Reflections 23rd November

Moving off the Beaten Path

There is an old comfort in believing that organisations, by virtue of their scale and resources, can learn faster and more reliably than individuals. They have strategy teams, budgets, technology, consultants on speed dial, and an organisational memory that spans decades.

Individuals, by contrast, are assumed to be smaller and more fragile, with limited access to resources. Learning has always been one of the areas where big institutions were thought to hold an unshakeable advantage.

I think that advantage is rapidly disappearing. In fact, I think we are now crossing a line where the most motivated individuals are learning and adapting at a pace that even the best organisations cannot match. The gap is no longer a minor irritation. It is reaching an inflection point. It has become structural, it is widening, and it is beginning to reshape where we place our allegiance.

In this post I want to offer a diagnosis of this growing asymmetry, why I think it matters, and what kind of communities…