00

I have been off blogging and onto wiki for a while. We launched a basic site describing the jazz in business workshop for the occasion of a training session we did in Paris. In addition we did the May 1 event on Wikinomics and Improvisation and finally, I gave a guestlecture at the University of Amsterdam on the topic of Organizational Improvisation.

The site can be found at http://www.jazzinbusiness.nl It is a basic description of the workshop. This weblog actually provides some of the deeper thoughts behind the workshop and I will start posting my interpretation of Franks principles and how we work with them here over the next days. Any feedback is welcome. We will be adding some more content over the next weeks. But let us know of any things you want to see on the site.

Our workshop in Paris was a peak experience. I had not been to Paris for fourteen years. When checking out the route description I found out that we were booked in a hotel around the corner of the hotel I did my internship in 1993, when studying hotel management in Maastricht. When you see that you silently start asking: what does that mean. When we arrived and I was checked in. I came into my room and I looked straight at the window of the attic room I lived in for half a year in 1993. Later that night we discussed the workshop with our client and he tols us it would be in the Concorde St-Lazare. Now that really was something to me.

The next day we did the best workshop sofar. Combining our standard principles in a way that built on the last one, we added interaction by letting the team do two rounds of co-creative dynamic teaming. A variant on the world-café developed by Charles Savage and aimed at bringing people together and building on their capabilities and aspirations. The spirit at the workshop was great and we had a feeling the participants were almost saying 'we want more' before turning to their scheduled business meeting afterwards. I understood that our client felt the workshop had a major effect on the business meeting they were having the three days after and I like to explore how we could measure this impact in my research. I hope we created a peak experience for the participants , because that is what we aim at: expanding consciousness as a result of our work.

Much of the learning before the workshop emerged in our May 1 session wikinomics and improvisation. Charles and I had prepared this one day jam session in collaboration with Marc and Joshua from art in rhythm and Daan Andriessen from Inholland University for Professional Education. We created a wetpaint wiki to evaluate the learning from that day, which was painful at times (as learning should be out of the comfort zone). If you participated, expect an invitation shortly.

Finally, Anna Snel asked me to deliver a guestlecture for a group of graduating Masters students in businesseconomics and information management at the University of Amsterdam. I took a somewhat more academic look at the work we are doing and added some of my experience with the 'real world' of our clients. Here too, I added two rounds of co-creative dynamic teaming. In this case I had to participate myself (Doing so May 1 caught me 'off stage'). A very powerful question was posed by Sam, the student I interviewed for the first round. After he interviewed me (I talked about my Paris peak experience, as I will be for some while) he asked me: "And what happens in that hotel in fourteen years?" Now that has me thinking on my toes.... Thanks Sam!

Contemplating paradigm shift and expanded understanding

2007-04-21T01:10:00.002+01:00

Charles posted the following comment to my introduction:

"Sergej, we talk about "paradigm shifts," but might we instead talk about "an enlarging of our understanding?" When I shift paradigms I am not just changing the direction of my "looking," but instead I am grasping (grokking) something in a more profound way, something that was likely there, but which I didn't see before. For example, when Einstein helped us see "space-time," he didn't invent the relationship, it had always been there, but he just made us aware, and in becoming aware, we were able to gain a deeper and more realistic understanding of the dynamics of our world and us in it. So when we move from the "gear" metaphor to the "groove" metaphor, what is really shifting and what does it mean? -- Charles"
Open Gear and Groove members see here: <http://v-work.sharepointsite.net/labs/gearandgroove/Article%20A%20tale%20of%20two%20metaphors%20Gear%20and%20Groove/Forms/EditForm.aspx?ID=4>

Thanks Charles, Powerful questions as always. First let me try and remember a recent shift myself and reflect my experience.

A first thought is that when we have a paradigm shift our attention gets drawn to the new insight so absorbingly that we (at least briefly) think this is all there is now. Maybe I simply forget the former paradigm at first. When I read Lakoff and Johnson for example, and grasped the meaning of their work. My first thought was to ditch my Oxford Companion to Philosophy altogether. All tenets of western philosophy as created in their own paradigm were no longer valid right?

