Nov 10, 2010
Scaling Up
In WNYC's latest Radiolab podcast they discuss how the larger an organism is, the less energy is consumed per cell. The trade off is that those cells operate more slowly than they do in the small organism. Cities, however, don't follow the same model. As a city gets big, activity of its citizens increases because of human friction. Ideas start exchanging, culture grows, and activity speeds up.
So how does your company behave? More like an animal - slow but efficient? Or more like a city - fast and innovative at a cost? Which is the ideal?
All organisms die. Cities almost never die. But cities are made up of organisms.