Storytelling (1)
ผมได้รับแจ้งผ่านทาง Learning to Fly Community จากคุณ Seth Kahan ว่ามีบทความสัมภาษณ์ กูรู ทางด้านสุนทรียสนทนา จึงขอนำมาฝาก มี ๔ ตอนครับ
http://www.sethkahan.com/Resources_0JohnSeelyBrown.html
JOHN SEELY BROWN
Interviewed by Seth Kahan
Edited by Stephen Denning
February 10, 2003
Seth: You're a
scientist and a manager, John. I understand you are paying a lot of
attention to storytelling. Why is that?
JSB: I'm taking
storytelling so seriously that I'm now spending part of my time at
the new institute for media literacy at USC. I'm particularly
interested in digital storytelling, in new ways to use multiple
media to tell stories and in the ability of kids, who are now
growing up in a digital world, to figure out new ways to tell
stories. They have the ability to build interpretive movies very
simply and to lay sound tracks around the content. They condition
or "sculpture" the context around the content. The serious
interplay between context and content is key to what film - and
rich media in general - are about. I want to understand what film
people know about storytelling. I want to know what makes them such
good storytellers. What are the techniques (and grammars) of film
that help them create an emotional scaffolding around a story so
that it connects first to the gut and then to the head?
Why storytelling?
Well, the simplest answer to your question is that stories talk to
the gut, while information talks to the mind. You can't talk a
person through a change in religion or a change in a basic mental
model. There has to be an emotional component in what you are
doing. That is to say, you use a connotative component (what the
thing means) rather than a denotative component (what it
represents). First, you grab them in the gut and then you start to
construct (or re-construct) a mental model. If you try to do this
in an intellectual or abstract way, you find that it's very hard,
if not impossible, to talk somebody into changing their mental
models. But if you can get to them emotionally, either through
rhetoric or dramatic means (not overly dramatic!), then you can
create some scaffolding that effectively allows them to construct a
new model for themselves. You provide the scaffolding and they
construct something new. It doesn't seem to work if you just try
to tell them what to think. They have to internalize it. They have
to own it. So the question is: what are the techniques for creating
scaffolding that facilitate the rich internalization and
re-conceptualization and re-contextualization of their own thinking
relative to the experience that you're providing them? Put more
simply: how do you get them to live the idea?
Seth: That's
similar to your concept of communities. You said: "You can never
design a community; you can onlynurture a community." It's as
though you build the trellis for the plant to climb on.
JSB: Precisely!
That's one of the reasons we need to understand this esoteric
stuff known as epistemology and socialnetwork theory. This stuff
starts to pay off when we use it to figure out how we can construct
the scaffolding, the trellis, which we want to put in place to
support the communication of a new idea and the kinds of nurturing
that weneed to do. We can use this stuff to help us figure out the
physical space, the social space and the informationalspace. These
spaces need have something wonderful about them, so that the idea
doesn't appear just once, butbecomes something that's lived: it
affects the way I see the world.
Seth: I can think of other applications, like helping an institution change its culture. But there's also parenting, anddeveloping citizens.
JSB: Absolutely! In fact one of the reasons I am at USC is to look at broader issues such as, "How do you re-think aculture of learning that might underlie new forms of journalism? How do you create an environment that is conducive to more folks participating in a democracy?" It's the scaffolding that engenders our attention. It's also helpful tounderstand the new technologies. What is the role of blogs; that is, weblogs? How do they provide a supportivestructure? How do they enable us to make sense of what is going on? How do they work? How do they communicate? How effective are they? When do they reach critical mass? And how?
Seth: Are there similarities between blogs and rumors? Blogs mystify me. When I heard of them, I thought, 'Blech! A blog? A serial conversation? What good is that?'
JSB: Blogs are
powerful when there's a set of blogs working independently that
end up helping you triangulate on thesame point. You have different
points of view that end up linking to the same mega-idea. If you
have three independent rumors that all say the same thing, then
that rumor may turn out to have a certain kind of significance.
What's interesting is whether we should read blogs in the same way
as we read a newspaper.
