Intrinsic Abundance

This relates to synergy (see glossary)

Combining existing things to create new synergies

Making new things from a combination of old ones is better than using up new resources. When these combinations create synergies we can see them as additional abundances, because no new resource was used. We can represent this with dots and lines (i.e. dots representing 'ingredients' or 'players' and their relations shown as lines. Although our society is accustomed to looking at 'things' (rather than relations) it is only when things work together (i.e. have successful relationships) that we find abundance.

In the above example, 2 ingredients create only 1 relation.

The more ingredients we use, the more relations we can have.
3 ingredients gives us the same number of relations (i.e. 3)

But 4 ingredients may give us 4, 5 or 6 relations depending on how it is mapped.

Fig. 1 - The tetrahedron

The Problem With Permanent Hierarchies

• We can think use this way of thinking to describe an organisation's systemic consciousness.
• In these terms, management discourse in big hierarchies will be less 'conscious' than flat structured organisations.

Visualising relations as polygons

• 'Intrinsic abundance' refers to Buckminster Fuller's term 'constant relative abundance'.
• It is probably the most important (and underestimated) aspect of the tetrahedron.
• It is special because of its ratio of edges and vertices (corners).
• In our terms, this gives us 2 more relations than ingredients.

Fig. 2 - Other polygons - Buckminster Fuller's C60 carbon molecules

• Euler (1707-83) showed this to be true of all polygons:

• Buckminster Fuller identified this as a potential gift from Nature.
• We have applied this blessing to the idea of transconceptual entrepreneurship.

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