Agusti Canals and Local Maxima or How often revolutions happen

Today I met with Agusti Canals, we didn’t meet for almost a year, among other things because he has been in Wharton working with his models. We have been talking about all the people here that work in SNA (Social Network Analysis) and also about the situation in Spain and Catalonia.

Among other things, we were discussing that in all these years our country was seated in a local maxima, we just were managing better than our neighbors. A similar situation happened with companies, universities, institutions, … Well, in many respects to be blinded by living in a local maxima is difficult to avoid. We humans are made for sensing and highlightening our close environment .. while somehow discarding things that are too far away.

But then I remembered Monday, when I was in the Telefónica Open Days and one of the speakers was trying to convince us that a revolution in the structure of the Internet is not possible because of the size of the installed base. Well, we all know that this is not true – just ask the music industry if you are not convinced (or poor Kodak …). Revolutions happen far more often than we think it happen. We all know that …

The real problem comes when these two ideas combine, and you don’t see that you are in a local maxima while simultaneously believing that revolutions don’t happen so often … Then you tend to expect that things will be more or less how they were. Again, this is not true and on top … is really dangerous !!