Notice, also, that
blogs can suddenly reach a critical mass that then forces something
out into the open, into publicconsciousness. You might think of it
as an analogy to the subconscious vs. the conscious. The formal or
consciouspart is what today's journalism is about, New York Times
and so on. But the informal layer, comprising things like blogs, is
like our unconscious mind. It's not publicly visible. But all
kinds of things are happening there. Things get linked together and
suddenly there can be enough links (creating a dense mesh of
intertextual links) that the underlying 'idea' breaks through to
public consciousness. The recent Trent Lott situation is an
excellent example. Initially, the mainstream press didn't pick up
on what he said. It wasn't in the public consciousness. It was the
blogs that identified the issue and got the debate going. It was
connected at the subconscious level - speaking metaphorically in
terms of the social mind. Enough energy was generated, and then it
burst forth into the conscious mind and into the formal media.
Seth: In a big way.
JSB: In a huge way, yes! That's what happens. That's how you get a phase transition from the unconscious to theconscious. That's how you get a phase transition from within the informal social networks to the public recognition and mainstream media. And we know a lot about the mathematics of this. Networks help us understand what leads tophase transitions.
Seth: Can you provide a reference for this?
Seth: I can think of other applications, like helping an institution change its culture. But there's also parenting, and developing citizens.
JSB: Absolutely! In fact one of the reasons I am at USC is to look at broader issues such as, "How do you re-think aculture of learning that might underlie new forms of journalism? How do you create an environment that is conducive tomore folks participating in a democracy?" It's the scaffolding that engenders our attention. It's also helpful tounderstand the new technologies. What is the role of blogs; that is, weblogs? How do they provide a supportive structure? How do they enable us to make sense of what is going on? How do they work? How do they communicate? How effective are they? When do they reach critical mass? And how?
Seth: Are there similarities between blogs and rumors? Blogs mystify me. When I heard of them, I thought, 'Blech! Ablog? A serial conversation? What good is that?'
JSB: Blogs are
powerful when there's a set of blogs working independently that
end up helping you triangulate on thesame point. You have different
points of view that end up linking to the same mega-idea. If you
have three independent rumors that all say the same thing, then
that rumor may turn out to have a certain kind of significance.
What's interesting is whether we should read blogs in the same way
as we read a newspaper.
Notice, also, that
blogs can suddenly reach a critical mass that then forces something
out into the open, into publicconsciousness. You might think of it
as an analogy to the subconscious vs. the conscious. The formal or
conscious part is what today's journalism is about, New York Times
and so on. But the informal layer, comprising things like blogs, is
like our unconscious mind. It's not publicly visible. But all
kinds of things are happening there. Things get linked together and
suddenly there can be enough links (creating a dense mesh of
intertextual links) that the underlying 'idea' breaks through to
public consciousness. The recent Trent Lott situation is an
excellent example. Initially, the mainstream press didn't pick up
on what he said. It wasn't in the public consciousness. It was the
blogs that identified the issue and got the debate going. It was
connected at the subconscious level - speaking metaphorically in
terms of the social mind. Enough energy was generated, and then it
burst forth into the conscious mind and into the formal media.
Seth: In a big way.
JSB: In a huge way, yes! That's what happens. That's how you get a phase transition from the unconscious to the conscious. That's how you get a phase transition from within the informal social networks to the public recognition and mainstream media. And we know a lot about the mathematics of this. Networks help us understand what leads to phase transitions.
Seth: Can you provide a reference for this?
JSB: Look at Linked: The New Science of Networks[1] . This "small world" stuff comes from the physicists' communityand the mathematics community. It comes from graph theory. I call it the topological approach. Much of Erdos' classical work on the theory of random graphs provides the foundation. Then you add the discovery of the kind networks being created in society: social networks and web networks. Nearly all these networks follow what is called "the power law." It's completely different from the normal distribution - the bell curve - that we all know. It's extraordinary the extent to which all these social phenomena have the same properties and can be described by a power law. It shows us how these networks start to condense, so to speak and then possibly go through a phase transition. A good example is the phenomenon of the rich getting richer, in terms of the growth of rich hubs (and their connections with others). So these communities connect and grow, at times slowly and smoothly, and at times explosively, with sudden shifts. We are just now beginning to understand the dynamics of all this.
