Fractal architecture for the adaptive complex enterprise

Abstract

Today's businesses must continuously adapt to external conditions in accelerated time frames. This requires businesses to shift from strategies that eliminate variation to those that embrace variation and changing conditions. Industrial-age Make-Sell businesses accomplished objectives by steadily eliminating variation. In contrast, today's sense-and-respond (S-R) businesses must often execute by embracing variation and learn to perform given widely varying circumstances [4]. Specifically, the S-R business must adapt to external conditions by managing along the chain: "Sense changing opportunities→Request variation→Product variation→Response process variation→Resource variation and Information variation→Efficient delivery and feedback→Business growth and survival." (Here, the implication symbol "→" reflects cause and effect.) Recognizing that IT holds the promise of enabling the S-R enterprise, transformation is often accompanied by enterprise integration projects but with limited success. Project experiences spanning the past 10 years suggest that IT must first meet key challenges.