Foundations
The ideas the
scaffold stands on.
Mastermind City borrows from decades of work on small groups, shared governance, human development and complex systems. Here is each idea in plain terms, how it shapes the design, and where to read more.
01 · The Mastermind Principle
Two or more minds, one definite purpose.
Napoleon Hill described the "master mind" as the coordination of knowledge and effort between two or more people working toward a definite purpose. In the right conditions, he argued, the group produces a kind of third mind that none of its members has alone.
Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937).
How it applies
- The node is a mastermind group that also shares a life and an economy.
- The monthly council is where the group sets its definite purpose for the cycle.
- Rotation means every member eventually sees the whole, not just their part.
02 · Human Scale
Five, fifty, one hundred and fifty.
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar found that human social networks fall into layers of roughly 5, 15, 50 and 150 people. The innermost circle, about five, is the group we lean on most. Around 150, often called Dunbar's number, is the number of stable relationships most people can maintain: people we know well enough to know how they relate to each other.
The same number turns up again and again. A study of the networks people keep up by sending Christmas cards found an average of about 150. Hunter-gatherer clans, early farming villages and army companies cluster around that size, and Hutterite farming colonies traditionally split in two as they approach it.
Research on teams points the same way at the small end: as a working group grows past a handful of people, the relationships to coordinate multiply and accountability thins out.
R. I. M. Dunbar, "Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates," Journal of Human Evolution (1992); R. I. M. Dunbar, "Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans," Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1993); R. A. Hill & R. I. M. Dunbar, "Social network size in humans," Human Nature (2003); Zhou, Sornette, Hill & Dunbar, "Discrete hierarchical organization of social group sizes," Proc. Royal Society B (2005); J. Richard Hackman, Leading Teams (2002).
How it applies
- Each node is run by a core council of five to eight: one close circle, large enough to hold five responsibilities.
- The node itself can grow to about 150 members, the largest group in which everyone can still know one another.
- Past that, a node divides rather than growing bigger.
03 · Sociocracy & Consent
Good enough for now. Safe enough to try.
Sociocracy is a way of governing organisations developed by Dutch engineer Gerard Endenburg in the 1970s, building on the educator Kees Boeke. Its core is decision by consent: a proposal goes ahead unless someone has a reasoned objection. People work in small circles, and circles connect through members who sit in both.
Consent is not consensus. Nobody has to love a decision; it only has to be acceptable to try and open to review.
Gerard Endenburg, Sociocracy: The Organization of Decision-Making (1998); Sociocracy 3.0 (sociocracy30.org); Rau & Koch-Gonzalez, Many Voices One Song (2018).
How it applies
- Every node decision is a consent round. An objection must come with a counter-proposal.
- The core council is the circle. The Connector is its link to the wider network.
- Sociocratic election is one of the council-selection methods a node can choose.
- Voting is kept for the federation level, where nodes, not individuals, take part.
- Tensions are raised in a set format, so problems surface early instead of festering.
04 · Governing the Commons
Communities can govern shared resources well.
Political economist Elinor Ostrom studied communities around the world that had managed forests, fisheries and water for generations without either state control or privatisation. She identified eight design principles shared by the ones that lasted. Her work earned the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (1990).
How it applies
- The scaffold is built to meet Ostrom's principles, mapped below.
- The federation is a set of nested enterprises: nodes inside a network.
| Ostrom's principle | In Mastermind City |
|---|---|
| Clear boundaries | Defined membership: a core council of five to eight in a node of up to 150 |
| Rules fit local conditions | Culture, economy and timing set by each node |
| Those affected make the rules | Consent decisions inside every node |
| Monitoring | Transparent contribution ledger and cycle record |
| Graduated responses | Tension process, then mediation, then exit protocol |
| Accessible conflict resolution | In-node process, with neutral help from outside |
| Right to self-organise | Node sovereignty; federation can't override culture |
| Nested enterprises | Core councils, nodes and the federation |
05 · Spiral Dynamics
Many worldviews, one structure.
Spiral Dynamics grew from psychologist Clare Graves's research into how people's values and ways of thinking change as their life conditions change. Don Beck and Christopher Cowan developed it into a model of value systems, often shown as colours: tribal belonging, personal power, order and tradition, achievement, community and equality, and integrative systems thinking.
We use it as a design lens. Its key insight for us is that different people and groups are motivated by different values, and a system built for only one of them breaks when it meets the others.
Clare W. Graves, The Never Ending Quest (2005, ed. Cowan & Todorovic); Don Beck & Christopher Cowan, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change (1996).
How it applies
- The scaffold is built to be legible to many value systems at once: a monastery, a guild and an enterprise can all run it.
- Structure (roles, records, rhythm) speaks to the need for order; consent speaks to the need for equality; contribution tracking speaks to the need for achievement.
- The federation aims to be an integrative layer that connects nodes without forcing them into one worldview.
06 · Antifragility
Systems that grow stronger from stress.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined "antifragile" for systems that don't just survive shocks but improve because of them. Antifragile systems tend to be made of many small, independent parts, where the failure of one part teaches the whole without bringing it down.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012).
How it applies
- Many small nodes instead of one large community. One node failing doesn't sink the network.
- Every cycle record is a lesson other nodes can learn from, including failures.
- Minimum viable structure: less to break, fewer single points of failure.
- Open exits keep the federation honest. If it stops adding value, nodes leave.
07 · Self-Organisation
Simple local rules, emergent order.
In complex systems, order often emerges from the bottom up: many agents following simple local rules produce patterns no one designed. Ant colonies, ecosystems, markets and cities all work this way. The cooperative movement shows the same thing in human institutions: independent co-ops that cooperate with each other.
Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour (2009); International Co-operative Alliance, Statement on the Co-operative Identity (1995).
How it applies
- The OS sets a few local rules and nothing more. The shape of the network emerges from what nodes do.
- Affinity matching lets nodes with shared purposes find each other.
- Federation services are kept only where they demonstrably add value.
From Ideas to Practice