Why Decentralized Engineering Is The Future of Innovation
When I was young I used to digest a lot of Star Trek (I still do, but I used to, too). That was the world I wanted to live in — where work is indistinguishable from leisure, where poverty has been eradicated, and where money doesn’t exist. And I truly believed some version of that would be realized in my lifetime (I still do, but I used to, too).
We live in a technologically-advanced time, where innovation is almost de rigueur. Every day we see more new headlines about promising scientific and technological advancements. We really live in an amazing time where the computers in our pockets are more powerful than the ones used to send people into space 60 years ago. But what got us to this moment isn’t necessarily the same thing that will lead us forward. NASA is funded by a centralized government, and many of the other innovations we use today were developed by huge corporations.
That worked for the 20th century. How innovation is achieved needs to be updated to fit how we live and work. The truth is that the future of work involves self-organizing networks of people and resources that make decisions and take action in a democratic, decentralized way. Let’s take a look at why decentralized engineering is the future of innovation.
Geography doesn’t matter anymore
In the old days (i.e. pre-Internet), it was essential for an organization or business to have its top engineers all in the same room. Today, however, people can work together from across the globe without having to leave their physical location. The work can be done asynchronously and incrementally, and at faster pace. Thanks to digital technology, it’s easier than ever to have engineering teams working around the clock, collaboratively, from anywhere, at any given time. This ultimately saves organizations time and money, while speeding up the rate at which innovation can occur.
Centralization = Bottleneck-ization
Anyone who’s driven on a six-lane highway that merges down into two lanes knows exactly what happens when a bottleneck occurs. You end up sitting in traffic, moving inch by inch, and wasting your own personal resources (gasoline) to get to your destination.
It turns out that centralized decision making is quite similar, but instead of cars and passengers we have projects and information (innovation is the resource; more on that below). Projects move forward at a glacial pace if decisions need to be reviewed by a single, small group of people who, coincidentally, also often control the flow of information. This results in organizations that innovate too slowly, as well as constituent parts that don’t have all the information they may need to perform at a high level.
Now, one might think that decentralization would lead to chaos. Not true. Instead, it allows for individuals or small groups of people to take up a slice of a project, take it as far as possible, contribute their piece to the larger project, and then move on to a different part of the project. They also have democratic access to information, and have the autonomy to solve problems without having to ask for permission to do so from a centralized authority.
Innovation is a limitless resource
As a society, we used to think that only scientific, “nerdy” types were the ones who were allowed to be inventive or innovative. But all humans are by nature innovative, and everyone can contribute something amazing. Which makes innovation a limitless resource.
But because of their interdependent and top-down structures, centralized organizations do not have the means to adequately harness this resource. Decentralized organizations, on the other hand, are structured specifically to take advantage and maximize innovation. By eliminating barriers for anyone from anywhere to pitch into the engineering and creative processes, decentralization can more efficiently harness innovation. Moreover, ‘burn out’ is very real in centralized organizations, but individuals can’t just quit their jobs. This drastically affects the pace at which the organization’s projects can move forward. In a decentralized organization, though, participants motivations are entirely different. They have autonomy over their participation, allowing them to take a break or shift to another project if they’re feeling burnt out, with other participants ready to pick up where they left off.
Humanity faces a lot of challenges, but these problems are also the biggest business opportunities. As a species, our ability to innovate allows us to overcome obstacles in ways that were previously unimaginable. We believe innovations in technology will allow humanity to make exponential societal, economic, political, and cultural advancements. And decentralization is the way these advances will happen.
