Surfing the Edge of Chaos by Mark Millemann

Visa, the largest credit card network in the world, took form in the late 1970s under the guidance of one of complexity's earliest corporate proponents, Dee Hock. As CEO, Hock applied the principles of self-organization to this struggling enterprise and, as they say, the rest is history.1 Starting from behind, Visa seized a huge competitive advantage over its rivals and continues to extend its lead to this day. With almost 100 million cardholders and three-quarters of a trillion dollars of point-of-sale volume annually, Visa claims half of the credit card market. Its nearest rival, MasterCard, has 31 percent.2

Visa represents self-organization in almost a pure form. Its decentralized structure relies almost exclusively on self-interest as the primary incentive. The transactional nature of members' relationship to the clearing center and to one another suffices to cause the right things to happen and the simplest structures to prevail.3