Seth: Could you
explain your use of the word, "topological."
JSB: By "topological", I mean, "what's connected to what." It's graph theoretic topology. Here are some questions to explore: How do these networks break apart? Are there isolated components in these networks when links are broken or key individuals (who are hubs themselves) leave the network? What happens if you start blindly downsizing a corporation? If you move the wrong people out of the network, then suddenly the network, that was deeply interconnected, starts to fracture. Suddenly there are no linkages, or pathways that connect all the nodes together or connect crucial parts of the network together. Often, this is what's inadvertently happening when we downsize a company or two companies merge. (Seeking 'synergy' often destroys real synergy). Understanding the topology of these networks, the different kind of networks and the roles that they play, is critical. If you don't pay attention to this, you can end up destroying the social and knowledge sharing fabrics without realizing it.
Seth: Inadvertently?
JSB: Well either inadvertently or stupidly.
Seth: You were talking in your presentation just now about the subtleties of storytelling. Could you say more about that?
JSB: What is the
structure of a narrative? What makes narratives fit so perfectly in
the architecture of the human mind? What are the ways of creating
the scaffolding for that narrative? How do you set the context for
that narrative? How do you maintain consistency with your core
ideas as you set the context? Now there are different media. You
can do it orally. You can do it in terms of writing and you can do
it in terms of film and video.
Let's take a look
at online games, such as Lineage, which are a much larger
phenomenon than most people are aware. This particular game holds
the record for having the most people online at once, probably
hundreds of thousands. It is immensely popular in Korea. Or, in
this country, consider Sims Online or EverQuest. If you take into
account not only the game itself but also all of the peripheral
activities (activities happening around the edge of the game such
as the support sites, the chat rooms, and so on) you find a rich
social ecology constantly unfolding. But just focus on the game
itself which involves all the players building and evolving a
complex world, and you see a new kind of nonlinear, multi-authored
narrative being constructed.
Yesterday I heard an amazing comment from a 16 year old named
Colin. Colin said: "I don't want to study Rome in high school.
Hell, I build Rome every day in my on-line game." (Caesar III[2]).
And in so doing he is continually building a new narrative space
that goes on evolving. Of course, we could dismiss this narrative
construction as not really being a meaningful learning experience
but a bit later he and his dad were engaged in a discussion about
the meaningfulness of class distinctions - lower, middle, etc - and
his dad stopped and asked him what class actually means to him.
Colin responded: "Well, it's how close you are to the Senate."
"Where did you learn that, Colin?" he said, "The closer you are
physically to the Senate building, the plazas, the gardens, or the
Triumphal Arch raises the desirability of the land, makes you upper
class and produces plebians. It's based on simple rules of
location to physical objects in the games (Caesar III)". Then, he
added, "I know that in the real world the answer is more likely how
close you are to the senators, themselves - that defines class. But
it's kinda the same."
In the past, I
tended to think of narratives as being basically linear, but they
aren't necessarily. As Steve Denning haspointed out, part of the
power of a narrative is its rhetorical structure which brings
listeners into active participation with the narrative, either
explicitly or by getting them to pose certain questions to
themselves.
In fact, stories have always been a kind of dialectic or
conversation between the storyteller and the listeners. Thus the
meaning of the literary classics - and the related narrative space
- has steadily evolved over time. So the evolution of the narrative
space per se isn't new. But what is new in the on-line games is
the scale and pace of the change. First, there are many more people
actively involved in shaping the story - as many as tens of
thousands at a time, rather than just a handful with the literary
canon. Second, the technology enables the participation to be
radically more active than before, not simply the odd comment that
might or might not be listened to. Third, the participants are
geographically scattered all over the globe, rather than
concentrated in one place or country. Fourth, the changes are
happening at an incredible pace, that is, in minutes and hours, not
in decades or centuries. The dimensions are so different that the
evolution of the narrative space becomes something new.
Here's another
thing that's curious. Let's look at the exercise that you had us
do in the conference just now. Youasked us to share a story with
someone close at hand. You told us that we'd only have a short
time to start the story and then we would have to continue it later
in the conference. One thing that we know about the structures of
stories is that it's dangerous to stop a story before you're
finished. But, you gave us enough time in a social context to start
a story; then you said, "Sit down." Now, something interesting
starts to happen. I didn't have the time to finish my story.
