Brain of the firm
"Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world's most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know." Dr Russell L Ackoff, The Institute for Interactive Management, Pennsylvania, USA. "If. anyone can make it [Operations Research] understandably readable and positively interesting it is Stafford Beer. everyone in management. should be grateful to him for using clear and at times elegant English and. even elegant diagrams." The Economist This is the second edition of a book which has already become a management 'standard' both in universities and on the bookshelves of managers and their advisers. Brain of the Firm develops an account of the firm based upon insights derived from the study of the human nervous system, and is a basic text from the author's theory of viable systems. Despite the neurophysiology, the book is written for managers to understand. The companion volume to this book is The Heart of Enterprise, which is intended to support and complement this text. "Stafford Beer's works represent required reading for everyone who believes that a capacity for rigorous thinking is an essential attribute of today's successful managers and administrators.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
17mentions
12people
2008–2026years
65% recommend35% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I stumbled on Brain of the Firm by Stafford Beer as a freshman in college, and loved the idea of an auto-optimizing business.
Back then I had questions about exactly how such a system could be implemented, the algorithm was very hand wavey, but I assumed surely they must’ve figured it out before writing a book about it.
As an adult with 20 years extra experience, I’m fairly confident that, no, aside from the high level concept, they had no idea how to build such a system. That coup was probably the best possible outcome for Beer - it gave credibility to his ideas without actually testing them.
- my most interesting reading this year has been Stafford Beer (Brain Of The Firm, Heart Of The Enterprise). fascinating person and books
I’ve otherwise been largely re-reading books I haven’t read in a decade or so
- I recommend:
- Designing Freedom by Stafford Beer
- Brain of the Firm by Stafford Beer
- Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
- on the cybernetic systems thing: take a look at a book named "brain of the firm" by stafford beer
- To be fair, CEOs are also kinda useless... on a more serious notes, these consultants are more like priests of capital, there to prosletize whatever new cargo-cult framework is popular (without actually making any real change mind you).
I kind of like some old consulting literature from the 70s and 80s,especially the cybernetics stuff, as it seems like it's genuinely scientific and trying to improve things. Just the quality of writing in i.e. "Brain of the Firm", is so much more complex and erudite than what you see coming out in the field now.
- This isn't a new idea, see Project Cybersyn[1].
A few books / works by Stafford Beer, who architected much of that project, that I recommend reading.
- Brain Of The Firm
- Designing Freedom, 1973 Massey Lectures[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
[2] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1973-cbc-massey-lectures-...
