'Companies that Mimic Life: Leaders of the Emerging Corporate Renaissance' is a 🏷️#book by 📝Joseph Bragdon that chronicles the radical transformation taking root in the corporate world.

Industrial capitalism is broken. The signs transcend national ideologies and are everywhere: climate change; ecological overshoot; financial exhaustion; fraying social safety nets; corporate fraud; government deceit; civic unrest; terrorism; and war. But there is hope. This book tells how transformation is taking root in the corporate world—the last place many would look for solutions.

The ideal of "organization-as-machine," which has been dominant for hundreds of years into the late 20th century, is giving way to an ideal of "organization-as-📝Living System." Understanding that everything of value ultimately arises from life, they place a higher value on living assets (people and Nature) than they do on nonliving assets—a practice called 📝Living Asset Stewardship (LAS).

The operating leverage of LAS resides in the speed of learning and adaptation. LAS is a skill that relies on a heightened corporate consciousness. Consciousness is a unique property of life and so, the more lifelike companies become, the more conscious they become. Companies that mimic life exhibit six 📝Six Lifelike Qualities that are present in all life from single-cell organisms to large ecosystems.

These six qualities are (1) decentralized, self-organizing 📝Networked Structures whose component parts serve the health of the whole; (2)📝Regenerative Life Strategies that increase opportunities for survival, reproduction, and improvement of cultural DNA; (3) 📝Frugal Instincts that seek to optimize their use of resources; (4) 📝Openness To Feedback that enables adaptive learning; (5) 📝Symbiotic Behaviors that link individual wellbeing in the health of the larger systems in which they exist; and (6) 📝Consciousness of capabilities, interdependencies, and limits.

Companies that Mimic Life shows the intuitiveness of 📝Ecocentric Capitalism by telling the stories of 📝Unilever, 📝Nucor, 📝United Technologies Corporation, 📝Novo Nordisk, 📝Henkel, and 📝Nike.

Companies that Mimic Life was recommended to us by 📝Mike Mollé of 📝Comar-Mollé.

Reflections

“This is one of the world’s most important books on leadership and corporate consciousness. [...] It is part of the Corporate Renaissance.” ~ Steen Hildebrandt, Professor and Adjunct Professor, Aarhus University and Copenhagen Business School
“Jay Bragdon has done a great service with this wonderful book, which turns a well-focused microscope onto some of the world’s most inspiring stories of corporate sustainability transformation.” ~ Alan AtKisson, CEO, AtKisson Group

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