Normally, I won't tell a story if I don't think I can finish it.
The way in which you orchestrated things here turned on what makes
stories so powerful. What you did was to condition us. You said,
"You have 20, 30, 40 seconds to tell a story." So I might do one of
a couple things. I might give a synopsis to my partner so I can
reach the end of the story. Or, I might decide to just tell you
enough of the story that you will come up to me at the break. These
are the kinds of things that happen, all subconsciously. But you
have to understand the structure of stories to know that.
Seth: That makes me
think about the metaphor you introduced in your presentation: the
tree and its roots. You said that sharing knowledge was like
uprooting a tree and transplanting it somewhere else. You called
the tree, the "smallest portable context." A story would be an
example of the smallest portable context. You said that the roots
of the tree symbolize tacit knowledge, shared practices (social and
work practices) and understandings that may not be explicit. In
order for the tree to continue to live after it is
transplanted, there must be a certain amount of shared practices
and tacit understanding. I have a question about "uprooting" the
tree. In a sense, the tree is never uprooted because moving it is a
continuous process. It's not discrete. You're not jumping from
one state to another. You are moving along a continuum.
JSB: The tree is a living process. It will die if you don't replant it, for one thing. And if you plant it in a context that's too different from what it's been accustomed to, it also dies, because the chemistry of that soil works against the way that these roots have been working. But replant it in somewhat similar soil and it will sprout new roots and leaves and continue to live in a transformed way.
Seth: To come back to my storytelling exercise, we've got people pulling their trees out of the ground as they begin to share their stories. Then, I'm saying. - while the trees are dangling in the air: "Okay, sit down now." Some of those trees are going to be planted later and they're going to survive. A lot of those trees are going to die. Some of the trees are going to be transformed by being in the air longer than might be optimal for replanting.
JSB: Right. That
plays out fairly simply for stories. But what is more curious is
what happens when you see it playedout in terms of practices.
Science works on replicable knowledge that flows across the entire
scientific world. Most of us have thought that scientific knowledge
is explicit and can be completely reported on and replicated from
those reports. But it's not universally true. Basically what
happens is that there are networks of scientific practice, which
embody a practice within a certain area of science. The
participants share enough of the same 'roots' that they can
replicate the knowledge (or experiment). It is their shared roots
that enable the knowledge to flow through their network.
The reason why
knowledge flows so readily across a community of practice is that
the members all share the same roots, not just some. That's what
enables a community to work. The reason why we keep trying to
replicate an experiment is that we want to make sure that the stuff
sitting above the ground is the right stuff and that we have found
the minimal root structure required for it to be reliably
replicated. Sometimes in an experiment, we engage in practices that
are not known to other members of the community or even to
ourselves. For example, in a novel and complex biochemical
preparation experimenters may be doing things - that they're
unaware of in terms of the way they do the experiment - that
actually make the experiment work. In science what we're trying to
do when we get other communities of practice (albeit, usually from
the same network of practice) to replicate an experiment is to find
the minimal roots of the new knowledge, so to speak. These are the
shared practices that are used in replicating the experiment and
supporting the claims by the community that this is (warranted)
knowledge and not just an opinion or belief.
Let's look at
another very powerful example. Stories are one reason why novels
have been so powerful through the ages. Why did we create the
canon? A set of classic literary works is the canon for western
civilization because these stories constantly get repositioned and
re-contextualized but in that process help to extend the culture in
a time relevant, situated way. The meaning of the story may morph
according to the social practices of the culture at any moment in
time even when the story line stays relatively invariant. That is
how civilization advances and why these canons can be so powerful.
A canon is a collection of stories. It can be folk tales. It can be
biblical stories. It can be the classics. These stories have the
capacity to move wonderfully through time. They have enough of a
root structure that enables us to uproot them and replant them at a
later time in another place.
