Thursday, May 18, 2006
The Change Function
Since I am perenially interested in scientific evolutions/revolutions and seek to understand them better, change is a topic I am always thinking about - specifically changes to human behavior and concepts. One of my observations is that some of us love change far more than others. I am a change lover. I live for the thrill of the paradigm shift. I love them and collect them, somewhat like stamps or baseball cards. They feel good to me. I am painfully aware that others do not share my love of change.
My current theory on this is that there is actually a brain structure feature at play here. Some of us have better restructuring capabilities than others, somehow. For most people, the resistance to changing the way they think about something is directly proportional to how much that something is networked to other concepts in their brain. If a concept is far out on the edge of a network of concepts in the brain, it is far easier to change than something at the center of a lot of related concepts.
I ran across a review of a book today in MIT Technology Review. The book is The Change Function: Why Some New Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn, by Pip Coburn. Pip seems to agree with me completely. He says technologists are all like me - change junkies. They love complicated new things that make them adapt. They just don't understand that most of their potential customers don't. He has an equation for the non-technologists:
The Change Function = f(perceived crisis vs. total perceived pain of adoption)
and there is the techie version:
Supplier-centric adoption model = f(Grove's law of 10x disruptive technology x Moore's law).
The supplier-centric model basically means that techies think people want things that are "way cool" and "much better".
I like Coburn's change function. It captures my concept succinctly. People won't change their way of thinking about things unless their current way of thinking is in such a failure mode that the problems with continuing to think that way would be more trouble than changing. This is true in all kinds of situations - not just scientific evolution/revolution or technology adoption.
In science, you can see this during paradigm shifts. Scientists will not abandon current theories until they are clearly "broken" or dignificantly less useful than a new theory.
This seems like an adaptive mechanism. As long as things are working for you, why change? Expending energy to reorganize your brain should be motivated by a good reason. So, the question is: why are I and my fellow techies so happy to change? Are some people change agents naturally? Do they seek the new ideas, regardless of their value, presenting them to the slow changers to evaluate?
Since I am perenially interested in scientific evolutions/revolutions and seek to understand them better, change is a topic I am always thinking about - specifically changes to human behavior and concepts. One of my observations is that some of us love change far more than others. I am a change lover. I live for the thrill of the paradigm shift. I love them and collect them, somewhat like stamps or baseball cards. They feel good to me. I am painfully aware that others do not share my love of change.
My current theory on this is that there is actually a brain structure feature at play here. Some of us have better restructuring capabilities than others, somehow. For most people, the resistance to changing the way they think about something is directly proportional to how much that something is networked to other concepts in their brain. If a concept is far out on the edge of a network of concepts in the brain, it is far easier to change than something at the center of a lot of related concepts.
I ran across a review of a book today in MIT Technology Review. The book is The Change Function: Why Some New Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn, by Pip Coburn. Pip seems to agree with me completely. He says technologists are all like me - change junkies. They love complicated new things that make them adapt. They just don't understand that most of their potential customers don't. He has an equation for the non-technologists:
The Change Function = f(perceived crisis vs. total perceived pain of adoption)
and there is the techie version:
Supplier-centric adoption model = f(Grove's law of 10x disruptive technology x Moore's law).
The supplier-centric model basically means that techies think people want things that are "way cool" and "much better".
I like Coburn's change function. It captures my concept succinctly. People won't change their way of thinking about things unless their current way of thinking is in such a failure mode that the problems with continuing to think that way would be more trouble than changing. This is true in all kinds of situations - not just scientific evolution/revolution or technology adoption.
In science, you can see this during paradigm shifts. Scientists will not abandon current theories until they are clearly "broken" or dignificantly less useful than a new theory.
This seems like an adaptive mechanism. As long as things are working for you, why change? Expending energy to reorganize your brain should be motivated by a good reason. So, the question is: why are I and my fellow techies so happy to change? Are some people change agents naturally? Do they seek the new ideas, regardless of their value, presenting them to the slow changers to evaluate?
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]