Mind · Strategy
ShapeMassInformation#0b9e
Growth risk is the balance of controlling shape, adding mass and adding information
Mechanism
Any growing organisation, from a gene to a firm, is steered along three interacting dimensions. Shape is the form or target being held, such as a plan, a blueprint or an objective. Mass is any investment of action, money or energy that scales the organisation. Information is what is added to it as it grows. A decision is one corner of this space: shape is frozen, then mass is added. Mass and information pursued for their own value loosen control of shape, so risk comes from a bad combination of the three for the conditions, not only from a wrong decision. Human practice favours shape control, while Nature adds information as it adds mass through MetaModularity.
Invariants
- Adding mass or information for its own value reduces control of shape
- A decision is a special case of organisation growth, not its general form
Failure modes
- Treating every risk as failure to hold a shape and missing failures to add enough mass or information
- Reading an exponential growth curve as a shape to hit rather than as a sign of shape deformation
- Treating the three dimensions as independent objectives instead of interacting forces
Where this came from
Builds on
Used by
Identity
The name is the hash of the definition. Change a word and it becomes a different pattern.
- Sema ID
sema:ShapeMassInformation#mh:SHA-256:0b9e0ab984495e4958bb5a66b8e5062dd3123d4dc78140944a19b2c43c6e9266- Reference
ShapeMassInformation#0b9e- Ring
- 1
- Tier
- 2