Enterprise Physics -the Gravity of Business

 

I While I was preparing a presentation a few years ago for Microsoft’s TechReady 2016 I had been fairly engaged with the ideas around physics or more aptly put applying concepts of physics applied to business.  This idea intrigued me and has actually driven me and my research around creating a design system and practice for enterprises.  This vision was inspired by my mentor at IBM, John Zachman.  His articulation of using the interrogatives as a means for describing an enterprise captured my imagination and over the years has had me research to create the coordinate system behind such.
With that as a background another aspect of looking at how to apply physics to enterprise has me looking at the parallels between Quantum Mechanics and Relativity.  This week Geoffrey Moore posted a great article: A Quantum Theory of Venture Capital Valuations.  This was in addition and possibly opposition to some of the analogies he used in his book Escape Velocity which inspired the following graphic and research on innovation I was going to present at TechReady.   

The past several months I’ve been heavily investigating various physics concepts and how these apply to the world of enterprise.  Such brainstorming has led to the following graphic/concept I quickly scribbled in my notebook several months ago.

On the surface it seems readily apparent a large enterprise due to its mass warps the ecosystem it operates within and influences the behaviors of other enterprises.  This might explain why social networks are so powerful outside and inside corporations.  And why enterprises are only now catching up to such an idea.  Most corporations are still in transition from Newtonian Physics to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.  The idea about some invisible force –social networks—effecting their organization is about as easy a concept to accept as “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy” was several years ago in physics.

 With that little bit of insight, I’ll leave you to continue my morning R&D on how to apply such in my Design and Transformation of Enterprise workshops