There's also the ground at the bottom of the silos
connecting them. I think communication happens there as
well in many cases.
Silos emerge because communication is a O(n^2) problem.
No business for more than a few people could survive if it
didn't divide and conquer. Increasing the communication
between silos usually involves creating lots of liaison type
positions, which will mostly be seen seen as fat to be cut
when times get tough.
Silos are kind of like a greedy algorithm. You trade a
suboptimal solution for one that can be cheaply computed.
They won't really be broken down until someone has a
sub-linear way to scale organizations that works in the
general case.
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