The Evolution of Complex Adaptive Systems

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In general, I'm fascinated with complex adaptive systems. And you see these behaviors like, why does this thing happen this way? And the answer is the emergent behaviors of lots of individual agents making locally optimal decisions or following very simple rule sets. So what's the opposite extreme on the other side of the far away from the slime mold model? The bottom rungs are just automatons effectively just executing on a script in a way that has no particular autonomy or ability to respond to novel information at the leads.

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Why do organizations get slower as they grow? What can organizations learn from slime molds? What are the advantages of top-down organization versus bottom-up organization, and vice versa? How can organizations encourage serendipity? What use are doorbells in jungles? Why is it so hard for organizations to set a "north star" that is at once plausible, coherent, and good?

Alex Komoroske has over a decade of experience in the tech industry as a product manager focusing on platform- and ecosystem-shaped problems. While at Google, he worked on Chrome's Web Platform PM team, Augmented Reality in Google Maps, and Ambient Computing. He's fascinated by how to navigate the emergent complexity within organizations to achieve great results. You can find some of his public writing at komoroske.com.

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