Steven Phelan: Embrace Complexity, Pursue Continuous Innovation, Don’t Waste Time on Planning
A rapidly advancing strand of theory has enabled great advances in the understanding of complex adaptive systems. Austrian economics is quintessential complexity theory; Austrians recognize that economic systems exhibit emergent outcomes as a result of the myriad interactions of consumers and businesses, value propositions and value perceptions, technologies and channels, and the innumerable transactions and exchanges that take place. The future is unknowable — we can’t know what will happen, and we don’t even know what can happen — and the system can sometimes feel turbulent and chaotic.
How should businesses manage complexity? They shouldn’t. It’s not manageable. No plan survives the first contact with customers is the way Steve Blank famously puts it.
What’s the answer? Don’t plan. Implement an Austrian Business Model (see Mises.org/E4B_103_Video) and embrace the complexity of the marketplace.
How do you do that? Professor Steven Phelan uses the complexity theory metaphor of the dancing rugged landscape. Think of the market or business sector in which you are operating as a landscape of peaks and valleys. You can see some o
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