Business ecology report
January 2007

I have known for some time that the concepts of business ecology enable the AEM-cube® to be the first individual and team assessment that works independently of the background culture of people.  Now I can see it at first hand with my work in China.  I feel I need  to work as much as possible on probing the variety of applications in the world's fastest growing economy.

Last year we finished our research with David Thomson (published in the book Blueprint to a Billion) and showed clearly that the teams leading towards exponential growth have a very specific and well defined, measurable, variety of people.  For investors and executive Boards, it is now much easier to assess the leadership risk of investments and/or strategies.

However, these Blueprint concepts are not only useful in the context of the extremely large organisations where Thomson conducted his research, but also in a much smaller context.  I want to take this further and focus much more on the medium and small business world.

I was asked recently what research I think a global business-ecology community should prioritise on?  It's an interesting question.

I think global business-ecology should establish a clear distinction away from those who relate the word "ecology" to environmental issues such as global warming, pollution etc.

Business-ecology focuses itself on the timeless principles of how human beings individually, and in the context of teams and large organisations and institutions, organise themselves.  The science behind it is the same as in the environmental approach but the application is very different.

Of course our site focuses on what has our attention and resources at Human Insight.  We want and expect this research to be leading edge and possibly even leading the way, but even more we hope that our research will become minute compared to what else is going to happen in the field of business-ecology.

My immediate response was around three main themes: matter attachment, entrepreneurship and diversity.

Firstly, consider matter attachment:

I feel a responsibility to inform the mainstream of psychology that has implicitly focused on people attachment.  If this were ever to give way to a depreciative approach towards all those who are not people-attached, then many talented employees and individuals would fail to make their best contribution to their business.

Take one major sector - the professional and technological industries.  The concept of matter-attachment can be a short term, highly profitable path to follow.  It gives a new insight into, and options for better management of the resources and the talent on which most of the shareholder value is founded.

I can imagine, and would strongly urge, that organisations such as HP, IBM, Apple and similar companies start funding some research into this area.  They will discover new strategies to manage their talent pool.

Secondly look at entrepreneurship and innovation:

At present, there is almost too much hype around entrepreneurship and innovation.  I prefer to undertake research and follow more timeless principles as laid out in the business-ecological framework.  I am this week heading for China to work specifically on this topic of entrepreneurship at the Zhejiang University.

I like to surface the deep fundamental structure underpinning, and connecting issues like renewal, growth, decline and growth, together with the timeless principles of exploratory behaviour, safe-attachment, diversity, values and consistency.  I believe that a new grammar will emerge describing the core of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Finally, team diversity:

For me, the work of David Thomson, as written in "Blueprint to a Billion" is yet more proof of the power of understandng diversity and how to measure it.

It is in this research that we developed some extremely strong evidence for precisely what the AEM-cube® as a business ecological model measures, i.e. a direct relation between team diversity and the purpose of the team.  Although it is too much to be able to predict whether or not a team will grow into a billion dollar business, it is now much easier to predict whether a team will fail or succeed and what the direction of that success will be.

I would love to see this work on team diversity being developed towards internationally agreed principles (independent of cultures) of what successful teams should look like.

If you would like to comment on any aspect of these reports please email info@human-insight.com