Jekyll2021-01-22T09:15:07+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/feed.xmlVinay DébrouIndependent Consultant - Data Strategy & CX Strategy Vinay DébrouFolk Festivals of the Internet People2021-01-16T13:35:44+00:002021-01-16T13:35:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2021/01/16/folk-festivals-of-the-internet-peopleVinay DébrouIntroduction to Experimenting Generalism2020-06-11T13:35:44+00:002020-06-11T13:35:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2020/06/11/experimenting-generalism<p>With a substantial indie-life runway of 3 years, I’m confident to claim that I am good at self-learning new things/subjects fast. But there are caveats. I don’t venture into a new domain randomly. Also, both the process of learning and the amount of specific domain expertise I end up acquiring in a learning sprint varies significantly in every case. Still, there is an underlying pattern in this practice that I’ve been wrapping my head around recently. I call this practice of selecting, learning, and applying specific knowledge across different-but-linked domains, <em>Experimenting Generalism</em>. In a series of posts in the coming weeks, I will be articulating what this practice means for me and how I chart the path of an <em>experimenting generalist</em>. This is part-1 of this new series where I introduce the practice.</p>
<p>Repeated attempts to observe and situate the meta attributes of my specific-knowledge stack over the past 6-8 months have revealed a few interesting nuances into the practice of Experimenting Generalism.</p>
<p>First, let’s situate this practice into the broader context of my skill-stack and learning interests.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>I have top 20 percentile expertise in two domains: data-science and web-branding. I call these domains my <strong>T20P domains</strong>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I probably don’t yet have top 1 percentile domain expertise in any domain that’s in-demand in the market right now. Hence, I don’t yet have a <strong>T1P domain</strong>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I have top 50 percentile domain expertise in about a dozen specific domains that are driving technological, business, and social progress in 2020. Few examples of my <strong>T50P domains</strong> are anthropology, storytelling, web development, network science, community building.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>We can plot my specific-knowledge stack on a domain-expertise spectrum, marked by three thresholds of domain-expertise—T1P, T20P, and T50P.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa683b7ce-819b-43c2-b406-7b18d611b6d9_1209x684.png"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa683b7ce-819b-43c2-b406-7b18d611b6d9_1209x684.png" alt="" /></a></p>
<p>Almost always, I seriously venture into new domains only when proficiency in that domain is indispensable to my professional client work or when <a href="https://daybrew.substack.com/p/deep-play">Deep Play</a> into that domain is the only way to quench my deep intellectual curiosity.</p>
<p>Here’s the high-level flow of how I level-up my proficiency in the specific-knowledge of a new domain that I just stumbled into:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>When I come across an interesting/useful topic, I soak myself into it and within a week(or two) of immersion, I have a good-enough amount of knowledge of that specific domain to be able to participate in a conversation with the domain experts. Speed-learning is a distinct attribute of this practice.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Getting familiar with the domain’s principal concepts and core terminology + getting a taste of the intellectual spot where the real conversation is happening currently makes me intellectually conversant to talk to the domain experts. This expertise level is <em>conversational proficiency</em>, closer to intermediate level than beginner level expertise.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>This rapid-learning practice has expanded my set of T50P domains to include about a dozen interesting domains in a relatively short period of three years. This recurring practice of rapid acquisition of conversational-proficiency in different-but-linked domains is what I call Experimental Generalism.</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="https://vinaydebrou.com/writing/essay/2020/05/28/deep-play.html">← Previous</a></p>Vinay DébrouWith a substantial indie-life runway of 3 years, I’m confident to claim that I am good at self-learning new things/subjects fast. But there are caveats. I don’t venture into a new domain randomly. Also, both the process of learning and the amount of specific domain expertise I end up acquiring in a learning sprint varies significantly in every case. Still, there is an underlying pattern in this practice that I’ve been wrapping my head around recently. I call this practice of selecting, learning, and applying specific knowledge across different-but-linked domains, Experimenting Generalism. In a series of posts in the coming weeks, I will be articulating what this practice means for me and how I chart the path of an experimenting generalist. This is part-1 of this new series where I introduce the practice.Deep Play2020-05-28T11:03:44+00:002020-05-28T11:03:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2020/05/28/deep-play<p>Deep Play is something I have been practicing for years but never talked about specifically. It’s neither a mental model nor a philosophy. For the lack of a better word, let’s call it a lifehack.</p>
<p>This note got triggered after a brief conversation on Twitter with Tom Critchlow and Jonny Miller about the importance of closed communities and play.</p>
<p>Amidst that conversation, I tweeted a quippy definition of Deep Play that made me ponder: <em>“Deep Play = playing with ideas, debating over weak signals, turning them into prototypes, and when something passes the quality threshold, collaborate.”</em></p>
<p>I discovered the term <em>Deep Play</em> from anthropologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Play:_Notes_on_the_Balinese_Cockfight">Clifford Geertz’s essay</a> on Balinese Cockfighting. In Balinese traditions, an cock-owner spends years of effort on training their cock for public cockfights and even in additional to betting a big chunk of thier life-savings, they attach their personal honor to the outcome of the cockfight.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2940f87a-c6bb-4f45-a9df-42aee1a3ba34_807x585.jpeg"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2940f87a-c6bb-4f45-a9df-42aee1a3ba34_807x585.jpeg" alt="Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight - Wikipedia" /></a></p>
<p>The term <em>Deep Play</em>, however, originates not from Geertz, but from 18th-century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who described it as ‘<em>a game where stakes are so high no rational person would play it</em>’.</p>
<p>My definition is quite different and without that negative connotation. I see Deep Play as taking that extra chance where I can’t justify the ‘risk-reward’ equation instantly, where the ROI is currently illegible and even ambiguous. Still, the experimental exploration aspect of the subject matter involved or the particular activity is so personally compelling that I can’t ignore it.</p>
<h1 id="cheery-nihilism-to-the-rescue">Cheery Nihilism to the Rescue</h1>
<p>The key to building a habit of Deep Play is to add a pinch of cheery-nihilism to the mix of DIY experimentation and rational optimism. Once you internalize that the “big game” that you get so engrossed in has real limits to what it can give you in terms of material returns as well the meaning you can derive from it. As my internship guide Ioannis Poulios told me once when I got too entangled in the project that it started affecting my everyday life, “Vinay, Take it Easy”. This seemingly obvious advice stuck with me over the years and has become my go-to-phrase for self-advice while honing my Deep Play instincts.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F55c50aed-c4c9-4ffe-b142-11dc07d27db5_1000x693.gif"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F55c50aed-c4c9-4ffe-b142-11dc07d27db5_1000x693.gif" alt="" /></a>
<em>–>illustrations by <a href="https://blush.design/collections/croods">Vijay Verma</a></em></p>
<p>I first consciously used a version of my evolving understanding of Deep Play in dating and had some spectacular experiences that would have been unlikely to happen if I always avoided ambiguity and let the lack of logic override my strong instinct. Being grown up watching romantic Hindi movies, starting to “take it easy” in any romantic relationship has allowed me to unlearn and peel off the distorted mental models of intimacy and companionship.</p>
