Don't Waste the Reboot - from The Yak Collective
I contributed to something cool -- Check it out!
Hello from the Himalayas,
I’ve acquired a bit of abdominal fat with all this sitting-all-day and not-enough-walking outside. So, I’m ratcheting up the frequency of my 20-min home-workouts and modifying my diet to make proteins go ⬆️ and processed fats go ⬇️. With that in motion, let’s get going for today’s note.
Interesting Small-Worlds
In addition to being a network, a small-world network structure is defined by two characteristics—
It has clusters.
Clusters have multiple links between themselves to enable the cross-cluster flow.
Brain Cell Networks & Dynamics of Learning
These structural characteristics allow for a lot of exciting dynamics in the network. Cluster flexibility increases the learnability of the network. I wrote about it in a new essay —What in the Small-World is this? —outlining the ideas and findings of brilliant network-neuroscientist Danielle Bassett’s work on brain cell networks and learning processes. Turns out that the brain uses a small-world architecture for complex learning—learning that happens across multiple functional areas. You can read my essay if you are new to small-world networks.
Supply-Chain Network & The New Online-Grocery Race
The recent Facebook-Jio’s $5.7 billion deal is a bet on the superiority of a small-world network structure over a scale-free one. In the wake of the internet and the newly available efficient layer of e-commerce, Amazon pioneered a scale-free structure that obsessed over efficiency above everything else. This resulted in thousands of Amazon warehouses and fulfillment-centers dotted around in the suburbs of almost every major urban-region of the world. The traditional neighborhood stores were ignored and left to die. The only caveat is that they didn’t die. They survived and even thrived in some places.
The robustness of these local grocery cluster-centers got highlighted when the unpredictable shock hit the global supply-chain network in 2020 with the outbreak of a global pandemic. The updated strategy of the big online-grocery players in India and in other major economies is to leverage these neighborhood mom-and-pop stores—nodes of organically robust local supply-chain clusters, instead of an artificial warehouse grid—which is costly to build and not too robust, as these warehouses are usually far removed from residential areas.
The robustness of the physical layer—local kirana-shops— is now being married to the efficiency of the digital layer—online cataloging and payments. Facebook-Jio deal is aimed at following this exact strategy. Other participants in this new online-grocery race—Amazon, Flipkart(majority-owned by Walmart), and other hyperlocal delivery players like Zomato and Big Basket— are all adopting this strategy. Instacart has been using this playbook all along and has built a $7.6B business in a saturated industry.
This new small-worldification of networks is not limited to one domain. I see this meta-change happening across sectors and across different aspects of lifestyle. Balaji Srinivasan described this change in this extraordinarily pithy 4-word tweet.
Don’t Waste the Reboot — from The Yak Collective
A group of independent consultants I am part of, The Yak Collective, is releasing its inaugural report in the form of a slide deck —Don’t Waste the Reboot. I contributed to this along with 20 other Indies.
Don’t Waste the Reboot is a collection of 25 non-mainstream ideas, systems, and frameworks, aimed at clearing up the fog of uncertainty and providing an anchor to decision-makers to move forward their ventures with confidence and foresight. The goal is to offer organizations of all sorts —business, non-profit, and government—a meaningful and practical alternative to traditional mainstream sources of counsel & intelligence.
The six core themes covered in this report include:
Response & Learning
Experimentation & Innovation
Reboot Mental Models
Sensemaking & Storytelling
Complexity & Resilience
Deploying Indies
You can find my contribution to this report ‘Restructure as a Small-World Network’ on Slide #37-38. It’s a call to proactive decision-makers to restructure their processes and teams in a small-world network structure and start reaping its exponential returns.
Another Idea that I really dig is Randy Lubin’s ‘Cultural Fringe as Free R&D’ (Slide #21). This framework shows a ready-to-implement way forward to organizations hungry to find new products, campaign-styles, and processes-that-work, but lack the fully established machinery of capital, human, and technical resources for rapid, effective R&D.
Check out the Full Deck—Don’t Waste the Reboot, on the website!
About the Yak Collective
The Yak collective is a network of independent consultants who all have their own consulting or creation practices but also work together on larger projects. If you are intrigued by an idea/framework, feel free to reach out to the relevant contributor directly. The Yak Collective is not an agency or intermediary. We are trying to develop a very different approach to developing and delivering business ideas and intelligence, based primarily on effective and fluid collaboration models inspired by the open-source software world. You can learn more about us on our new website, The Yak Collective.
What You Can Do:
Read the Deck: We are not interested in the shallow, clickbaity virality of this report. We’d rather reach people and organizations who are actually interested in the ideas we’ve been thinking about. So please take 5 mins to read the deck before sharing.
Retain our Services: If you or your organization is interested in one or more of the ideas included in the report, and would like a workshop or a freeform conversation, let me know, and I'll help set it up. One or more of us from the Yak Collective can develop an offering suited to your particular needs (more info in the deck).
Spread the Word: If you'd like to help us out, you can do so by spreading the word in your network. Just forward this email(or the link to the deck) to decision-makers at organizations you think could benefit from discovering these frameworks. You can also share this deck on your social media —Don’t waste the Reboot.
Connect with Us: Follow The Yak Collective on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook to keep up with new releases and to join in the conversation. If you're an independent consultant or potential client, you're welcome to join our Discord server and hang out with us live as we do our collaborative work. Just ask me for an invite. (my email is vinaydebrou@gmail.com & my twitter handle is @vinaydebrou).
Yak Collective is Just Getting Started
Here's the link again— Don't Waste the Reboot. Read, share, and let me know what you think. And stay tuned! You'll be hearing more about the Yak Collective and its work in the coming months.
Interesting Finds of the Week
This song ‘Marz’ by John Grant —it evokes the feelings of Sehnsucht in me. I couldn’t stop myself from replaying it multiple times.
I discovered a new indulgence-snack combo that I love—
Watermelon Salad + Black Coffee
For me, it wins over the popular combo of Ice-cream + Hot Chocolate Brownie. Health-wise, it’s a win too. I can indulge myself while avoiding (processed) sugar completely and the two components balance out their hydrating and dehydrating effects. Cheap and quick-to-make too. If you haven’t, you probably wanna try this combo out.
Remembering Irrfan Khan
One of my favorite actors from Indian cinema, Irrfan Khan died yesterday at the age of 53. He is among the few actors whose movies I feel proud to recommend to my friends, particularly my non-Indian friends who might be missing out on his versatile work. In his remembrance, I am recommending you to watch—if you haven’t— one of these two movies which are my Irrfan Khan favorites—Life of Pi & The Lunchbox.
Piouff! Today’s note was a long one. I hope you found it fun or intriguing. Thanks for reading.
Until Next Week,
Vinay