Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Synergy describes how whole systems behave in ways that parts alone do not predict.
In plain terms
The whole acts differently than the sum of its parts.
What can you take from it?
Focus on how parts interact to understand system behavior.

Where it applies

  • management
  • collaboration
  • engineering

Putting it to work

  • study system dynamics
  • focus on interactions
  • avoid reductionism

Questions to consider

  • How do parts interact in your projects?
  • What emergent properties do you see?

Another view

Synergy is often overused as a buzzword without precise definition.

More from Buckminster Fuller

  1. The youth of humanity all around our planet are intuitively revolting from all sovereignties and political ideologies. The youth of Earth are moving intuitivel…

    Permalink to quote #49

  2. Unity is plural and, at minimum, is two.

    Permalink to quote #51

  3. It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.

    Permalink to quote #48

Related quotes

  1. Synergy is the only word in our language that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate …

    Buckminster FullerBuckminster Fuller quote #25

  2. Differential equations won't help you much in the design of aeroplanes - not yet, anyhow.

    Nevil ShuteNevil Shute quote #1

  3. The more physics you have the less engineering you need.

    Ernest RutherfordErnest Rutherford quote #14