<p>When you make a habit of Deep Play, you get comfortable with future uncertainty and fear turns into a sense of thrill to try new things for the experience of doing it. Doing that regularly can open unpredictable opportunities & spontaneous conversations can become deep collaborations. It can also be tiring at times to process the ambiguity of not being able to chart the ROI of your short-term actions.</p>
<p>After I started to more keenly observe my self-learning process, it became apparent that I was developing a Deep Play approach to learning as well. I would discover a fascinating new concept, practice, or even a new field, I would jump in for hours of digging on the web. From Wikipedia rabbit holes to binging YouTube interviews/talks to trying out new models and products that are being developed at the state-of-the-art edge in that field. If the subject matter continues to hold my attention, within a few months, I find myself at the intermediate level where I can grok the conversations happening between the most interesting pioneers of the field and sometimes even participate at the margins of the conversation. Deep Play is like Deep Sleep, in a sense. Both are temporary states when you lose consciousness of the rigid structures around you or you refactor your perception of them to fit it to a new structural framework you just came up with. Also, in both these states, you play with new possibilities that might pose an existential risk with your status quo. In Deep Sleep, you do it with dreams and In Deep Play, you do it with experimental DIY. You can chart and experience new ‘adventures’ with others in Deep Sleep but usually, you don’t have the conscious control of choosing your co-adventures. In Deep Play, you have that conscious control.</p>
<h1 id="margins-to-the-core">Margins to the Core</h1>
<p>Now I engage often in Deep Play. It is usually initiated through prolonged conversations with people who share my interests/aspirations but might be working/learning in a domain/context that’s neither immediately relevant to mine nor immediately adjacent. After soaking the ramp-up knowledge of a field that continues to hold my interest for over a month, I like to jump in the deep end of the play sooner than later. I use the cutting-edge products as a beta-user, start my small side-collabs with interesting acquaintances, and participate in messy conversations inside closed communities where the behind-the-scenes stuff happens before the sanitized version appears out in the public. This has pushed upwards my ratio of deep play to light play(equivalent to deep sleep / light sleep) by 3x in the past year.</p>
<h1 id="questions-to-ponder">Questions to Ponder:</h1>
<ol>
<li>
<p>How does this overlap with the product development process in an interdisciplinary context?</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Is Deep Play a differentiating habit of experimenting generalists like me or even expert generalists (who prefer having a grand unifying theory and belief in the inherent meaning behind the universe) practice this in some other form?</p>
</li>
</ol>
<hr />
<p><a href="https://vinaydebrou.com/writing/essay/2020/05/21/case-study-capgemini-invent.html">← Previous</a></p>
<p><a href="https://vinaydebrou.com/writing/essay/2020/06/11/experimenting-generalism.html">Next →</a></p>Vinay DébrouDeep Play is something I have been practicing for years but never talked about specifically. It’s neither a mental model nor a philosophy. For the lack of a better word, let’s call it a lifehack.Case Study of Capgemini Invent: Making Crossdisciplinary Collaboration Work in a Large Corporation2020-05-21T11:03:44+00:002020-05-21T11:03:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2020/05/21/case-study-capgemini-invent<p>I had a chat this week with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/karybheemaiah">Kary Bheemaiah</a> about enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration to innovate within a large tech corporation and the role of team-structure, incentives, and trust in doing so.</p>
<p>Kary works as an Engagement Manager at Fahrenheit 212 (F212), an innovation strategy firm that got acquired by Capgemini in 2017. To reposition their brand from ‘IT systems partner’ to ‘innovation partner’, Capgemini also made other acquisitions and nested them in their innovation arm: Capgemini Invent(CapInvent). Among the 6 departments of CapInvent, F212 leads the innovation & strategy (I&S) department.</p>
<p>Kary is also the incoming CTO of the Future of Tech(FOT) division of Capgemini Invent. A big part of his new job is to link together the departments to address silo issues and help F212 build products & services by that I&S dept. comes up with by stewarding different stakeholders along a shared journey.</p>
<p>I am including here some of the most interesting excerpts from our discussion. You can also listen to the audio recording of the chat. Excerpts included here are not a transcript of the call and may include notes from my discussion with Kary outside this call.</p>
<h1 id="team-structure">Team Structure</h1>
<p>Kary emphasized that the structure of the teams in CapInvent is kept modular to mitigate silo buildup. The flexibility to assemble a cross-disciplinary task force allows CapInvent to build solutions without limiting the scope across which a problem demands to be innovated upon. The modular structure of these task forces is complemented with a connective tissue that enables easy overflow of ideas, feedback, and resources from one ‘cell’ to another. Kary’s job as an interdepartmental liaison in Capgemini Invent is to build this connective tissue. This structure is similar to the ‘Small-World Network Structure’ I highlighted in my contribution(Slides 37-38) to the Yak Collective report —<a href="https://www.yakcollective.org/projects/dont-waste-the-covid19-reboot/">Don’t Waste the Reboot</a>. A partial snapshot is included below.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F970296f7-d598-4e1c-8742-93229eca0a4a_473x411.png" /></a></p>
<p>A cross-cluster link (or connective tissue) acts as a porous gate to filter interesting signals from intracluster noise to share knowledge across clusters to harvest the low-hanging fruits of the economy-of-scope. Kary stated that his liaisoning role involves being a probe and a filter to find the exciting things happening within the company, in the market, and in the wider tech ecosystem to pick and promote the signals that are high-potential.</p>
<p>When a problem becomes too overwhelming for one cluster(discipline), the adjacent ones jump in to share the load. Or when a cluster finds a small hack that just works really well, they share that to adjacent clusters which then might be able to apply that solution (or a slightly repurposed version) to a different problem in a different context.</p>
<p>Leveraging the economy-of-scope this way multiplies the return of innovation (ROInn) happening inside corporate divisions with impermeable boundaries and a rigid hierarchy (that resemble a scale-free network structure shown above). After the walls of cluster-jargon are punctured and connective tissue gets built across clusters, shared vocabulary emerges and combinatorial innovation gets accelerated. The Small-World Network(SWN) structure maintains the coherence benefits (and the resulting efficiency) of clustering and also mitigates the chances of having blind-spots that make the overall structure (and the company) under-prepared and fragile to shocks, by leveraging the economy-of-scope. Kary highlights that granting competency-based official rank and authority are important to align incentives before a large corporation can leverage this structure.</p>
<h1 id="incentive--kpis">Incentive & KPIs</h1>
<p>Senior executives drive a big part of the innovation decision-making process in a large corporation. Their biggest incentive is to ‘not get fired’. How can the outdated and fuzzy KPI metrics (and the appraisal/approval procedures they govern) be bypassed by a cross-disciplinary task force?</p>
<p>Kary laughed while noting that “those wishing the KPIs in a large corp to disappear will keep waiting for that to happen, it’s not going to happen anytime soon”. But he also suggested there is a need for a new KPI that is more relevant and common among the clusters than the old KPIs. For him, that new KPI is Cash. According to Kary:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Using cash as the KPI is useful here. Quantifying signals, showcasing impact and using the shared vocab based on Cash as KPI is a way of getting the sense of urgency you feel into the minds of others. This is a collaborative effort and respect has to be given to all as one can give direction, but the path has to be created by the teams.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fuzzy KPIs that innovation & strategy teams tend to have and vanity metrics that technical teams like to brag about are boiled down to precipitate into the number that makes sense for everyone: Cash.</p>
