Business 2000.htm

Co-Presidents, Institute for Business and Social Architecture International, Ltd.

The industrialized world is currently in the midst of one of the greatest evolutions/revolutions since mankind made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and the domestication of animals. This current evolution/revolution may be the most challenging and difficult in the history of the human species due to the ever-increasing rapidity in the rate of change which is creating tremendous chaos and crisis and which the industrialized world is required to engage.

The boundaries of industries are morphing, as are the boundaries of entire disciplines (ecology, biology, physics, medicine, etc.) and domains (theology, science, art, philosophy, etc.) Rapid change has forced experts in various disciplines to deal with difficult problems caused by overlapping between and among a number of disciplines. Previously, these disciplines had well-defined boundaries with a practical and historical basis upon which decisions were made. Consider the question as to who should have the right to decide when a terminally ill patient's medical life support system is to be removed. Should the power of decision lie with the patient; the doctor; the hospital management; the minister, priest, or rabbi; the family; the insurance company; or some combination of "interested parties?" Boundaries relative to nation/state, sovereignty, and national security are changing as well. The subject of national "interests" and borders has become complicated, and is compounded by the increased rate in which new countries are being formed. Suddenly a third world county acquires weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and has, "overnight," become a major, aggressive force with which to reckon.

The seven areas of telecommunications, consumer electronics, office equipment, information vendors, media and publishing, distribution, and computers are representative of rapidly morphing boundaries. According to The CyberMedia Group, [1] the greatest opportunities created by these morphing boundaries lie: where the computer industry overlaps with the other industries - in other words, where the greatest changes are taking place.

The western world has created disciplines with great vertical depth, however, the bridges among these disciplines are significantly lacking. The interfaces are insufficient, the communicative languages are esoteric and not well understood by people educated in different professional disciplines. Furthermore, since the blueprints upon which the disciplines' technologies are founded are not generally based upon a natural system, the discipline's structure and function is not easily understood by professionals in other disciplines. We have created a tower of Babel, and this is apparent to anyone who scrutinizes the disciplines from a holistic perspective. This observation is all too well understood by anyone who operates a computer and attempts to exchange information with others using different computer hardware and/or software. In the age of the information highway, lightening fast equipment, and satellite communications, attempting to send attached "files" on email messages (a basic communication function) can prove to be extremely frustrating due to incompatibilities among the connecting systems. An open architecture, openly shared information, and collaborative effort are conducive to rapid product development (evidenced by the rapid development and success of Sun Microsystems Inc.,'s new software program language system, JAVA).

Since there is a very high probability that technology will evolve whereby humans rely more and more on computerized technology, it is crucial that the research and development of AI (artificial intelligence) and expert systems (software that automatically makes or recommends decisions - an extension of AI) be based upon a natural system process. Expert systems will increasingly influence and supplant human decisions. If we prematurely abdicate responsibility for critical decisions to a technological system which is fundamentally flawed, such as an improperly designed inference engine (the key component of expert systems which performs the "reasoning function"), we are in for a world of trouble. Who is responsible for assuring that the automated systems are appropriately engineered and produced? Can this responsibility be assigned or does it have to be assumed by those who create the product? A classic error of management (accepted as such in academia and in portions of corporate America) is to assign responsibility to a person or group without commensurate authority. Has society made an error (by acquiesce) by allowing organizations to function with authority to produce without the commensurate responsibility for the consequences of the production and products? Since business impact to the "quality of life" is potentially so great, how is the appropriate responsibility factor addressed? Do we need a new approach? Is natural systems a place to look for answers? The answer seems to be an emphatic yes! We need new systems in which a process produces decisions and actions that create solutions to many problems simultaneously rather than a process which produces a temporary solution to one problem and simultaneously creates others.

Technology is a powerful driver of the changes taking place in the world today. Every 18 months the power of the Personal Computer doubles and the new computer is then used to design the next model. New technology design is created as an extension of old technology and, to a large degree, is not based upon the current needs and values of its consumers. Technology is produced because it can be. Business develops technology and is, therefore, fundamentally involved as a causal force of rapid change. Business is then forced to deal with ramifications and problems of the rapid technological advances that it is partially responsible for creating. Society's quality of life is ever-increasingly dependent upon the decisions of business which is often focused solely upon profitability, quite often without consideration of the "true" needs and values of its customers or the rest of society.

