בוקר יום ב' – הסמינר הבית ספרי של ביה"ס לניהול וכלכלה, בעריכתם של מירון גרוס וציפי שפרלינג, ארח ביום 16 במאי 2011 את אייל בנימין ואלי גימון להרצאה בנושא :
Radical Changes in Strategy; a Natural Event?
ABSTRACT: Biomimetics (also known as Biomimicry or Bionics) is a means to mimic substance related research from nature in synthesis of substance and/or mimicking biological procedures aimed to create substance. The linkage between the environment and organization was addressed via "Population Ecology Theory", by Hannan and Freeman (1977) asserting that 'there is a one-to-one correlation between structural elements of social structures and those units that mediate flows of essential resources into the system.' The field of Bioeconomics emerged to bridge the worlds of socio-economy and nature via their core principles, mainly the Darwinian Theory (Witt 1999) and was later developed by the Complexity theory (Lloyde 1990, Price 1995). This work attempts to look into the phenomena of radical changes in business strategy using biomimetic tools of thought.Business Strategy is commonly accepted as the dynamic alignment of resources with the environment in order to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage. Research has shown that is a business strategy is major factor affecting new venture performance, hence is expected to be re-aligned with environmental changes. Nevertheless, those changes may represent high risk for a new venture, or a turning point saving the venture, and placing it on a growth track. These types of 'strategic changes' are well noted in nature, where organisms go through radical changes in their structure at certain environmental conditions. For example, this phenomenon was observed in the botanic world (Hermes 1992) where genetic changes in plants occur when certain thresholds are crossed.Although biological analogies where criticized (Khalil 2000, Penrose 1952), it was later shown that Darwinism provides a compelling ontology by being a universal meta-theory (Hodgoston 2002). Analogies were suggested as powerful tool in resolving complex strategy issues (Gavetti et al. 2005), supporting the organic view of strategy suggested by Farjoun (2002). This research tries to explain strategic change in new ventures, in light of the Resource-Based View (RBV) by using biomimetics analogies with nature. It is argued that while resource levels change along the life of a new venture, at some thresholds radical changes are more likely to occur. Findings so far suggest existence of thresholds of internal resource-levels and of resources to the environment in which the venture operates that may trigger radial changes in strategy. The mechanism appears to resemble similarities in nature.
