In today's world, we already seem to know everything. Science and technology have shown incredible progress, and information is available in real-time. However, the more we know, the less we seem to know how to move on. Global economy is more volatile than ever, politics is failing in all parts of the world and all endeavors so far did not make the world the stable and peaceful place to live in it could be.

Our overall thinking and mental models cannot keep pace with the increasingly complex processes and systems. This is also true for managing organizations.

We deeply believe the state of the world we live and do business in requires a new way of thinking. No more mechanical (18th century, “more power”) thinking, no more reductionist (19th century, “hierarchy and cost focus”) thinking, no more computational (20st century, “input-output”) thinking.

Our core question is: “How can an organization be prepared for a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future?“ We need a new way of thinking for the 21st century — a network-oriented, cybernetical way of thinking.

Our understanding of the world is shaped by systems theory, complexity theory, cognitive sciences, brain theory and – in general – cybernetics as a meta-science. It follows largely the ideas given by great thinkers in this disciplines like Gregory Bateson, Heinz von Foerster, W. Ross Ashby, Ernst von Glasersfeld or Stafford Beer.

We aim to translate this great ideas to the entrepreneurial world and have developed a thesis representing our ambitions. Luckily, there is no “checklist” to follow through. Management cybernetics is not a “one-size-fits-all” solution and therefore offers no “simple solutions” to complex questions.

However, some core principles and methods show us ways to tackle that question. One of the most important ones is the “Law of requisite variety”, stated by W. Ross Ashby. In its core it makes a critical statement: only variety can absorb variety. A reductionist approach would therefore make no sense in working with complex systems. For us, that means that variability is one of the key ingredients to a viable system. Anotherone would be self-organization.

In it’s core, those (and all other principles of management cybernetics) deal with the way how people communicate, share information, act and interact with each other to enable an effective organization.

Interestingly enough, we discovered that innovators and founders nowadays often intrinsically operate & live by this new way of thinking, incorporating core principles of management cybernetics like variability and feedback loops. Practical applications of this could be establishing values like interdisciplinarity, professional networks, opening up to the outside world, out-of-the-box-thinking, rapid prototyping and testing, cross-functional-cooperation, experimenting, getting into a dialogue and encouraging failure, enabling learning and adoption throughout the organization.

We aim to engage and discuss around the topics of management cybernetics especially in the context of startup organizations, tackling questions like organizational development, collaboration, recruiting and cultural fit, leadership and communication.

Cybernetic Ventures

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