<p>Incentivizing cross-disciplinary innovation doesn’t have to be limited to cash though. It can also be more specifically defined. At Capgemini Invent, in the biweekly CxO council meeting, everyone is asked to bring new proposals that serve the goal of showcasing Capgemini as ‘the innovation partner’.</p>
<p>The ‘Deal Flow KPI’ takes into consideration the new projects & services that are launched by an executive along with new partnerships made with startups/firms in the outside tech ecosystem.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“Execs are now told to work on creating department specific (New Service Offerings) NSOs. There are guidelines on what is an NSO (needs to use new tech, solve a problem via efforts from 2 or 3 Invent departments, address sectoral challenges, etc.). Execs and teams are reviewed based on their participation and success. The forthcoming annual report (June 2020) will talk about NSOs and Applied Innovation networks. As it hits shareholders, executives will onboard in reply.”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Aligning efforts need aligned incentives. But even with aligned incentives, the friction encountered during the building of intercluster connective tissue is significant due to vastly different values and Working styles of different disciplines. The friction needs a lubricant to be minimized. That lubricant is trust.</p>
<h1 id="friction--trust">Friction & Trust</h1>
<p>It’s not uncommon to hear jokes with connotations that people in one department don’t respect the people in another department that’s on the other side of the business. Sales guys say “Engineers are too happy building features they want, they don’t know what the customer wants.” On the other hand, Engineers usually joke that the “Sales & Marketing guys don’t usually build anything of value, they only talk about what engineers build.”. These jokes hint at an undercurrent of the lack of respect that exists among disciplines and the lack of interdepartmental connective tissue that is lubricated by the trust.</p>
<p>At Capgemini Invent, the solution to this problem was building connective tissue via workshops that explain the innovation & strategy process to the technical team along with the jargon and on the other hand, workshops that educate the innovation team about the technical tools and production constraints at an introductory level.</p>
<p>These workshops engendered among participants more respect for people in the other team and gave them shared vocabulary to use while brainstorming or prototyping a new product/service.</p>
<p>Kary shared an example of a project going downhill because of misaligned expectations and how it was refactored and rescued by him and his team by setting up a common context for the different stakeholders of the project.</p>
<p>The following snippet is how Kary described it in our discussion outside the call:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“We had a project where we were to build a new supplier procurement platform for a client that is one of the largest banks in Europe (and the world).</em></p>
<p><em><strong>Client’s problem:</strong> The current procurement process is inefficient, is almost analog, does not help to find the right kind of suppliers, and is impacting the cost of operations and the quality of the partnerships.</em></p>
<p><em><strong>Innovation Teams response:</strong> Let’s build a new procurement platform that is based on NLP.</em></p>
<p><em><strong>Why?</strong> The client had the budget and very specific demands that made using an existing provider inappropriate. Also owing to the size and volume of the bank, they have an aggregator effect in EU markets.</em></p>
<p><em><strong>Approach selected:</strong> We will design the platform based on the aggregator effect of the client. Using NLP, we’ll be able to better categorize suppliers, their offerings and how it fits the strategic intentions of the bank.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><em>Problem Encountered:</em></strong></p>
<p><em>1. The innovation teams’ knowledge of NLP was amateurish at best. The platform capabilities were theoretical and the analysis it was supposed to do was feasible but required a significant allocation of technical expertise.</em></p>
<p><em>2. This led to the second problem. Designing a new platform takes time (surveys had to be done, automated due diligence processes had to be analyzed, etc.) By the time to template of the platform was created, it had been 6 months. this was when the Technical teams became involved. They were shot into a moving train and were not as committed/could not allocate the NLP experts to the build what was presented to the client. It led to a lot of volatile conversations.</em></p>
<p><em><strong>Solution:</strong> I was jettisoned into this conversation at this time (it was my first month). Having some experience in the subject (I worked as a director of research at a startup where we made a NLP based search engine) I realized what needed to be changed was the deployment plan.</em></p>
<p><em>The following communications ensued:</em></p>
<p><em>Sit down with the innovation team and explain why what was promised could not be delivered in one shot. NLP and ML capabilities build off each other based on new data coming in. You needed to have a more ‘obliquity’ based approach where you start small, train the algo’s and add features as the efficiency of the algos grows.</em></p>
<p><em>Sit down with the technical team lead and broke down the execution plan into smaller bits. What data do we to train the algo’s on, how will new data be collected, cleaned, processed and used to achieve the objectives outlined progressively? Etc….</em></p>
<p><em>Sit down with client key stakeholders (and tech and innovation team leads) and explain why this obliquity approach is a more sensible approach – reduces bad matching risk, more accuracy, less reputation damage, etc..</em></p>
<p><em>This led to a change in the action plans, milestone setting etc, which the client was comfortable with.</em></p>
<p><em>Having a willing client also helped assuage the tension between the innovation & tech teams. More collaborative workshops were organised and both sides got to see how they go about doing their work.</em></p>
<p><em>The outcome was the understanding that the tech teams need to be involved in client conversations from the very beginning – the first interview. Not later down the road. We’ve now made it a mandatory process (even though it seems evident).</em></p>
<p><em>You are always going to have silos. If you try and break them, it’s a never-ending effort & pointless. Instead, build more connective tissue between them so that they understand each other’s roles but still maintain their specialty/identity. Tribes and hierarchies will always be there. More communication can make the silo membranes more permeable – and could even lead to some trust and respect.”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<h1 id="links">Links</h1>
<p>You can listen to the audio-recording of the chat I had with Kary <a href="https://daybrew.substack.com/p/case-study-cross-disciplinary-collaboration">here on my Substack newsletter</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to reach out to Kary Bheemaiah, LinkedIn is his most preferred channel. Find him <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/karybheemaiah">here</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to chat with me, drop me an email to vinaydebrou@gmail.com.</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="https://vinaydebrou.com/writing/essay/2020/05/04/complex-problems-team-of-indies.html">← Previous</a></p>
