WhatIsSynergy

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Synergy is usually characterized as "the whole being more than the sum of its parts". But this doesn't tell the whole story.

Synergy starts where the physical world is at its end. Physics tells us, that energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. This makes our world basically a ZeroSumGame.

But life, esp. in the form of communities, makes a clever step forward. It uses information to gain special advantages by planning the future and by organizing collaboration. Information about the past is transformed to "useful information" (=knowledge) about the future. Collaboration is secured by systems of fair distribution of advantages. So the whole and its parts profit at the same time.

There may be singular actions where a community is able to create synergy, but much more important are patterns that may be reused again and again. These discoveries, inventions and developments form a culture that is the foundation of a community.

While we do have "thermo dynamics", telling us about energy processes, we don't yet have "social dynamics", that could tell us about social (community) processes in the same detail.

I am interested in getting feedback about the idea of synergizing workflows, such as what I have written [here]. My hope is to create a useful set of principles/practices that people can use on individual, group, and group to group scales, and share those. See also a wiki version [SynergizeWorkFlows]-SamRose

WhatIsSynergy

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