"In Goethe's poem, the apprentice seeks to spare himself the chore of house-cleaning by the incantation of a magic formula that puts the broom to work on its own. The broom, forthwith, applies itself to the tasks with the zeal of the totally mindless. The apprentice, who has not thought of the consequences of his action, discovers that he does not know the magic formula for stopping the broom, which is beginning to inundate the place by emptying pail after pail of water onto the floor. In desperation the apprentice tries to stop the broom by chopping it into pieces with an ax. But all the pieces turn into complete brooms and the problem is now multiplied.

Society seems to be in the hands of the apprentice in the absence of the sorcerer. Frantically we seek to prevent the avalanche or proliferation of problems by developing creative skills in increasingly narrow defined specializations, an effort which only serves to aggravate the problem. We see the trees and overlook the forest. We claim that the complexity of the social system causes an increase in the problem. We overlook the fact that complexity is the problem. We do not understand the qualitative nature of complexity, being accustomed to thinking solely in quantitative terms. The result of our effort is increasing social fragmentation." [2]

Perhaps within this quote from Dr. Arnold Mysior's book, Society--A Very Large System, we can discover two major erroneous driving forces in our society. One is over-specialization. The other is the preponderance toward the quantitative at the expense of the qualitative. We speak of this age as the age of specialization, but too often, specialists know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing. The late, great futurist, Buckminster Fuller said, "Overspecialization is a very threat to the survival of this planet." (See Richard Leakey's book, the Sixth Extinction: Patterns of life and the Future of Humankind [3])

Accordingly, a "reductionalistic mind syndrome," has been ingrained into our American paradigm. This reductionalistic syndrome results in our taking everything apart, piece by piece, bit by bit, until we arrive at the point where we no longer understand how these small pieces fit into the total system. We have lost our way and need to rediscover how these pieces fit into the whole. Then our subsequent decisions will not multiply the problems as in the case of the apprentice who did not understand the system.

We have some serious and fundamental questions to ask. Have we sacrificed the qualitative for the quantitative? Is more better? Is faster necessarily better? Is a zero-sum game the appropriate model upon which to base business decisions and create our future? Are our metrics appropriate? Is the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) a valid measurement of our quality of life? GDP measures financial transactions, the exchange of money, and rises during war, when people with AIDS spend large sums of money on health care, when rebuilding is required after a hurricane. Is this an appropriate index to measure "quality of life?"

We live and die based upon causal drivers embedded within our paradigms, core beliefs and attitudes. [4 ] We develop a mythology of life and then base our decisions upon them. For example, for years business organizations and governments have been operated based upon the belief that a choice had to be made between a state of economic development, [5 ] ( economic well-being and jobs) or ecological non-toxicity. This myth has driven our business machine and the consequences are grim. Not only are organizations being battered by the waves of change, they are also being battered by the consequences of their past decisions based upon this fundamentally flawed mythology. Due to increased public awareness rooted in values necessary to sustain life, i.e. pure water, pure air, and pure soil, organizations are faced with a barrage of laws and regulations about what to do, what not to do. Increasing legal and financial liabilities are consequences of previous short-term linear decisions. Decisions have been based upon the zero-sum model which accepts the premise that in order for someone to win (be profitable), someone or something has to lose (the environment and everyone else). Executives immersed in this competitive mythology, based upon zero-sum constructs, rarely consider the "whole system" during the design, production, marketing, and obsolesce of their organizations' products. However, like the advertisement says, "you can pay me now or pay me latter." The time for payment has arrived. While operating within this mythological paradigm, we have created many current crises.

Some organizations are riding the waves of change, but most are struggling to maintain an upright position. The waves of change appear to be increasing in frequency, power, and amplitude. Organizations' approaches to these changes such as downsizing, reengineering, restructuring and, to some extent, total quality control, are not sufficient to enact systemic organizational systems changes that will yield an organization that is in concert with the global systemic transformation currently underway.

