The Trade-Off Between Top-Up and Bottom-Up Organizations

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There is no one true balance point for every context. Bottom-up organizations are extremely hard to find interesting shelling points or other coordination mechanisms. They tend to be much more resilient, much more able to adapt to circumstances and way less likely to die as one way of putting it. Top-down control can create shelling points very actively but they can get very caught off guard by things.

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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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