<p><a href="https://vinaydebrou.com/writing/essay/2020/05/28/deep-play.html">Next →</a></p>Vinay DébrouI had a chat this week with Kary Bheemaiah about enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration to innovate within a large tech corporation and the role of team-structure, incentives, and trust in doing so.Complex Problems vs Small Teams of Indie-Professionals2020-05-04T11:03:44+00:002020-05-04T11:03:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2020/05/04/complex-problems-team-of-indies<p>Less than six months after Boris Johnson took the prime minister office in the UK, his senior adviser and political strategist, Dominic Cummings published— on January 2nd, 2020— a <a href="https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/">new post</a> on his personal blog. Through that post, Cummings sounded a recruiting call-for-applications for ‘unusual’ professionals. He wants these unusual and super-talented professionals to help No10 ’s small team build, test & implement strategies for complex problems that the UK faces in the new decade. Solving the complex problems also means getting to exploit the big open-to-grab opportunities at the edge of research in fields like data-science, complexity economics, network theory, and social-media communications among other promising fields. The headline read: <em>‘Two hands are a lot’ — we’re hiring data scientists, project managers, policy experts, assorted weirdos…”</em>. Cummings noted in the post that his team’s goal is to tap the ‘very high-leverage ideas’ that inevitably seem bad to most people until their full-potential is unfolded.</p>
<h1 id="assorting-super-talented-weirdos">Assorting Super-talented Weirdos</h1>
<p>For high-authority decision-makers in business, government, or other kinds of organizations— complex problems are not an exception anymore. Rather, complex problems populate their high-priority to-solve list —from containing an epidemic or tracking terrorist-networks to patching-back a broken supply-chain network or recovering from a branding disaster on social-media.</p>
<p>There is an interesting characteristic that most complex problems share —they are not bound within a single discipline or domain. Interdisciplinary problems— like pandemics, climate change, terrorism— demand interdisciplinary solutions, which in turn need flexible, interdisciplinary teams to work together. When an interdisciplinary solution is created, it also brings with it the ability to capture big, intradisciplinary opportunities. All the action starts with assembling the right interdisciplinary team for the complex problem that you are tackling head-on —or the right assortment of super-talented weirdos & unusual specialist professionals with ‘high leverage ideas’. Many of the indie-professionals that I know match the above description. Martin Davidson promoted in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-09/the-case-for-recruiting-weirdos">his 2014 Bloomberg article</a>, the case for hiring more constructively-weird people in your team to avoid group-think pitfalls and tapping counterintuitive opportunities.</p>
<hr />
<h1 id="network-science-and-small-team-assembly">Network Science and Small-Team Assembly</h1>
<p>There is a wide variety of indie professionals that are doing interesting work out there. Before you get started on picking some of them for your interdisciplinary taskforce, I want to share with you a few insights from the world of network science.</p>
<p>Network science researchers study all kinds of networks —from <a href="https://daybrew.substack.com/p/what-in-the-small-world-is-this">biological cell-networks</a> in the brain to transportation networks & social networks — and have found simple-but-powerful insights about their structure and dynamics. Noshir Contractor, a professor of behavioral sciences at Northwestern university borrowed the frameworks of network science to study team-formation in collaborative projects. In one of his research projects, he collected a massive amount of data on multi-player video-game players to study how team-formation is shaped by various pre-existing factors and which kind of teams were most successful overall. He also did this for groups of software developers and scientific-research collaborators. <a href="https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/contractor_noshir.aspx">His work</a> has been sponsored and used by US Army Research Lab, US Air Force Lab, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation among many other organizations using interdisciplinary teams.</p>
<p>Here, I’m outlining a few of his most interesting findings on assembling the right kind of interdisciplinary team from the ecosystem, for maximizing the likelihood of project success.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fccc77cda-f9cf-4c6d-9e3d-b05e6b628ee4_547x359.png" /></a></p>
<ol>
<li>Three key levels that influence the assembly of the right team:</li>
</ol>
<ul>
<li>
<p><strong>Compositional:</strong> Which competencies you want to be included—skills and experience of individuals count here.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Relational:</strong> How much ‘warmth’ there is between the individuals—how much they know each other or not.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Ecosystem:</strong> How much overlap they have with their peers in the ecosystem, both individually and via their past collaborations.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F672ae7e5-4d2c-46e9-8e40-75c7373d75bc_537x363.png" /></a></p>
<ol>
<li>This collaboration research found that any type of diversity helps the group to achieve more in terms of a competitive score. However, <strong>bringing cosmopolitan members (means people from completely different neighborhoods of the ecosystem) added to the robustness of the project</strong>. They didn’t let the project die in most instances— as significantly different members widen the scope of knowledge they bring and cover the structural holes(blind-spots) that homogenous teams might carry without being aware.</li>
</ol>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1285663c-51d8-45f0-bad9-c4df33f8e528_537x353.png" /></a></p>
<ol>
<li>The <strong>coherence of the ecosystem matters</strong> too. Too little global-overlap between team members means the project will struggle to coordinate the efforts of the members. On the other hand, too much local-overlap between members means no significant differences that would spark innovation by combining their skills and perspectives. In Noshir Contractor’s research, successful teams were more likely to be incoherent-locally but coherent globally in the ecosystem—this means that their members share some indirect level of connectedness (e.g: same location or same language) across the network but do not closely-match each other in their attributes like skills, background, and experience.</li>
</ol>
<h1 id="free-agency-and-assembly-decisions">Free-Agency and Assembly Decisions</h1>
<p>Small teams are assembled together in many different contexts for different functions. Two key variables involved in the assembly process are:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Level of free-agency of individual members</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Basis of decision-making in the assembly process</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a5d5a4c-8dd8-45f7-9849-8a689bebba7f_990x578.png" /></a></p>
<p>In this 2x2, I’ve roughly situated the instances of small-teams in various contexts. Exploration-focused teams usually have higher free-agency, as they are involved in dealing with more complex problems without an easy and straightforward solution.</p>
<p>On the other hand, most execution-focused projects, especially the ones with abundant human resources(drug-distribution, army platoons, outsourcing agencies) don’t invest in a decision-making process based on collecting data about the unique capabilities and experiences that individual members bring with them. High-stakes projects with high cost-of-mistake (space-missions or epidemic control teams) tend to prioritize data-driven assembly.</p>
<p>There are some teams/groups/clubs made with primary motivation other than exploration or exploitation/execution. Video-gamers and hobby clubs are two such examples whose primary motivation to form a small, tightly-knit group is bonding.</p>
<h2 id="yak-collective">Yak Collective</h2>
<p>A good example of an ecosystem of indie professionals creating collaborative, interdisciplinary work by assembling consultants, creators, and specialist freelancers is <a href="https://yakcollective.org/">Yak Collective</a>. It a loose network of 200+ independent professionals (including me) who collaborate on group projects to solve interesting complex problems for organizations of all sorts—business, research, non-profit, or government. We recently released a <a href="https://yakcollective.org/projects/yak-wisdom">public report</a> <strong>—Don’t Waste the Reboot—</strong> a collage of 25 provoking ideas/frameworks contributed by 21 independent professionals from different industries, backgrounds, and skills. If you’re intrigued by the idea of working with a small, interdisciplinary team of indie-professionals custom-assembled for dealing with a complex problem your organization is facing, feel free to check out this report and more about the Yak Collective on the <a href="https://yakcollective.org/">website</a>. If you know someone who’d be delighted to work with or join the Yak Collective, forward to him/her this post or the link to <a href="https://yakcollective.org/projects/yak-wisdom">the report</a>.</p>