After a little while of getting used to their new idea's, and after applying them myself to different contexts, I started to see that many tenets of a previous state of mind still worked well. Arnold Cornelis for example, was not aware of Lakoff and Johnson's findings when he wrote his 'Logic of Feeling'. But, in line with the title, I still find many of his insights (or metaphors ;-) are very well applicable for making sense of the complexity of everyday life. But at the same time I am better aware of where he uses metaphor, and how I find, in my experience, such mataphor apt to the questions at hand. So by shifting a paradigm, I have expanded my understanding to a level that helps me better understand Cornelis and the applicability of his thinking to my questions.

So in my own experience I would say that after experiencing a shift, in retrospect, after internalizing some of the new, I would indeed prefer to use your suggested statement that I have expanded my understanding. Let me try and make a drawing to explain how I experience it.

There is a number of key elements involved in the process:

Paradigms: through the lens of philosophy in the flesh I would define a paradigm as a relatively consistent and stable set of metaphors that provide a coherent and apt framework for sense making to a given set of issues and questions. A paradigm can be as humble as the example of the 'arrow' in the FeDex logo, or as large as the shifts from Newton, to Einstein, to String Theory. So we have them on a day to day basis as well as every so many centuries. The larger ones take steeper curves.
Expanded understanding: covering more than one paradigm, and taking the 'latest paradigm' as the starting point for sensemaking.
People: An individual over time, and individuals in different paradigms simultaneously who, by empathy and passion, help others with answers to their questions.
Experiences, maybe and often anomalies, errors, serendipities, accidents, incidents, problems leading to reactive...
...Questions, which can also be pro-active, caused by leaving the comfort zone, explorations, experiments...
Answers: can be expanded understanding within a paradigm (or set of paradigms), but in the light of our discussion here these can be answers 'to be discovered out there' (Einstein) or answers provided by people from a different paradigm. Since answers are never true, they pretty quickly evoke new questions. (Now that IS something my five year old daughter understands ;-)
Perception of answers: (paradigm filter). Providing an answer from a paradigm (especially right after a shift) can be a passionate affair. The receiver of the answer on the other side filters through her current paradigm. The strength of the question and the position on the learning curve towards the shift determine the effect.
Shift: The tipping point for an individual (or a complete culture)
A continuous cycle of growth towards a new paradigm, shifting and internalizing. (If you keep questioning) Often described in terms of hierarchy, spiral, time or growth curves. (We can't help it: growth is up)
The folk theory of the 'essence of being' leads us to search for the ultimate truth. This probably entrenched paradigm itself as the important issue at hand with me unconsciously.
Philosophy in the Flesh teaches us that it is really expanding our understanding by adding new metaphor to apply to different questions. Newton is still ok to explain gravity in most cases, while we know there is more ways to look at it now. We also experience earth as the middle of the universe on a day to day basis. (Quite practical right?)

So each part of this story has its use in explaining our learning, growth and evolution. Focusing on expanding understanding comes closer to an inclusive and pragmatic approach than paradigm shift as such, which stresses the peak experience where, I at least, briefly, dismiss the 'old'. Not very productively ;-)

Same goes for Gear and Groove. Gear for me represents the industrial model, while Groove represents (for me) the expanded understanding of both the knowledge economy AND the industrial model. So gear, for me, is not a paradigm equivalent for the knowledge economy as OPPOSED to the industrial economy.

One of the key questions that arises is: Can a metaphor, by including two paradigms, accelerate the cycle for people to shifting their paradigm if they haven't done so yet? What would be design criteria for such a metaphor given a specific paradigm shift?

Paradigm Shift Visualised

2007-04-21T00:17:00.001+01:00

Beauty is truth, truth beauty...

2007-04-12T23:36:00.002+01:00

...That is all ye know and all there is to know on earth. (John Keats)

As if John already knew what insights Lakoff and Johnson would bring together in their book 179 years later.

Daan Andriessen pointed me to their work two years ago when I first discussed doing a PhD with him. I was looking for a theme related to Value Networks Analysis at the time and he said that if he would have read that book when doing his PhD, it would have turned it up side down. Lucky me, still defining my question and getting the chance to turn it upside down already!

Of course I bought the book and started reading. Now more than a year later it really starts to sink in what's in there. At some stage in exploring my questions (which by then had evolved towards Organizational Improvisation) I found a book by Umberto Eco called 'A history of beauty'. On the back was the quote from the poem by Keats that captures this philosophical work in one sentence.

