I love the phrase, “the adjacent possible”. It captures in a very vivid way my sense that we are surrounded by more possibilities and opportunities than we can see – the theme of “Purposive Drift”. Hence my excitement when I first saw the term. It seems to say something I have been trying to say for along time in a very compressed, succinct way. That’s what the “drift” in “Purposive Drift” is about, trying to finding ways to counter our blindness to the richness of the world and to create the circumstances where one can become aware of the adjacent possibilities that too strong a focus on goals or plans could make you miss.
I found the phrase on Edge, where I haven’t been for a while. When I did last week there it was, “The Adjacent Possible – a talk with Stuart Kauffman”. My excitement was somewhat tempered by the fact that I couldn’t pull out much of what he meant from the talk nor with my search of the web following it. This was not dissimilar to my experience of reading his “At Home in the Universe” where I felt he was saying something very important, but found it difficult, if not impossible, to follow his argument in detail. This is due to my inadequacies not his. But, never mind, I shall shamelessly appropriate the phrase and use it in a way that makes sense to me.
What added to my sense of glee was the interesting stuff I came across trying to track down what others meant by the adjacent possible. (Among other things, in an indirect way, that’s where I alighted upon Geoffrey Vickers, my current, growing obsession – all the snippets I have managed to pick up reinforce my sense that he has some really important stuff to say.) Among the new stuff I found there was an interview with Michael Lissack, who is someone else who seems to have a good take on the world. As this extract from the interview shows his use of “the adjacent possible” is close to how I think about it.
“Q: How can companies become more adaptive?
A: You need to be able to recognise your adjacent possibilities. A lot of people can’t. They are at A, they want to go to X. And X is maybe twenty steps away. And they can?t visualise what the next step is that gets them towards X. They can work their way backwards to like N. But they have no idea how to get from A to N. They do know if they can get to N, they can get to X. But they need to know what B and C are. I find that a lot of people at a lot of companies are so focused on being able to articulate X, and then they hire consultants who work them backwards to N, that they never figure out B and C.”