Don't Congratulate the Butterfly ....
Dave Snowden,
Cognitive Edge,
Feb 04, 2008
This is a good post that picks up on Duncan Watts's criticism of Malcolm Gladwell's suggestion (in The Tipping Point) that you can target a few "influencers" in order to market a product or an idea. Watts's arguments are summarized in three precise points:
- people and groups work in very different ways
- common sense notions of cause and effect are deeply misleading with respect to social processes
- data gathered retrospectively is biased
It's this last point that has always troubled me about the whole 'science' of management. It is very difficult to separate good business practice from simply being in the right place at the right time. Fior more on this, and on Snowden's perspective, see this post on the Cynefin Framework in ACRLog.
- people and groups work in very different ways
- common sense notions of cause and effect are deeply misleading with respect to social processes
- data gathered retrospectively is biased
It's this last point that has always troubled me about the whole 'science' of management. It is very difficult to separate good business practice from simply being in the right place at the right time. Fior more on this, and on Snowden's perspective, see this post on the Cynefin Framework in ACRLog.
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