Jose and I have been going back and forth on what to call groups of Radical companies working together. Should we call them networks, collaboratives, and ensembles?

This is my case for ensemble.

Several co-owned companies want to get together to create a particular thing. It is not a merger or an acquisition or anything like that. What this means for co-owned companies is that they want to pool their RADs for the duration of the project. They want to divide by all the RADs they have put out.

Maybe it is an electric car and one company can do the basic motor while other works on the mechanical engineering involved in putting together a chassis with synchronized motors, etc. Each company can see how the technology they are passionate about could be applied to projects in the future. They want to remain independent and ready to go their own way.

Networks

One suggestion is that we call this kind of association a network. Seems fine, except that there is a whole body of network mathematics already in existence. Also, a network has nodes connected to nodes, not exactly what we have in mind.

Calling them “networks“ would be confusing, to say the least.

Collaboratives

The other suggestion is that we call them collaboratives. I have always resisted the term, because collaborative emphasizes the labor. But we want this association to include everything social, not just the labor component. Also, it is not a regular word and would call attention to itself.

So, is there a better word?

Ensembles

An ensembles is a group of people who come together to play and make each other look good. They may play together for a long time or they may disband.

More importantly, this is a social act. It embraces everybody’s mistakes and aims to make others look good. This is what working together is all about.

It seems to me that the association of ensemble with music is more fitting than associating it with mathematics or labor.