Surfing the Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business

by Richard Tanner Pascale, Linda Gioja, Mark Milleman

Surfing the Edge of Chaos is a brilliant, powerful, and practical book about the parallels between business and nature—two fields that feature nonstop battles between the forces of tradition and the forces of transformation. It offers a bold new way of thinking about and responding to the personal and strategic challenges everyone in business faces these days.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Management

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2000

About the author

A leading business consultant worldwide, author and a respected lecturer / professor. In addition to being an Associate Fellow at Oxford University (United Kingdom), he also acted as a consultant to several Fortune 100 companies. Richard Pascale owes his fame to his contribution to the 7S framework when he was working at McKinsey & Company management consultancy.

Reviews

[Quinton]

Found a reference to this book in The People's Scrum: Agile Ideas for Revolutionary Transformation by Tobias Mayer. This is the first book I have read on Complexity Science as applied to business transformation/evolution. Enjoyed it and will be re-reading it.

[Hilary Holmes McKinney]

Great book with some sound, timeless ideas

This book has some information that is still applicable in 2019. I’d like to see an update or follow-up. I also think it’s way too long.

[Ryan]

This book is helpful giving insight to the strategies of adaptive leadership and explaining the chaos of organized living systems; finding parallels with business management practices post industrial revolution and up to the age of information/internet.

[Pete]

Thought it was a wonderful illustration of parallels in nature and the business world!

[Elio Nakouzi]

This book discusses analogies between natural systems and trends in economics. Although very interesting, it is less rigorous and convincing than I hoped for.

[E.R. Leyva]

Notes: If not growing, declining