Limitations and Challenges

Considering that the Intelligent Consortium differs from traditional Cybernetics-based commercial organizations, its unique organizational design may not achieve hard constraints under the current traditional legal framework. When the organization grows significantly and involves substantial interests, it remains uncertain whether situations may arise where specific organizational individuals violate established rules without facing sufficient penalties. For instance, if the Intelligent Consortium reaches a consensus on the expenditure plan of a sub-network structure at a certain point, and an individual within that sub-network violates the plan, the Intelligent Consortium may have no recourse other than expelling specific organizational individuals. For organizational individuals other than capital, labor, or product suppliers, such a measure may be inconsequential. Alternatively, if a shareholder of an Execution Unit, disregarding the interests of other organizational individuals and violating prior consensus, forcibly exercises shareholder rights to interfere with the unit’s operations or transfer capital, the operations of the Intelligent Consortium could be significantly impacted. However, under the current legal framework, the Intelligent Consortium may not be able to impose sufficient penalties on such shareholders in accordance with existing commercial laws. Consequently, practitioners of Intelligenism and the Intelligent Consortium must continuously innovate and explore organizational mechanisms and rules to provide substantial safeguards for the organization as a whole. When certain organizational rules lack sufficient organizational guarantees, the Intelligent Consortium may be inapplicable in certain commercial contexts or scenarios. Until clear safeguard mechanisms emerge, I still consider this a limitation and challenge of the Intelligent Consortium.

As outlined in the previous framework of the Intelligent Consortium, information within the network spreads diffusely, meaning all organizational individuals can access all operational information if they wish. In scenarios where business expansion involves confidential information, such as a restaurant’s seasoning recipe or a specific production process, the need to protect such confidentiality within the organization must be addressed. When the organization seeks to obtain intellectual property rights, current legal rules require such rights to be attributed to a traditional commercial entity or individual. My temporary solution is to encapsulate confidential research or recipes within a conventional commercial entity, functioning as a black-box input-output system that interacts with the Intelligent Consortium as an organizational individual. However, this raises another question: who should be the shareholder of the entity holding the intellectual property? Overall, I believe this could be a limitation in the future development of the Intelligent Consortium, requiring practitioners to explore innovative, scenario-specific solutions in practice.

Compared to traditional Cybernetics-based commercial organizations, the organizational power in the Intelligent Consortium is more decentralized. For all organizational individuals, greater decentralization indeed provides a stronger sense of participation and engagement, thereby increasing overall mobilization and reducing mobilization costs. However, the organizational characteristics of the Intelligent Consortium may result in lower mobilization for specific individuals compared to Cybernetics organizations. When exceptional individuals with capabilities and organizational value far exceeding the average—such as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs—emerge, the decentralized power structure may lead to reduced mobilization for such super individuals, potentially lowering the likelihood of disruptive innovation compared to Cybernetics organizations. While it is not yet confirmed whether this risk of insufficient mobilization due to power decentralization truly exists, logical reasoning suggests it is possible. This potential risk implies that the Intelligent Consortium may need to complement traditional business models in its network structure. For instance, super individuals could establish a Cybernetics commercial entity and participate in the Intelligent Consortium network as an organizational individual, ensuring sufficient mobilization at certain rights conversion points.

Readers of this book may also notice that the structural complexity of the Intelligent Consortium is likely significantly higher than that of Cybernetics organizations. While a bottom-up managed organization delegates its complex tasks to all organizational individuals, the intricate network structure may increase the overall maintenance costs of the organization in the long term. Although these costs may be distributed among all organizational individuals rather than reflected in the organization’s financial statements as operational costs, it remains uncertain whether the incremental value brought by the Intelligent Consortium’s characteristics can offset this cost increase.

Due to the bottom-up collective decision-making nature of the Intelligent Consortium, the decisions it produces may not be suitable for matters requiring a few individuals to bear full responsibility. Additionally, in the foreseeable future, the Intelligent Consortium will need to operate under traditional commercial entities, which tend to favor individual accountability. This means that the organizational design of the Intelligent Consortium must still align with certain limitations of traditional commercial entities.

The collective decision-making and responsibility framework of the Intelligent Consortium may make debt financing under traditional commercial frameworks unfeasible, as the Intelligent Consortium cannot provide a few or a single guarantor. This implies that the Intelligent Consortium may only attract capital providers willing to accept its organizational rules when seeking financing.