A Complexity and Darwinian Approach to Management with

Failure Avoidance as the key tool

Ron Willis
Imass Limited,
Regent Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne
NE3 3PW, United Kingdom
Tel. 0191 213 5555 Ron.Willis@imass.co.uk
For the ISUFI Summer School at the University of Lecce, Italy on
e-Business and Complexity: New Management Practices
12 July 2001 (Revised)
1. Abstract
Complexity theory leads me to believe there is no recipe for business success but failure avoidance
offers a potential solution for managers. For most firms survival is success. In this paper two business
attractors are discussed and a methodology called the Complexity Escalator is proposed to
operationalise these concepts. In nature the struggle to survive dominates, extinction is inevitable and
success in the short term is just a fortunate by-product.
2. Introduction
The central message from complexity theory when applied to business strategy is that success can
only be managed poorly and that avoiding failure should be taken more seriously. If a firm is viewed as
a dynamical system then it may have system attractors. An attractor is defined as the limiting
behaviour of a dynamical system and there are three types static, limit cycle and strange. In this
paper it is argued that there are two key attractors for firms, one for success (defined as long-term
profit generation) and another for failure (defined as liquidation or being taken over). They are
fundamentally different, the former is too unstable (stochastically chaotic) to be managed whereas the
latter is strange (exhibits deterministic chaos) but offers scope for a real degree of strategic and
operational management.
It is possible to manage long term success (defined in decades) as shown by firms such as De Beers,
IBM and Microsoft but they are exceptions rather than the rule. They are examples of creating and
sustaining monopolies but this is viewed by many as an unethical strategy. Evidence of unacceptable
monopolistic behaviour is shown in the record fines imposed by the EU on a vitamin cartel run by
several pharmaceutical firms. I will argue in this paper that strategies for success are rarely successful
but this does not stop the stream of academic and popular articles on the subject. Most are either nonrandom examples of successful firms over short time frames and/or anecdotal evidence in the form
of post hoc rationalisations with an eye on marketing and PR. A recent example is a report (Hay
Group, 2001) based on interviews with 17 successful entrepreneurs. The sample size is small and the
entrepreneurs are asked how they came to be successful. Even if they could actually remember the
details, they are unlikely to give an accurate account to the standards of audit or legal testimony
evidence.
Consequently what follows is a discussion on how a firm exists between these two attractors and by
understanding the failure attractor there are lessons for management. This is pulled together by
considering the management of a firm as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) avoiding the chaotic
failure attractor by taking advantage of both complex systems and ordered systems in the prevailing
scientific management paradigm.
3. Entropy and Complexity
Thermodynamic laws developed in the Nineteenth century by Clausius, Gibbs and Boltzmann lead
people to believe that the science of complexity should not exist, The second law and the related
concept of entropy made it clear that all systems have a tendency to decay into disorder and then

