The African Enterprise (18/10/2021)
Chaos Theory, Combinatorial Explosion, Architectural Knowledge.
Hi friends,
Greeting from Abuja.
Here's what I have to share with you this week.
Socialize the problem: No one can have the depth of knowledge to account for all facets of problem-solving. That said, there are two mentalities that define how we phrase problems and look to solve them: The mindshare and Marketshare mentalities. With mindshare, we think in relational ways, allowing us to socialize problems.
Architectural Knowledge - How things fit: How things work is just as important as whether they work. All the best products, systems, teams, and groups are more than the sum of their parts. The level of synchronization that exists within is crucial to making the most of them.
Coolest things I learned this week
Chaos Theory
According to this theory, in a chaotic or complex system, tiny differences at the beginning of a process can lead to massive differences down the road.
I see this concept most in my writing and wrote about it in a short essay - Imperfect understanding. One small additional idea can mean I write an entirely different essay to the one I set out to write.
Anything chaotic or complex in this sense can mean everything with lots of moving parts. I also believe it's why it's possible to pivot sharply. Any change - no matter how small - can be the difference between a good product and a great product that people will be eager to spend their money on.
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Combinatorial Explosion
Think back to the last time you had trouble understanding something. What did you do? For most people, It would be to google, Ask others, or look for ways to get more information.
All that new information can help to make sense of the information you had before. But it doesn’t end there. To understand the new information you used to make sense of the previous load, you need new information, and so on. An ever-growing information need.
Computer scientists refer to it as Combinatorial Explosion. Complete understanding requires increasingly more and more information. This combination of everything you need to understand in order to understand eventually becomes unbearable thus exploding.
That’s it for this week.
If you have any thoughts or questions, hit reply and we can have a chat. And if you enjoyed it, share it with friends.
Till next week,
Kelvin