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As organizations become more and more interconnected, volatile,
and complex, how can managers possibly anticipate, much less control, the myriad
factors that determine their company's success? Simply stated, they cannot. In
an age of hyperchange and hypercompetition, the traditional management strategies
and techniques no longer work. A new approach is called for and its principles
lie in the science of complex adaptive systems, or CAS. CAS
is nothing new. Its ability to provide powerful insights into new complex systems
can evolve to become well-ordered, self-organizing entities has informed evolutionary
biology and other disciplines for some time. It's truths have long been demonstrated
in economics, computer science, and in the common marketplace. But not until The
Biology of Business have the principles of CAS been translated into practical
methods, tools, and examples that managers can use to make their organizations
fit for the future. Here, John Clippinger and nine extraordinary
contributors present the seven basics of CAS theory and show how to apply them
to real-world business challenges including knowledge management, brand creation,
market development, product innovation, and organizational change. They present
case studies of how CAS is already being employed by McKinsey & Co., Capital
One, and Optimark to improve organizational performance. And they explain how
CAS can be used to keep an organization in that "sweet spot" between
too much order and too much chaos so that it remains maximally responsive to market
conditions and opportunities. In today's complex organizations,
control cannot be imposed, but it can emerge if managers create the right conditions
and incentives for it to do so. The Biology of Business teaches managers
of such organizations how they can do exactly that -- how they can transform their
company into a self-organizing, self-renewing enterprise by creating order from
the bottom up. John Henry Clippinger III, CEO of Lexeme,
is a leading thinker on self-organizing systems and organizations. Previously,
he was director of intellectual capital at Coopers & Lybrand. He lives in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