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remain static in equilibrium with their surroundings. Spontaneous order creation seemed impossible,
despite the obvious evidence of stars, molecules and life. Maxwell developed the statistical
interpretation of thermodynamics and this helped others to propose a resolution to the paradox.
Extreme odds make the laws essentially true but possibilities remain where parts of a system can be in
a non-equilibrium state and entropy reduced i.e. order created. This view was started in the 1930s by
Onsager and developed in the 1960s by Prigogine. (For more information on these subjects the
reader is referred to the online magazine Entropy).
There are two conceptual types of entropy. Thermodynamic entropy (symbolised by S) described
above is applied to engines, chemical reactions and life. Information entropy (symbolised by H) is a
statistical concept largely developed by Claude Shannon in 1958 based on the level of information in a
system. If the information is high then the entropy is defined as low. This is the type of entropy usually
applied to economics and computer modelling.
To apply these information entropy concepts, to a CAS, especially in computer models, the
parameters described by Casti seem sensible. Rather than working with billions of units (e.g.
Molecules, agents) one should limit the study to 10s or 1000s. These agents should not viewed as
dumb particles with no past or future but as having an ability to acquire local knowledge and learn.
A concept developed by Prigogine is that of the Dissapative Structure (DS) that is part of an open
system far from equilibrium and requires constant inputs for its existence. When a DS reaches
equilibrium with the rest of the open system there is no potential difference the dissapative structure
ceases to exist.
The purpose of the dissapative structure is the systems way of increasing the rate of entropy creation
a vortex helps water to get out of a sink faster. Consequently as the dissipate structure grows it
requires more inputs to sustain it a growing firm is also nurturing the seeds of its own failure
eventually all the water drains the sink and the vortex collapses. This has important implications in a
business context that should be explored. Whilst the individual firm many become more ordered for a
while what does the increasing entropy of the whole system represent? Is it environmental damage?
Increasing wealth disparities? Increased failure risk for other firms?
A related concept has recently been raised (Test and Kier, 2000). They propose that emergence in a
CAS often implies a reduction in the number of probable states of its components. They call this
dissolvence and see it as a creative process in which information is generated to fuel the process of
self-organisation. In organisational terms this equates to the freedom to act as individuals we give up
as we join a group and conform to the group norms. It has relevance to business failure avoidance if
skills held by individuals are not made available to the management because they do not fit into the
existing mindset.

4. Evolution
4.1 Natural Selection
There are three essential mechanisms in evolution (Maynard Smith, 1988) mutation (changes in a
gene), selection (differential survival or fertility of different types) and migration (movement of
individuals). Evolution by natural selection is the differential survival and/or reproductive success of an
organism based on these three mechanisms. For firms, through trial and error and learning from
others, they can follow strategies that on average make a firm better fitted to its economic
environment. Natural selection leads to mechanisms to preserve the organism through hard times
such as storing reserves in the form of fat, nuts and tubers. For a firm this is equivalent to policies on
adequate cash reserves and sensible controls over gearing (debt: equity) ratios.
An organism does not evolve in isolation. Its fitness depends on environmental pressure and the
relative fitness of other organisms in a particular ecosystem. The term coevolution describes the
competition with other organisms - individuals and species. The coevolution can be subject to
continuous change or develop into an Evolutionary Stable Strategy a holding pattern between two or
more species.
4.2 Sexual Selection

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An alternative mechanism for adaption and survival operates called Sexual Selection (Andersson,
1994). It is driven by positive feedback in a run away snowball process that may go beyond actual
advantages for natural selection up to the available resource limits. There are two main versions;
male-to-male competition leading to the evolution of weapons (e.g. antlers) and indicators of strength.
Secondly, and more commonly, are adaptions in males where females choose their mates (e.g.
peacock tales).
In corporate terms the male-to-male competition could represent inter firm competition such as that
between Microsoft and Oracle with weapons and strength indicators in the form of cash reserves,
public relations battles and dirty tricks campaigns. The choosy female version in corporate terms can
represent signalling by a firm to its customers (and other stakeholders) through product promotion,
advertising and sales teams. These signals may be real or just a bluff and the Internet now makes it
easier for a small firm to appear to be larger and more successful than reality via its Website.
In business terms sexual selection can be seen as a decline in scientific management disciplines
being replaced by creative corporate passion in that it starts off as a sensible strategy with tangible
benefits and increasing returns but can spiral out of control up to the firms resource limits and greatly
increase the risk of failure.
4.3 Limits to Evolution
There is a clear limit when applying evolution to business theory. When a problem is evident in a firm,
say a flaw in a product design that makes production costs too high to compete, then action can be
taken to redesign the product. In Darwinian evolution an organism cant do this. It cant increase its
inclusive fitness by taking one step backwards and two steps forward it must always build on what
fits now and this leads to what might be called sub-optimal solutions. For example (Olshansky 2001)
the human spine evolved for four-legged movement. The benefits of walking on two feet now outweigh
this but the spine does not have the mechanical strength and shape to do it effectively leading to acute
and chronic back pain for millions of people.
4.4 Evolution and Complexity
In biology there is an ongoing debate as to whether self-organisation is more important than adaption.
It is a bit like the nature / nurture debate where many people highlight the divide but in reality it is a
mixture of both. Clearly physics and chemistry determine an underlying framework of self organisation
such as in the shapes of snowflakes, protein folding and convection cells (Ball, 1999) but it seems to
me that on grounds of probability evolution is the key driver. Self-organisation seems just as likely to
create useless structures as useful ones because a selection mechanism is needed to filter out the
best fitted structures. A CAS is usually described as having such a mechanism in the form of local
knowledge and an ability to learn so there is no fundamental problem with accepting the complexity
approach.
Few thermodynamic examples of dissapative structures are quoted in the literature (Raleigh Benard
Cell, Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction and Turing waves) and there are not many widely accepted and
useable theorems other than metaphor and computer modelling to operationalise the concepts into
business terms. Evolution, however, provides actual mechanisms as described above.
In this paper self-organisation is rejected as a useful mechanism to apply to business. Complexity
theory is accepted but it currently lacks detailed theory and evidence. Evolution provides theory,
experimental evidence and mechanisms but has its limits. A synthesis of complexity and evolution is
therefore applied to business.

