Nigel's take on "Mashing it up"

Getting in Gear for Tomorrow's Choices

Let's be honest about it. Our human community faces two threats, two enemies, two dedicated and subtle villains who will if we are not careful destroy us. They are not the ones you were thinking about. They are groupthink, and silos. Groupthink: the tendency of humans to agree with each other, not challenge each other, buy into conventional wisdom - and in the process disable their capacity to cope with the unexpected, with fast-paced change, with the seriously new. In other words, with the future. Think Wall Street, 2008. Think Detroit. Think plenty of disagreeable thoughts. And worry, because you ain't seen nothin' yet. The pace of change and therefore the scope for the unpredictable is only getting faster.

Then silos. Silos are the places where we tend to think with people who share our disciplines, our job, our network. Whether we are chemists v. physicists v. biologists. Or politicos v. technologists v. entrepreneurs. Or social conservatives v. progressives v. libertarians. You get the point. We tend to think within communities determined by either our expertise or our opinion. And in neither case do we place much value on the opinions of those outside, who just look at the world differently.

And you see how these are related. Whether you are locked into your silo or allowed out for an "inter-disciplinary" effort, the tendency is to think with a group. "Conventional wisdom" is such an interesting phrase. For all its, well, bourgeois and old-tyme feel, we grant it a lot of respect -especially if we are over 35. There is one standard, default view. Then there are other, controversial, way-out views.

Our disciplines (silos) and our shared, settled views within and across them (groupthink), shape our world. And set it up for utter disaster.

So what to do? The answer is actually rather simple. Twofold. Mash the silos. And mash the opinions. Smash the silos actually - not that we don't need seriously expert people who can't see beyond their seriously expert noses; but the decision-makers are of another kind. Their expertise lies as much between as within silos. They are used to dealing with pygmies and headhunters and the anthropophagi as well as white Caucasians. While they have credibility within their tribal discipline and opinion group, they have equal credentials as ambassadors and polyglots. Let them loose. On them depends tomorrow.

And then, bring on the mavericks. The outliers. Those smart, articulate people who just don't go along with the convention; who think "wisdom" lies elsewhere. They cause us discomfort. We are tempted to label them as dumb, extreme, or - the current cliché -deniers. But it is conventional wisdom, and those who place their trust in it, that is dumb.

This has always been true. But as the unbelievable pace of change has grown, it has become the most important truth out there. Think exponential. And remember that at point after point it is the conventional wisdomalists who have brought us to disaster.  It is not easy to see exactly why. But smart people have a tendency to do something very unsmart: to glom together like iron filings on the pole of a magnet; to suppress their tendency to think things through for themselves; to trade conclusions with friends and colleagues and end up with a remarkable homogeneity of view.  This at the very time when disruptive and exponential change is redefining the conditions of our human experience.

So what to do? Well, the key is to unconventional, to listen to the outliers, to structure our conversations to ensure that they are open-textured.  But this of course is where it get interesting - and difficult. Because on every issue there are people with crazy views, random views, views that are all over the place. We suspect they have been paid to think that way. Or they have extraneous loyalties that shape how they think even if they won't admit it (they, they got religion; or they're Commies; or Randians). Or they got hit on the head when they were young.

But who said this was going to be simple? To rephrase, at the core of building value into our decisions lies the need to sculpt processes and prepare people to be open to the improbable, the unexpected, the unconventional or, as many will always characterize what they think, the unwise. Here at C-PET we have a principle that we put like this: All articulate voices round the table, all the time. Not easy to live up to, and of course it does not mean that every discussion needs to have dozens of views represented. But it is a core knowledge principle. And hard though it is to action, my prediction is that every effective organization facing strategic choices in these tumbling years of change will be successful in proportion to their finding ways to do just this. And they will fail in proportion as they find themselves locked into the conventional wisdom of the world of silos and groupthink.

Not perhaps the place to segway into the Bubble discussion that has been ebbing and flowing around the latest tech valuations, but it offers a cautionary tale. My point about silo/groupthink is not that new-economy digital types have it their own way. My suspicion is that they are every bit as likely to fall into their own pits of conventional wisdom as everyone else. Only the conventions have been established more quickly, and the silos too (sorry, Silicon Valley is one too). If there is a Bubble, it is not quite like the dot-com lunacy that swept us up with all the logic of the archetypal South Sea Bubble. But what is it like? And how can we keep our strategic thinking under rational and economic control, even as we strive to peer into what is coming? On that question much value will hang. Value of all kinds.

I discuss groupthink in a recent op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/groupthink-hasnt-worked-its-time-to-embrace-the-maverick-20110609-1fuar.html

News from C-PET's Board of Directors:

- "We have a US industry that is governed by regulators. The question is whether the FDA is still the gold standard. Many companies want to find out about regulations in China, Russia and other countries where they can market new products."- G. Steven Burrill , read more from Burrill Report Finds Biotech Posts Strong Second Quarter Gain

-  Read Adam Slone's interview with G. Steven Burrill 

-"There are a lot of things needed to improve the biotechnology innovation capacity of the country. Some of the things we noticed were weak intellectual property rights, a relatively low number of patents and weak capital for biotech ventures." - Yali Friedman, Read more from Report Shows Turkey Continues to Miss the Biotech Train here.

-Read the latest interview on Systems Biology and the medical field with Gregory Stock here.

You can also watch Mr. Stock discuss the future of bioethics here.

-Read David Goldston's testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, or watch the C-SPAN2 video of the testimony.

News from other C-PET Members:

-Read C-PET Senior Fellow Jonathan Moreno's article on his upcoming book The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America where he "sets out the background and terms of the new biopolitics, arguing that, once one surveys the options, what [he] calls bioprogressivism fits best with the American narrative."

-"Treat it like you would if you were showing up at their plants."- Jules Polonetsky, C-PET Advisory Board Member read more from Forbes How Visiting Competitors' Websites May Give Away Your Business Secrets.