“Earlier this year, technology observer Clay Shirky argued that “complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond.” Societies like the Romans and the lowland Mayans fell because further reductions became too uncomfortable for those in power. “Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification,” writes Shirky. After disintegration, he explains further, the members of a society disperse, experimenting with new ways of doing things. “When the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity,” he writes, “it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.”
This quote comes from the Fast Company article “The Future of Advertising“, by Danielle Sacks. The world of business is changing. It’s time to embrace the small and nimble organization.
