by Katherine
Lewis
Leaders who want
their workforces to innovate must give up the notion that they can predict or
control the outcome.
The secret to
business innovation and sustainable social entrepreneurship lies in
complexity science, according to Jeffrey Goldstein, Ph.D., a professor at the
Robert B. Willumstad School of Business. One of the most important ideas of the
field is emergence: when new unexpected patterns arise in a complex system.
“Social entrepreneurship is the emergence of a new kind of structure” and a new
kind of business strategy, explains Dr. Goldstein, who, with Adelphi colleagues
James Hazy, Ed.D., and Joyce Silberstang, Ph.D., organized a social
entrepreneurship conference and wrote papers and a book about the resultant
discussions.
According to
complexity theory, emergence relies on the combination and recombination of
different elements, with an unpredictable result. Since you can’t control the
outcome, you can only try to create appropriate conditions that aim to create
an organization or community that is adaptable, no matter what the path forward
turns out to be.
“When you think
about social entrepreneurship, it’s different social groups coming together,”
whether bankers, business leaders, investors, non-governmental
organizations and government, Dr. Goldstein says. “It’s a complex
interrelationship of subsystems at different levels of the hierarchy…People who
have business knowledge, people who have knowledge of the local conditions.
You’re going to have people with all different skills.”
Similarly,
leaders who want their workforces to innovate must give up the notion that they
can predict or control the outcome, and instead focus on two simple goals: (1)
creating conditions that encourage social interactions where new ideas are
combined and recombined; and (2) building an adaptable organization. That means
encouraging the exchange of information across the company and across levels of
hierarchy, and social networks that will facilitate open communication.
“The people on
the factory floor: they’re the ones that have the new ideas,” says Dr.
Goldstein, who with Dr. Hazy has conducted relevant business case studies. “We
want organizations to learn from each other and then turn around and do what
they need to do” in their own organizations and communities, says Dr.
Goldstein, adding, “Get the engineers in with sales people, finance people.”
This piece
appeared in the Erudition 2014 edition.
