tacit, inexplicable knowledge

There’s a lot of work being done today that doesn’t have any soul in it. The technique may be the utmost perfection, yet it is lifeless. It doesn’t have a soul. I hope my furniture has a soul to it. I do not feel that it is possible to make a working drawing with all the intricate and fine details that go into a chair or stool, particularly. Many times, I do not know how a certain area is to be done until I start working with a chisel, rasp or whatever tool is needed for that particular job.

sam maloof

intentional ambiguity

Monday, 4/22/2013; 10am to noon

Baker Library 102, Harvard Business School [map]
Amy Edmondson (co-chair), Christopher Winship (co-chair), Jeffrey T. Polzer

Intentional ambiguity

Vaughn Tan

Organizations increasingly operate in uncertain external environments which are not only risky (uncertain in quantifiable ways) but also ambiguous (unquantifiably uncertain, featuring unclear reality, causality, or intentionality). Though the two types of uncertainty have different implications for decision-making and action, organizational theory and practice generally neglect ambiguity by conflating it with risk. How should an organization respond when the uncertainty in its environment comprises both risk and ambiguity? And what are the intended and unintended effects of these organizational responses?

I answer these questions by analysing data collected over four years from observations at nine high-end avant-garde culinary groups and 80 interviews with respondents working in the industry. My findings suggest that external ambiguity can be managed through costly internal processes that make it more likely that a group and its members can detect and respond to changes in the environment—processes that result from intentional internal ambiguity of member roles and group goals. I then describe a general mechanism by which intentional internal ambiguity supports group adaptability.

My findings complement the risk-management view of managing uncertainty by re-stating the distinction between risk and ambiguity and documenting organizational responses that are specific to the latter and not the former. I suggest that an appropriate approach to managing the unquantifiable uncertainty of ambiguity is to increase the likelihood that a group can adapt as ambiguous conditions change and show that this can be done by incorporating ambiguity into the internal operations of the group.

the oak tree

The final shape of any one particular oak tree is unpredictable ... And a town which is whole, like an oak tree, must be unpredictable also.

The fine details cannot be known ahead of time. We may know, from the pattern language which is shared, what kind of town it will be. But it is impossible to predict its detailed plan: and it is not possible to make it grow according to some plan. It must be unpredictable, so that the individual acts of building can be free to fit themselves to all the local forces which they meet.

The people of a town may know that there is going to be a main pedestrian street, because there is a pattern which tells them so. But, they cannot know just where this main pedestrian street will be, until it is already there. The street will be built up from smaller acts, wherever the opportunity arises. When it is finally made, its form is partly given by the history of happy accidents which let the people build it along with their more private acts. There is no way of knowing, ahead of time, just where these accidents will fall.

This process, exactly like the emergence of any other form of life, alone produces a living order.

christopher alexander, the timeless way of building

too light winning make the prize light

self-imposed limits on technology make it more likely that human ingenuity will develop an elegant response to its environment. the idea is not new, but it is certainly not en vogue.

Animal-drawn plows varied from country to country and even from one farm to the next. They had to be coordinated with the type of soil, the moisture content, the kind of planting, the draft animals used, and the farmer's own movement. When animals were replaced by mechanical power, plows were simplified, the differences between them became less, and the variations between plows used in some areas disappeared completely. With mechanical power, it was no longer necessary to design each plow individually. General plows were designed to work almost any kind of soil. The farmer was freed from the constraints of his environment. He no longer had to understand his plow in relation to his soil composition.

christopher and charlotte williams, craftsmen of necessity

the ocean of unknown possibility

richard feynman, he say: "i think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong." right on.

intentional ambiguity

Tenses are important:

abstract: This ethnography of nine internationally renowned avant-garde culinary groups in the US and Europe shows that they operate successfully despite having intentionally ambiguous (and hence uncertain and unstable) member roles and group goals. This is in contrast to the sizeable body of research suggesting that individuals and groups need clarity and stability to function effectively. I describe how this intentional ambiguity modifies group and interpersonal processes in these groups, then propose explanations for how these modifications might allow them to adapt to changing resources and environments and enable their members to teach and learn complex things such as house style. I conclude by showing how internal ambiguity supports adaptability and thus helps groups respond to external ambiguity.

TL;DR version: Ambiguity and uncertainty are not always bad. Wisely deployed, they can be beneficial for those in the business of innovation or working in unpredictable and rapidly changing environments. Which is nearly everyone working in a high-end restaurant, a startup, or an R&D group these days.

Just saying.

committee: Christopher Winship (co-chair), Amy Edmondson (co-chair), Jeffrey Polzer.

the myth of risk reduction

garry kasparov, considering the slowdown in technological development*, writes that

People have a sense that we should receive benefits from our investment, but need to reduce the uncertainty. Risk should be less, but the income should be the same. This creates a gap, because in a free society, in a market economy, there is a direct relationship between risk and return. If you want to avoid risk, but receive ten percent of of your annual income from your investment, you open the way for the so-called financial engineering. In fact this is all fake, not real income, because it is not based on real changes in the economy, because you do not create new and tangible assets. In the 1960s young boys dreamed of becoming aerospace engineers, now they want to be financial engineers, working in investment companies, which are the most attractive spheres for talent. This naturally affects the quality of the total scientific potential, because financial engineering creates nothing.

he's right, of course, though it would have been nice to distinguish between risk and uncertainty as frank knight (1921) did:

Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated.... The essential fact is that 'risk' means in some cases a quantity susceptible of measurement, while at other times it is something distinctly not of this character; and there are far-reaching and crucial differences in the bearings of the phenomena depending on which of the two is really present and operating.... It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or 'risk' proper, as we shall use the term, is so far different from an unmeasurable one that it is not in effect an uncertainty at all.

the return on any investment (or, more generally, the outcome of any action) comprises three conceptually distinct components: a known part, a knowable unknown part, and an unknowable unknown part. the knowable unknown is risk, and risk can be "reduced" or "managed" by spending effort, time, and money in advance: gathering information and preparing defensive assets of a known nature and quantity.

the unknowable unknown is uncertainty and is not reducible by advance action. the only way to "manage" uncertainty is to be ready to respond to conditions as they change unpredictably: this is costly in a different way since it requires creating a potentially enormous reservoir of excess capacity with which to respond. maintaining this excess capacity is expensive and may not pay off in the short or even the medium term.

responding to risk and responding to uncertainty require different approaches and different processes. all innovation requires both types of response. innovation in rapidly and unpredictably changing environments requires more preparation for uncertainty than risk. surprise! this will be my dissertation.

* found, since i read chessbase only infrequently, through tyler cowen's marginal revolution.