Business is at a crossroads - a threshold of greatness or decay. Will business move away from the zero-sum management model which produces crises - a reliance upon a "reactive model" based upon problem, need, and solution processes which create urgency, stress, and a need to win? Or, will business embrace a more mature management model - a "proactive model" founded upon vision, goals and tasks, with a process that fosters and employs imagination, creativity, and innovation? Individual, societal and organizational habits are difficult to break. There are alternative approaches and methods. The question is: are we sufficiently mature and flexible enough to objectively acknowledge and evaluate new potential solutions?

The fundamental change agent operating in this new world of chaos and crisis lies not in the "hard" area of business and technology, but rather in the "soft" realm of individual values. Large institutions are generally slow to perceive change and even slower to adjust their structures in order to adequately participate in an altered business environment. Representative and notable recent changes which significantly influence the manner in which business is conducted include marketplace environmental sensitivity and "social conscious investing." Are these changes isolated, one-time anomalies in the history of human events or are they representative of fundamental paradigm shifts that will persist and increase as time passes? Indicators point to a systemic change which will fundamentally alter the way in which people live their lives and participate in business and world affairs.

One of the most significant signs of this tremendous shift is the enormous number of individuals who make up an entirely new cultural form which Paul H. Ray, executive Vice-President of American Lives, Inc. has named "Cultural Creatives." [6] Of the three primary subcultures in the United States, this emergent new group accounts for 24% of the American public, about 44 million people. The people belonging to this group have values that reflect an emphasis on idealism and spirituality, concern for the environment, interest in relationships, healthy psychological development, are tolerant of diverse views and perceive the need to create change in a systemic manner. "Cultural Creatives" don't just talk about their interests and values, they are well on their way toward creating an entirely new context for transforming the future.

Does it seem plausible that this emerging group's interests will clash with some well-established practices in our society? How do you perceive this group might react to being informed that the federal government spends 60 percent of the IRS tax dollar (nearly $500 billion a year) on the military complex and 2 percent on education? This computation is extracted from Addiction to War [7] and is based upon adding the Pentagon budget, the military projects of NASA and the Energy Department, foreign military aid, veterans' benefits, and interest payments on past military debt (1993 statistics). Could this be a crisis in the making - the converging lines of diverse values and beliefs between the advocates of maintaining the existing military system and the interests and demands of the "Cultural Creatives?" The values driven group's political actions could result in a drastic reduction of Congressional military budget allocations which would result in a loss of large corporate government contracts creating corporate crises if not anticipated well in advance of the budget cuts.

In addition to the study identifying the "Cultural Creatives," other relevant studies offer similar indications. A study conducted by Stanford Research Institute, (now know as SRI International) resulted in the book entitled The Nine American Lifestyles, [8] The author concluded that "it appears that more and more people are driven by an inner vision of what they think should and, hopefully, can be, and less and less by acceptance of what is. In short, choice based on individual and collective values is coming to dominate choice made by mere capability. The time seems, at last, to be arriving when many people are able to employ the full range of their powers to choose what kind of lives they truly want to lead." The book describes the U.S. population as one in which values continually evolve as individuals travel through nine well defined stages of human development.

The rapidly changing values trend, like a snowball rolling downhill, is gathering mass and momentum as it rolls and, as an "idea whose time has come," is ultimately unstoppable. Our world may well be in crisis because we, ourselves, are in crisis. Nature teaches that nothing exists in a vacuum, that everything is connected to everything else in some manner. Since we are part of nature, this most certainly applies to humans. Is it possible that our outward world of crisis has not happened by accident or by chance, but is a direct result of the fragmentation of our inner selves and, that as we harmonize our inner selves, we can better deal with the decaying fruits of our previous fragmented state of being? The individual recognition of the need for inner congruence and harmony is most likely the driver that has recently created the vast personal development product and services market and may well be the primary force for change in the future.