<hr />
<h1 id="acknowledgments">Acknowledgments</h1>
<p>The research-findings included here, along with the images used, are sourced from Noshir Contractor’s presentation <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_apQO1rR2Bs"><em>Unleashing intellectual insights in big data</em></a> at the University of Michigan School of Information(UMSI). You can find more of his work <a href="https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/contractor_noshir.aspx">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p>Enjoyed reading this? Why not share it with someone who’ll be delighted to read this?</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="https://vinaydebrou.com/writing/essay/2020/04/30/small-world-network-brain-cell.html">← Previous</a></p>
<p><a href="https://vinaydebrou.com/writing/essay/2020/05/21/case-study-capgemini-invent.html">Next →</a></p>Vinay DébrouLess than six months after Boris Johnson took the prime minister office in the UK, his senior adviser and political strategist, Dominic Cummings published— on January 2nd, 2020— a new post on his personal blog. Through that post, Cummings sounded a recruiting call-for-applications for ‘unusual’ professionals. He wants these unusual and super-talented professionals to help No10 ’s small team build, test & implement strategies for complex problems that the UK faces in the new decade. Solving the complex problems also means getting to exploit the big open-to-grab opportunities at the edge of research in fields like data-science, complexity economics, network theory, and social-media communications among other promising fields. The headline read: ‘Two hands are a lot’ — we’re hiring data scientists, project managers, policy experts, assorted weirdos…”. Cummings noted in the post that his team’s goal is to tap the ‘very high-leverage ideas’ that inevitably seem bad to most people until their full-potential is unfolded.What in the Small-World is this?2020-04-30T11:03:14+00:002020-04-30T11:03:14+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2020/04/30/small-world-network-brain-cell<p>In addition to being a network, a small-world network structure is defined by two characteristics—</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>It has clusters.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Clusters have multiple links between themselves to enable the cross-cluster flow.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Clustering:</strong> Homophily—a tendency of similar nodes (eg: people with similar attributes) in the network to stick together and a bit away from those dissimilar to themselves, is the driving force behind clustering. This is why teens hangout online in a separate cluster (Snapchat), and the parents hang out separately(Facebook).</p>
<p><strong>Cross-Cluster Links:</strong> This is where a small-world network shines over other network structures. Links between clusters mean that the clusters have porous gates. This enables things-that-work or things-that-overwhelm to flow over to other nearby clusters. While clustering provides enough efficiency in good times, this cross-cluster linking provides the robustness to the whole network in the face of uncertainty. This robustness comes from the flexibility that these cross-cluster links provide to the network in reshaping as and when the need arises.</p>
<p><a href="https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/"><img src="https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/615aa2f2-4cd2-40f7-9d9a-098d7d9aa79a/Untitled.png?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAT73L2G45O3KS52Y5%2F20200430%2Fus-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200430T064708Z&X-Amz-Expires=86400&X-Amz-Signature=6fc260e1bd9db68ac4e928e29c76f2e9c0922b62413d47e0a6aef9944584bd0a&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&response-content-disposition=filename%20%3D%22Untitled.png%22" /></a></p>
<h1 id="small-world-brain-networks--dynamics-of-learning">Small-World Brain Networks & Dynamics of Learning</h1>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Bassett">Danielle Bassett</a> is a network-neuroscientist who took a look at the structure of the brain’s functional areas from the lens of networks. She was interested in finding out if the network structure of brain cells plays a key role in the process of learning. And if it does, what kind of network structure does the brain uses for learning and how it evolves during the process.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc85418de-487a-4dac-b5eb-8a52f1296c33_690x430.png" /></a></p>
<p><em>Image Source: Danielle Bassett’s community lecture: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWLIbfLoE8c">Networks thinking themselves</a></em></p>
<p>She constructed the electrical-activity snapshots from lots of MRI scans and analyzed the patterns that emerged. The cells that were involved in similar functions—like those active for motion or those active for vision or those who are active during standby default mode —were clustered together and there were plenty of cross-cluster links. It seemed to be structured very much like a small-world network.</p>
<h1 id="cluster-flexibility--learnability">Cluster Flexibility —> Learnability</h1>
<p>The interesting part of the small-worldness of the brain cell networks was the dynamics that enabled. In learning-process experiments, Bassett noticed these clusters were flexible and shifted their shapes according to their functional needs. It appears that the small-world structure optimizes the learnability of the network.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89d748d5-00f8-48c1-8333-824f2effdf0d_422x136.png" /></a></p>
<p>Look at these clusters forming cross-connections over time during the learning process. In Bassett’s experiments, more flexibility in network modules(clusters) predicted individual differences in visuomotor learning, cognitive flexibility, working memory, planning& reasoning, and learning rate. This is revealing and an exciting finding. This flexibility is not random. It turns out that the brain emulates the architecture to that of the object of learning. The knowledge objects like a lecture, paper, or a book that are most optimal for a knowledge-transmission via linear walk-throughs(reading or listening) have a meta-structure like a small-world network. This is helpful to an author for accurate and efficient mapping(compressing) and to a reader for reconstructing(uncompressing) with minimal loss of knowledge.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe4784a0a-3f7d-4c86-8696-e0ef3e01cc8e_436x268.png" /></a></p>
<p>These findings have popped interesting questions across the domains of learning, engineering, neuroscience, psychology, physics, and art. The most important question: Does small-worldness enable networks to think and evolve by themselves?</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.substack.com/"><img src="https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F508571d9-b98b-432d-8660-66713c3b1bc6_687x430.png" /></a></p>
<p><em>Image Source: Danielle Bassett’s community lecture: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWLIbfLoE8c">Networks thinking themselves</a></em></p>
<hr />
<h1 id="acknowledgments">Acknowledgments</h1>
<p>These ideas and images come from the stellar work of Danielle Bassett over many years and her 2019 Community Lecture at Santa Fe Institute — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWLIbfLoE8c"><em>Networks thinking themselves</em></a>. If you’re interested in diving deeper, check out <a href="https://complexsystemsupenn.com/projects">her work</a> at Complex Systems Lab of University of Pennsylvania.</p>
<hr />
<p>Liked this note? Why not share it with someone who’ll be delighted to read this?</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="https://vinaydebrou.com/writing/essay/2020/05/04/complex-problems-team-of-indies.html">Next →</a></p>Vinay DébrouIn addition to being a network, a small-world network structure is defined by two characteristics—Ask for Help, You Can2019-11-18T11:03:44+00:002019-11-18T11:03:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2019/11/18/ask-for-help-you-can<p><em>Pride and Fear</em></p>
<ol>
<li>Pride of “I figure things out myself”.</li>
<li>Fear of getting a “No”.</li>
</ol>
<p>These two emotions paralyze us and stop us from asking for help, even in times when we really need it and even when there are people out there who would love to help us.</p>
<p>We tend to rethink and reconsider how to ask for help. We get careful and hesitate asking for support. Friends, coworkers, and acquaintances can support us and would like the opportunity to do so.</p>
