Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

by Geoffrey West

This simple nonlinear quadratic relationship between the maximal number of links between people and the size of the group has all sorts of very interesting social consequences. For instance, my wife, Jacqueline, particularly enjoys dinner parties if a single conversation can be sustained by the entire group, so she is reluctant to participate in dinner parties larger than six. With six people there are 6 × 5 ÷ 2 = 15 possible pair-wise independent conversations that have to be “suppressed” for a single collective one to emerge and be maintained. This is just about possible, and it’s tempting to speculate that it’s because the number of other guests, five, corresponds to Dunbar’s number for the group size of an average individual’s inner circle. With ten at the table, there are a whopping forty-five such dyadic possibilities, which inevitably leads to a balkanization of the group as it disintegrates into two, three, or more separate conversations. Of course, many people prefer this modality but it is worth remembering that if you want a certain kind of group intimacy, having more than about six people is going to make it quite a challenge.

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