Ok, to further my exploration, let me try and make my own short summary of what I understand of Lakoff and Johnson so far.

The mind is embodied. Most thought is unconscious. Human concepts are largely metaphorical. This also captures what's in the book, but reading that only evokes questions right? Let me try and explain it in simple words.

The mind is embodied. Our reason is not a faculty that is separate from the body. Our body, specifically our sensory-motor system, feeds our reason. Without physical experience there is no reason. Ultimately, all our reason is based on, and constricted by what our body experiences sensually.

Most thought is unconscious. 95, or even more of what we think is at the unconscious level. We can't help what we think there, nor do we want to (mostly) since many thinking is involved in performing the most basic actions. We use the conscious part for the very tiny portion that we need to be aware of consciously.

Human concepts are largely metaphorical. What is literal about this world? Mostly things in nature. Most abstract concepts that are part of psyche or culture are metaphorical in nature. Take the expression 'a warm smile'. Is this smile warmer in degrees Celsius than a grunt? No. It is a metaphor that indicates affection, an abstract concept. Where does it come from? As a child you are held by your parents. When you are held, you experience two sensations simultaneously: Physical warmth, because you are near another human being and a feeling of love and affection. Because these sensations activate two area's in the brain simultaneously, a link is created between these two parts in the brain. This effect we call conflation. As this happens again and again, the link between warmth and a feeling of affection is reinforced. The physical domain of warmth gets mapped to the abstract feeling of affection to help us make sense of it. Eventually this finds its way into language as the expression a warm smile.

We have several hundred of these basic metaphors in our brains. Big is important (tomorrow is the big day), Growth is up (We go for the top), Seeing is knowing (Oh, now I see!) etc. We cannot help acquiring them, since we have sensual experiences every day, our minds are tied to our bodily experience and most thought is unconscious.

On top of this set of basic metaphors we evolve complex metaphors. Complex metaphor comes into play when we need to make sense of abstract concepts. Lakoff and Johnson explain this by example of 'love'. Complex concepts generally have a radial category of differing metaphors that help make sense of a subject. Love is a journey, or love is an organism are two examples of complex metaphors for love. In the first instance we may say that we 'started out' well together, but we now have decided to each go 'our own way'. Or we have grown over that (2nd example). Part of a source domain that we have experience with (travel, nature) is mapped to the target domain (love) (usually more abstract than the source domain) to help make sense of it.

An Example Daniel uses often to clarify this mapping of a part is the expression 'the man is a lion'. We map source(lion) on man (target). Do we mean to say that the man has a furry skin and a tail or do we mean that the man is courageous and strong? We automatically select the properties from the source domain that are apt to help us make sense of the target.

Ok, still with me?

Once you start to realize this and you try to read any book on abstract concepts, you start seeing metaphor everywhere. We use metaphor to work with concepts of time, cause and effect, the self, morality and economics. Philosophers use metaphor to ask what's true (without consciously realizing it. Many philosophers denounce metaphor as a vehicle for truth seeking because it is only apt for the arts and rhetoric. The most striking conclusion from the insights here is that truth itself is suddenly directly bound to the question you have at hand and no longer a clearly defined philosophical grail to search for.

Keats helps me realize that truth is beauty. The better a metaphor feels to the senses, the more it is true for the situation. This one sentence explains why we can now observe a shift to design thinking as a management science. This one sentence motivates me every day to further explore the metaphor of organizational improvisation, because this takes art as a source domain and thereby views management and business as target domain for beauty.

Ok, if you are ready for more, please check out Daan's great paper on the metaphorical nature of intellectual capital and bear with me while we try to apply these insights to organizational improvisation and the value chain and value network in 'A tale of two metaphors, Gear and Groove'. (send me a note when you want to join that dialogue)

Sources cited in this item:

Keats, J. 1820. Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh : the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Andriessen, D. 2006. On the metaphorical nature of intellectual capital: a textual analysis. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 7(1): 93-110.
Kamoche, K. N., Cunha, M. P. e., & Cunha, J. V. d. 2002. Organizational improvisation. London ; New York: Routledge.

Groove in jazz and other contexts

2007-04-05T21:22:00.002+01:00

Groove defined

Groove is the term that jazz musicians use to describe the phenomenon of close synchronization between all members of a band performing a song. Groove happens when the beat and the meter work together to create a 'lock-in' that holds all parts of the distributed task of playing a song together. In such a way that this enables the individual musicians to perform at their peak. Improvisation follows effortlessly when a band is in a groove.