5. The Business Attractors

5.1 Overview
In the terminology of non-equilibrium thermodynamics a firm can be seen as a dissapative structure.
(DS) that is far from equilibrium and requires constant inputs (profitable sales or investment). When a
firm reaches equilibrium with its environment, at the bottom of the failure slope there is no potential
difference the DS ceases to exist. When it is too far from equilibrium at the bottom of the success

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slope (the business environment is too chaotic) then, in time, it also fails. The zone at the top of the hill
is where the opportunities for managing sustainable success lie.
As shown in diagram 1, the life of a firm through time from start-up to eventual failure can be seen as a
point following a trajectory along the surface of a long hillside with the success attractor (SA) and
failure attractor (FA) in the valleys at either side. The task of management is to steer a trajectory near
the top of the hill with occasional trips part way down the success side. The firm can be seen as a DS
and the management cohort can be seen as agents acting as a CAS interacting with their staff and
other stakeholders. They get feedback, can learn from it and modify their actions within the constraints
of the other stakeholders and the business environment.
Both attractors are themselves a summary of numerous smaller attractors that managers can grapple
with (such as cashflow and marketing strategies) like small whirls around a larger vortex. Both
attractors change temporarily on short time-scales as different internal and external business factors
interact. Both attractors change spatially as what works in one geographical location may be less
important in another. It is argued that these changes are the main reason why learning from other
corporate success stories is of limited value and why learning about failure causes and avoidance
should be recognised more widely. In addition to the short-term fluctuations both attractors vary in
strength over the long term in line with the business cycle which is itself an emergent property from
the interactions of all the firms and the economies around them.
Diagram 1

A firm following a trajectory between two attractors

F1
F2

Time

SA

FA

Diagram 1
Above the dotted line is called the Power Zone in which the firm exhibits Strategic Resilience.
F1 shows a firm moving towards the failure attractor but then reversing its fortunes and heading up.
F2 shows a firm that struggled for some time and then failed.
It is worth considering the inertia of a firm. In physics, inertia is the force of nature that makes matter
tend to maintain or stay in its current state of motion. Inertia is the resistance of objects to any change
in their speed. In business a large firm can be said to have more inertia than a small one. A firm
heading towards the success attractor will tend to continue in that direction and the converse is also
true. A firm gains inertia from profitable sales or external investment. A start up firm will often have

