The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.

The young are always coming up with the good ideas; it's because they waste time. They follow their passion and do something, not looking for a payoff, just doing what's interesting.

An organization's intelligence is distributed to the point of being ubiquitous.

‎What color is a chameleon placed on a mirror? ... The chameleon responding to its own shifting image is an apt analog of the human world of fashion. Taken as a whole, what are fads but the response of a hive mind to its own reflection? In a 21st-century society wired into instantaneous networks, marketing is the mirror; the collective consumer is the chameleon.

When a system is in turbulence, the turbulence is not just out there in the environment, but is a part of the organization or organism that you are looking at.

Changing things from the top down works when things are stable.

Each system is trying to anticipate change in the environment.