james burke

• "i believe that change is a surprise because of that knowledge management idea i mentioned 500 years ago which brought all of us today and which also happened because of an amazing bit of serendipity, an accident if you like. a surprise. one hell of a surprise. and a surprise that also brought us all here today. i'll get you in a moment but first of all let me get back for a moment to the beginning where knowledge management first emerged as a concept: in the caves of paleolithic prehistory. which is where we get our attitude about pretty much everything and our institutions and systems. which i would argue beginned with the first flint tool.
  
  at the time if you think about it, the first flint tool is the best thing since eating berries and dirt. because now it is possible to look out and hunt for lunch that is walking by on the hoof. and whatever it was that we human beings were going to be, the flint tool, in one sense freezes us at that point in our development. freezes the way we think and act and organize and innovate from then, until about yesterday.
  
  first of all, if you're going to go about hunting, you will need noodlers -specialists- whou will go on making the axes and flints and butchering tools. and then you need a man with a plan or you won't coordinate the hunt and lunch will get away.
  
  and then you need lots of people who do what the man with the plan says. so you make a top-down decision-making command structure in which -you may recognize this- the very few get power and reward and the very many are excluded from the process and do as they're told.
  
  so when i say we freeze at that point in our development, that's because while i was describing what went on in paleolithic caves, i could as easily have been describing what happens in general motors. the entire command structure of the modern society starts with the flint tool and shapes the culture and the way we think from then on, which is what technological change always does.
  
  the flint tool triggers a cultural cascade effect because its first use creates a discontinuity. because it introduces the first non-cyclic once-for-all change which people get used to and want more of.. which they always do.
  
  which generates public expectation of an even better tool tomorrow as it always does. which generates the requirement that noodlers will come up with tools that satisfy those public expectations.. which they always do."