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high inertia due to the initial funding and can survive for a few years until its resources are eroded
away.
5.2. The Success Attractor
Striving for success is the long-term goal for most managers and consultants continue to make good
money helping them. So much management training is dominated by efforts to make firms successful.
A recent study of 150 British firms (Bain & Company 2001) found that 9 out of 10 firms do not achieve
profitable growth and 90% of management teams forecast growth they will never achieve. But I
wonder how much of this, especially the implementation is about personal ambition; not many people
like doing the A bit of the MBA. Who wants to keep a brand ticking over or increase productivity by
2% per annum? Most people prefer to be involved in rebranding products and introducing new
technologies. When the affairs of a company go seriously wrong people talk about bringing in a
turnaround team (if there is time before the official administrators come in) whereas the skills
required should be well known to all managers.
Diagram 2 showing the strengths of both attractors

Attractor
strength curves
High

FA
Attractor
strength

SA
Low
Success

Failure

Attractor
location

The Success Attractor (SA) has four main properties (see diagram 2).
a) Its strength increases as a firm gets closer to it as a result of increasing returns to successful firms
and it decreases in strength as one moves further away from it.
b) It is stochastically chaotic and it is difficult to identify where it is when contrast against the Failure
Attractor that is usually rather easy to identify. This means it is very difficult to identify whether a
new product will succeed or whether a new market will grow. A degree of this chaos from the
perspective of an individual firm is due to coevolution applying as other firms compete harder in
attempts to grab their share of success.
c) It varies in strength over the long term in line with business cycles and regional / spatial
economies.
d) It is highly subject to non-mathematical factors such as freewill, ambition and politics.
Together these properties summarise why it is difficult to manage effectively a path into the SA and
stay there.

5.3. The Failure Attractor

The Failure Attractor (FA) is much more important for managers simply because it is easier to
manage.

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The first major study of failure is often quoted to be by Argenti in 1976 and he concluded that bad
management and defective accounting information were the main causes (Neumair, 1998). One needs
to go much deeper to see what is behind these phrases.
The FA has several properties (see diagram 2).
a) It is stronger the nearer a firm is to failure. As with the SA this is caused by increasing returns
but not the beneficial type for example just when you need it the credit lines dry up, a firms
reputation becomes tarnished and suppliers become harder to find.
b) As a firm moves away from the FA the attractors strength weakens as one might expect but it can
rise again as success is almost achieved. The point here is that short term success can mask and
be an indicator of a rise in the risk of failure. Three examples of this can be given. The UK
Telecom firms who were very successful from their old mobile phone franchises but then borrowed
heavily to get the 3G licences and now some find failure risks increased. Marconi who sold their
Defense division to focus on Telecoms only to find a collapse in demand and share price leading
towards failure. Equitable Life were seen as one of the UKs leading and most respected pension
providers but that success hid liabilities that caused the collapse of the firm and ongoing pension
problems for thousands of people.
c) It varies in strength over the long term in line with business cycles and regional / spatial
economies.
d) It is subject to the vagaries of freewill and politics but I believe this is to a lesser degree than for
the SA.
e) Failure is the thermodynamic endpoint for all firms. There is probably no fixed point equilibrium or
limit cycle. There is not even an enduring strange attractor. The corporate equivalent of entropy
makes failure inevitable in time.
So the strength of the FA can be seen as J shaped as the firm moves away from F towards S, but
note it is not at all static. In the short term it moves as management strategies are implemented
and as the external environment changes
6. Management by Failure Avoidance
In this section a methodology is given to operationalise the concepts of business attractors, strategic
resilience and evolution so that managing by failure avoidance can be practiced. It is called the
Complexity Escalator.
6.1 Overview
As a generalisation the role of a management team is to meet a market demand by considering a
range of issues, both strategic and operational to reward the shareholders. They do this by
implementing appropriate management systems (structures, procedures, behaviours) and providing
leadership to the staff who run the systems. Examples are financial management using monthly
budgetary control procedures, implementing a Customer Relationship Management System, corporate
branding strategies and new product development. The generally accepted approach to doing this is
the Scientific Management paradigm.
In section 5 the firm in its business context was described as a dissapative structure. By considering
management of the firm as a CAS it is meaningful to see not one but two acceptable paradigms for
implementing and managing such systems scientific management (with its ordered world of
thermostats, control and equilibrium) and complexity management (with limited control, positive
feedbacks and no equilibrium).
Management Teams need to use both paradigms and recognise that some systems will operate more
effectively if managed in the complex edge of chaos area rather than with full scientific management
disciplines.