<p>But we don’t want to look needy, vulnerable, clueless or weak. We try to figure everything out ourselves and stress ourselves more than needed. We don’t want to bother or annoy people asking for their time, money, introductions, and guidance. We fear getting a no and being rejected.</p>
<p>We keep wondering and suffering alone, waiting until we have the perfect thing to offer to people before asking for help. Humility, curiosity and courage are three emotions thatvcan help us here. Inviting people in the process of learning, creating, iterating, and figuring things out requires us to have the courage to be vulnerable and we need more humility and curiosity to put our pride and fear away.</p>
<p>Let me tell you this. Once we open the kimono, people drop their apprehensions and tend to trust us more. They feel validated for their value, skill and judgement in our lives and they love to contribute in making something worthwhile happen.</p>
<p>If people can see themselves in a project, they will be proactive in contributing to its progress. Asking for help makes both sides build further trust and appreciation in our relationship.</p>
<p>You can :</p>
<ul>
<li>Ask for feedback.</li>
<li>Ask for an Intro.</li>
<li>Ask for funding.</li>
<li>Ask for new ideas.</li>
<li>Ask for hands-on load-sharing.</li>
<li>Ask for a retweet.</li>
<li>Ask for tool recommendation.</li>
<li>Ask for a therapy call.</li>
<li>Ask for help with humility, sincerity and curiosity.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3 id="how-to-ask">How to Ask</h3>
<p>Before you request for help, dig a bit about how you can best access the person you want to ask for help <a href="http://from.to/">f</a>rom. To give you a structured mold to use while you learn how to ask for help with sincerity and without feeling ashamed, I’m including a few pointers. Give a one liner about each of these, in your request:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Who you are</strong> (clear, concise and memorable persona)</li>
<li><strong>Why you care about them</strong> (their work, life or principles)</li>
<li><strong>Why you care about the world they are working on</strong> (their domain of practice)</li>
<li><strong>What you need help on</strong> (a link/attachment that showcases what you’re working on)</li>
<li><strong>How can they help you</strong> (specific questions, or specific requests for help)</li>
<li><strong>Let them know how their help will tangibly improve your life</strong> (picture of a better future)</li>
<li><strong>Let them know saying a “No” is okay</strong> (and it wouldn’t impact your perception of them)</li>
</ul>
<p>This should get you started. Like all things in practice, you should be iterate on it by your insights you glean from your own experiences.</p>
<p>Also, you will adapt on which pointer to emphasize most in which context. If you are asking for funding, your proof-of-work pointer will require more consideration than if you’re asking for a therapy call.</p>
<p><strong>P.S. -</strong> If you have something to add or want to discuss this, let me know on <a href="https://twitter.com/vinaydebrou">Twitter</a> by tweeting with #daybrew. You can ask for my help too. Drop me a quick <a href="mailto:vinaydebrou@gmail.com">email</a>.</p>Vinay DébrouPride and FearNetwork of Free-Agent Clusters2019-10-29T11:04:44+00:002019-10-29T11:04:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2019/10/29/network-free-agent-clusters<p><em>How indie-microbusinesses and antibiotic resistant bacteria are surviving and thriving</em></p>
<p>Most people have a small number of people in their direct acquaintance but almost every pair of two random people can reach one-another via a handful of intermediary connections. Dunbar’s number puts that degree of separation to six. Facebook recently said this number (the average ‘degree of separation’) is around 4, as calculated from the social-graph data of its more than a billion users.</p>
<p>Sociologists have found that people tend to gather in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/11/4/1062/4617719">homophilous cliques</a> (of size ~ 50 to 150) for maximal participation from members. When the group gets bigger, it breaks into two or more units. In this way, a small-world network emerges - with high level of clustering while at the same time the length of the path across the clusters is minimized. Most naturally emerging networks in the real-world like social networks are small-world networks(SFN).</p>
<p><a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/"><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/615aa2f2-4cd2-40f7-9d9a-098d7d9aa79a/Untitled.png" /></a></p>
<ul>
<li><em>Scale-Free Network(SFN) looks like a corporate hierarchy- it has clustering but no redundancy in links (destruction of a single central node can separate the clusters)→ <strong>Efficient but fragile</strong></em></li>
<li><em>Random Network(RN) has lots of links means lots of redundancy - but no clustering, which leads to longer average-shortest-path between any two nodes → <strong>Robust but Inefficient</strong></em></li>
<li><em>Small-World Network(SWN) takes the best of both worlds - clustering and link-redundancy → <strong>Efficient and Robust</strong></em></li>
</ul>
<p>Edit(Nov 2nd, 2019):</p>
<p>In terms of the mobility-friendliness,</p>
<ul>
<li>Hierarchical <em>scale-free networks</em> as illustrated above have <strong>strong gatekeeping</strong></li>
<li><em>Random networks</em> have <strong>negligible gatekeeping</strong></li>
<li><em>Small-world networks</em> have <strong>porous gates</strong>.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2 id="the-oblique-strategy-of-bacteria">The Oblique Strategy of Bacteria</h2>
<p>Horizontal Gene Transfer(HGT) is a way to bypass the gatekeeper for acquisition of genes. Instead of being limited to the gene-acquisition via reproductive heredity, an organism can acquire genes from another organism who is not its parent and is not even from the same species.</p>
<p><a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/"><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/a1224ce7-1680-4306-8f45-c847f750c23a/Untitled.png" /></a>
<em>Photo by Barth F. Smets / Wikipedia</em></p>
<p>Bacteria use horizontal transfer of antibiotic-resistance enabling genes from one species to another, resulting in an evolution faster than the speed at which pharmaceutical companies upgrade the effectiveness of antibiotic drugs. Usually, the transfer involves a virus (temperate bacteriophages) being the vector for this transmission. This accelerated co-evolution by horizontal sharing of useful genes is possible only by having a universal layer that underlies gene expression. That universal lingua-franca of life that can understand and combine genes from different species is thought to be the set of mechanisms common across species for genetic protein synthesis.</p>
<p>The equivalent of this in the digital world is the common file-transfer protocols of the internet, allowing for horizontal exchange of information across different formats, industries, and cultures. Many independent microbusinesses today, run by free-agents, are exploiting the power of this horizontal exchange and collaboration, resulting in free-agent clusters (FAC). They can take forms of a private group of solopreneurs or freelancers on Slack or Skype, who discuss regularly to share their varied insights, skills, resources and challenges. In physical spaces, it’s not new for free-agents to form close-knit clusters that meet up in coffeehouses or breakfast clubs. These clusters nurture long-term partnerships and shared ventures by inducing the scarce element of trust via transparency. The symbiotic co-evolution these free-agent clusters generate is a win-win - the way to go for the indie microbusinesses that the common layer of internet and software tools is creating and enabling.</p>
<p>To exploit the economy-of-scope, free-agent clusters are connecting to other clusters from distant domains, although maintaining sufficient boundaries for the sake of their own coherence and community. This higher layer of radical interdisciplinarity is opening viable out-of-the-box opportunities. With the rise of complexity, the necessity to take a interdisciplinary approach to solve a complex problem is rising. Take the example of the nascent field of crypto- solutions being built in crypto merge insights from neuroscience, cryptography, finance, psychology and software technology. Same is true for the emerging fields of AI and bioengineering, they are cutting across domains. Climate change, Urban traffic congestion, and International terrorism are all problems that demand multi-domain solutions.</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="connected-colonies">Connected Colonies</h2>