The Chinese ideogram for crisis is comprised of two distinct symbols, one meaning danger and the other meaning opportunity. Interestingly, the oriental mind combines the two symbols to represent crisis, recognizing that both danger and opportunity exist simultaneously. An appropriate reaction to crises is to recognize the danger and focus on the opportunity. What type of business culture can respond to these "opportunities" brought forth during a state of crisis, when most organizational cultures emphatically resist change? A rigid corporate organizational structure which created previous successes in different circumstances is now totally insufficient to meet new challenges brought about by crisis, chaos and change.

Traditional corporate leadership, based upon "command and control," anchor the moribund structures which no longer serve corporate stakeholders, except, perhaps, in the very short-term only, the executives. "Closed" systems do not allow new information to flow sufficiently in order to stay abreast of the waves of change and therefore are frequently inundated. Paradoxically, [9] the rigid boundaries of inflexible cultures have been perceived as organizational safety devices, yet change respects no boundaries and infiltrates ill prepared and recalcitrant organizations, causing mayhem. Messengers to organizations with communications addressing the need to systemically redesign the organizational culture are rarely welcomed. From Roman times to the present, the messenger of perceived ill tidings is sacrificed, though today, the technique of sacrifice is more "civilized." This human tendency was well stated by Albert Einstein who said, "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

Business and scientific disciplines appear to evolve more slowly than other parts of society Large business organizations and financial institutions seem recalcitrant and lag well behind the leading edge of causal-values waves of change . Individuals functioning as change agents (those who initially embody the new change) require funding for revolutionary projects, technologies, and businesses from financial institutions which contain the pools of money. The funding is difficult to acquire because often, the financial experts, entrenched in the old paradigm, tend to fund only the products of the old paradigm and not the new, thereby functioning as front-line resistance to the wave of change. Thus many alternative solutions are unavailable to the world in a timely fashion and frustrated authors/innovators eventually become extremely disillusioned. Collaborative team integration of these old-line experts and the new innovators could provide an approach to deal with crisis, chaos, and change by effectively bridging between the paradigm which built the old, now obsolete system, and the new paradigm which is attempting to build the new, more relevant system. As Albert Einstein said, "the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we used when we created them."

Business organizations need to increase profitability, increase market share, improve personnel morale, insure longevity, and enhance the quality of life with their products and services. Are any of these objectives mutually exclusive? If not, how does an organization create the congruence necessary to achieve these goals? Where should we search to gain answers to these questions? We are faced with the simultaneous challenges of dealing with our past mistakes, deciding what future we desire, and selecting the methods to accomplish both. Perhaps we should look to nature and to its natural systems for a generic method which can be used to adequately address both challenges.

Nature is a self-organizing system with self-organizing parts that appear to fit together well and are interdependent. A symbiotic relationship exits between and among the parts. Humans have sought to command and use nature without understanding that nature is a whole system and that all its components are connected. Like it or not, humans are part of this incredible system and from a perspective of being part of this system, we can explore new possibilities. Peter Drucker states it well, "Concern for the ecology, the endangered habitat of the human race, will increasingly have to be built into economic policy. And increasingly concern for the ecology and ecological policies will transcend national boundaries. The main danger to the human habitat are increasingly global--and so will be the policies needed to protect and preserve it. We still talk of environmental protection as if it were protection of something that is outside of, and separate from, man. But what is endangered are the survival needs of the human race." [10]

Suppose that your organization's large-scale computer/telecommunications system was used for a variety of purposes including MIS (management information systems), financial accounting, internal communications, external communications, product design, production, generating payroll and marketing products, etc. Suppose that a group of people began to tinker with the system without understanding its many usages, interrelationships and interdependencies. This particular group was only interested in and knowledgeable about internal communications. The group devised a way for the system to become more efficient for internal communications and made technical changes to the system. The internal communications were faster, easier, and, in general, more efficient. However, a portion of the system no longer accurately gathered data for MIS. The corporate executives did not become aware of this situation until many decisions had been made based upon erroneous data which resulted in unanticipated and unwelcome consequences. Problems arose in the product design software which were only discovered after products had been manufactured and shipped to customers. The situation deteriorated until the company experienced crisis after crisis and, ultimately, became one of the bankruptcy statistics. Is there an appropriate analogy that could be gleaned from this organizational scenario and applied to nature (associated with the organization) and humans (associated with the redesign group)? Where does the responsibility lie for the demise of the organization? Where does the responsibility lie for the many existing crises in our world? Perhaps there is enough responsibility to "go around." What is required in the design of man-made systems is the utilization of processes that automatically tends to create the symbiosis and congruence found in Nature.