6.2. Strategic Resilience and the Power Zone

From diagram 1 it can be seen that the area for survival and a useful degree of success is near the top
of the hill and this is labelled the Power Zone because it is where managers can exercise power over
the trajectory of the firm. Failure can be seen to result from a loss of power by the management team.

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As Francis Bacon said, knowledge is power so Knowledge Management can be seen as central to
failure avoidance. Evolution uses DNA to code the information needed to maintain low levels of
entropy but how does a CAS do this? Knowledge management provides a mechanism with distributed
tacit knowledge in the edge of chaos systems and codified knowledge in the more ordered systems.
Outside of this zone management power is diminished and external forces drive the trajectory (e.g.
creditors) either directly towards the FA or via a short-term flirtation with the SA. Keeping the firm in
the power zone entails creating Strategic Resilience and this is achieved by management addressing
the factors described below.
6.3 Complexity Escalator
In diagram 3 the management of a firm is shown as a CAS with three areas of management style
along the horizontal axis, chaotic, complex and scientific.
The vertical axis represents the level of order in the firm and as explained in section 3 this is inversely
equivalent to the level of entropy. For example the scripted text used by service staff in McDonalds or
Call Centre agents is highly ordered compared to the freethinking style of an advertising agency.
A is a bifurcation point where the system can either go into the edge of chaos area or on to a more
ordered state.
To use the Complexity Escalator management activity (shown as a solid line) is directed towards
taking a system out of the chaotic area and increasing its order to point A. Decisions are then made as
to whether it is better (more effectively adapted) to place it into the complex edge of chaos area or
continue up the escalator and implement a scientific management solution. At the same time as the
management activity is pushing up the escalator the unavoidable force of entropic decay is attempting
to destroy the imposed order and take the systems back down the escalator (shown as dashed lines)
towards the failure attractor.

Diagram 3

M a na ging the C om plexity E scalator

High order/
low entropy

Management
activity

Order

A
Edge of
Chaos
Chaos

Entropic
decay

Low order /
high entropy

Chaotic

Complex

Scientific

Management style
TABLE 1

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This table gives examples of appropriate management styles for particular business systems.

