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In group: Exploring Adaptive Space – community of practice

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  • Matthew Mezey posted an update in the group Exploring Adaptive Space – community of practice 2 years, 8 months ago

    John Hagel’s ‘Beyond Fear’ vs Mary Uhl-Bien’s adaptive spaces model

    I joined a Zoom earlier this week that was part of the launch of the new book by John Hagel, ‘The Journey Beyond Fear: Leverage the Three Pillars of Positivity to Build Your Success ‘.
    John focused on the tension between ‘scalable efficiency’ and ‘scalable learning’ – very similar to Mary’s distinction between operational efficiency vs learning/adaption.

    But what was strikingly different was that he sets up efficiency and learning as extremely polarised dichotomies: ‘scalable efficiency inevitably crushes scalable learning’ he told me when I wondered whether they might co-exist, as in Mary’s model where ‘adaptive spaces’ act a sort of connecting third space between the two.

    He didn’t feel such ‘ambidexterity’ was possible…

    Anyone looked at Mary’s work, and John’s?

    Part of his solution (I’ve not read the book so don’t know much of the details) revolve around the role of ‘Learning platforms’, though he couldn’t offer an example of a current one. Much easier to offer examples of Aggregation platforms, Relationship platforms, Mobilisation platforms (eg Wikipedia).

    I said I’d love to see a discussion between the two of them, who seem to see such similar things, yet reach different conclusions.

    Will probably read the Hagel book, at some point…