These two quotes from an article by Frank Barrett (Who in turn quotes a brilliant book by Berliner) illustrates this magnificent state of consciousness.

"Every musician wants to be locked in that groove where you can't escape the tempo. You're locked in so comfortably that there's no way you can break outside of it, and everyone's locked in there together. It doesn't happen to groups every single night, even though they may be swinging on every single tune. But at some point when the band is playing and everyone gets locked in together, its' special for the musicians and for the aware, conscientious listener. There are the magical moments, the best moments in jazz. (Franklin Gordon in Berliner 1994, p. 388)"

Barrett then continues to analyze the paradoxical nature of groove:

"What happens when musicians strike a groove adds a paradoxical dimension to our earlier discussion of attention and cognitive processing. Good improvisers, we said, employ a combination of automatic and controlled cognition. However, this experience of groove that improvisers hope for seems to involve a surrender of familiar controlled processing modes; they speak of being so completely absorbed in playing that they are not consciously thinking, reflecting, or deciding on what notes to play, as if they are able to simultaneously be inside and outside of their bodies and minds. Controlled thinking is depicted sometimes as an obstacle, something to develop only to escape."

Let's look at other domains where groove is experienced and then let's see what happens when we take groove as the source domain and reason about business, especially time in business.

Groove in rowing

This winter I read the inspiring book Synchronicity, the path to inner leadership by Jo Jaworksi. Somewhere in there he describes the state that rowers get into when they are perfectly synchronized in performance. (I don't have the book at hand right now, so lost for the term or the reference. Anyone?)The feeling is comparable to the descriptions jazz musicians give of Groove. This week's Economist has a short feature on how principles from business where weighing collaboration and competition in are applied to the Cambridge rowing team as a means to let the rowers 'self-steer' the decision how to assemble the team based on rowing rhythm. An interesting development, since I would guess that business still has more to learn from jazz and rowing when it comes to dealing with such paradox.

Groove in collaboration (software)

Ray Ozzie, the founder of Groove Networks started this company after he had sold Lotus Notes to IBM in 1995. Groove is peer to peer collaboration software. When I first read Barretts description of Groove, I was quite sure Ray had read the same article, or at least uses the organizational improvisation metaphor in his work. Software that peers can use to self-organize collaboration on a distributed task, using a set of standards to close the often physical gap in today's world fits the conditions players in jazz need to be in groove: according to Barrett:

"Jazz members are able to negotiate, recover, proceed, adjust to one another because there is shared task knowledge (members monitor progress on ongoing basis), have adequate horizon of observation (they are witnesses to one another's performance); and they bring multiple perspectives to bear (each musical utterance can be interpreted from different points of view)."

Groove in business

What does all this mean for business? Last year I had a conversation with Verna on this and we came to the idea that meetings in business could get a completely different nature when seen through the lens of this metaphor. Instead of seeing a meeting as something that happens because there is something to discuss, so the meeting happens because of its content, may it be that the function of the meeting as part of a rhythm is equally or more important to achieve business groove. A regular tempo of meetings creates he lock-in needed to let the individual participants improvise in synch. It simulates the adequate horizon of observation and multiple perspectives needed for close collaboration.

Groove and networks

According to my close colleague and friend in Value Networks Analysis Verna Allee The natural pattern of work is the network . Ray christened his company Groove Networks. Pretty soon after he founded the company, Microsoft took a stake in it. At first I guessed because they were interested in the software itself. Two years later it started to emerge to me that it must have been connecting to Ray's mind that was in it for them. I read he joines the team with Microsoft that was thinking about moving from a hierarchical file-system to a network-based-file system: IFS. This fundamental change to the way an OS deals with files proved too difficult to incorporate it in Vista. Meanwhile Microsoft is owner of Groove and Ray is inheriting the role of Chief Software Architect from Bill Gates.