COMPLEXITY MANAGEMENT

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

Increasing returns, sexual selection, nonequilibrium systems

Diminishing returns, natural selection,

equilibrium systems

Culture of consent

Culture of control

Tacit knowledge management

Codified knowledge management

Marketing, branding and sales management

Financial control, cash flow and audit

Product innovation and research

ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems for

product / service delivery
Intellectual property protection

Niche identification and source of possible coevolutionary responses

Bias towards external environment

Bias towards internal environment

Business partnerships and alliances

IT infrastructure and security

Fast, agile, risk taking

Cautious, considerate, risk averse

6.4 Scientific Management

There is little need to say much about scientific management Newtons laws of predictable behaviour
turned into management disciplines and exemplified in Fordism. The massive gains in productivity
over the last century clearly show this is a valuable paradigm. For a firm to find effective systems and
strategies is similar to the natural selection processes of trial and error as well as learning from others
to make the firm better adapted to its environment. Given this paradigm is about predictable control it
is better suited to systems internal to the firm where a higher degree of control can be exercised. In
biology a good example is the evolution of the mammalian kidney to regulate salt and blood pressure
levels.
6.5 Chaos Management
Many firms lack adequate management systems or have not completed their implementation. This is
the chaotic domain of management. It is possible to have a succesful firm here but because of the
sensitive dependence on initial conditions and lacking the systems to manage effectively then failure is
a more probable outcome. Examples of success could be one-offs as in fashion and childrens toys
at Christmas; usually non repeatable success.
6.6 Complexity Management
It is proposed here that driving all systems to the top of the Complexity Escalator into the ordered zone
increases the risk of failure as it reduces the positive feedback elements from the system that are
needed for rapid, flexible and novel responses. In biology a good example is the immune system that
is able to identify quickly to produce antibodies to external threats it has never experienced before.
Within a firm the self-organising agents are the management and staff. As with scientific management,
they have to learn about their business environment, devise appropriate strategies and implement
systems to achieve the desired results. Much of this learning should be directed towards the lessons
from failures both within the firm and from other firms. In the CAS the learning is driven by positive
feedback to generate a source of variability i.e. strategic options based on signals picked up from
competitors and customers. This is also where strategic games such as pilot projects can be
performed. Given this paradigm is characterised by limited predictability and control it is better suited
towards externally focused systems.
6.7 Entropic Decay
This is how the Complexity Escalator turns back down and is what happens if management neglect
their systems and knowledge is lost. There is no scientific mystery about this; it is simply the evolution

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of systems from an ordered state to a more likely disordered state or stable equilibrium. The odds of
rolling a handful of ten dice and getting ten sixes are highly improbable. Repeat this time after time
even more unlikely. This is equivalent to building up Microsoft successfully and repeating the
performance year after year. Far more probable is for the dice to give a mixed distribution of numbers,
sometimes with sixes but most times without. By way of examples, for an organisation a rise in entropy
can take the following forms;

Staff turnover, especially skilled staff leaving

Expiry if intellectual property rights on licences and patents
Coevolving competitors catching up and overtaking the firm
Introduction of new technologies that undermine the firms technology
Overtrading i.e. a negative cashflow due to cash timing differences as a firm expands
An excessive rise in the gearing ratio; debt - equity
Changing demand and needs in the firms client base
Ageing (depreciation) of fixed assets such as IT infrastructure, production equipment.
Stock obsolescence
Brand erosion as customer preferences change

I would like to speculate that a more useful aspect of entropy might be evident in the edge of chaos
area. In biology the concept of apotosis describes the programmed death of cells. It is an essential
part of development and a failsafe mechanism preventing, for example, cell growth running out of
control to form cancer. In an organisation an equivalent could be feedback mechanisms that serve to
maintain useful complexity whilst limiting harmful complexity such as sub-optimal team behaviour.
6.8 Risk Management
Turning to the stable equilibrium state for a firm is there one that is not equivalent to failure? A firm
that converts most of its assets to cash or cash equivalents may be an example. When the UK firm
GEC was run by Arnold Weinstock it was well known for sitting on a cash mountain of several billion.
This provided stability and failure avoidance but eventually the City of London viewed it as too risk
averse leading to GEC being transformed into Marconi with the eventual disastrous consequences
referred to earlier. Another example is the decision of Boots PLC pension fund trustees to convert all
of their holdings into low risk government bonds forgoing higher return possibilities in the stock market
from economic activity.
The well-established discipline of Risk Management functions by attempting to minimise entropic
decay but has to accept the probable trade-off of lower returns. This sits well in the scientific
management paradigm but does not come to terms with the risks this also causes by neglecting the
benefits from the complexity management paradigm. These equilibrium states are only temporarily
stable and failure avoidance as other firms coevolve and adapt faster also remains a risk.
6.9 Management Team
The objective for the management team is to steer a trajectory that keeps the firm in the Power Zone
and maintain Strategic Resilience. Although I have argued that failure is inevitable, it can be delayed
and firms can have long run survival providing valuable economic activity to the stakeholders.
This approach to management highlights the importance of having a balanced range of skills and
experience within a management team rather than a single style. For example a team dominated by
people with a financial background is likely to be biased towards the scientific management area. This
is a characteristic of many UK manufacturing and financial services firms.
A management team dominated by more creative people as often found in media, advertising and
small software firms will tend to be biased towards the complexity area. Here the risk of failure comes
from a lack of ordered systems that also reduces strategic resilience.
A management team taking a more balanced view will be better placed to know when a highly ordered
system is required and when to say no to that level of rigour and accept a more adaptive flexible
system. In the inevitable business downturns the team will be better placed to judge where cost cutting
is required to reduce failure risks and where systems should be supported if they contribute to future
profit generating capabilities. To minimise entropic decay the managers need to lock-in the systems

