Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

by Geoffrey West

As they grow companies tend to become more and more unidimensional, driven partially by market forces but also by the inevitable ossification of the top-down administrative and bureaucratic needs perceived as necessary for operating a traditional company in the modern era. Change, adaptation, and reinvention become increasingly difficult to effect, especially as the external socioeconomic clock is continually accelerating and conditions change at a faster and faster rate. Cities, on the other hand, become increasingly multidimensional as they grow in size. Indeed, in stark contrast to almost all companies, the diversity of cities, as measured by the number of different kinds of jobs and businesses that comprise their economic landscape, continually and systematically increases in a predictable way with increasing city size.