Companies and swarms

Back in the old days (10 years ago or so...) companies were seperate entities, their interaction with the surrounding world being controlled and known. Interaction and dependancy on other financial entities was usually limited to customers, and suppliers, and management had a chance to react to changing external conditions, as the interaction would usually be constrained to a few companies. A company had control of its path forward and its ultimate destiny largely lay in the hands of management. This is changing.

Control is no longer constrained to factors within the company. Suppliers, customers, media, politicians, bloggers, hype, partners, and a host of other external agents all influence the path of the company. This is a paradigm shift in how a company is (or should be...) run, and how it works, as control becomes indirect, and is no longer easy to point at.

Interestingly this development has a lot in common with swarming intelligence, the hot buzzword of today. Swarming intelligence relates to a system with a lot of individual agents, all with simple behaviours and means of communicating with each other. If the system is built correctly it will become greater than the sum of its parts, with no central intelligence controlling its behaviour. An ant hill being the perfect example. No individual ant has any control of the whole, and noone understands how the ant hill works. Not even the CEO ant, the queen.

The similarities are striking, with the the Suppliers, customers, media, politicians, bloggers, and partners being the ant, and the company being the ant hill.

So how do you completely control a company? How do you map the sphere of influence? Who are the agents, and do some exert more influence than others? Is there a business model in all of this? I don't know, but if you find out send me a mail.