Mind · Strategy
InformationGrowth
Adding new information that has value in its own right, even when exploiting it deforms or abandons the current shape
Definition
Mechanism
Instead of using information only to restore a target shape, the organisation takes in and generates new information whose value lies in what it makes possible: a new direction, a manoeuvre, an innovation, an option that was not planned. Exploiting such information usually means changing shape, at a cost, as a fighter pilot changes course under attack or a shopper diverts on seeing cheap oranges. Producing a variety of valuable alternative shapes, as immune systems and sexual reproduction do, is part of this ingredient. It is one of three ingredients of organisation growth, next to control of shape and addition of mass, and it is the one human risk management most often neglects.
Preconditions
- Shape can be changed at a cost lower than the value of the information it exploits
Invariants
- The information is valued for itself, not only as a correction toward an existing target
- Exploiting it changes shape, and changing shape has a cost
- Useful new shapes are not random: they carry value and information of their own
Risks
Failure modes
Filtering out valuable information as noise because it does not serve the current shape
Overestimating the cost of changing shape because earlier decisions would have to be revised (sunk cost)
Generating variety at random rather than from a stock of valuable alternative shapes
Relationships
Root pattern: builds on nothing in this library.
Used by
References
The gap between how humans model and manage risk and how organisms manage it: decision over organisation, prediction over creation, control of shape over change of shape
What a single-model system filters out as noise can be signal belonging to another, overlapping model
The payoff from changing shape to exploit reliable short-term information, which exists even when the long-range forecast is entirely correct
Risk in organisation growth is the balance of three trading-off ingredients: control of shape, addition of mass and growth of information
Occupy a position that lowers the cost of moving to many valuable states, rather than one that is best for any single state