The Parable of the Hare and the Tortoise: Small Worlds, Diversity, and System Performance

Abstract

Whether as team members brainstorming, or cultures experimenting with new technologies, problem solvers communicate and share ideas. This paper examines how the structure of these communication networks can affect system-level performance. We present an agent-based model of information sharing, where the less successful emulate the more successful. Results suggest that where agents are dealing with a complex problem, the more efficient the network at disseminating information, and the higher the velocity of information over that network, the better the short run and lower the long run performance of the system. The dynamic underlying this result is that an inefficient network is better at exploration than an efficient network, supporting a more thorough search for solutions in the long run. This suggests that the efficient network is the harethe fast starter-and the poorly connected network is the tortoise-slow at the start of the race, but ultimately triumphant.Networks provide the architecture of systemic adaptation. In any social system, the units of that system seek success-whether those criteria for success are determined by evolutionary processes or by (boundedly rational) goal-seeking processes. Networks provide the architecture of success in social systems because information about success that flows through the network provides one of the primary mechanisms for improvement in the system. This paper explores the implications of this architecture for system-level success (e.g., Putnam 2000), rather than nodal-level success (e.g., Burt 1995). In particular, using computational experiments, it demonstrates how network architecture affects the aggregation of problem solving within a system. It finds that small world (small number of degrees of separation) networks (the hare) are better at quickly converging on the best solution that initially exists in the network. However, small worlds perform very poorly in the long run, because they so quickly squeeze diversity out of the system. Larger world networks (the tortoise) perform better in the long run because they explore more of the solution space. More generally, we find that the smaller the world, the better the system in the short run, and the worse it is in the long run. Finally, we find that the velocity of information is negatively related to performance, especially in highly connected worlds.We argue that these findings are robust across a wide variety of settings, offering illustrations from the diffusion of pre-written history agricultural innovations and creative groups.The first section of the paper examines the role that networks play in the diffusion of information, focusing in particular how networks affect the aggregation of information. The second part of the paper develops a simulation model, basing the solution space on NK models (Kauffman 1995), to understand the implications of

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