Vegan enterprises should go ‘open-source’ and reveal the critical components of their business operations
Successful vegan enterprises can ensure that high-resolution copies of their states of affairs are those that are propagated
The problem of having a hodgepodge of disconnected vegan enterprises is that innovations may be silently enacted and kept from the rest of the vegan community. Vegan pioneers may be overseeing exemplary states of affairs but leaving other vegan enterprises in the wilderness.
That is, it is conceivable that if and when vegan enterprises capture established cultural flags that represent the most unmistakable markers or representatives of our food culture — the important nuances of what it means to win and maintain these flags, may only be imperfectly understood — or haphazardly acquired — by other vegan enterprises.
Whilst our cultural structures have become less rigid and domain knowledge appears to be sloshing around in a broader social cultural mix, high-quality information — or intelligence — is still often obtained inefficiently.
Our increased connectivity has brought about the need for a thoroughly endless cross-checking of sources in order to mitigate the effects of substandard information and achieve modest consensus.
And, as a result, the internet, in particular, rather than preventing cheap imitation or low-grade copies of ideas, has encouraged them — on a massive scale.
But, what if, instead of being anxious about the possibility of other enterprises stealing their competitive edge, successful vegan innovators actively encouraged comprehensive piracy of their in-house expertise?
By going ‘open-source’ and revealing the critical components of their business operations, successful vegan enterprises could ensure that high-resolution copies of their states of affairs were those that propagated — as opposed to low-grade copies, or copies of copies.
According to Giulio Tononi’s theory of human consciousness, the more information that is shared and processed between many different components to contribute to that single experience, then the higher the level of consciousness.
And the extent to which components are integrated, coordinated, or conscious of each other — may be as advantageous to a business endeavor as they are to a biological organism.
What if the glue that holds successful vegan states of affairs together was somehow available in a vegan cloud, a cumulative collective vegan intelligence or type of vegan consciousness that was continuously updated?
Every incremental improvement made in one vegan enterprise could be rolled out to all other vegan enterprises. The success of every breakthrough, or captured flag, could be repeated on a huge scale.
Imagine a city whose network of existing flags was slowly strangled by better versions of these same flags — until the best ‘Hamburger’, ‘Pizza’ or ‘Taco’ just happened to be vegan.
Rather than the critical information that led to the capturing of these flags being left to trickle-down or slip out the backdoor, it could be beamed up to a vegan mothership, a network of small startups rigorously focused on product — free to experiment, but also driven by and guided by a collective intelligence.
Just as Starbucks opens a new store in China every 15 hours, the most desirable vegan ‘Hamburger’, ‘Pizza’ or ‘Taco’ could be rebirthed around the world every 15 hours.
For vegan enterprises that have been created primarily for the aim of bringing about vegan cultural norms, any meaningful concept of success lies in the collective. And the collective rate at which vegan states of affairs bring about vegan cultural norms may be determined by the quality of their copies.
High-quality copies of states of affairs are likely to have higher survival rates than low-quality copies of states of affairs. And, in order to maximize the quality of copies of states of affairs, information or intelligence must be free to move back and forth between these different states of affairs.
