Research Outline

Evolutionary Companies

Goals

To identify companies that are revolutionizing their “operating system” culture in order to develop content for articles.

Early Findings

  • One of the axioms of a human operating system is “Recognizing that we are prisoners of old ways of thinking, we see that higher levels of complex thinking are required to match our world’s increasing complexity. We use game theory and a game to stimulate complex systems thinking, knowing that once systems thinking is adopted in place of reductive thinking, design of self-organizing governance is facilitated.”
  • Some experts feel that human operating system understanding “is the only way we avoid self-termination as a species.”
  • Stripe notes that it “has a flat structure without titles.” This appears as if it is confirming to the “Authority” and/or the “Structure” feature of the OS Canvas.
  • Strip also exemplifies the OS Canvas principle of “structure” in the way Patrick Collison, Stripe’s CEO, speaks about its ever-changing culture, “what it is that we need today is just different from what we needed two or three years ago.”
  • Basecamp devalued face-to-face meetings and places more value on the belief that giving employees options to work and collaborate in a way that is best for their individual work habits boosts quality.
  • Basecamp has also instituted wellness rooms within their offices along with other ‘amenities’ like quiet rooms, library spaces, standing tables, communal seating, and family rooms.