Every Living Organism grows. Any organisation that has stopped growing may have reached maturity. Students of the Sigmoid Curve of product life-cycles will recognise that this is equally true of businesses. This is why reproduction is such an important characteristic of a Living Organism. It may be it is time for your original business to die. This could be the best news ever. If you have succeeded in preserving the essence of your intellectual capital, it can find new vitality in a new venture. One of the great tragedies in industry is when a company holds on to a model that should have been laid to rest. Contrast this with the way companies like 3M continue to reinvent themselves.

If the business model is still viable, how do we grow in a sustainable manner? Well, once more we can immediately see the value of a collective commitment to life-long-learning. If the brain is built for learning, so also the collective 'mind' has a mission to learn and discover. There are huge reams of ideas available on the important subject of learning organisations. It is my hope that the concept of Living Organisations will take us further towards making learning a lifestyle. After all, what do we learn for? To improve the quality of our life experience.

Living Organisations also harness the natural cycles of the seasons. I find it fascinating that many weedkillers actually work by overstimulating growth. The weeds literally grow themselves to death. In contrast, sustainable growth recognises the wisdom of seed-time and harvest. There is a season to sow, and a season to reap. This means that Living Organisations always have ideas that are in the gestation process. Not everything needs to be developed at once but the future does need to be prepared for.

This is how well developed businesses continue to develop. They harness periods of growth in one area to build capacity for the development of the next life-cycle of a new product, service or business.

In the book, I will be exploring other creative ways to grow the business. Again, this is based on a natural model - that of symbiosis. Symbiosis is where two very different organisations work together to mutual advantage. Biological examples include lichens. A lichen is a collaborative organism. It is part plant, part fungus. Fungi are very good at storing water and nutrients. Plants have the gift of fixing energy from the Sun. Working together and sharing resources means that they can colonise locations that would otherwise be barren. Another natural example is the Oxpecker. Oxpeckers are the birds that clean the teeth and skin of large 'dangerous' animals such as hippopotami and crocodiles. Living in harmony, both parties benefit.

Business examples of symbiotic growth include the creative partnerships between supermarkets and petrol stations.

Jay Conrad Levinson uses an alternative term for this natural success model. He calls it 'fusion marketing'. Even before the book is released, you could easily begin exploring symbiotic growth. This is one way that business clubs can be helpful - helping members network and build each other's businesses through shared information.

Where does the evolving organisation fit? I'm not yet sure whether it is more appropriate to explore this important aspect here under 'growth' or elsewhere under 'reproduction'. The most important point is that we address the opportunity. The future of business development must embrace a fusion of soft-skills with software. My own business growth has been transformed and accelerated by the way that software can help an organisation articulate its ideas. This site is a good example. When I was at school, personal-computers were non-existent. Now I use them all the time to manage the business. Living Organisations are open to every environmental opportunity for expansion. The internet has created a new environment, and we are now colonising it.

Summary

Living Organisations explore growth in multiple dimensions. Lateral growth into sister industries is combined with symbiotic growth through fusion partnerships. Living Organisations are also quite happy to lay an old business model to rest if the time for the product or service has passed, provided the genetic heritage has been preserved ready to be reinvested. Living Organisations also tap into the power of tool-making, fusing soft-skills with software to build more effective ways to relate to their environments.