We can design technology and systems to incorporate increased profitability, ecological purity, user friendliness, consumer needs, and enhanced quality of life simultaneously. At present, in order for any significant new discovery (one that changes a fundamental "scientific" belief labeled as "fact") to be commonly accepted, the discoverers, and the world, have to wait until the old high priests die. Einstein's discoveries waited for 15 to 20 years. Scientific history is well punctuated with such examples. The fundamental obstacles exist only within the minds of the participants and within the resistance of the high-priests "experts" of each discipline or domain. Considering the rapid increase in chaos, crisis and the rate of change, we don't have sufficient time to wait for a large number of funerals to take place before we make substantive changes in the ways in which we go about the business of living.

Furthermore, it is well know in some sectors, that major discoveries/inventions originate from people outside the discipline in which the discovery/invention is categorically placed. Why? The answer is that the people (researchers, scientists, technicians) are subconsciously immersed within a paradigm of "this can't be done." Joel Barker has effectively communicated the premise of Thomas Kuhn's book [11 in his videos, lectures, consulting, and book, Paradigms: the Business of Discovering the Future. [12] The paradigm impediment is well illustrated in the description of the Swiss watch manufacturers. The Swiss dominated the watch industry for sixty years and constantly improved their products. By 1968 the Swiss commanded over 65 percent of the world watch market and over 80 percent of industry profits. Interestingly, the Swiss developed the initial electronic quartz watch movement at the research institute in Neuchatel, Switzerland and introduced this revolutionary idea to the Swiss manufacturers in 1967. Was it enthusiastically accepted? No, it was completely rejected. It looked like a watch and performed like a watch , but it did not have "real watch" components, such as gears and mainsprings. The Japanese industry had no such paradigm barriers and embraced the new design. Seiko and other Japanese companies adapted the design and manufactured quartz watches. Consequently, between 1979 and 1981 the Swiss watch industry lost employment for fifty thousand of the sixty-two thousand watchmakers. Why? Paradigm blindness!

Paradigm blindness is not an unique property of Swiss watch manufacturers. There are numerous examples of similar scenarios indigenous to business and government bureaucratic history. Unfortunately, paradigm blindness is alive, well and flourishing in most organizations today. Bureaucracies, suffering from this malady, still sacrifice the messengers of alternative solutions, methodologies, and processes.

So, where do we want to go from here? In Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland," Alice, while lost, met a cat. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here," said Alice. "That all depends upon where you want to go," said the cat. "I don't much care where," said Alice. Replied the cat, "Then it doesn't matter which way you go." Said another way, "Where there is no vision, the people will perish." [unknown] Our greatest challenge lies in arriving at a consensus as to where we (collectively) want to go, identification as to how to travel from here to there, and properly engaging the many self-organizing parts of our system to provide their unique contribution to the journey. Because business is a major driver in our society and in most other societies, it is the key domain with respect to the success or failure of any societal goal. And the goal must become a vision embodied by the majority of the participants.

The quality of organizational vision, mission, purpose, values, and acceptance of responsibility of each organization are critical to the quality of life on this planet and thus are more important in the long-term than the quantitative products and/or services produced by the organizations in the short-term.

Do conflict, war, famine, and pollution have to be significant ingredients of our future? Probably not. Corporations and countries protect valuable resources and commodities such as oil which are used to fuel the economies. In addition to greed, currently accepted scientific paradigms present a barrier to alternative resources which would permit commonly unforeseen answers to conflicts over natural capital and commodities such as oil. Does the possibility of developing zero-point energy devices (equipment that produces more energy than is inputted to the equipment manufactured based upon zero-point technology) exist which would reduce the importance of oil for energy generation and economic development? Serious scientific research suggests that zero-point technology is feasible. Does this possibility warrant budget allocations, objective research and development, and objective evaluations? Could zero-point technology be another quartz watch situation? Will some company or country seize the potential opportunity or will the "experts" (high-priests of scientific disciplines) seek to bury new information and opportunity? Thomas Edison was put in jail for raising money for the development of the light bulb because it was "common knowledge" that it was "scientifically impossible" to produce light from the strange little translucent box. Therefore, the conclusion of the experts was that Edison had to be perpetrating fraud upon potential investors.