Groove and time

Analyzing all this over the last few years makes me think that Groove is the state of mind where two philosophical paradigms are experienced in synch. Lets take time as the philosophical lens to make sense of this assumption. Our dominant metaphors for reasoning about time are space based. One is moving time the other one is moving observer. In both cases time is metaphorised as space, where in moving time, the observer is on a line. In front of him is the future, behind him the past. The observer himself is in the present. Time is objects moving towards the observer from the future, as when we say: tomorrow comes or time passes by. In the other metaphor, the observer moves through a landscape of time, where events in time are places on the map. This happens when we reach the end of the project and when we say that the distance between Utrecht and Amsterdam is half an hour. These definitions of time serve well to describe external, social time or clock time. This is a cultural phenomenon, invented to synchronize activities between people. Transferring the metaphor to jazz you could say that this form of time is akin the beat and the meter. The standards that set the pace of a song, the

"surrender of familiar controlled processing modes"

mentioned earlier. External time is of a different philosophical nature than internal time, which is present when musicians describe what they experience when they improvise, when they compose in the moment. Barrett quotes Bailey in his article:

"I'm attracted to improvisation because of something I value. There is a freshness, a certain quality, which can only be obtained by improvisation, something you cannot possibly get from writing. It is something to do with the "edge." Always being on the brink of the unknown and being prepared for the leap. And when you go out there you have all your years of preparation and all your sensibilities and your prepared means but it is a leap into the unknown."

Improvising as an individual within the song is an experience of communicative self-steering. Of individual expression. The internal time consciousness that comes into play while doing that is best metaphorized as a network. Losscher strikingly defines time as

"not a line of now moments, but rather a network of intentionalities, a network of retentions and protentions. So time is a network of being conscious of's"

The paradox of Groove is that it captures both external and internal time in a paradox, which is then balanced to enable a feeling of flow in every individual participating in a distributed task. The metaphor of a network, as opposed to a line is often used to try and explain the phenomenon.

Easiest now would be to define that external time is a line and internal time a network. But I feel that the metaphor is one level trickier than that. I feel that the willingness to make that distinction is given in by our dominance of space experience and metaphors.

In my opinion the metaphor of the network can capture both external and internal time in one encompassing paradox. The network is a useful metaphor to start capturing a new level of complexity where you cover both paradigms. Once you have this holistic picture you can distinguish the external and linear part among its structures. Depending on what Groove you try to achieve you can use this model to decide where to let meter and beat do its work and where pole will be free to improvise. Try that starting from he time is a line metaphor. ;-)

Sources quoted in the article:

Barrett, F. J. 1998. Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organization: Implications for Organizational Learning. Organization Science, Special Issue: Jazz Organizing and Improvisation, 9(5): 605-622.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh : the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Berliner, P. F. 1994. Thinking in Jazz, The Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago London: University of Chicago Press.
Losscher, H. A. 2005. Duality, Shades of Meaning. Radboud University, Nijmegen.
Rhythm and Blues, Economist, March 29, 2007
Cornelis, A. 1999. De vertraagde tijd, revanche van de geest als filosofie van de toekomst. Middelburg: Essence.

What is the core message of jazz in business?

2007-04-02T22:57:00.001+01:00

I am working to create new website material for the jazz in business workshop we have developed last year. Two reasons: we aim to launch jazz in business in May. In the same month we are live in Paris! We play for the marketing executives of a large temp agency.

A good occasion to take the lessons learned so far and to create a new and simple message. Using the jazz principles myself to arrive at that, I start my first try with a question: If I had to explain to my five year old daughter what is key to the jazz workshop, what would I say?

The jazz in business workshop helps people in business (re)connect with their natural-born talent for creativity and innovation.

The overwhelming complexity and dynamics of current business problems and challenges, like globalization, regulation, increasing consumer power and a need to balance corporate social responsibility with profitability and collaboration with competition, promote a strong desire in business leaders for a 'new simplicity'. People are uniquely equipped to 'create' a way out of this situation. Today however, we seem trapped in our own systems. Systems we created as solutions to challenges in the first place, now seem to hold our creativity prisoner. We need to break out of this by shifting our paradigm. People must create space and time to rethink their systems and to adapt them to a changed world.

Our mind is embodied. Our physical, sensual experience is directly connected to our reason. Our cognitive unconscious provides us with a comprehensive set of experiences, linked to abstractions that help us react to our environment unconsciously in our everyday lives. New life conditions provoke new mind conditions. We create new mind conditions by creating new metaphors, grounded in experience and connected to abstract reason. Jazz provides us with a new experience and language that is well suited to think about the challenges facing us in business today. Experiencing the workshop and the principles of jazz with all our senses may help us shift paradigm: people, not systems change the rules.

