I made this a long time ago but never really showed anyone outside of one to one conversations in a presentation.
The reason I gravitated to using the intelligence of natural complex adaptive systems as a strategy for investing was that I got frustrated meeting so many amazing entrepreneurs, scientists and technologists that could not turn their vision into tangible reality. Sometimes, it is the normal reasons such as finding a way for such gifted nonlinear visionaries and thinkers to relate to ordinary people. However, that was not the whole thing.
The way the markets work kind of excludes these people by definition. Basically, capital markets work for “go big or go home.” They do not work for the people that visualize new possibilities in terms of nested systems, possibilities across society’s silos, and opportunities that build failure and adaptation as part of the product or service cycle. We build for rapid growth but not for the intrinsic value to society and not for the need to unwind the old to build the new.
What I realized meeting with so many executives, entrepreneurs and gifted creators over the years was that most of our really hard problems require making this shift. Instead of teaching these gifted creators and polymaths to fit the existing investment paradigm, we need to adapt our investment modalities around their more sophisticated understanding of complex systems. This is far beyond linear concepts of impact investing or socially responsible investing which mostly use the same linear investment frameworks we use today.
Major externalities and trade offs are built in to the predominant economic paradigm, so there is little point in virtue signaling or demonizing most people (I am not referring to the extremes when I say most people. The people at the extremes can get ugly to the point of evil) once you see this reality. Believe it or not, authoritarianism, dystopian realities and superorganisms that consume the creativity of others like food are built into the existing zero sum game economic paradigm.
To create new vibrant communities, we need to come together across polarities and no system is better for accomplishing this difficult task than some version of a living complex system process. My own understanding grows daily of the beauty of natural intelligence, but I worked hard to design a system built on the wisdom of the many that can evolve as I (and “we”) evolve. The best part is that it creates such strong incentives for us to come together and share in creative ways we never have before. You can see so much evidence of this happening all over the world which is a welcome shift.
I use permaculture principles as a way to connect ancient esoteric wisdom to advanced science and technology such as complexity science. Some of the details and value of the natural intelligence investing principles I designed are below.
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