Reaching Startup Community Utopia, Or As We Call It – An Emergent State

I write a lot about complex systems and how I apply it to startup community building. It’s a lot to wrap our heads around and I have been into complex systems for almost 6 years now (thanks Ian Hathaway). This is another riff that needed more discussion. One of the key concepts is the concept of reaching an emergent state. Emergence is a tricky fellow and a somewhat nebulous goal for newbies (including me). But, before you make it a goal, you have to understand what it is, what it could be for you and your ecosystem, and how to get there. 

In complex systems, emergence refers to the phenomenon where larger patterns, behaviors, or properties arise from the interactions of smaller, simpler elements that do not exhibit these characteristics on their own. 

In overly simplistic terms emergence is where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

We know that cliche well and its two levels:

• The whole, and
• The sum of the parts.

But in terms of ecosystem building I would add a third component, “slightly less than the sum of the parts. So if you ranked the 3 states your ecosystem could be in, they would look like this:

1. The Whole (emergent state) ~ Great!
2. The Sum of the Parts ~ OK.
3. Slightly Less than the Sum of The Parts ~ Bad.

Without knowing about complex systems, I labeled my Raleigh-Durham startup community as “slightly less than the sun of our parts” after doing a 5 month, 275 interviews tour in 2009 and 2010.

So your challenge is to best understand the assets you have in your community. Then you will need to see how/if those assets work together to form something bigger than the individual assets themselves. This is where things always break down. This is your challenge as a community builder. The easy thing is to put your head down and execute your mission to the best of your ability without worrying about how your mission complements or augments other missions throughout the ecosystem. The best this gets you is the sum of the parts.

The best, accelerating ecosystems always have an emergent quality to them and there are small and usually quiet signals as to when you are in this state.

So, how do you get to this emergent state? 

1. Years of consistent effort
2. Authentic collaboration & support among leaders
3. Creating room for new leaders to emerge and supporting them equally
4. Filling the biggest ecosystem gaps with appropriate programming over and over again as things change
5. Patience.

What have you seen work in your community that triggers more good results indirectly?