Founder Mode vs Manager Mode

Biological Parallel

Queen bees don't delegate—they chemically suppress worker reproduction through pheromones, maintain direct sensing of colony state, and make resource allocation decisions centrally. Worker bees (managers) execute local tasks efficiently but lack colony-wide context. Founder mode is centralized control when information asymmetry between center and periphery is too costly. The biological question: when does central coordination beat distributed decision-making? Answer: when integration matters more than local optimization.