<p>Hierarchy, division of labor, and specialization - all of these are there to serve the big organization because economy of scale made all this worth while. While being a useful cog of the ‘big machine’ was great, we seem to be hitting the productivity-ceiling in such jobs. That is also making it possible to replace human cogs with mechanical ones by using self-driving cars and project management software.</p>
<p>Increasing automation of medium-skill jobs is prodding us to extract more unique economic value out of human capabilities. Instead of pushing vertically to break this productivity-ceiling with even more narrow specialization, rigid hierarchy and tranched sub-domains, we need to move horizontally- towards the many open doors around us. Horizontal movement across these open doors lead to paths that overlap with those of other domains and create new domains, new frameworks and spark new ways of things previously unconsidered. This is where the notion of radical interdisciplinarity comes in.</p>
<p><a href="https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/"> <img src="https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/b3f36652-087d-4d77-97bc-a1a8bab045fa/Untitled.png?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAT73L2G45P2WRPTEO%2F20191025%2Fus-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20191025T101915Z&X-Amz-Expires=86400&X-Amz-Security-Token=AgoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEDkaCXVzLXdlc3QtMiJHMEUCIQDiTMX33ABxcelW4Bv%2BJB5xR51pEqy522ceqWa1nh3wLAIgGYO07xCD2BwLQSpLZF5mmg2iZ5t1z3bUU%2FoTXHqeGlIq%2FAMIQhAAGgwyNzQ1NjcxNDkzNzAiDOUh%2B8cKTuckUJxDvCrZAzINQKGm9HwnkL5e6Dydr5e4D7RWtJj7CYw0k3jISgWw29NNJ5eGC5819BQ3GTmWdA3yWCPaDA9xqZo4zNxTsPBtRb2FwO4jZhvih6LP4rNWNdl3GE%2B19QnkaBmgaplNMsqA6b1Zbfqd%2F0bgoX0yeTM1O6P%2FzZsLUmS8gs1IsrHd6q2WaFk2zgFuJhwQs8YYLYtuucAxH72VD4SGJtfwM0ZdgBXDuZCnMYilavvPopl%2BPddn%2BDdBlpLEBYUdHAVmKDvXRjEgWfm3rv0zv2UAwMYZAknex4XHgKwmxz11ECjmFBPsOAm0Y2u4W2fvEErMp2Cw8sQrR8lptIhT9SJH4C%2Fz4FpqDvzJOkCu39VdWKD7XklQ8FybIddKGHFxaIVzVCI5I4fED6dxAfAhrANyMLPoZtKtpkymGr3xai%2BFkL9tsJaSq1TykRIn%2BN7YcoqarzibIkiVO8uDPme2C7OSkjjJnOTYNVhytI4LNc1OdpR6iwcW%2B6A0mrlIGdQC0MLbduAsEDW7aC7giJO7j7m566VQASI6aRII5PaSCzhOorW9RVg%2Fn4dGx2aqy8IKPB%2Fh3aLtWswPvM4tkVRPkV%2FuyQGJZL%2Bp29Jy96kerHuKyp4DgGub%2FMrTGfF1MPjkyu0FOrQBeE3EUWP71QyB7kZjf1jdU4Wn0dXbCuaf%2F3cD8PbdsJx9d2gjzf8LFEjkTVS67gSwiPZ8zYIJj7MjRaAeRq9T3OtCkf2L78i6HhEzdq1i2BuYHxPvB79Tqvm%2Fx2XSDg6bMkbMGNu0PdT6MZ%2Bx8mXYtZ7zk0XQmCRkZMK5DTdX%2FZzWHNdm9UGmmn%2BBnVEBUk8I79y8uHiPh4saGn1rCBfU5VdSgEsQwbYU7vwMpPZZR4SrkMBA&X-Amz-Signature=9be71b69c185728f254a2b83f8a68759bf1aa8123760f0b65aa6258d3e8c5904&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%20%3D%22Untitled.png%22" /> </a></p>
<p><strong>How does a single Free-Agent Cluster (FAC) look like?</strong></p>
<p>A FAC resembles an informal incubator which is hosted by one or few of the free agents and contains a homophilous clique of people(usually between 6 to 30). There is essential dissemination of products, skills, ideas- both tacit and definitive knowledge, and there are commonly accepted norms, stated or unstated.</p>
<p>There is free space for casual exploration of new ideas, along with respect and mutual appreciation for unexpected ways of thinking and doing things. It can be a manifested in a digital space— a Slack channel or in a physical space— like a tinkering lab. As we hit the limits of economy-of-scale driven by centralization, we are ready to tap in the economy-of-scope.</p>
<hr />
<h2 id="network-of-free-agent-clusters-nofac"><strong>Network of Free-Agent Clusters (<em>NoFAC</em>)</strong></h2>
<p><em>Collaborative Commerce</em> is now enabled by on-demand flexible manufacturing, free distribution via the internet and cheap software systems to create, communicate and collaborate. A small-world network of free-agent clusters (NoFAC) is emerging to leverage the techno-industrial layer of abundant, on-demand, flexible manufacturing that was built and optimized by specialized labor and centralized organizations. This layer includes cheap software-as-a-service(SaaS) platforms and products for creation, free-education, free instant communication and collaboration tools along with on-demand manufacturing and distribution. This layer is the universal lingua franca for horizontal collaboration that accelerates co-evolution of symbiotically clustered free-agents.</p>
<p>Creating the free-agent ecosystem requires at least three layers to exploit horizontal collaboration:</p>
<ul>
<li>Essential resource-infrastructure to be free or cheap- accessible to maximum free agents, enabling permission-less learning and creation.</li>
<li>Close-knit clustering for free-agents with shared values and interests to group together in symbiotic relationships and provide a coherent community.</li>
<li>Radical interdisciplinarity to leverage economy-of-scope to solve complex problems that demand multi-domain solutions enabled by horizontal collaboration.</li>
</ul>
<p>A NoFAC is a small-world network of free-agents (armed with on-demand techno-industrial systems) who form small clusters of like-minded people, along with plenty of inter-cluster linking. This horizontal inter-cluster linking is manifested as <em>radical interdisciplinarity.</em> Overall, a NoFAC resembles in functional structure, an archipelago of self-organizing islands of homophilous tribes.</p>
<p><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/ab669672-6b92-474e-b994-1df68cbc0ac2/Untitled.png" />(https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/)</p>
<p>Layer 1: <em>Techno-Industrial Systems Layer (Essential Infrastructure)</em> - this layer is for a free-agent what soil is for a plant - encouraging self-learning and self-creation by autodidacts, the systems in this layer leverages economy-of-scale to provide the essential resources and leaves the freedom to choose to the free agent- encouraging maximal creativity.</p>
<p>Layer 2: <em>Free-Agent Cluster (Sufficient Community)</em> - an incubator with acceptance of unexpected ideas and frameworks, encouraged by small, intimate cluster of like-minded free-agents- homophilos cliques. The cluster is self-organizing and each free agent has accountable autonomy. These free-agents share, collaborate, trade, inspire and learn together, enabled by a trust based on shared values and transparency.</p>
<p>Layer 3: <em>Radically Interdisciplinary Network (Maximal Diversity Connections)</em> - intertwining of domains, frameworks and ways of thinking, win-win growth - this layer leverages economy-of-scope and opens up unexpected opportunities for two or more clusters to pursue together and come up with multi-domain solutions for complex problems and create entirely new fields.</p>
<p>I have observed the emergence of NoFAC in my corner of the internet world, witnessing from up-close, the new tactics and strategies that have been recently developed by the indie microbusinesses to survive and thrive. Micro e-commerce brands to indie finance-bloggers to small clusters of software developers, free-agent clusters are a thing that exists to serve the existential need of the participants. Given the Cambrian explosion of internet-era indie microbusinesses we are witnessing, it is not a stretch to say that more NoFACs will become norm in the 2020s. I will be watching this phenomenon with excitement and optimism as an aspiring free-agent.</p>
<hr />
<h3 id="relevant-links-for-further-reading">Relevant links for further reading</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.notion.so/brewing/Free-Agents-Clusters-25f1165226af4dd89a368c8eabede930#fb1d353f0be845c1a18f573ee6fbdd75">The Rise of Full-Stack Freelancer</a> by <strong>Tiago Forte</strong></li>
<li><a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5659f669e4b0f60cdbb12aa8/t/5ace41c30e2e72484fea7026/1523466729545/Free+Agent+Ecosystem+Manifesto+v8+2017.pdf">Free-Agent Ecosystem (manifesto)</a> by <strong>Joseph Sterling</strong> of Rainforest Strategies</li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cXRrNXK4zE">Radical Interdisciplinarity</a> talk by <strong>Andrew Nelson</strong></li>
</ul>Vinay DébrouHow indie-microbusinesses and antibiotic resistant bacteria are surviving and thrivingIn Praise of the Small Goldilocks City2019-10-17T11:03:44+00:002019-10-17T11:03:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/essay/2019/10/17/small-city<p>Can we have the best of both worlds?</p>
<p>There is a lot of talk in books, reports and internet blogs about the advantage that living in a Big City brings about to the individual. Serendipitous encounters, broader acceptance of the fringes and large-scale public infrastructure pull many ambitious upstarters to the Big City every year.</p>