Nicola Tesla, perhaps the greatest discoverer of scientific principles, and holder of approximately 117 patents on alternating current motors and generators was essentially "hung out to dry" by certain members of the financial community because they perceived that their existing financial structures were threatened by Tesla's subsequent inventions. Would it have been possible to reframe the situation such that all could "win" and the quality of life be enhanced? Probably, but that would have required a different paradigm than was then embodied by the financial participants. A paradigm of collaboration embodying a "win-win" model was a necessary ingredient in order to make different decisions regarding Tesla's inventions.

It seems relevant to consider a world vision which contains sustainable development, successful businesses, ecological purity, benign technology, and reduced terrorism and war.

The process of collaboration is a necessary ingredient of a proactive model of inter and intra- organizational operation and is a key ingredient necessary to tap any organizations' most significant asset, intellectual capital. Deep within the intellectual capital pool lie the mostly dormant elements of imagination, creativity and innovation. What is necessary to unleash the potential fruits of these elements or attributes? The answer is an organizational culture which fosters, supports, nurtures, and simulates the emergence of these powerful creative engines. Einstein stated that, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." In an organizational culture free of the severe consequences for being wrong, employees learn that it is safe to risk exposing the products of their imagination and creativity because they have much to gain and little to lose. Fundamental to such a culture is a high level of trust. Without an environment of trust these delicate elements seldom venture forth.

No one knows where the next great idea will originate, or from whom. While it could be the CEO, it could also be the janitor whose imagination produces the next ideas that could be converted into a product or service... perhaps the next quartz watch. The process is collaboration housed in a trusting corporate culture with open-minded participants who fully engage their creativity and imagination.

The collaborative process involves the principle of self organizing systems, naturally creative teams, cross-functional teams with multi-disciplinary backgrounds - some members of which have core competencies in specific specialties as well as general systems minds. In the coming years, we will recognize the importance of the generalist without sacrificing the specialist. We have traveled the road of the specialist and currently are in desperate need of the significant participation of the generalist in order to better identify how each specialty fits into the whole puzzle.

The creation of a "Department of Innovation and Creativity" and the introduction of a structure similar to the Collaboratory® [13] into organizational structure are essential to unleashing the power of human inventiveness. The Collaboratory is a center which acts as a birthplace for creativity, innovation and transformation and creates breakthrough paradigms, processes and structures for the successful navigation of organizational chaos and change. The Collaboratory has a physical location within an organization and is properly designed and supplied for enhanced creativity, productivity and communication. One of the most prevalent misconceptions, occurring largely unconsciously in organizational thinking today, is that, due to a global paradigm "shift," transformation is a "big job," a "large leap" which needs to occur in order for an organization to survive and thrive in a changed world, and that once that transformation has occurred, everyone can relax and all will be well. The greater reality is that the paradigm "shift" is, in fact, a paradigm "expansion" which requires that human beings and the organizations they create become willing and able to view transformation as an on-going process, not as an occasional product.

The Collaboratory® serves as a core from which continual organizational learning, creativity and innovation constantly support personal and organizational transformation which, in turn, nourishes the organization and its participants and sews the seeds for ongoing growth, change and prosperity. Thus, creative change and transformation lose the onerous, stressful connotation so common today, and become a safe and normal way of living a more exciting, productive, fulfilling life. The Collaboratory is a communications center employing cybernetic principles, sending and receiving information to and from all parts of the organization and is responsible for facilitating an organization-wide learning culture. As the connecting bridge within the organization between and among management, teams, and all organizational members, the Collaboratory facilitates creative alliances within the organization. Time and space are collapsed by the use of information technology, creating a new corporate form, the virtual organization. The Collaboratory also facilitates the creation of strategic alliances with individuals and entities outside of the organization.

