The Butterfly Effect
September 3, 2008
The Butterfly Effect
In 1963, meteorologist Edward Lorenz announced a stunning conclusion.
For decades, people had viewed the universes as a large machine in which causes matched effects. People presumed that big causes had big effects, and little causes produced little effects. Lorenz doubted this.
The question posed to Lorenz sounded strange but simple. Could the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Singapore affect a hurricane in North Carolina?
After considerable study, Lorenz answered yes.
Lorenz’s postulation of what is now called the Butterfly Effect was one of several findings in the last twenty years that reflect the unpredictability of everything: weather; the likely outcome of direct marketing programs, and the distant but often enormous effects of tiny causes.
One group of people was not surprised by Lorenz’s discovery, however. Those people had seen the Butterfly Effect at work everyday. They were careful observers of service companies- a world where my efforts often produce enormous, though sometimes distant, effects.
Remember the Butterfly Effect. Tiny cause, huge effect.
Extracts from “Selling the Invisible”
