The Friction Point Between Variety and Variation in Organizations

Today’s guest is Jabe Bloom, in conversation with Simone and Emanuele Quintarelli, Boundaryless’ EEEO Micro Enterprise Lead.    With Jabe, we look into how, increasingly in an age of technologically powered organizations, thriving means the ability to enable “the three economies” of differentiation, scale and scope at the same time. The key question is: what’s the role of platforms and ecosystems in this shift?    During the chat we explore topics such as managing organizational commons, ensuring continuity between the organization and its ecosystem, decentralizing information, sympoietic versus autopoietic systems, maneuver warfare theory, cosmopolitan localism, the role of social practice and methodologies in institutional innovation and so much more. We focus on the interplay between these trends and organizational development.   Jabe Bloom is part of Red Hat’s Global Transformation Office, where he services as a senior director. He has been working to explore the complex interactions between design, innovation, development, and operational excellence in organizations for more than 20 years. Jabe is currently writing his dissertation in pursuit of a Ph.D. in Design Studies at Carnegie Mellon University (PA) – his research focuses on the field of Transition Design and informs an ongoing exploration of the practice of design and strategy with a select group of international clients.    Tune in to this informative conversation as we learn more about Jabe’s research, and his theories on organisational design and platform thinking.    Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our Medium publication: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/Podcast-S2E16-Jabe-Bloom      To find out more about Jabe’s work:   > Website: http://blog.jabebloom.com/  > Twitter: https://twitter.com/cyetain   > Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com/en    Other references and mentions:   > Herbert Simon:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon  > Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch, Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration, 1968: https://www.amazon.com/Organization-Environment-Managing-Differentiation-Integration/dp/0875841295   > Bruno Latour: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/index-2.html > Elinor Ostrom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom  Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast   Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music   Recorded on 9 April 2021.