InnovationIntrospection

Simplexity

Most humans cannot internally visualize more than three or four objects without dividing them into sub-groups.

Close your eyes and visualize five dots. You probably visualized the side of the die with four dots in a square and one dot in the middle. That is one group of four and one group of one. The group of four could also be called two groups of two. The human brain has over 100 billion neurons and is fantastic at recognizing complex patterns, such as faces. Do we really see a face or groups of groups of features?

SIMPLEXITY is the ability to have a very complex system appear to be simple or simple to use. Think automobile (or iPad) - maybe today's designers need to remember Leonardo DaVinci, painter, sculptor, engineer, inventor...
"La semplicità è l'ultima sofisticazione"
(Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication).

House plants are more complex systems than industrial plants, but look at their simple beauty.

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."
Blaise Pascal

Expand your Opposites

In Nature, there are no opposites.

Nature has no hot or cold ... those are opposites create by mankind and language. Nature only has degrees of thermal energy. We may also argue that Nature has no zero or nothing-ness, again man-made.

Zero was discussed as far back as the middle of the 2nd millennium BC in Babylonian mathematics. But not until 825 AD, did a Persian, al-Khwārizmī, write a book on Arithmetic which synthesized prior knowledge and also contained his own fundamental contribution to mathematics including an explanation of the use of zero and negative numbers. It was only centuries later, in the 12th century, that the Arabic numeral system was introduced to the Western world through Latin translations of his treatise Arithmetic.

So if opposites do not really exist, think in your personal or business life of the opposites you deal with every day and "EXPAND YOUR OPPOSITES"!

Requisite Variety

Why are all powerful/influential cities in the world around 45 degrees latitude?

Requisite Variety of Temperature.

The cities (and residents) with the largest swings from low temperatures to high temperatures developed the need to be sufficiently adaptable to cope with the changing environment.

Ashby's Law of REQUISITE VARIETY states that "variety absorbs variety... defines the minimum number of states necessary for a controller to control a system of a given number of states."

The gist of this law is that in order to master any problem or process, we have to be able to bring more variety to bear than is inherent in the situation.
In combat that means being capable of using attacks in a greater variety of ways than your opponent. Further, by restricting the amount of variety that the opponent can use, the chance of victory can be enhanced.

A flexible system with many options is better able to cope with change.

One that is tightly optimized for an initial set of conditions might be more efficient while those conditions prevail but fail totally should conditions change. And in today's business world, conditions change daily/hourly...

Triangles

How many triangles do you see?

Reality is not always what you see.

The unknowable

What is the next item/character in the three sequences?

In the first sequence, you know the next entry.

In the second sequence, most people do not know the next character right away, but can later figure out the sequence or some will google the answer.

In the third sequence, the next character/number is unknowable.

The three sequences represent the known, the unknown and the unknowable.

Many cannot distinguish the last two.

The Internet

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" is an adage which began as the caption of a cartoon by Peter Steiner published by The New Yorker on July 5, 1993.
Social media is the wasteland of self-absorbed egotists.

Simplexity

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

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