Creating new intelligence systems for making better sense of everything
Welcome to Revlr—a project to create a next generation organization intelligence system for our time.
The systems we have are no match for today’s challenges.
Revlr is a collaborative R&D project between a startup (Revlr Studio) and a university research lab (UMBC’s Imaging Research Center).
We are currently seeking people and organizations who are willing to try new kinds of tools and practices to overcome longstanding obstacles to the success they aspire to.
Our work rests on three observations we’ve taken from research, conversations, and experiences working with people tackling society’s hardest challenges.
Most of the work has been in public health, education, community development, and the environment, but what we’ve learned applies to other situations where success has been the challenge is messy and hard to get a handle on, probably because it involves, well… people.
Observation 3.
This one is about AI (more accurately thought of as Machine-Based Intelligence, or MBI because there is nothing artificial about it). Alongside the excitement, we see anxiety because its potential seems limitless. People wonder how to manage its growing capacity and whether it will leave us all useless in our own organizations and even our own lives.
Observation 1.
Our greatest challenges and opportunities arise from interactions within and among countless complex systems that behave like ecosystems where everything depends on everything else. These can't be understood in pieces, examined a few at a time, but that's all current organization intelligence systems allow us to do. That blinds us to both existing synergies and creative insights. So we get overwhelmed and stay stuck. Or worse, we settle, and forget our aspirations.
Observation 2.
Amid these confusing situations, it’s rare to find organizations whose people align in how they see goals, challenges, and opportunities. People don’t agree on the factors that will determine success and how much each of them matter at any given time.
If these observations ring true for you, we'd like to meet with you to understand how they play out in your work. We’d also like to hear what you've observed.
We may come back to you to share what we are learning and see if you want to become more involved.
Revlr is currently a set of approaches, represented in an evolving prototype of an immersive visualization environment. We will only turn it into a product if and when we learn, by engaging with organizations willing to work with it enough to make and share observations, that it is, or can be, promising for them. Our approach is hypothetical at this point. It becomes useful only when those who would use it think it is.