What do aquariums have to do with Web 2.0?

A few weeks ago while reading definitely not Web 2.0 related literature, I found a good metaphor for my ideas about Web 2.0. Günther Sterba was a German ichthyologist, a fish researcher, his aquarium books from the 50s were cult books of many young people that were still dealing with analog things, just like me. When I read them again, I found astonishing statements.

He wrote in 1955 (my words) that all the aquarium hobbyists would be essential for professional research. Because one cannot simply examine e.g. the reproductive behavior of a particular type of fish in centralized research once, and then know the facts. It depends on so many factors, well-known factors like water temperature, but also things you do not have on your radar. Therefore in many cases, breeding will not work, even if people have actually kept everything the way that experts have so thoroughly investigated. Because they are just in a different location, in a different situation with other factors prevailing. And small differences have large effects.

So therefore the solution that hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic hobby aquarists try that out themselves at home and talk to each other. Thus automatically incorporate the diversity of local conditions with myriad factors, test it out, communicate, learn. A research endeavor, that could not be paid by individual institutions, there would not be enough staff and it could not be performed under so many spontaneous conditions. The unusual, highly distributed, localized mix is the right thing. And at the time of Sterba, this exchange worked with . . . Shriek. . . Letters!

In this example everything is included, what drives my ideas about Web 2.0: integrate many enthusiastic individuals who experiment in heterogeneous ways for their respective situations and – through intensive networking – multiply the knowledge and skills for all. And like this, we should set up projects for Enterprise 2.0, innovation and the future. Many points of view, diversity, individuality, heterogeneity, bottom-up instead of a knowing elite. Therefore, prefer a scenario project with many “normal” people to a Delphi panel with a few experts, use rather Prediction Markets than operational planning. And if we think with this metaphor in mind about things like health care or management?

The heart of creative structures

We often want to know what exactly makes exceptionally creative structures tick, where the magic is hidden. And then,  to imitate that.

The Attractor-Incubator-Approach (ATICA) has as objective to dive into the core of creative structures, like creative businesses, cities or regions, hotspots, of magical places.

Its assumption is that any deeply creative structure is an intimate connection of an incubator and an attractor, a combination which finds really new solutions in contrast to the ordinary everyday way and, based on that, ensures rapid explosive spread. Together they stand for real change instead of incremental improvements or “messing around with the symptom.”

Because an idea without application and spreading is as if it was not thought at all, as well as rapid spread without a radical new idea that promises real solutions is a fad or a big show, but nothing more. True creativity goes to the core. It solves open issues and pressing problems in an unprecedented way.

The incubator is the place where diversity clashes, where the big questions of humanity are given to a team of individuals ready for intense debate. With its own “mission”, completely closed to the currently fashionable catalog of solutions, the participants develop the “next big thing” in the incubator.

The attractor communicates solutions to the outside, motivates people to use them, to work with them, being a part of them. It attracts talent into the orbit of these new approaches, combines feedback and plays back the improved solutions.

The performance of a creative structure like a company or a region is at its highest when it designs the interaction of an incubator or incubators with an attractor in a permanent cycle of self-re-inventing.

You’ll find an overview of ATICA in this introduction article:

http://www.vreedom.com/material/TAF_2012-01-10_ATICA-Artikel_eng.pdf