The results are a greater sense of collaborative partnership, relationship, connection and community, all of which increase profitability, promote more effective communication, increase morale, create more comprehensive product and service design, and ease the inherent difficulties of managing organizations, particularly during periods of chaos and rapid change. Processes are used to enhance personnel's capability to innovate and deal with rapid change, such as "strategic-gaming" (a derivation of war games), "scenario design," and "mindmapping." Tools are used such as the "Growth Through Space and Time Matrix-Map" which can be used to map the history (and potential future) of any organization and ascertain its placement within the four quadrants of a universal cycle..

This process is a collaborative process and must be installed over time. The process has to be accepted and mentored by the executives of each organization. As stated by the author of Pyzdek's Guide to SPC (Statistical Process Control) [14] "to the best of my knowledge, there has never been a successful program for long-term quality or productivity improvement that did not have the active support and involvement of top management of the company." It is imperative that management accept, endorse, mentor and support the intended change. In fact, contemporary corporate management is about change. "In order to respond to the challenges of external chaos, the management of change has become the prime occupation of those who inhabit the executive suites of the world's leading enterprises," states James O'Toole in Leading Change. [15]

Industrial Ecology is an example of an emerging discipline that is collaborative and based upon natural systems. This emerging discipline may hold one of the keys to our future prosperity and, perhaps, our survival. The discipline is defined and described in many ways including:

1) "Industrial ecology is a systems oriented approach to integration of human economic activity and material management with fundamental biological, chemical, and physical global systems." (Branden Allenby, AT&T Vice-President for Technology and the Environment)

2)"Industrial ecology's definitive contribution is moving the vision of industry from a linear, mechanistic mode to a closed-loop system, more akin to natural ecosystems." (Ernest Lowe, Indigo Development) "The Source of Value," written by Ernest Lowe will be published by the Environmental Protection Agency in May 1996. [16] This book provides an excellent description of IE (Industrial Ecology) and includes case studies.

IE is a systems discipline and consequently can accommodate the agendas and objectives of many stakeholders. It can accommodate the economic profitability objectives of corporate American and the ecological objectives of environmentally concerned people and organizations. IE targets zero wastes. As many industrial processes produces 50% waste, disposal of waste is usually a significant cost to the corporation. IE provides the system basis to initially convert a waste cost to a product income. Eventually, the systems assist accomplishing the objective of zero wastes. Achievement of the objectives meets the agendas of the corporate personnel, the environmental organizations, the public, the government - everybody wins. The "zero-sum" model has been replaced by a "win-win" model!

One win-win model is the Eco-Industrial Park at Kalundborg, Denmark which exemplifies and employs Industrial Ecology (IE) as its basis. Denmark's largest power station, a coal-fired plant, Denmark's largest refinery, an international biotechnology company, a plasterboard factory, and the City of Kalundborg all benefit from the symbiotic relationship established by participants using the IE system. The refinery provides excess gas to the plasterboard factory; the power station provides steam to the city for district heating as well as to the biotechnology company and the refinery; the sludge from the biotechnology company goes to farmers for fertilizer; hot water from the power plant is provided to local fish farms; waste water from the fish farms is used to fertilize agricultural farms; a cement company uses the power plant's desulfurized ash; the power plant harvests its stack gas (normally an air pollutant) SO₂ with calcium carbonate, making gypsum which it sells to the plasterboard factory (supplying two thirds of its feedstock requirement). Because the power plant extracted the sulfur from its stack gas, it now burns surplus refinery gas in place of coal; the refinery's new desulfurization process produces pure liquid sulfur which is sold to a sulfuric acid producing company; surplus yeast from insulin production at the biotechnology company is provided to pig farmers.

