Complexity and Experimentation: The Rebellious Bee

Doug Garnett wrote a blog post titled Complexity and Experimentation: The Rebellious Bee (12 June 2025).

« Rory Sutherland tells a story about bees… Without rebellious bees the hive would be less resilient and less likely to survive… All complex adaptive systems are also only healthy when exploitation of what is known (e.g. pollen sources) is balanced with time exploring things critical to future health. It is for this reason that JP Castlin talks, then, about the need for continual “safe-to-fail” experimentation in business as all companies are complex adaptive systems. All companies, then, require continual exploration if they are to be healthy. Of course, he calls these “safe-to-fail” experiments because they must be affordable enough — or constructed in safe enough ways — that they don’t sap the company’s ability to survive. »

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