By contrast, if I
give you a fact, you don't have enough of a context to be able to
understand what that fact means in a new context or even if it is
still meaningful. Why was it uttered? To whom? What else was going
on? In today's presentation I described how Cartesian philosophy
underlies so much of today's pedagogy. But, what was going on with
Descartes when he said something equivalent to, "I think therefore
I am"? If you don't understand the religious environment that he
was struggling against in that particular moment in time, you
won't understand the force of what he was really trying to say, or
why he was saying it. It made eminent sense at the time. It
doesn't necessarily make the same sense today yet our system of
schooling and our notions of pedagogy are still based on it.
By contrast,
stories are able to move on. When I tell you stories of the
persecution and what was going on at that time, you begin to
understand why Descartes had to play it safe.. You understand why
he said certain things in certain ways.
Seth: I was a performance storyteller for about fifteen years. I studied myths: King Arthur and Beowulf and the like. When I really got into it, I had this eerie sense that each story was tumbling down through the generations, as opposed to me selecting and then telling it.
JSB: Yes! And as the stories tumble down through us, parts of them are preserved. But sometimes there are very subtle shifts that help us re-embed it in a new time and place. This preserves the authenticity of the story. That's what is so powerful. Culture is passed on orally because (a) we can remember stories, but (b) we can tell stories re- positioned in a different way at a different time in a different culture. We can have one foot in that other culture and be able to tell the story slightly differently in our own culture so that it connects better.
Seth: From your perspective, as someone who often addresses CEOs, as well as managers and practitioners, what are the most exciting applications of storytelling in organizations today?
JSB: What I find so interesting is talking to boards of directors. You've got 30 seconds to capture their attention and three minutes to make your point. You've got to capture their attention and make your point in a way that it sticks with them throughout the rest of the meeting. You want to condition the conversation that unfolds at the board meeting in terms of your story. If you just plunk a fact down, or an assertion, it will get swept away. So the trick is, first of all, how can you capture the audience's attention and, second, how do you communicate something that will have a life of its own throughout the duration of, at least, the rest of the board meeting, and hopefully later on? How can your story become a scaffolding for their discussion, providing context to their content? I want to see whole points-of-view shifting though my stories.
Seth: I see you planting a trellis. You're throwing a magic seed down that springs into a whole lattice, and you're hoping that their conversations are going to use that lattice.
JSB: Right. When I work with corporate managements, that's what matters almost more than anything else. I want something important to be in place after I leave. That something has to be a seed around which other things start to grow, the tiny crystal around which many things crystallize.
Seth: That sounds very close to what Steve Denning is doing with his springboard stories[3]. He tells these stories as though he's planting seeds. Then he leaves and he lets the stories do the work. He lets the stories climb the trellises.
JSB: Right! Now
exactly how well it really works, we're not really sure yet. We
sense that it's working. We see that the traditional approach to
communication - bullet points in PowerPoint slides - doesn't work
at all in this area. But we haven't yet been able to measure the
impact of organizational storytelling in any formal sense. So our
intuitions are not analytic. Steve Denning's work isn't analytic.
My work isn't exactly analytic. We have a strong sense that we
gain more leverage through the storytelling mechanism than many
others. Maybe one day we'll figure out a way to measure it.
I am always trying
to find new ways to use familiar tools. For example, I'm exploring
the use of compound real options theory. It's a financial tool
that is much more dynamic than using NPV (net present value)
calculations. It's very complicated. It stretches the mathematical
abilities of most CFOs. But it's an extraordinarily powerful
analytical tool. You can cast a lot of what we are talking about in
terms of a compound real option. That is something that brings a
different kind of credibility to this discussion. Many of my
arguments for radical innovation are now cast in this framework.
This buys credibility in the CFO community, which used to say to me
things like, "Go put your sandals back on, John, and putter in that
magic silicon sandbox called Silicon Valley." (laughter)
There are some
ways that you capture attention and other ways that you get
credibility. So a story cast in compound real options theory has a
certain ecological validity and credibility in the financial
community. It sticks with them sometimes a year or two after the
fact. Both practices and stories provide the lenses to help us make
sense of things.
