Sid Mohasseb - The Caterpillars Edge: Evolve, Evolve Again, and Thrive in Business

Copyright 2017 by Sid Mohasseb

Published at Smashwords

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Rugged Land

9 Barrow Street, Sixth Floor, New York, NY 10014

www.ruggedland.com

Rugged Land and Colophon are Trademarks of Rugged Land, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mohasseb, Sid

The Caterpillars Edge:

Evolve, Evolve Again, and Thrive in Business / Sid Mohasseb

1. Business and Economics. 2.Strategic Planning.

3. Management. 4. Information Management

BUS063000

ISBN 978-0-9966363-1-5

Printed in Hong Kong

Book cover, graphics, and design by:

HSU & ASSOCIATES

First Edition

PART

THREE

BREAKING STATIC:

UNLEASH & EMBRACE

When I let go of what I am,

I become what I might be.

Lao Tzu, Philosopher

CHAPTER 5

BEING ALIVE

L iving beings and their environments emerge and evolve. The process they all go through is emergence (rise and renew) and all that they create is emergent and nascent.

The remarkable and unplanned patterns made by clouds and the unforeseen sculptures shaped by lava gushing out of a violent volcano are creations that arise from the interaction of life and things. The collective courage that erupted from protestors in Tiananmen Square, the commitment to country and excellence displayed by the Japanese after the atomic bomb dropped, and the remarkably fast progress made by a group of scientists as they created that bomb, are all emergent results transpired from complex systems. Life itself is an emergent result of interacting molecules.

Both you and I evolve and what we each create, our lives, is emergent. Our societies, the world, our organizations, and competitors are all unfinished and constantly changingemerging. We all (people, companies, and societies alike) interact with each other and create our own unique patternsour next future.

EMERGE: SHAPE YOUR
PATTERNS AND PAVE YOUR PATH

In science, art, and philosophy, emergence is the process of patterns and regularities arising as smaller entities of complex systems interactproperties that do not exist in any of the pieces separately. Emergence is considered a source of novelty, creativity, and originality in art. Societies and economies emerge from the interactions between people, countries, beliefs, desires, technologies, resources, innovations, wars, competitions, and more. Your life is an emergent. You sense, learn, adapt, and evolveyou emerge. Sophisticated algorithms are embedded in your DNA and complicated physics, mathematics, and chemistry are at work in your every cell at every second. You interact with everything that is external to you to create patterns, decisions, and outcomes that shape your life. Living beings and all that they interact with create complicated and multipart systemscomplex systems that emerge.

Organizations are complex systems. Companies are emergent. They represent a collection of human beings, processes, and practicesthey are alive. A company is an entity that cannot be reduced to commonalities or differences among its people, systems, products, or marketsa whole that is not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts. Each and every organization is distinct, represents a unique and integrated whole and enjoys a singular character (the companys persona). Each character emerges based on the behavior of its bosses and employees, capabilities, orthodoxies, collective imagination, systems, aspirations, partners, and competitors. You may study every part of it, but you can never confidently predict its patterns of emergence. It follows its own self-defined path forward. Organizations are always in flux, always emerging and always evolving. If they dont, they will die.

In 2006, Ed Colligan, the CEO of Palm, discussing the possibility of an Apple iPhone, said weve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone . . . PC guys are not going to just figure this out . . . they are not going to just walk in. The same year, CEO of Motorola Ed Zander at a conference said Screw the Nano. What the hell does a Nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs? as he dismissed Apple iPod. Both of these companies have crumbled as they failed to discover and embrace what is relevant. They saw the future as a continuation of the past and failed to emerge. In contrast, Apple has been able to emerge and evolve by innovating and changing. It has moved from being an anti-establishment, niche PC player to the creator and dominant player in mobile and portable devices.

Along the way, Apple has failed and been rescued multiple times. When ten years old, in 1985, facing a product and revenue crisis, Apple lost its inspirational leader and compass. After a period of turbulence and confusion with little real progress, a dozen years later Steve Jobs returned. The company emerged again in the early to mid-2000s as it introduced iPod and entered the music business by streamlining the online purchase processoffering a place to buy a song and a device to save it for replay anywhere, any time. Later, Apple redefined the mobile communications industry with the iPhone. It then evolved and thrived again as it introduced the iPad and reinvigorated Steve Jobs lifelong core cause of making computers personal. Apple is an organization that has emerged over and over, with remarkable frequency, using innovation and boldnessa company with a unique persona that has constantly created its own patterns and path.

In 2016, again faced with challenges of declining sales and increased competition, Apple is getting ready for another metamorphosis. This time, without Jobs and with a slightly different approachusing investments and partnerships. Its one billion dollar investment in the Chinese transportation company, Didi Chuxing (the former Uber competitor now owning Uber China and an Uber investor), gives Apple expanded access to the Chinese market and a possible scaling path for an old Steve Jobs dream of building self-driving cars. The investment also indirectly puts Apple in the playground with Lyft and GM (Didi Chuxing and GM are both investors in Lyft which is also an Uber competitor). Apple is positioning itself to emerge in a different direction!

Organizations are not alike or uniform. They are neither created equally nor do they emerge similarly. Apple is fundamentally unlike Microsoft. Both companies started in pretty much the same era and focused on the same mission of making computing personal. But who they are today and the journey they have travelled are vastly different. At the start, their commercial objectives may have been similar, but personalities, actions, innovations, and priorities made each distinct. Their reactions to external forces made them unique and positioned them to emerge differently.

Tom Fitzgerald, in a CEO refresher article, suggests that people have always instinctively known that a human enterprise is a living, breathing entity, that grows and ages, sickens and heals, flourishes and fails... treating the company as a person evokes its personhood and simultaneously evokes attributes only living creatures have... like the ability to change and even transform. Organizations are alive, have a persona, and emerge. When a group of people (an organization) collaborates, interacts, communicates and pursues the same purpose, emergence occurs; a collective change happens, a fresh understanding that leads to new decisions, patterns, or changes in direction.