The Evolution of Business Ecosystems: Balancing Growth and Stability

Seminar Summary: How do human systems organise for sustainability? How do they balance growth and stability?  We shed light on these important questions by investigating another set of classic questions in evolutionary economics, politics, anthropology and sociology:  Why do organisations (e.g. firms) in the same environment (e.g. industry) vary systematically in performance over time?  Under what conditions is it competitively advantageous for organisations to cooperate or to compete?  Is it possible to meaningfully change organisations, or are they effectively inert?  We explored these questions through an empirically-based theoretical framework which posits “inter-species competition” between firms in evolving business ecosystems.

Speaker Biography: Dr. Theodore Piepenbrock, PhD, MBA, MS (MIT), MEng (U.C. Berkeley) is a Research Affiliate with MIT’s Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development, a Research Affiliate with the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute at the University of Oxford, a Senior Research Associate with the Balliol College Graduate Centre, and the founding Director of the International Institute for Strategic Leadership.  His research focuses on the evolution of business ecosystems, the architectures of extended enterprises and inter-species competition.  He teaches in executive education and graduate courses at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, MIT’s Engineering Systems Division and at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.