The workshop lets you experience eight principles of improvisation, packed in four sessions, that together form a comprehensive metaphor to deal with learning, change, collaboration and innovation in business:

1. Organizational Improvisation defined

2. Individual principles in jazz:

basic attitude of the jazz musician;
learning style;
sense making in improvisation.

3. Collaboration principles in jazz performance:

synchronization of a distributed task;
jazz leadership style;
balancing of innovation and standardization.

4. Community Principles:

learning in networks;
economics in networks.

A brief impression of one of our earlier try-outs lets you grasp some of the feel of the workshop. (In Dutch). Click here to view the two minute movie.

Key sources used for this item:

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh : the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books.
Graves, C. & Lee, W. R. 2002. Graves : levels of human existence : transcription of a seminar at the Washington School of Psychiatry, October 16, 1971. Santa Barbara, CA: ECLET Pub.
Barrett, F. J. 1998. Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organization: Implications for Organizational Learning. Organization Science, Special Issue: Jazz Organizing and Improvisation, 9(5): 605-622.

Jazz in business, organizational improvisation and open source

2007-03-28T21:20:00.002+01:00

People, not organizations...

IBM takes organizational improvisation seriously. Their next generation development platform is 'Jazz' On the jazz website you can see what their core message is: People, not organizations, build great software!

This weblog item explores some of the linkages and background that led to this new development and tries to formulate some questions that can be further explored in organizational improvisation.

The website where the community is developing this new platform is rich in dialogue, adhering to some of the principles you would expect of a network of professionals using this metaphor.

Given enough eyeballs...
I first read about the principles underpinning open source when Charles Savage pointed me to Eric Raymond's essay 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' two years ago. In his essay Eric describes his observations and learning while coordinating the development of an open source e-mail application. He is not so much focused on the idea of open source as an end result, i.e. the product, as on the principles that guide the way the open source community works and collaborates to create such software. He compares his findings with the centralized, traditional development model that is metaphorised as 'The Cathedral' while reflecting on the workings of the open source community as a 'Bazaar'. A key bazaar principle (one of fourteen in total) is: given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow. Indicating the difference of publishing a problem to a large community trusting that the person who has the right set of skill and knowledge to solve the issue will find it first in contrast to assigning such problem to a person in a centralized control model where this match is not so obvious.

IBM a few years before today…
A few years ago, an IBM manager published the first results they observed in a pilot, where they switched some of their internal teams from the cathedral to the bazaar model. The outcomes were astonishing. 30% more efficient development at a higher quality level. This short quote does not even come to mention the impact of an open source work style on talent development, knowledge sharing and retainment. Very important intangibles in today's talent market. See the article on eWeek for a full brief.

Connecting the dots…
Looking back at the article I found out that the same people are behind the open source pilot and the jazz project. Could that be a coincidence? Danny Sabbah on both occasions acts as spokesperson. Core people from IBM Rational are the visionairies bringing the message. Michel Jonker, one of the architects with e-office, pointed me to this great video, where Erich Fromm and John Wiegand share their learning when they switched form their old 'closed, Swiss banker, once a year shipping' paradigm to the 'open development rhythm' paradigm they are doing now.

One of the questions I have is. The jazz metaphor jumps in almost intuitively. Rhythm replaces Shipping. It is not too difficult to see some parallels between how open source works from the perspective of operations. And yet it is not something explored in much detail. My time today doesn't allow me for that either. But in our 1 May event I would definitely like to explore this further. What do jazz musicians do in a song that is applicable to the communications and rhythm of a team. What entailments from the source domain of jazz can be projected on the target domain of software development and what does that mean. Verna surfaced this interesting thought with me last year April: May it be that a beat and meter of meeting is more important as such than the contents being discussed in such meetings?

I welcome your thoughts as we develop this theme further...

It's the instruments stupid….or not?

2007-03-18T23:41:00.002Z

On our second try out last year, we were deliberating the question how it was possible that jazz musicians, as opposed to people in service organizations have so many standards. Standards in this context meaning, rhythm, harmony, melody, songs, tempo's etc.

