Experiments in Collective Genius

& the Social Alchemy thereof

Ossip Zadkine working in his La Ruche studio - La Ruche Artists Residence, Paris in the 1930s? - a hub of collective genius

We just concluded a three-day intensive focused on exploring the ingredients required to create contexts of collective genius. When I announce a class, I never know if we’re going to get a hundred people signing up, or two. I have the fortunate or unfortunate attribute of wanting to teach what I am really interested in, so on returning from the wedding that we attended last weekend where I didn’t have internet for three days, and discovering that we had three people signed up, I went ahead and we did it. Below is a document of about twenty minutes of the thesis of the class, which is that there are these moments of collective efflorescence that transform society that emerge from and through a very small number of people. There are certain contexts that seem to create some sort of magical alchemy such that genius spreads, with definitive effect.

I want to understand the recipe for this: I view it as the next frontier in our work on Autonomics, as it moves into understanding how to create contexts for collective flourishing. I see the applicability of this across any living system of humans, from athletic teams, to companies and organizations, to innovation.

I believe it has a neurobiological component, but also consistent attributes, such as a balance between collaboration and competition. I got to be friends with Dee W. Hock, the founder and CEO emeritus of VISA (ever heard of VISA?) before he died. At 92, I reached out to him after reading his book Birth of the Chaordic Age, where he describes how he conceptualized VISA as an ecosystem bio-mimicked from nature. I sent an impassioned email to his website, and answered the phone one day to his gravelly voice calling me back.

VISA, which is (or was) the largest connected international network of monetary exchange is based on a balance between cooperation (all of its member banks honor the protocol) and competition (they can all issue VISA cards). This notional balance is apparent in moments of collective effloresence. During the Florentine Renaissance, for example, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni both collaborated on anatomical investigations, and competed fiercely for commissions. Chaordic, the term Dee coined, is a mashup of chaos and order. This living edge is where complex systems emerge.

If you are interested in following this notional frame, check out Chris Brookfield’s elegant handbook Field Notes from Systems Change. It is succinct, well-written, and inspiring in its formulation of understanding the ways that innovation happens at the edges. Like transition zones in nature, e.g., a meadow at the edge of the forest, or a tidal zone, the richest innovation contexts are intersectional. This awareness points us towards a second attribute of collective genius: the density of diversity. My friend and colleague Ayssar Arida, in Quantum City, coins the term ‘diventity’: the density of diversity that creates novel identities.

So contexts that encourage collective genius, be they:

• The Florentine Renaissance

• Alhambra in Spain during the rule of Sultan Yusef I

• Black Mountain College

• La Ruche, the artist residence in Paris

• The Chelsea Hotel in NYC

All seem to be chaordic, and with a high degree of diventity.

Should you wish to geek out further in this direction, we have set up a project on Metalabel to help fund and continue this exploration. You can join us here: