Companies
922 companies explored through the lens of biology
Most Mentioned in Books
Nintendo
Gaming & EntertainmentApple
Consumer Electronics / TechnologyNetflix
Entertainment / StreamingAmazon
E-commerce & Cloud ComputingToyota
Automotive ManufacturingBlockbuster
Video Rental & EntertainmentMicrosoft
Software & Cloud ComputingKodak
Photography / TechnologyAirbnb
Travel & Hospitality TechnologyJumia
E-commerceSpotify
Music Streaming / TechnologyIntel
Semiconductor ManufacturingBrowse A-Z
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Diversified Technology/Manufacturing
3M manufactures 60,000 products - from Post-it Notes to N95 respirators to semiconductor polishing slurries. That's not...
20th Century Fox
Entertainment
Film studio that purchased X-Men rights from Marvel for $2.6M (1994) and Fantastic Four rights (1986). Like Sony with Sp...
3M
Conglomerate / Manufacturing
Exemplar of early decentralization experiments (1970-1990) with divisional autonomy fostering innovation.
Apple
Consumer Electronics / Technology
Apple defied every Silicon Valley orthodoxy - and captured 80% of smartphone industry profits with 25% market share. The...
Amazon
E-commerce & Cloud Computing
Amazon mastered what kills most companies: strategic reallocation across time horizons. From 1997-2000, Jeff Bezos execu...
Airbnb
Travel & Hospitality Technology
Airbnb's origin story reads like a case study in biological stress response. In September 2008, three founders had $5,00...
Alibaba
E-commerce / Technology
Alibaba is a study in strategic symbiosis and territorial limits. When Jack Ma launched Taobao in 2003 to compete with e...
Airbus
Aerospace
Airbus proved that four weak players can beat one dominant incumbent - if the coalition is architected correctly. When t...
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Cloud Infrastructure
AWS is invisible infrastructure that makes the internet possible. The company provides compute (EC2), storage (S3), and...
Blockbuster
Video Rental & Entertainment
Blockbuster didn't fail because it missed Netflix. The company knew about Netflix, even considered acquiring them for $5...
Basecamp
Software / Project Management
Basecamp has operated with voluntary caloric restriction for 25 years. The company maintains 50-60 employees while servi...
BlackBerry
Mobile Phones & Software
In 2008, BlackBerry had an $84 billion market cap and 20% of the global smartphone market. By 2016, less than 1% market...
Boeing
Aerospace Manufacturing
Boeing held 80% of the commercial aviation market in 1970. By 2024, it had surrendered half that share to Airbus while t...
Berkshire Hathaway
Conglomerate / Insurance / Investments
Warren Buffett's genius isn't picking stocks - it's designing ecosystems. Berkshire Hathaway comprises 60+ wholly owned...
Best Buy
Retail Electronics
The electronics retailer that survived where Circuit City died - then learned that distributing power isn't the same as...
Carrefour Brazil
Retail
Carrefour Brazil illustrates the Red Queen hypothesis: you must adapt just to survive, not to win. The French hypermarke...
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Fast-casual Restaurant
Chipotle marketed 'Food with Integrity' while deferring $2.3 million in annual food safety investments. The 2015-2016 E....
Circuit City
Retail / Electronics
Circuit City was the second-largest electronics retailer in the United States with capital, infrastructure, and brand re...
Corning Glass
Materials Science / Glass Technology
A 170-year-old glass technology company that exemplifies institutional knowledge preservation. Corning's ability to acce...
Canon
Photography & Imaging
Canon is mentioned as one of the competitors that entered and dominated the digital photography market while Kodak - whi...
Catholic Church
Religious Organization
With 1.3 billion members globally, the Catholic Church operates the oldest continuously functioning fractal organization...
Disney
Entertainment & Media
Disney's $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009 looked expensive at the time. Marvel was a bankrupt comi...
Danone
Food & Beverage
French multinational food corporation with €27 billion revenue operating a fractal brand portfolio. The global corporate...
DoorDash
Food Delivery
DoorDash is mentioned as a beneficiary of Y Combinator's mycelial network - receiving technical support from Airbnb's in...
Danaher
Diversified Industrials & Life Sciences
Danaher demonstrates resource partitioning across life sciences, diagnostics, and environmental technologies. Vertical i...
Darktrace
Technology
Darktrace is a global leader in AI-powered cybersecurity. The company's Cyber AI platform uses machine learning to detec...
Dassault Systèmes
Technology
Dassault Systèmes is a French software company specializing in 3D design, simulation, and product lifecycle management....
eBay
E-commerce / Online Marketplace
How do you get millions of strangers to trust each other enough to exchange money for goods they can't see? eBay solved...
Enron
Energy Trading
Enron didn't fail because of accounting fraud. It failed because it built a despotic culture that made fraud inevitable....
e.l.f. Beauty
Cosmetics
e.l.f. Beauty is a cosmetics brand offering affordable, high-quality makeup, skincare, and beauty tools. The company mar...
E.ON
Energy
E.ON is one of Europe's largest energy companies, focusing on energy networks and customer solutions including electrici...
Eagle Bancorp
Regional Banking
Eagle Bancorp is the holding company for EagleBank, which provides commercial and consumer banking services in the Washi...
easyJet
Airlines
easyJet is one of Europe's largest low-cost airlines. Operating over 1,000 routes across 35+ countries, it focuses on po...
Ford Motor Company
Automotive Manufacturing
Ford invented the modern assembly line - and spent a century learning its limitations. From 1900-1970, Ford exemplified...
Fairfax Financial
Financial Services
Fairfax Financial acquired BlackBerry in 2016 after the company's failed attempt to compete in the smartphone market. Th...
Fairphone
Consumer Electronics
Fairphone is mentioned as an example of a company that designed modular smartphones for repairability at the seed stage,...
FedEx
Logistics/Delivery
FedEx built a billion-dollar business on costly signaling you can see from your window. Founded by Frederick Smith in 19...
Flipkart
E-commerce
Flipkart represents ecological succession in business form. Founded in Bangalore in 2007, the company emerged only after...
Freshworks
SaaS / Enterprise Software
Freshworks represents the climax stage of Bangalore's ecological succession - Indian SaaS unicorns selling globally from...
General Electric (GE)
Conglomerate / Industrial
GE was the world's most valuable company in 2000 - $500 billion market cap, Jack Welch on magazine covers, diversified a...
Technology / Search / Advertising
Google's dominance didn't come from better algorithms alone - it came from organizational innovations that maintained br...
General Motors (GM)
Automotive Manufacturing
The American automaker whose worst factory became Toyota's best - with the same workers. In the 1980s, GM's Fremont, Ca...
Grab
Technology/Transportation/Fintech
The ride-hailing startup that beat Uber by recognizing what multinational tech giants always miss: local markets aren't...
Groupon
E-commerce / Daily Deals
Groupon reached $1 billion in revenue faster than any company in history - 2.5 years. Forbes called it the fastest-growi...
General Electric (GE)
Industrial Conglomerate
General Electric was once America's most valuable company - $600 billion at its peak. By 2020, it was worth $100 billion...
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL)
Consumer Goods (FMCG)
Hindustan Unilever Limited exemplifies adaptive radiation in business - the rapid diversification that occurs when an or...
Hermès
Luxury Goods
Hermès spent its first 100 years on a single Paris street perfecting saddles and harnesses for horses. When the automobi...
Haier Group
Consumer Electronics / Home Appliances
China's largest appliance manufacturer ($55.9B revenue) that killed the org chart and replaced it with 4,000 competing m...
Hanseatic League
Trade Confederation (Historical)
The Hanseatic League, a 13th-century commercial confederation of German merchant guilds, demonstrates that symbiotic mes...
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL)
Consumer Goods (FMCG)
HUL demonstrates adaptive radiation identical to Darwin's finches. From one ancestor (Lever Brothers selling imported so...
Hollywood Video
Video Rental
Hollywood Video is mentioned as one of Blockbuster's traditional competitors. Blockbuster's selective membrane served th...
IBM
Enterprise Technology & Cloud Computing
IBM has survived 113 years by mastering what most companies can't stomach: killing its own businesses before they become...
Intel
Semiconductor Manufacturing
Intel created the x86 architecture in 1978 and spent four decades running the Red Queen's race - investing $15-20 billio...
IKEA
Retail / Furniture
IKEA demonstrates 80 years of phototropic discipline - systematically bending toward resource gradients while maintainin...
IDEO
Design Consulting
IDEO doesn't just design products - it operates as a brokerage topology that generates innovation through structural hol...
Infosys
IT Services
Infosys represents a pioneer species in the Bangalore ecological succession story. Founded in 1981, Infosys pioneered IT...
Instacart
Grocery Delivery / Gig Economy
Apoorva Mehta's 21st startup idea succeeded where his previous 20 failed because of germination timing, not a better ide...
Jumia
E-commerce
Jumia proves that 'best practices' from one environment can be lethal DNA in another. Launched in 2012 as 'the Amazon of...
Janus Henderson Group
Financial Services
Janus Henderson Group is a global asset management company offering investment solutions including equities, fixed incom...
JBS
Food Processing
JBS S.A. is the world's largest meat processing company, producing beef, pork, and poultry products with subsidiaries li...
JCPenney
Retail
American department store chain that serves as a cautionary tale about phototropism failure. In November 2011, JCPenney...
JD Sports Fashion
Retail
JD Sports is a leading retailer of sports fashion and outdoor brands. The company operates over 3,000 stores globally, s...
JD.com
E-commerce
JD.com is one of China's largest e-commerce companies, known for high-quality products and industry-leading logistics ne...
Kodak
Photography / Technology
In 1976, Steve Sasson demonstrated the world's first digital camera to Kodak executives. Thirty-six years later, the com...
Kickstarter
Technology / Crowdfunding
The crowdfunding platform that proved two biological insights: humans need recovery time, and commitment requires thresh...
Kadant
Industrial Machinery
Industrial termite colonies - machinery that breaks down wood fiber into paper pulp, separates waste from recyclables, a...
Kahoot
EdTech - K-12
Hijacks dopamine pathways like young dolphins learning through play - timed competition triggers cortisol spikes that bu...
Kaiser Aluminum Corporation
Aluminum
Mimics bird bone architecture - aluminum extruded into hollow tubes and rolled into sheets with strength-to-weight ratio...
Kajima Corporation
Construction
Builds like termite mounds rising from Japanese soil - coordinated teams assembling towers and tunnels from modular comp...
Lenovo
Computer Hardware & Technology
The Chinese tech company that built a global empire by absorbing what dying giants shed. Lenovo's strategy is elegant:...
Professional Networking / Social Media
LinkedIn's success came from understanding germination timing: launching early in the right environment beats launching...
Louis Vuitton
Luxury Fashion
Louis Vuitton was founded in 1854 to solve a practical problem - creating flat-topped, stackable trunks - but became a $...
LVMH
Luxury Goods
In 1984, Bernard Arnault bought Christian Dior and began building what would become the world's largest luxury goods com...
Lilium
Aerospace / Urban Air Mobility
German electric jet company that filed for bankruptcy twice - first in October 2024, then again in February 2025 after a...
L.E.K. Consulting
Management Consulting
Provides strategy consulting through pattern recognition across industries, identifying successful adaptations in one se...
Microsoft
Software & Cloud Computing
Microsoft's transformation under Satya Nadella represents one of the most successful metabolic pathway shifts in busines...
Marvel Entertainment
Entertainment & Media
Marvel filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 1996 with $700 million in debt after the comic book market collapsed. Inv...
McDonald's
Quick Service Restaurants
McDonald's represents the most successful example of asexual reproduction in business history. When Ray Kroc encountered...
Maersk Line
Shipping & Logistics
The world's largest container shipping company, headquartered in Denmark with 17% global market share and 700+ vessels....
Mercado Libre
E-commerce / Fintech
Mercado Libre ('Free Market'), founded by Marcos Galperin in 1999, became Latin America's e-commerce leader by solving t...
Meta/Facebook
Technology/Social Media
Social media and technology company that demonstrates effective decomposition through open-sourcing. When Facebook reduc...
Nintendo
Gaming & Entertainment
Nintendo is 135 years old. The company started making playing cards in 1889, pivoted to toys in the 1970s, and has survi...
Netflix
Entertainment / Streaming
Netflix has died and been reborn three times - DVD rental (1997-2007), streaming service (2007-2013), global content stu...
Nokia
Mobile Phones / Telecommunications
Nokia understood the iPhone's significance immediately in 2007 - and collapsed anyway. That's the lesson. The company he...
Novo Nordisk
Pharmaceuticals
Novo Nordisk did one thing for 100 years: diabetes. Not cancer, not cardiovascular, not general pharma. Just metabolic d...
Nissan
Automotive
Japanese automaker that was near bankruptcy in 1999 with $20B in debt and -3.5% operating margins before forming an alli...
Nikon
Photography & Imaging
Nikon is mentioned alongside Sony and Canon as competitors that captured the digital photography market while Kodak fail...
OPEC
Energy/Oil
Intergovernmental organization of oil-exporting nations formed in 1960 that demonstrates both coalition power and coalit...
Ocado Group
Technology
Ocado is a technology-focused online grocery retailer and solutions provider. The company operates automated warehouses...
Ogilvy & Mather
Advertising
One of the world's largest advertising firms, founded 1850 with modern form established by David Ogilvy in 1948. Ogilvy'...
Okta
Identity Management
Okta provides identity and access management with first-mover advantage in cloud-native identity. Platform economics thr...
Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd.)
Mobility & Technology
Ola is India's largest ride-hailing platform, competing with Uber in the Indian market and expanding internationally. Th...
OpenAI
Artificial Intelligence
OpenAI exemplifies r-selection in the AI ecosystem: rapid reproduction of models (7 families in 18 months), wide dispers...
Patagonia
Apparel - Outdoor
Patagonia proves that refusing to grow can be the most radical business strategy of all. Since 1973, founder Yvon Chouin...
Pfizer
Pharmaceuticals
Pfizer's 175-year history demonstrates five major phototropic pivots: chemicals to antibiotics (1940s), antibiotics to b...
Pixar
Animation & Entertainment
Pixar proves that creativity and structure aren't enemies - they're symbiotic. The most valuable animation studio in his...
PayPal
Financial Technology / Payments
PayPal's story is about strategic focus under pressure. During the 2000 dot-com crash, the company demonstrated what bio...
Philips
Health Technology
Philips is a Dutch health technology company with €18 billion revenue (2024) that has pursued circular economy principle...
Pinduoduo
E-commerce
Chinese e-commerce platform that became infamous when a 23-year-old female employee collapsed and died in December 2020...
Quibi
Streaming / Entertainment
Quibi raised $1.75 billion - the largest pre-launch funding for a media startup - with Hollywood royalty (Jeffrey Katzen...
Qualcomm
Semiconductors
Qualcomm exemplifies success as an ecosystem participant rather than keystone controller. As an ARM licensee, the compan...
Qualtrics
Enterprise Software/Experience Management
Experience management platform acquired by SAP in 2018 for $8 billion. Part of SAP's cloud branching strategy, now servi...
Renault
Automotive
French automaker that formed the groundbreaking Renault-Nissan alliance in 1999, investing $5.4B for a 36.8% stake in ne...
Royal FloraHolland
Agriculture / Floriculture
Royal FloraHolland exemplifies niche partitioning and cooperative infrastructure. The world's largest flower auction, ho...
Ratner's Group
Retail/Jewelry
Ratner's Group was Britain's largest jewelry retailer with 2,500 stores and £1.2 billion revenue when CEO Gerald Ratner...
Reliance Industries
Conglomerate (Energy, Petrochemicals, Retail, Telecom)
India's largest conglomerate with ₹9 trillion (~$110 billion) revenue, demonstrating vertical integration as fractal dep...
Roche Holding AG
Pharmaceuticals/Diagnostics
Roche invests $15+ billion annually in R&D - approximately 30% of revenue, among the highest in any industry. The Swiss...
Rakuten, Inc.
E-commerce & Technology
Rakuten is Japan's largest e-commerce platform and operates a diverse ecosystem of internet services including fintech,...
Spotify
Music Streaming / Technology
When Daniel Ek launched Spotify in Sweden in 2006, record labels viewed streaming as legalized piracy - micro-payments d...
Samsung
Conglomerate (Electronics, Shipbuilding, Insurance, Theme Parks)
Samsung is a $240 billion conglomerate spanning electronics, shipbuilding, life insurance, theme parks, and hotels - 270...
Stripe
Financial Technology / Payments
Stripe made payment integration take seven lines of code instead of six months and $100,000. But that simplicity require...
Shopify
E-commerce Platform & Technology
Shopify started when Tobias Lütke wanted to sell snowboards online and found every platform inadequate. So he built his...
Safaricom / M-Pesa
Mobile Financial Services
Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile operator, launched M-Pesa ('mobile money') in 2007, creating one of the most successfu...
SAP
Enterprise Software
The German software giant that maintained perfect apical dominance for 20 years - then nearly died because it couldn't p...
Toyota
Automotive Manufacturing
Toyota didn't invent the automobile - it built the most imitated operating system in business history. The Toyota Produc...
Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC)
Semiconductor Manufacturing
TSMC didn't invent semiconductors - it invented trust at scale. When Morris Chang proposed a pure-play foundry in 1987,...
Texas Instruments
Semiconductors
Texas Instruments plays two roles in the chapter: as the company that rejected Morris Chang's foundry model in 1985 (lat...
Theranos
Healthcare Technology/Biotech
Theranos raised $700 million, reached a $9 billion valuation, and partnered with Walgreens - all without working technol...