The foregoing symbiotic relationship emulates nature's systems wherein there are no unusable wastes. Within Nature a life, birth, death, life cycle is fundamental to its system. Waste from one life process becomes a feedstock into a different life process where the waste is converted and used, and so forth, and so on. Each company in the Kalundborg Eco-Industrial Park is a self organizing system, yet each has begun to redefine itself within the context of its relationship to other self-organizing systems (companies) in such a manner as to better integrate into the total system from a financial perspective. The byproduct of this enhanced interdependence is better integration into the whole system from many perspectives and, hence, the quality of life is enhanced for all.

Seismic evolutionary eras have occurred periodically throughout the evolution of the human species and we are clearly in the midst of one of these paradigm changing events. We can no longer do what we have done before and expect to get new and different results. Since our doing is a direct result of our being, and our being is a composite of our mental, physical, emotional and spiritual constructs, we are now having to examine these different parts of ourselves, realizing that they are integral parts of our own natural system. As we observe our species growth through space and time, we find that our childhood lasted hundreds of thousands of years and was primarily physical. Our adolescence lasted a few thousands of years and was primarily mental. We are now being required by the forces of change in nature to move into adulthood via an emotional realm, which will lead us, finally, to full maturity in the spiritual realm, having integrated the four primary components of being human. Our present transformation is the most difficult and dramatic of all, since it calls for shifts in so many different aspects of our individual and collective lives within a time frame that is increasingly reduced.

We can no longer pretend that we are separate from anything or anyone else on the planet. Nor can we continue to ignore the fact that our actions and mindsets carry profound and systemic ramifications, the effects of which we are only now beginning to understand. Though all aspects of our growth and change through space and time are natural and necessary, we must mature beyond our adolescent aggression based on pure individualism, fear, power and control. We have run out of road. And we are "face to face" with a crisis of maturation. If we are to survive as a species, we must move into the collaborative, creative stage of our evolutionary journey and become congruent, integrated, mature beings, capable of carrying life in a new way. Make no mistake. The survival of the human species is at stake. We will either make this great shift or we will bring tremendous destruction upon ourselves.

There are several critical components necessary for the successful move into this next stage of human evolution. We must call for the full and active participation and leadership of highly capable individuals who have taken their own personal journeys and have emerged whole, mature, coherent and integrated - courageous people who are capable of broad vision and creative expression. And we must create new technological, organizational and societal structures and processes which embody and emulate whole systems and hold the energies, intuitive intelligences and differences so necessary for the creation of an expanded paradigm of collaborative creativity and participation.

The urge to discover, to learn and to create anew is an innate part of every living thing. We want to learn because we are here, because we must learn and grow or we will cease to live in the most complete sense of being alive and never fulfill our true destinies as individuals or as a species. As we mature as a species, fashioning creative, collaborative and systems-oriented cultures, we will grow and thrive. We will find ourselves free, at last, to engage and enjoy the power and beauty of a profoundly new and ever-expanding way of life.

2. Mysior, Arnold, Society -- a Very Large System: A Systems-Theoretic Approach to the Study of Society, University Press of America, 1977

4. Relative subject - book recommendation: Schaef, Anne Wilson, When Society Becomes an Addict, Harper & Row, 1987

5. Relevant subject book recommendation: Breton, Denise & Largent, Christopher, The Soul of Economies: Wilmington, Idea House Publishing Company

6. Ray, Paul H., The Integral Cultural Survey: A Study of Values Subcultures and use of Alternative Health Care in America, conducted for the Fetzer Foundation and the Institute of Noetic Sciences, American LIVES, Inc., 1995

9. Relative subject book recommendation: Handy, Charles, The Age of Paradox, Harvard Business School Press, 1994

11. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Chicago, University of Chicago, 1962, 1970

12. Barker, Joel A., Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future: New York, HarperCollins, 1993

13. registered trademark: Institute for Business and Social Architecture International, Ltd., Pine CO

14. Pyzdek, Thomas, Pyzdek's Guide to SPC - Volume one: Fundamentals: Milwaukee, ASQC-Quality Press

16. Lowe, Ernest, The Source of Value, Indigo Development, Oakland, 1996 (Prepared for EPA)

[This article appears in the May, 1996 issue of Business Tech, an Internet electronic publication. Business Tech focuses on the overlapping and integration of business, technology, and information systems. Business Tech's address is: http:\\businesstech.com

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