Connected Intelligence: Leveraging Collective Wisdom

"The World is Flat, declared Thomas Friedman. It is a Long Tail, says Chris Anderson. Everything is Miscellaneous, avers David Weinberger. Seeing it as The Wisdom of Crowds was a profound insight from James Surowiecki. Their perspectives addressed several aspects of business, life and the human condition in general. The truth is that we have reached not one era, but a multitude of eras, all at once and in a time-space compressed fashion. This has caused a shift in our expectations and our practices that impacts how we work, what we consume and how we live life. Currently, the only tool that we have in our hands to combat this phenomenon is Change Management. It is a linear response to the non-linear set of changes happening in this Poly-Era (or Era containing multiple Eras). It is so Newtonian. We need a holistic new paradigm. Complex Systems, on the other hand, has the beautiful notion of Emergent Structures, which are patterns not created by a single event or rule. Instead, the interaction of each part with its immediate surroundings causes a complex chain of processes leading to some new order. The Connected Intelligence System is a practitioner-centric corporate operating system that augments Knowledge Work. The principal components emerge out of simple interactions of fundamental components and are based on Complexity Thinking. It provides tools to address the changes that have taken place all at once in the human enterprise due to the coming of the Poly-Era in a holistic fashion. This manifesto presents the case for the need of a Connected Intelligence Operating System."