Trattoria Bella Vista
Restaurant
Chicago restaurant that exemplifies catastrophic knowledge transfer failure. Founded 1952, survived 63 years across thre...
Social Media
Twitter accidentally built the most powerful positive feedback engine in media history. What started as 'SMS of the inte...
Uber
Transportation / Ride-sharing
Uber achieved $130 billion valuation by experiencing ecological release - entering markets where normal predators (taxi...
Unilever
Consumer Goods
Unilever manages 400+ brands across 190 countries - an empire built on complementarity and modularity. Formed in 1929 fr...
United Airlines
Aviation
United Airlines solved the hardest communication problem in business - then forgot the lesson when it mattered most. On...
Ulta Beauty
Beauty Retail
Ulta Beauty combines prestige and mass beauty in one destination. Resource partitioning distinct from Sephora with mutua...
Under Armour
Athletic Apparel
Under Armour disrupted Nike's dominance through moisture-wicking technology. Predator-prey dynamics as Nike and Adidas c...
UniCredit
Financial Services
UniCredit is an Italian global banking group serving 25 million clients across Europe. The company provides commercial b...
Visa Inc.
Payment Networks / Financial Services
Visa isn't the biggest company in global commerce - it's the mechanism that makes global commerce work. Processing $14 t...
Volkswagen
Automotive
Volkswagen's Dieselgate scandal - 11 million vehicles with emissions-cheating software, $33 billion in fines - wasn't a...
Vale
Mining
Vale is a Brazilian multinational mining corporation and joint venture partner with BHP in the Samarco iron ore mine in...
Veolia Environnement
Environmental Services
Veolia Environnement is a French multinational operating water, waste, and energy services globally. With revenues of €4...
Volocopter
Aerospace / Urban Air Mobility
German electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) developer that filed for insolvency in December 2024, becoming the...
Valve Corporation
Gaming
Valve operates Steam gaming platform with first-mover advantage in digital distribution. Platform economics with 120+ mi...
WeWork
Real Estate / Co-working
WeWork became biology's most expensive teaching moment: a $47 billion cautionary tale about what happens when growth has...
Walmart
Retail
Walmart built the most efficient distribution system in retail history, then discovered efficiency has limits. From 38 s...
Technology/Social Media/Fintech
The messaging app that ate China - and reorganized an entire economy around its platform. Launched in 2011 by Tencent a...
Warner-Lambert
Pharmaceuticals
Pharmaceutical company acquired by Pfizer in 2000 for $90B. Warner-Lambert had its own established hierarchy with market...
Western Union
Financial Services
Western Union appears as a contrast to M-Pesa's mutualistic model. Traditional money transfer services like Western Unio...
Whole Foods
Organic Grocery Retail
Whole Foods serves as the case study for sexual reproduction in business - specifically, genetic recombination through M...
Y Combinator
Venture Capital / Startup Accelerator
Y Combinator doesn't just fund startups. It creates resource-sharing networks that function like underground fungal syst...
Yahoo
Internet / Media
In 2008, Microsoft offered $44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo. CEO Jerry Yang said no. In 2017, Verizon bought Yahoo's core...
Yara International
Agriculture/Fertilizer
Norwegian fertilizer company with revenues of $13.9 billion (2024) that has evolved from transactional fertilizer sales...
YouTube
Video Platform/Technology
Video platform hosting hundreds of millions of videos, enabling micro-niche content where even videos with dozens of vie...
Yum! Brands
Fast Food
Yum! Brands operates KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut with economies of scale through shared infrastructure. Resource parti...
Zappos
E-commerce / Footwear Retail
Zappos represents the epigenetic model of cultural inheritance in acquisitions. When Amazon acquired Zappos for $1.2 bil...
Zoom
Video Communications / SaaS
Eric Yuan founded Zoom in 2011 after leaving Cisco WebEx, detecting signals others missed: terrible video quality, deskt...
Zara (Inditex)
Retail / Fashion
Zara moves from design to store in 2-3 weeks. The industry average is 6-9 months. That speed premium isn't about fashion...
Zomato
Food Delivery / Technology Platform
Zomato is one of India's largest food delivery platforms, coordinating 300,000+ delivery riders serving 50+ million cust...
Zalando
E-commerce
Zalando is Europe's leading online fashion and lifestyle platform, offering products from thousands of international bra...
Zapier
Technology/Automation
Distributed-first automation company that designs remote work topology intentionally, emphasizing asynchronous communica...