Surfing the Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business

by Richard Tanner Pascale, Mark Milleman, Linda Gioja

Every few years a book changes the way people think about a field. In psychology there is Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. In science, James Gleick's Chaos. In economics and finance, Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street. And in business there is now Surfing the Edge of Chaos by Richard T. Pascale, Mark Millemann, and Linda Gioja.Surfing the Edge of Chaos is a brilliant, powerful, and practical book about the parallels between business and nature -- two fields that feature nonstop battles between the forces of tradition and the forces of transformation. It offers a bold new way of thinking about and responding to the personal and strategic challenges everyone in business faces these days.Pascale, Millemann, and Gioja argue that because every business is a living system (not just as metaphor but in reality), the four cornerstone principles of the life sciences are just as true for organizations as they are for species. These principles is death. Innovation usually takes place on the edge of chaos. Self-organization and emergence occur naturally. Organizations can only be disturbed, not directed. Using intriguing, in-depth case studies (Sears Roebuck, Monsanto, Royal Dutch Shell, the U.S. Army, British Petroleum, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems), Surfing the Edge of Chaos shows that in business, as in nature, there are no permanent winners. There are just companies and species that either react to change and evolve, or get left behind and become extinct.Some between Yellowstone National Park and Sears show why equilibrium is a dangerous place in both nature and business.How Monsanto used a "strange attractor" to move to the edge of chaos to alter its identity and transform its culture.The unlikely story of how the U.S. Army embraced the ideas of self-organization and emergence.Why the misapplication of linear logic (reengineering a business or attempting to eradicate predators in nature) will inevitably fail.The stories in Surfing the Edge of Chaos are of pioneering efforts that show how the principles of living systems produce bottom-line impact and profound transformational change. What's really striking about them, though, is their reality. They are about success and failure, breakthroughs and dead-ends. In short, they are like the business you are in and the challenges you face.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Management

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 30, 2000

About the author

A leading business consultant worldwide, author and a respected lecturer / professor. In addition to being an Associate Fellow at Oxford University (United Kingdom), he also acted as a consultant to several Fortune 100 companies. Richard Pascale owes his fame to his contribution to the 7S framework when he was working at McKinsey & Company management consultancy.

Reviews

[Quinton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found a reference to this book in The People's Scrum: Agile Ideas for Revolutionary Transformation by Tobias Mayer. This is the first book I have read on Complexity Science as applied to business transformation/evolution. Enjoyed it and will be re-reading it.

[Hilary Holmes McKinney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book with some sound, timeless ideas

This book has some information that is still applicable in 2019. I’d like to see an update or follow-up. I also think it’s way too long.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is helpful giving insight to the strategies of adaptive leadership and explaining the chaos of organized living systems; finding parallels with business management practices post industrial revolution and up to the age of information/internet.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought it was a wonderful illustration of parallels in nature and the business world!

[Elio Nakouzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book discusses analogies between natural systems and trends in economics. Although very interesting, it is less rigorous and convincing than I hoped for.

[E.R. Leyva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes: If not growing, declining