No matter how hard you study an individual bee, it’s impossible to figure out how it makes honey.
You need to examine the operation of the whole hive.
And even then you need to engage in some radical new Thoughtware to make sense of what’s going on.
Karl von Frisch figured it out in 1967, but it took till 2005 before his thinking was finally accepted as correct.
Other examples of new thinking abound.
A recent challenge to traditional Thoughtware can be seen in ‘The Brain that Changes Itself’,
(See: Norman Doidge’s book on neuroplasticity.)
And then there is thinking about forest fires as living entities.
Modelling their behaviour along biological principles to enable a more accurate prediction of their spread.
As`the Frisch example reveals there is often a considerable time between original Thoughtware, its acceptance and then inculcation into the prevalent Orgware.
Talking Social Media
We now have the software tools to analyse, decode and gain insight into millions of simultaneous conversations taking place in Social Media between producers and consumers.
Do you think that understanding and applying that information to create value will require a new Thoughtware?
How long will it take for that Thoughtware to be accepted and then incorporated into the pervasive Orgware?
Pharma is a Producer Isn’t It?
Do you think that any one of the leaders of Big Pharma is capable of getting their head around this new Thoughtware?
Or should we be thinking of the leaders as a distributed network?
A network that is incapable of individual thinking, only the group-think we associate with closed and dying systems.
But maybe they are too far removed from where the honey is produced to hear the buzz…..
Will Pharma take too long to accept the challenges the new Thoughtware associated with Social Media?
Will it wait until there is a sort of collective ‘bee’ acceptance of the new Thoughtware?
And when it comes to Pharma Orgware adoption - now we are talking challenging.
The Real Pharma Dilemma
In a recent conversation with a Senior Pharma Executive it was refreshing to hear the realisation that it is not just the acceptance of a new Thoughtware that represents a challenge but the acceptance of a new Orgware that presents the greatest hurdle.
Any one Pharmaco is very large. Organisationally slow and difficult to move and change.
Even if the new Thoughtware is accepted - to address the organisational challenges that such thinking poses is perhaps impossible in a realistic time?
Clearly, an organisation can collect the pollen but turning out the honey???
If the real opportunity that Social Media represents to any organisation, let alone Pharma – not known for the elegance of its flight through changing times, is to be grasped then major Orgware re-thinking will be required.
Research, product development, marketing, sales, the entire continuum of business activity will need to be considered.
Is this really a possibility?
Or will the flight of the Pharma bee be more like that of the Bumbling Bee?
(Tomorrow’s Blog: Pharma without LABS)
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