Building Information Systems
at the
Edge of ChaoS
with Force.com

“The attitude that we’re shifting into is viewing the world as chaotic. You’re never going to understand it. You’re never going t
– Danny Hillis, founder of Applied Minds, quoted in What’s Next? Exploring the New Terrain for Business.
“The attitude that we’re shifting into is viewing the
world as chaotic. You’re never going to understand it.
You’re never going to control it. Instead, you have to
be responsive. You have to make sure that when an
opportunity arises you can take advantage of it.”
– Danny Hillis, founder of Applied Minds, quoted in
What’s Next? Exploring the New Terrain for Business.
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We build applications like we build railroads:

multiple stages of planning

agreed upon destinations

predetermined stops

rigid schedules to maximize rail efficiency rather
than user demand.

There is little room for flexibility and adaptability

These characteristics are critically important to
railroads – and certain types of applications like
accounting

where events are anticipated and planned for.

The consequences for not doing things right can be severe.

But this approach does not work well when
events cannot be easily anticipated

and responses need to be made up on-the-fly.

A dynamic business environment looks a lot
more like this

than this.

The need for a dynamic business environment is
more closely reflected in the process that taxi
cab companies use to respond to demand.

Cabs cruise the streets with only flexible strategies

allowing response to demand to unfold as required

Decisions are made as closely as possible to the
time when action must be taken

The driver makes decisions on the spot -
consistent with passengers needs

In the railroad \"methodology,\" the organization plans in
advance and passengers must adjust their plans accordingly.

In the taxicab approach, the organization must adjust
in real time to the passenger whose plans are
unknown most of the time.

This requires organizations to embrace
uncertainty, dynamic demand, and some degree
of chaos, and to learn to thrive on it.

The rest is left to the flexibility, adaptability, and
creativity of the individual agents as the context
continually changes.

This is all possible because the infrastructure is
already in place

maintained by someone else

and deployment is easy.

Imagine if the taxi cab company had to be
responsible for the infrastructure as well!

Force.com gives you the infrastructure to build
systems where there is uncertainty and change.

But you need a different mindset to get the
most out of it – you can’t build (or run) a
railroad like you would a taxi company.

The prevailing
paradigm determines
what you think is
feasible, as well as
what you think the
“right way” is to do
things.
If your worldview included the belief that the Earth
was flat, it would be highly unlikely you would set off
on an ocean voyage for fear of falling off the edge.

You have to think less like this
and more like this.

Build information systems
and more like this.
that look less like this

A taxi system operates at “the edge of chaos”

because taxi cab organizations are
complex adaptive systems

just like your business.

So you need to be here.
“The edge of chaos is a place where there is enough
innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough
stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy.”
- Joseph Campbell in “On the Edge of Chaos: Navigating through Global Change”

Force.com allows you to build information
systems at the edge of chaos

by providing a stable, evolving platform upon which you can
innovate, experiment, adapt and take advantage of
opportunities as they arise.

To get the most out of it, you need a different:
methodology, mindset and support mechanism.
Because complex adaptive systems don’t
work like clockwork.

Find out more.

“In the face of threat, or when
galvanized by a compelling
opportunity, living things
move to toward the edge of
chaos. This condition evokes
higher levels of mutation and
experimentation, and fresh
new solutions are likely to be
found.”
- Richard Pascale, Mark Tillemann, Linda
Gioja, Surfing the Edge of Chaos
www.PowerInTheCloud.com

“The health, competitive power, and even survival of
an enterprise largely depends on its ability to
understand and harness the power of knowledge
workers who are enabled to take responsibility for
providing automatic solutions to meet many of their
business needs.”
– SOA meets situational applications: Examples and lessons learned,
IBM System Journal, July 2008