Paul Berner offered an interesting point of view: His guess was that jazz being much longer around than knowledge work made sure that the basics of the trade had evolved farther than those of knowledge work could have. Peter Drucker, who coined the term knowledge worker somewhere to the end of the fifties was the first to note them. Miles Davis was already exploring his second revolution in the music by that time…

The funny thing that strikes me is that knowledge workers have a lot of common standards to play with than you might think: TCP/IP being the scales and notes, smtp and pop/imap being melody and sip/simple likening voice. So everything in place for a great performance then? No. The obvious bottleneck you would think is our suppliers of instruments, who, for their competitive position try to implement different approaches to the standards. It takes not much imagination to hear how that would sound in a jazz trio.

The dialogue we had shifted quickly away from that. If people were more serious about what instruments they played than how they could play them together that would certainly not be knowledge workers…

How to start a blog today?

2007-03-17T00:43:00.001Z

Let me start by saying that the title to this post is a question, not an answer. My Guess, after some years of thinking, would be that a blog, and therefore this blog should no longer purely be 'in' cyberspace, but in (cyber)time.

This is not my first blog. However, I think it is my first blog entry without fear. Fear for starting something that will be left behind at the time of its conception. An unconscious and dominant feeling for space invoked this fear. A fear for losing track of what was where. Today my question when I lose something will be: when?

So, this blog is different. It feels different. It is different. It sounds different. Because of jazz. Jazz helped me see that not only space and time exist simultaneously, but time itself has two simultaneous identities. The internal time of our hidden programme and cultural, external time. (Cornelis, 1999)

How can jazz help us make better sense of time? And how can an evolving sense of time help business? Two questions that I would like to explore with you here.
My motivation? I believe that understanding these questions will help business contribute to both world benefit and stakeholders needs simultaneously.

What are your start(l)ing idea's? Don't be afraid to post them now. When complex, things only seem to make sense retrospectively. Why not give your best shot right now instead of trying to work it out another time…

Cornelis, A. 1999. De vertraagde tijd, revanche van de geest als filosofie van de toekomst. Middelburg: Essence.

Opening Business Jazz

2007-03-15T22:33:00.001Z

For about two years I have been working the jazz metaphor now. Here is a text of a wiki item I posted last week on our teamsite. It is an open invitation to help co-create the next stage in working with the jazz metaphor. Feel free to contact me if you want to join this project.

This wiki serves to startup the open business jazz project.

As I write this I am about to hop into the car to ski in Switserland for a few days. Two years ago, in the spring the idea for this project was planted with me just before another vacation, in France actually, by Charles Savage. He was coaching me at that time. I remember well how he asked me what the mission of e-office, an ICT consultantcy and my employer at that time was. As I answered that e-office improves the productivity of information workers, Charles said: Well that's boring!

He challenged me to help e-office create a more challenging mission, which was my responsibility at the time. He urged me to look for the arts and mentioned our rich legacy of golden age painters as an example. When I offered that I found that boring he asked me: "Are there any forms of art that you have a passion for?" My immediate answer was: Jazz!

A month later, while reading an article by David Cooperrider on Appreciative Inquiry, my eye fell on a reference to an article by Frank Barrett about improvisation and creativity in Jazz and Organization (see the shared documents library on this site for the article and many more). Back home I asked Egbert Baarsma to check out that article for me. Egbert scanned all journals for jazz articles and to my surprise there were many. I was hooked immediately. I knew that the jazz metaphor, or Organizational Improvisation was my thing.

Two years later we have the business jazz trio, with whom I co-created a workshop based on Frank's article. Together with Armand van Middendorp (drums), Folkert Oosting (piano) and Paul Berner (Bass) we did some try-outs and by now we have some real experence with (paying) customers. The next step here is to launch the workshop with Folkert. We are creating a project here to work on that.

Last week, the experience was shared with Joshua Samson and Marc van Roon with Art in Rhythm, who have been working the jazz metaphor for 12 years already.

A turn in working the jazz metaphor came when Daan Andriessen pointed me to Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnsson. This lead to the idea of doing a PhD on organizational improvisation.

Finally, Charles inspired me to the title of this teamsite, which will also be the title of the article Daan and I will write on Organizational Improvisation. This wil start here.

Anyway. Before I try to put everything in this item. Click on one of the links to help co-create the jazz metaphor!

Pasted from <http://milesahead.sharepointsite.net/gearandgroove/Business%20Jazz%20Wiki/Home.aspx>