PART 04 [SDF2024] Research Findings 3 - Companies that Go beyond Mere Survival: Ultra-survival and Evolvability 2024.11.12 All Videos
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Every year, the American business magazine Fortune announces its list of the top 500 global companies. If this list is any indication, no company is eternal. Over just the last fifty years, many companies who were once the highest-valued in the Fortune rankings have been pushed off the list, with some even going bankrupt. Meanwhile, of the countless startups that are born everyday around the world, less than 50% survive beyond their fifth year. In short, the majority of companies that are started eventually die. Observing the rise and fall of companies, we are prompted to consider what characteristics or criteria determine whether a company survives or disappears. Take this line of questioning further, and we can ask, what characteristics do “ultra-survival” companies, who have survived for hundreds of years, have in common? Traditionally, such questions have been explored mostly in the fields of business administration or economics. But there are new insights and findings to be gained concerning these questions in the four-billion-year history of life, and the mechanisms of survival and annihilation observable throughout. This is because there is sufficient evidence to suggest that these two worlds (the world of biology and the world of companies) operate on the same principles of evolution. In this context, this session focuses on differences on “evolvability” as manifested over four billion years of life on earth to discover what attributes enable a company to have high evolvability and thereby continue in a state of ultra-survival. What organizational structures and technology systems show high evolvability, and what kinds of laws, regulations, leadership, and philosophy can strengthen a company’s evolvability?