European Cognitive Edge Business Network

Last Friday I found myself in Luton, right next to the airport, for a day of interaction with ten fellow Cognitive Edge practitioners. On the invitation of Tony Quinlan and the entire Narrate crew, this was hopefully the first of multiple meet-ups and the start of doing much more actual work with Cognitive Edge methods. I for one am very eager to work with clients this way, and the network is essential for me to build up experience and steam to do that. Next meeting is planned for October, probably in Brussels.

Friday we spend the morning to get to know each other, and discussed the 'Children of the World' project Narrate has been doing. The afternoon we ate our own dog food and did both an anecdote circle sharing stories around landing and doing CE projects, as well as a 'The Future, Backwards' session to see how we can envision both a worst case and best case scenario for the business network we intended to start that day.

For me moving towards CE methods in my projects will be a focal point in the coming months, as in our complex world a lot of our current ways of working are simply failing. I believe at least some are waking up to that reality and are open to stop trying to do failing strategies harder, in the futile hope it will work this time, and start doing things differently.

Part of that focus is that I will be joining several other Cognitive Edge practitioners under the banner of TOP innosense, a new company starting in September by Harold van Garderen and Wouter de Heij. Under the TOP innosense label we will be able to do more than as individual consultants, so we are joining forces this way. It fits my perception of companies as mushrooms on the mycelium of the network. It's a building block for the European Cognitive Edge business network.

Tags: cognitiveedge, complexity