Now let's take a
look at information. It has been defined as the difference that
makes a difference. If you follow this, you can think of
information as that which causes a ripple in the pond. But, the
whole issue of, "What is the pond?" is a devastatingly complicated
question. Philosophers haven't been able to answer it. Here is a
simple model with clear rules and yet nobody ever really seriously
asked, but what's the pond that the ripple is on? When Paul Duguid
and I were doing this chapter of our book[4] we realized how
fundamental this question really is. Nobody has ever seriously
answered it. Sure, we can formally measure it (i.e., using
Shannon's theory) but what really is it?
That is a whole
new way into the subject. It's having another look at the
subterranean work that goes on in the work environment - the
cultural fabrics, the social fabrics and the habits in both social
and work practice. Here we have to use our ability to see something
new. We have to see the world through a set of distinctions. These
distinctions form the lenses that enable us to detect the ripples
on the pond. One person's ripples are not necessarily another
person's.
Seth: So what one
person sees as information is not necessarily what another person
sees as information. In fact, people do have very different points
of view, different interests and different assumptions.
JSB: All this points to something very interesting about the energy of groups. As they come together, over and over again, different points of view collide. Through that iteration we're grinding new lenses. This is where innovation happens. Our practices are morphing; they're producing new sets of distinctions and new ways to understand the world. It's a place of iteration. There are negotiations about practices - creative abrasions within and between communities that are trying to share something or come together.
Seth: And some of the roots between the communities will be conflicting, right?
JSB: Absolutely! Unbelievably conflicting.
Seth: So, you're describing a model for innovation that holds multiple worlds where some of the basic assumptions in one world are actually in conflict with the assumptions of another world.
JSB: That is why we use this obscure term "negotiation-in-practice (originating with Lee Star)." What has to be negotiated are some of the root structures. A lot of that gets done below the surface, as opposed to negotiation that happens openly and explicitly, on the table, as in conversation. This negotiation is usually around boundary objects. A boundary object is something that is understood by members of the two different communities, and bridges their worlds. One example could be a prototype, another - a blueprint. Blueprints are used by the architect, the engineer, the owner, and others. Each of them sees it differently yet there is enough shared understanding that the difference of their perspectives can come into focus around it.
Seth: You said this negotiation gets done below the surface as opposed to open and explicit negotiation that is on the table. What is meant here by 'below the surface?'
JSB: I mean
underground, subterranean practices. Let's take the example of the
blueprint being used by an engineer and an architect. The architect
has certain reasons for wanting a particular wall to be a
particular way. The engineer says, "Well, I can't build a
load-bearing wall that way."
Back and forth
they go. Suddenly they come together and say, "Aha! Suppose we
shift something over here that enables us now to use a new kind of
material. Won't that solve the problem?." And so, something new
comes about. Both of them bring their practices together for that
moment in time and construct something brand new.
Seth: But that's happening explicitly. That's in a conversation.
JSB: Yes and no.
There's a lot more going on than just a verbal conversation. If we
were just doing that on the telephone, it probably wouldn't work.
But there are a lot of other factors at work here. For example,
maybe the architect goes out to the construction site and tries to
see the problem from the engineer's point of view, and figure out
what he was really attempting to accomplish by designing the wall
that way. The design (or boundary object) is now situated in a
broader context. In that shared context, each can adjust his own
thinking and practice to encompass the other's practice. It has to
do with becoming more attuned to each other's set of skills. When
these skills come together around a situated boundary object, there
can be a really creative compromise.
You'd be
surprised. There are all kinds of examples of impossible things
that just keep inching ahead. These can be million dollar issues.
Many millions of dollars can come from solving some of these
problems. That gets your attention. (laughter)
Seth: It sounds like each side is sifting through the other's "roots," exploring the periphery.
JSB: Yeah, it is
an exploration - each center is in the other's periphery, but it
is also a clashing. I call it, the creative collision of craft.
That collision taking place in a fabric of trust can go - as we
were saying with storytelling - huge distances.
Virtually every
radical innovation from PARC has come about by creative collision
of different crafts usually within a community of practice or
sometimes across multiple communities of practice. If this is so,
the question is: How do you build an ecology that makes it easy for
practices to collide productively?
Innovation almost
always comes from bringing crafts together and having members of
each negotiate within and between their practices. That's part of
being in a productive and ever evolving community of practice. We
don't usually talk about the diversity of crafts within a
community of practice. I believe that we're beginning to see the
fine grain structure of what is going on here. What it produces can
be amazing.
