Karsten SchmidtFeb 6, 2025

Another workshop done and glad I got a chance to introduce colleagues to the I Ching hexagrams as an example for #BottomUpDesign and as system for constructing/composing higher level concepts/meanings from just a small set of fundamental archetypes (in the I Ching there're only 8 fundamental trigrams)... It's been hugely influential and a guiding principle for my own work & design philosophy (incl. for most of my #OpenSource projects) and I keep finding ever new uses for applying this approach, here to devise a composable classification system, eventually allowing us to define more complex concepts... In world defined by #TopDownThinking, going the opposite way and showing people the benefits/flexibility is sometimes/oftentimes _very_ hard, but to me unquestionably more powerful...

Ps. Also reminded again of the whole Seed technology and essence/function (aka "ti-yong") contrast/discussion/subplots in Stephenson's Diamond Age... Yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagram_(I_Ching)

#ThingUmbrella #Composition #Language #IChing #Hexagram

Hexagram (I Ching) - Wikipedia

James KempJan 7, 2023
McKinsey Invented #Matrix Games https://www.themself.org/2006/07/mckinsey_invented_matrix_games/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost #pa #topdownthinking
McKinsey Invented Matrix Games - Themself

Most of today I spent on a training course called “Top Down Thinking” being run by a nice chap from PA Consulting who is the project’s workstream leader for technology. What was most interesting for me was the way it boiled the presentation of just about anything down to a ‘Governing Thought’ and some key lines that summarised your arguments (no more than five of those). The general style of it was very similar to the Matrix Game format where you say I think x will happen because … and give three arguments to support your case. Apparently the basis for this approach was a book called Pyramid Thinking written in the 1970s by a woman called Barbara Minto who was the first female partner than McKinsey had. So on that basis I think it is fair to say that […]

Themself