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Fractal Scaling Social Innovation – Alignment with Fractal Brain Studies

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The Fractal Nature of Nature

There has been talk within my Facebook ‘Social Innovation’ (SI) groups to figure out a way to scale it for growth. I proposed that we can not apply the same methods to social innovation as we have for all our other forms of innovation, as that would backlash and bring down the potential breakthroughs that SI are beginning to tap into.

The idea of ‘fractal scaling’ popped out of my brain and I’ve decided to pursue a study of its potential for us to transform our thinking and actions around social innovation. Sometimes doors open when you put a stake in the ground: Last night I finally watched a presentation that I’ve been wanting to get to forever called “2012 & the Fractal Brain Theory” where neuroscience thinker, Wai H. Tsang presents a revolutionary Fractal Theory of Brain, Mind & Consciousness that could fundamentally alter the course of human(e) progress. This is holy grail stuff.

In the video, Wai correlates new research on the brain that shows how its complexity emerges from fundamental simplicity and links it to fractal math, then eloquently takes the whole subject into a journey of spiritual awareness! Excellent. These are the kinds of people out there that I want to hang with, as his synthesis speaks of a new paradigm that is founded in ancient truths … fractal.

Moving Back into the Sacred

From this work, I believe that we will find the scaling of anything (everything?) may end up correlating with Fractal Brain Theory. If we are to innovate ourselves out of the destructive box we’re in, we will have to paradoxically enter deep into ourselves – only to find that we ‘are’ the Universe.

Sound familiar? God is within us? All is one? And all that sort? Now our technology has reached a point in its fronteer that suggest undeniable connections between spirituality and science. A sort of bounded ball of inter-twine.

The outcome is revering our creation of technology as a Sacred Act. What would our world be like from this frame of mind? How wonderful. From this work, I propose that a model of ‘fractal’ scaling for social innovation may be just what the doctor ordered, and will emerge a few of us addressing what is being presented in Wai’s video below.

It seems that complexity truly is the offspring of simplicity. And from simplicity, breeds complexity. The fractal cycle of matter, and ‘what’ matters, in this world. The future of innovation and our social well being will be founded upon this universal condition.

2012 & the Fractal Brain Theory from Paradigm Shift Productions Ltd on Vimeo

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The Dirty Little Secret About Sustainability

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With all the growing commitment to green, is sustainability actually happening?  

quick_draw_rattle_shake_by_blackrhinoranger-d6qkqhlAs an advocate for sustainability for many years, I sincerely want to know what you think. My goal here is to rattle things up a bit. To shake and stir us sustainability advocates into sharing what I believe is a silent voice regarding its future. 

On our way to where? …

Consider the statistics in the video presentation and then please share with me – Are we on our way toward sustainability? Maybe the survey statistics are not correct – that 2/3’s of all CEO surveyed don’t see today’s sustainability efforts as solving the growing problems we face.

He mentions incremental vs transformational change …

So far, it seems we are spending most our time with ‘incremental’ rather than ‘transformational’. These are very different animals; are they not? Why would one work and the other fail?

Social and environmental systems should be showing more signs of improvement … 

Yet the crisis in both cases is still getting worse.  Are we at a place along this journey where we need to reconsider that SUSTAINABILITY MAY NOT BE ON THE RIGHT PATH? 

Maybe it’s time we touch on truths that we do not wish to address … 

Uncomfortable as it may be, are we denying what is really happening and avoiding looking at the bigger picture? How can we bring these statistics to the front of the room and talk about fears we have about our ongoing efforts? How do we step up to a deeper level of responsibility regarding our direction?

From my view, it’s time we shake out the dirty little secret about sustainability (as stated in the video) and rattle things up a bit as a collective.

Please share your thoughts … 

What do you have to say about what is said in the video? Might you be in agreement with my own conclusion, that sustainability is failing? Or not? If no, tell me why. If yes, what do we need to do to turn things around?

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Lossy vs Efficient Organizations – How to Design a Sustainable Supply Chain Management System

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My recent insight on Sustainable Supply Chain Management System design … Lossy vs efficient organizations – how to design a ‘sustainable’ supply chain management (scm) system

sustainability in supply chain management is optimized by measuring the lossiness cause by reflective coefficients at the sources and sinks of each learning node (suppler/vendor) in the chain. This refers to both informational and material flows. Thus, when the reflective coefficients are high, much loss occurs in the transfer of energy (product/services) process.

This generates a highly inefficient system and utilizes more resources, times, and people – thereby money; than a system that has been optimized at each supplier connection point with the goal of minimizing resistance and maximizing flux of information. The higher the flux (meaning bidirectional flow of information so that it is received and absorbed or assimilated), the lower the cost factors in product/service creation, is involved.

In a closed loop supply chain system (for example see the metabolic closed loop system diagram) each point of technology/materials transfer become an increasing way to build sustainability into the supply chain. this generates, not only a cleaner product generator through the network (chain), it also non-linearly reduces the costs involved – after an initial startup cost factor to break through the existing system’s resistance (otherwise known as momentum).

By defining reflective coefficient models as result of source/sink information and materials flow ratios, the evolution of a supply chain can be monitored, measured, and melded into an optimized performance system that directly affects world sustainability.

Sustainable Supply Chain Management System

copyright vic desotelle discoverycolabs.com/vicsblog

comments from drew:  drew goodwin: just read  your piece….. good stuff overall….. devil in the details….. precisely what has to be measured?  and how ? ….. cool thing is that if you can figure out a way to measure “inefficiency ” then you have a metric that can be monitored for improvement over time….. providing a benchmark to substantiate claims of gain/loss…. also, would be nice to specify and quantify those data (the “flux”) that are necessary and sufficient for efficient supply chain management……

For Those Who Stand in the Arena of Change

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May 2014 be the year when the men and women of ‘the arena’ (see below) come together to share our triumphs and struggles, and to celebrate the making of a world that works for all. I wish a to extend to each of you who stand in this very special place, a joyful and transformative New Year.

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THE MAN IN THE ARENA by Theodore Roosevelt

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

 

Is There an Ecological Unconscious?

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I find that this subject is one of the more revealing issues of our time. A place that requires us to reshape our understanding and meaning of ‘environment’. Read this great article on the link between our human psyche and the Earth.

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ecologicalunconsciousBy DANIEL B. SMITH
Published: January 27, 2010

The terms in which ecopsychology pursues this admittedly ambitious goal are steeped in the field’s countercultural beginnings. Ecopsychology emerged in the early 1960s, just as the modern environmental movement was gathering strength, when a group of Boston-area graduate students gathered to discuss what they saw as the isolation and malaise infecting modern life. It had another brief period of efflorescence, particularly on the West Coast and among practitioners of alternative therapies, in the early ’90s, when Theodore Roszak, a professor of history (he coined the word “counterculture”) published a manifesto, “The Voice of the Earth,” in which he criticized modern psychology for neglecting the primal bond between man and nature. “Mainstream Western psychology has limited the definition of mental health to the interpersonal context of an urban-industrial society,” he later wrote. “All that lies beyond the citified psyche has seemed of no human relevance — or perhaps too frightening to think about.” Ecopsychology’s eclectic following, which includes therapists, researchers, ecologists and activists, still reflects these earlier foundations. So does its rhetoric. Practitioners are as apt, if not more apt, to cite Native American folk tales as they are empirical data to make their points.

Yet even as it remains committed to its origins, ecopsychology has begun in recent years to enter mainstream academic circles. more …

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