<p>Things have changed a lot in the last two decades. Big Cities have become Mega cities with millions new inhabitants. Pollution and traffic, lack of coherent community, stressed infrastructure due to overpopulation and high housing costs have ruined the Big City dream for me. I needed a new refuge.</p>
<h3 id="community-and-convenience">Community and Convenience</h3>
<p>I need some light sense of community belonging, a place where people take a minute to breathe and chat lightly to neighbors. I need a place with joyful outdoors - essential infrastructure combined with lots of nature. A place that still holds the coherence of its culture combined with an openness to welcome outsiders. I wanted the best of both worlds - the small town community and the big city convenience, along with a culture that fuses both.</p>
<p><a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/"><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/9aa88f8d-3411-4740-9edc-f05d37e11661/2x2_of_small_goldilocks_city.png" /></a></p>
<p>I have a location-independent worklife. This means, I am not bound to live in the Big City for my work. My dislike for the current state of the Big City life and the location-independence offered by my worklife made me go on a search sprint to find a better place where I can take refuge. The biggest element in curating a joyful everyday life was to select the right place. So I read hundreds of reports, blogs and compared the quality of life in dozens of places, filtered by what I was looking for. I tried beach towns, foreign cities, country villages, boom cities, college towns and tourist cities. I kept optimizing for what I like and what I dislike. Then I found my new <em>homebase</em>.</p>
<p><a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/"><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/5f33e046-e049-4e33-a00e-517e71621331/Untitled.png" /></a></p>
<p>The mountain city of Dharamshala (in North India) fits the small goldilocks city criteria I was looking for. It is located in the foothills of western Himalayas and is home to a good mix of outsiders and insiders. I do not see the indignity of homelessness on the streets here. The residents are welcoming and friendly to outsiders but still hold on to their culture and community. A vibrant sub-community of spiritual Tibetan Buddhists (including the Dalai Lama) adds to the diversity-mix along with proud Punjabi people from the neighboring state, nomadic mountain tribes of Himalayas, families of retired army veterans, and a disparate flow of exploring backpackers.</p>
<p><a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/"><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/b365a583-04b2-4b16-a1b7-8a33fccb7235/IMG_20191114_140651.jpg" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/"><img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/9263045b-63a9-463a-beae-edbd78c79bf6/Untitled.png" /></a></p>
<p>Big city life is optimized for maximum productivity but I found a better bargain: essential productivity + maximum creativity + essential community. In this small goldilocks city, We don’t have many shopping malls and metro trains here but we do have art galleries, museums, film festivals, artisan cafes, and markets. However, its not overflowing with crass commercialism overriding the coherence of the community structure. Traffic jams are rare occurrences. Essential infrastuctrure—(housing, transport, utilities, et al) is cheap. Perennial water streams from the mountains acts as a free audio-spa when I go out on long strolls in the nature, outside the city center. Above all, people are friendly and sincere to each other and after living in this place for months now, it keeps filling me with joy and raw life, day after day.</p>
<p>After noticing some of my acquaintances and other location-independent people making a similar choice, I decided to write this note to others who might share the same interests and are looking for someone to share with, the experience of making a conscious choice of finding and moving to a small goldilocks city.</p>
<h3 id="more-praise"><strong>More Praise:</strong></h3>
<p>[<em>Brent Beshore](https://twitter.com/BrentBeshore)</em> (VC & Founder of <a href="http://adventur.es/">adventur.es)</a>, who moved to Columbia, Missouri to live and build a business:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I understand why people live in big cities — physical density of the interest graph has a meaningful impact on serendipity and access to infrastructure, quality of distraction, and broad variety is beneficial. Rural America is built on family, the outdoors, and community. It’s just a fundamentally different lens to view the game of life.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>With that said, there are many “Goldilocks” towns in the U.S. and my hometown of Columbia, MO is one of them. We frequently host visitors from the coasts and virtually all of them remark about how they “get it.” We’re a college town with about 130,000 residents without students and roughly 40,000 students in the area. We blend the quality of food, music, sports, and art of a bigger city with a toned down pace and focus on community. There’s no traffic. It’s cheap. People are friendly and welcoming. We have a vibrant downtown, beautiful outdoors, and host some of the top film, music, and book festivals in the country. We put together short slide deck about it here:
<a href="https://www.adventur.es/our-home">https://www.adventur.es/our-home</a></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>My pitch is that there’s far, far more going on than wherever you physically find yourself in the world. That area of the country you fly over looks barren, but it’s not. For instance, two of Y-Combinator’s most valuable companies originated in Columbia in the past 8 years (Zapier and Equipment Share). CNBC ranked Columbia as the second best place in the U.S. for women with careers. Forbes ranked Columbia as the 10th best place in the country for business. Plus, the internet cord stretches all the way out here and there are jet planes that can take you anywhere you want to go.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>You should come check it out. I’d be happy to show you around.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Source: Brent’s October 2019 <a href="https://danco.substack.com/p/an-interview-with-brent-beshore?r=2hi7l&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy">interview</a> with Alex Danco.</em></p>
<hr />
<h3 id="finding-your-small-goldilocks-city">Finding your Small Goldilocks City</h3>
<p>There are hundreds of these small goldilocks cities around the world, lying undiscovered by the digital nomad. I had the first taste of this in the small city of Albi in South France, in the spring of 2016.</p>
<p>After 3 years of trial and search, I have developed a personal set of filter criteria to select such cities—a population in the 100,000-300,000 range, plenty of nature in and around, essential infrastructure in good shape, an openness to outsiders<em>(tourist towns and college towns are usually good for this),</em> pleasant climate, affordable housing, and walkable side-roads.</p>
<p>Industrial revolution pulled us from villages and small towns to the Big City but now, the Metropolis has turned into the Megalopolis. Good news is, the Internet Revolution is here to liberate us from it. If you are location-independent in your worklife, you can find your own small goldilocks city— joyful, affordable, clean, friendly and filled with community and nature. That doesn’t sound too bad to me.</p>Vinay DébrouCan we have the best of both worlds?About One Morning2019-09-15T11:03:44+00:002019-09-15T11:03:44+00:00https://vinaydebrou.github.io/vinaydebrou.github.io/writing/poem/2019/09/15/about-one-morning<p>Trees are green and full of energy,</p>
<p>shedding the old leaves</p>
<p>Water flows in unending rythym</p>
<p>The mountains stand in front of me in confidence</p>
<p>I woke up before the sun to-day</p>
<p>I now see it making golden outlines on that cloud</p>
<p>as it touches the highest tip of the mountains.</p>
<p>The therapeutic sound of water stream by my side.</p>
<p>Oh the chirps of these little birds are filling the air</p>
<p>While the insects of the night screech no more</p>
<p>People are waking up getting into the chores of the day</p>
<p>Just like the vines in my garden,</p>
<p>growing another inch with every day.</p>
<p>The owl is looking for a place without disturbance</p>
<p>That is what I seek.</p>
<p>I find it among the nature, in my garden in the hills.</p>
<p>The fresh air I breathe and the ground I sit upon,</p>
<p>all is well when I am aligned with nature.</p>Vinay DébrouTrees are green and full of energy,