Rol, expressing some doubt about Kauffman's concept of "patches," asks,
>What if the product development department
>decides to postpone final decisions on new products until it is too late
>for the logistics and inventory departments to get goods into stock? The
>inventory dept gets the blame, but has no control over improvement. The
>company clearly does not benefit.
Rol, I believe Kauffman would say that a department would make a poor
"patch." Patches are sub-units that share some common interests but may
also have varying interests within a larger unit, and the concept obtains
only if the patches are numerous. (Exactly how numerous Kauffman proposes
we determine through his NK model.) The idea is that patches optimize
their own behavior while learning from the adjacent patches. (The concept
is simply cellular automata or Boolean networks overlaid with learning and
intention--optimization on fitness landscapes.) In your example, the
product development department would consists of several patches.
The patches notion may not be ready for prime time, so to speak, because
Kauffman does not address a few essential things like legacy boundaries in
organizations, as your example would demand. But the concept is still
worth thinking about. The nut of the problem, as he points out, deciding
how large a patch should be.
BTW, I have been away from the list for quite a while completing a book
manuscript--in which the LO list itself played an important role in the
research. It's good to be back!
cheers,
tom
Thomas Petzinger Jr.
tom@petzinger.com
<http://www.petzinger.com/>www.petzinger.com
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