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through a mix of standard practices such as effective reward systems, HR development and codifying
knowledge where possible and appropriate.
The idea of a firms inertia was mentioned in section 5. Since inertia increases in a spinning object is
there a business equivalent whereby spinning in the CAS equates to more activity, more networking
and higher staff morale? This could represent a higher degree of strategic resilience.
Working to build legal monopolies such as IPR, brands and high market shares in geographical areas
appears to be a natural way for a corporate CAS to seek a degree of strategic resilience and this
should be the key strategic objective for management teams. In evolutionary terms the monopoly is
the niche the firm identifies or creates and then defends.
6.10 Summary
The model of the Complexity Escalator provides a way for management to operate between the two
business attractors. It also indicates why this approach is valid in that if a firm runs its systems in the
ordered state when a complex system would be more appropriate then the risk of failure rises and vice
versa.
7. Conclusions
In this paper I argue that Complexity Theory implies that much more management time should be
spent on failure avoidance strategies creating Strategic Resilience to keep the firm in the Power Zone
where sustainable profits can be made. To help managers to do this the concept of the Complexity
Escalator is introduced to demonstrate the need to take advantage of both complexity and scientific
management styles and systems. For firms, like nature, failure of the individual is the norm its just a
matter of time - but before that happens the best fitted firms can survive and prosper.

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About the Author

Ron Willis is the Business Development Manager at Imass Ltd. His key responsibilities are marketing
and Internet strategies. Imass is an IT solutions firm employing 100 people and is owned by the Suez
multinational group.
The origins of these ideas go back to 1979 when, as a student at the University of Sussex, I wrote a
dissertation on Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics in Physical Geography and was taught evolution by
John Maynard Smith. After University a career in IT management was launched following a few years
of accountancy. My MBA at Newcastle University finished with a dissertation in 1990 on business
planning and incorporated elements of this paper including the difficulty of managing for success and
the importance of avoiding failure. In 1996 a meeting with Professor Richard Hall at Durham University
Business School introduced me Knowledge Management and Pierpaolo Andriani leading to an
enjoyable friendship exploring the complex interface between business, physics and biology.
References
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6.

Andersson Malte 1994 Sexual Selection,

Bain & Company, May 2001. See website www.bain.com
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Casti, John.L 1992, Searching for Certainty,
Entropy magazine www.mdpi.org/entropy/
Hall, Richard and Andrianni, Pierpaolo, 1999 The Theory and Practice of Knowledge
Management, Durham University Business School
7. Hay Group, July 1 2001, Mavericks stick to their guns, Financial Times article
8. Horgan, John, 1995. From Complexity to Perplexity, Scientific American June 1995
9. Krugman, Paul, 1996, The Self Organising Economy,
10. Krugman, Paul 1996, What economists can learn from Evolutionary Theorists, paper given to
the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy
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Anderson School at UCLA
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Magazine December 2000
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15. Neumair, Urs Johannes 1998 A general model of Corporate Failure & Survival,
16. Olshansky, SJ, et al, 2001. If humans were built to last, Scientific American March 2001
17. Test and Kier, 2000, Emergence and Dissolvence in the self-organisation of Complex
Systems. Entropy, 2
Waldrop, Mitchell, 1992, Complexity
18. Willis, Ron, 1991 Unpublished MBA Dissertation, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

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