A Spherical Core

By | November 24, 2008

I’ve really gorged on the concept of “value at the edge” for the past couple of years. That idea is that people outside you and your organization, and the network that they’re a part of, is where everything happens.

Whereas in the very recent past, value was found at an org’s core. It was largely defended and used to win market share.

At this point, I believe in the idea of value at the edge totally (with the appropriate amount of critical awareness, of course).

However, I’ve also said to myself many times that, yes, value does get created at the edge, and if you could only say one thing about how that works, that would be it. But, obviously, you still need a strong core. Look at any great company that’s tapping into audiences and networks and clearly they’ve got a great culture of innovation and system of management.

The difference is that it’s a core designed to support and enable the edge.

Umair, speaking about the Obama campaign, pointed to this new core in his usual poetic way:

“Obama’s organization was less tall or flat than spherical – a tightly controlled core, surrounded by self-organizing cells of volunteers, donors, contributors, and other participants at the fuzzy edges.“

Great visual: a spherical core around which self-organizing cells generate value. That’s the total picture.

  • http://www.unstructuredventures.com/uv Taylor Davidson

    What I'm most interested in in how Obama can apply the same theory of organization and value creation used for campaiging to governing.

    He was able to create his own organization for campaigning: but for governing he inherits a vastly different organizational system that, by its very structure (i.e. democracy), resists fast change.

    • http://brooksjordan.name brooksjordan

      Noting that this was a great question, Taylor, given how much trouble Obama and his team are having making progress on the banking crisis.