Business Intelligence Success Factors: Tools for Aligning Your Business in the Global Economy

CHAPTER 2

Models from Science and Nature

If we, on our most fundamental level, are packets of quantum energy constantly exchanging information with this heaving energy sea, it means that all of us connect with each other and the world at the level of the very undercoat of our being. It also means that we have the power to access much more information about the world than we realize.

 

—LYNN MCTAGGART, LIVING THE FIELD

 

The seemingly continuous creation, destruction, and evolution of organizational frameworks are best understood by exploring models in science and nature. When examining the underlying principles, there are many parallels to models in physics, biology (living systems, ecology, and evolution), and complexity theory. In an attempt to explain what we are experiencing—constant change, chaos, and unpredictability—the new scientific models challenge us to rethink how we view organizations and ourselves as leaders. “ ‘The New Science,’ a radical shift in our world view, is replacing the image of organizations as machines with a living systems model that offers awe, creativity, and greater cosmological connection.”¹

QUANTUM PHYSICS

Quantum theory introduces yet another level of paradox into our search for order. At the quantum level we observe a world where change happens in jumps, beyond our powers of precise prediction. This world has also challenged our beliefs about objective measurement, for at the subatomic level the observer cannot observe anything without interfering ...