Expansion and Contraction

All growth experiences a period of expansion, reaches a complexity apex, and must then contract into simpler, more effective primitives. This cycle permanently loops, though nothing guarantees that it remains balanced. The same grow-apex-contract mechanism is observed for every measurable thing in life: knowledge, possessions, and even money. The apex is defined and measurable, though identifying and measuring the inputs has variable difficulty.

Balance

Mass accumulation is motivated by the immediately realized gain or by the estimated future potential. Simplification is motivated due to excessive input resource consumption. So, expansion is measured by the output while streamlining is measured by the input.

The assumption is that growth (the rate of production) follows a quadratic trajectory. The peak is found and sustained when a gold rush occurs – there is surplus opportunity to sustain growth and production at a rate that is now constrained by the inputs available.

When expansion is constrained by the input, a new peak can be reached by either linearly scaling the inputs or by identifying some way to employ inputs more efficiently. There is no requirement that only the same inputs are used. New inputs can be introduced, and any risks must be reassessed whenever the inputs are changed.

Maintaining Balance (and when to shift gears)

Exploration

Mass accumulation and expansion are the processes required to explore new ideas. There is often difficulty in clearly expressing exploration as a deterministic process.

Larger units will use pseudo-random processes to conduct exploration, hoping that any gaps in understanding will be masked by data-driven success heuristics. Often these larger units are divided into many smaller sub-units. The benefit is a coordinated exploration effort, where power and control over each sub-unit can be assigned to the most suitable experts. The main risk in a distributed pseudo-random exploration is that two sub-units will explore the same new ideas - this can be perceived as a waste of resources.

Innovation

Innovation occurs when ideas that have been confirmed effective collapse into actionable units of information, ideally units that can be applied broadly and specifically. The scale is determined as a measure of how many distinct applications that innovation can be applied to. The impact is determined by the total change affected by that innovation (i.e. the sum of change seen by anything and anyone employing the innovation).

The hardest step for innovation is determining how to share one innovation in every field. There is a balance to maintain between continued innovation and chaos. This balance can sometimes be misused to control ownership and power – employing the fear of chaos to control access to innovation, progression of ideas, and any further development.

It is possible that the benefit of an innovation can be allowed without requiring ideas to collapse. Typically this would signal excessive input resource consumption, and implies the value of output being generated outweighs the cost of the current input requirements. It signals the strength of the new developments but also presents future opportunities in streamlining input resource usage.