Perspectives

The conventional strategic planning process was grounded on a meticulously designed set of initiatives that delivered competitive superiority in the marketplace.  This strategy formulation architecture has been steadily unravelled over the past decade, partially dismantled by accidental, unforeseen events well beyond the control of any organisation.  Accidental events and the surprising opportunities they sometimes present, have always had a disproportionate impact on every s

Our world appears to be suspended in a permanent state of multiple, simultaneously occurring crises. The French complexity theorist, Edgar Morin, referred to this condition as ‘polycrisis’.[1] Polycrisis leads to long-term instability, often referred to as ‘permacrisis’. Managing the chaos created by a non-linear world steeped in this permacrisis makes it imperative for organisations to develop and execute their ability to adapt. Organisations across industries and geographie

The laws of scale that govern the growth of both organisms and organisations mirror a symmetrical logic in spite of them having traversed completely independent journeys through the maze of their evolution. Organisms and organisations that attempt to climb the mountain of scale often face significant obstacles in their growth journeys. Nature, on the other hand, has mastered the art of managing scale in organisms across diverse species, over hundreds of millions of years of e

The structure of the hyperconnected global business ecosystem renders it vulnerable to disturbances anywhere in the system regardless of its geographical location. This is a characteristic of all complex systems. The interdependence of the global business ecosystem now closely mirrors the complexity of natural ecosystems, a deeper understanding of which allows organisations to better adapt to the challenge of a rapidly changing world. Every natural ecosystem is characterised

Since the dawn of humankind our ancestors have feared nature, worshipped her and survived her. Our deep history as nomadic hunter-gatherers adapting to the harshness of the natural world is deeply imprinted in the recesses of the unconscious mind. The power of nature’s omnipotent force was intensely present for the early hominid mind to see, hear and feel. But nature wielded not just fear and awe; it was also a source of inspiration for those that were willing to receive its

The creation of new products, new services and new operating models in business ecosystems follow a paradoxical pattern. Bursts of these intensely progressive periods are invariably interspersed with periods of dramatic destruction of the old order. This surprising paradox of progress was best explained by the Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter, back in the 1940s with his theory of “creative destruction”, which originally coined by the German economist, Werner Sombart. Sch

Disruptive events such as financial shocks, terror attacks, wars, natural calamities and pandemics, disturb the stability of a business ecosystem pushing it into a state of disequilibrium. Such external or exogenous events can play a much larger role in determining an organisation’s destiny, than a meticulously crafted business strategy, to counter market forces emerging from within a business ecosystem. Similarly, major disruptions of natural ecosystems are invariably the re

The global business ecosystem is now an entangled web of complexity. The frictional forces of globalisation, protectionism, hyper-connectivity, the pandemic, war, inflation, a food crisis, a looming recession, an energy shock and impending climate change have fractured the global ecosystem. We now live in a continuously unpredictable world that we struggle to decipher. The end of a long era of stability and predictability is here. In the prescient words of the futurist Paul S

The business landscape has been dramatically transformed in the past one year from a smooth, undulating terrain to an intensely rugged one. The "fitness" of many organisations on this landscape has been altered, perhaps forever. We know that extinction is the inevitable fate of most organisations; 99% of companies that have ever existed are now extinct since their "fitness" declined over time. Crisis, such as this pandemic, often accelerates this eventuality. While periodi