Distributed Intelligence in Organizations and Traffic

The experts in Knowledge Management tell me that this is the age of shared knowledge where successful organizations are able to pool together information found in databases spread across the organization with the aid of computer based database management technologies. I can understand and appreciate how that would improve efficiency of an organization significantly. What I have in mind is, however different. What if intelligence itself were distributed? In the domain of IT, this would be closer to the debate of server client architecture as opposed to peer to peer distributed computing.

When the industrial revolution took place, there was a great need for workers in the factory. These workers largely performed mechanical jobs like assembling items on an “assembly line” or maybe even stoking a furnace. Borrowing a term from the agricultural context, these were “hired hands”. With the rapid adoption of automation in the work place, the work in the factories began to change where brains are more important than brawns. It is in the Industrial era, that protection of information became such a crucial thing. Companies were built around secrets.. a colonel who had a secret formula to make great fried chicken, secrets about new cars under development, etc. etc. Much of this was already compromised by the 80’s because people often left one organization to join another. The advent of the Internet made matters worse, where we can communicate to our peers (outside the organization) with the touch of a button. Pooling of databases made matters worse. What was once knowledge spread across an organization now became available to everyone...at least the kind of knowledge that can be written down and represented in words. The power of organizations was considered to be the power of the knowledge that they held within their boundaries. With this came a whole new era of protecting data and information and along with tools and organizational practices that went with it. Along side, also grew the need for sharing knowledge and the tools to do it.
Today, knowledge is no longer enough to stay ahead. Knowledge is often available easily and whatever knowledge you hold on to is soon antiquated. Intelligence, on the other hand, is a whole different ball game. Intelligence is not knowledge, but the ability to process information/knowledge. This is far more difficult to replicate than knowledge is, since intelligence in an organization is a combination of formal procedures, informal and adhoc systems and interpersonal relationships. Yet our organizations have yet to recognize this as a major shift in the way we organize business. In the Knowledge Era, information was to be protected and often was centralized, as was decision making, since obviously you need data to make decision. The knowledge era was also the time when data was protected from prying eyes. After all if I could steal a blue print, or a prototype, I needed little else to beat a company to the market and gain the advantage. Relationships and softer skills were not important to people with knowledge, like Teachers, Scientists and Doctors, since their knowledge assured them their place.
In my own field, I find the two approaches strikingly different. On the one hand there are teachers and institutions who are constantly trying to protect data that they have, to prevent someone else from taking away their “core strength”. On the other, MIT has announced a project by which they will put ALL their teaching content online. Increasingly the complexities of business and quick response times needed in the market are moving organizations towards greater empowerment and decision making at the lower levels. Reduction of middle managers in an effort to cut costs is another factor that is doing this. Yet we have only begun to examine theoretical models that involve the idea or distributed intelligence. One such approach is to study colonies of animals like beehives or anthills, where animals seem to behave in organized patterns, even without any central processing (what I call the CIA – The Central Intelligence Agency).

Roby Mathew, a friend of mine with Saatchi in Banglore, once gave me an idea. He talked about traffic and how each city has a “feel” for traffic. How true! Despite international laws and conventions about traffic, the way traffic behaves in Bombay is very different from the way it behaves in Calcutta or Delhi. Having just completed a 6125 KM road trip by car, I appreciate the wisdom of this statement. Each driver does not coordinate with another driver. The official conventions and rules are the same for all cities, yet each city develops its own flavour. How does one imbibe this flavour and can we describe what is the essence of this flavour?