Most frameworks explained in modern management are based on ideas which germinated from a nucleus, a eureka moment, a genesis, a drawing board or a board room in a linear fashion. Maturing such ideas into tangible results necessitated hierarchy, a chain of command that prioritized resources with the aim of optimization of operations and maximization of profit. The proliferation of such a metaphorical “Tree” structure fitted perfectly within a collective thinking regime of cause and effect that typified success or failure of a plan. An organization chose stability as the pivot around which required core competence was built.

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The advent of Industry 4.0 challenged the “Tree” model of organization. The digitally born incumbents (as well as a few from the old economy) built a new set of competence by reimagining life horizontally, not as a bottom-up process of development but as a decentralised movement in both directions. The DNA for these organizations preordained Insight (resilience) as the intent of organizational learning over the classical choice of Knowledge (stability). This new organization design typified the character of a Rhizome (a continuously growing horizontal underground stem which puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals, viz. lilies and water hyacinths). In such organizations all elements are interconnected and intersect while remaining independent of each other. The Internet for instance, has a Rhizome structure, a limitless possibility of a network whose parts are endlessly connected to each other with no beginning and no end.

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What good are roots if you can’t take them with you?

-Gertrude Stein