The Firm oF The FuTure
A Business inspired By nATure

Guidelines for Sustaining Organizations Towards 2020

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The Firm oF The FuTure - A Business inspired By nATure

Foreword
The central theme of this paper is: The Firm of the Future is a Business Inspired by Nature. We are entering a decade of changes that are likely to be both very fast paced and very fundamental across all areas and which will impact the rules of business, the environment, technology, the attitudes of the new workforce, and the global socio-economic balance. If organizations want to survive the “Decade of Transformation”, continuing the way we run our business today will not be an option. In the past we operated businesses like monolithic, centralised, top-down, hierarchical machines. This approach emerged out of command-and-control structures of military organizations and worked pretty well in a world with broadly limitless access to natural resources and narrowly limited access to communication. However, we now realize that the resources upon which our business empires are built are limited and even running out, while communication channels are rapidly shifting from broadcast to broadband, networks to networked, limited to limitless. Today’s rapidly changing business environment calls for businesses that are resilient to rapidly changing environments – such as in nature, where waste is food, where consumption is beneficial, where the focus is optimizing rather than maximizing, where relationships are synergistic. The Firm of the Future has to be an organization more akin to a dynamic living organism which thrives within ever-changing business, socio-economic, and environmental systems, all interdependent and operating within the largest system of all – the ecosystem of Earth. The Firm of the Future is a business inspired by nature. It is collaborative, decentralised and multifunctional. It is adaptive, responsive and resilient. Furthermore, it plays a positive role in the