Seth: So the warm, fuzzy nature of community - the mutually supportive community that is often talked about - doesn't indicate the abrasiveness that you're looking for in an innovative environment.
JSB: Nor does
social capital! We all talk about social capital, but some of the
worst labs that I've ever been in had extraordinarily high social
capital within the lab. But social capital can create the feeling,
"I'm better than anybody else," and this creates dysfunctional
work relationships. It creates the idea that "you're a bad guy."
One of the best ways to build social capital is to have a common
enemy. If that enemy is in the outside world, then guess what?
You'll have a very hard time transferring ideas from the inside to
the outside. So, social capital can work against you. Communities
of practice are not necessarily very open. They can become very
rigid structures, just as rigid as hierarchies. Look at the guilds
in medieval times, like the stonecutters. They were very
exclusionary. They were seats of absolute power. They were even
able to challenge the church!
We need to be
careful when we use the term, community. It is often spoken of as
warm, mutually supportive and open. But a community is a highly
ambiguous domain. A community is not necessarily a warm and
mutually supportive domain. What we see in an innovative community
is a lot of abrasion and tough clashes among crafts and practices.
These iterations can be tremendously exciting and we may end up
creating something. But the clashes can be tremendously stressful
for the participants when these forms of abrasion take place.
Sparks fly, as Dorothy Leonard has said[5].
Seth: Thanks,
John.
JSB: O.k. Hey, good
luck!
Footnotes
--------------------------------------------
[1] Linked: The New Science of Networks, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi,
Perseus Publishing, 2002
[2] www.thesimsonline.com. Caesar
III is a "SimCity." It takes place in ancient times. Participants
must be ready to defend themselves against enemies, bring happiness
to the citizens, and please Caesar. [3] The Springboard: How
Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations, Stephen
Denning, Butterworth-Heinemann,
[4] The Social Life of Information, John Seely Brown and Paul
Duiiud, Harvard Business School Press, 2000
[5] When Sparks Fly: Igniting Creativity in Groups, Dorothy Leonard
and Walter Swap, Harvard Business School Press, 1999
John Seely
Brown was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the Director
of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). At Xerox, Brown had been
involved in expanding the role of corporate research to include
such topics as organizational learning, ethnographies of the
workplace, complex adaptive systems and techniques for unfreezing
the corporate mind. His personal research interests include digital
culture, ubiquitous computing, user-centering design,
organizational and individual learning. A major focus of Brown's
research over the years has been in human learning and in the
management of radical innovation. Dr. Brown is a co-founder of the
Institute for Research on Learning, a non-profit institute for
addressing the problems of lifelong-learning. He is a member of the
National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American
Association for Artificial Intelligence. He is a trustee of the
MacArthur Foundation and Brown University.
Seth Kahan has
successfully used storytelling and community building to lead
change and improve performance in organizations for over 14 years.
He helped spearhead the World Bank's enterprise-wide knowledge
management initiative in 1996 under the guidance of Steve Denning.
Seth serves as Business Visionary to the Center for Association
Leadership and Distinguished Fellow to the Center for Narrative
Studies in Washington, DC. He is writing a book on the applications
of storytelling to increase organizational effectiveness. This
interview and others can be found on his website, www.SethKahan.com
Steve Denning is
the author of the acclaimed book, The Springboard: How Storytelling
Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations which describes how
storytelling can serve as a powerful tool for organizational change
and knowledge management. From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program
Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank where he
spearheaded the organizational knowledge sharing program. He now
works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on
knowledge management and organizational storytelling. Steve also
conducts workshops around the world on organizational storytelling.
Steve's website which has a collection of materials on knowledge
sharing and storytelling may be found at: www.stevedenning.com
Copyright 2003 Seth Kahan. Reprint with attribution allowed.
Seth Kahan consults and speaks on topics that include: communities of practice, business performance, collective intelligence, tacit knowledge, business collaboration, business learning, knowledge management, business storytelling, organizational storytelling, business community, business communities, organizational community, knowledge and learning, knowledge and community, knowledge community, knowledge communities, performance improvement, visionary leadership, social potential, institutional community building, and internal communications.
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