Companies
2290 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 & EntertainmentKodak
Photography / TechnologyMicrosoft
Software & Cloud ComputingAirbnb
Travel & Hospitality TechnologyJumia
E-commerceY Combinator
Venture Capital / Startup AcceleratorSpotify
Music Streaming / TechnologyBrowse A-Z
Browse by Index
All Companies
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Diversified Technology/Manufacturing
On April 1, 2024, 3M completed the spinoff of Solventum, its $8 billion healthcare business. Shareholders received one S...
100 Thieves
Esports
This esports organization behaves like peacocks displaying elaborate plumage—investing heavily in branded apparel and co...
10x Genomics
Biotechnology
Like a microscope that finally revealed cells, 10x Genomics tools let researchers see individual cells within tissues. T...
1520
Quick Commerce
Like a peregrine falcon diving at prey, 1520 compresses delivery time to 15-20 minutes through pre-positioned micro-ware...
15Five
Technology
Performance management software that mimics the continuous feedback loops in immune systems—constant small adjustments p...
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...
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...
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 bu...
Best Buy
Retail Electronics
The electronics retailer that survived where Circuit City died - then learned that distributing power isn't the same as...
BHP Group
Mining & Resources
At 42,000 employees and $146 billion market cap, BHP operates like a superorganism coordinating resource extraction acro...
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 / AI Infrastructure
A 175-year-old glass technology company that exemplifies both institutional knowledge preservation and adaptive radiatio...
Canon
Photography & Imaging
When Kodak invented digital photography in 1975, it faced a classic signal transduction failure: detecting environmental...
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
Danone operates €27 billion revenue across 100,000 employees in 140+ countries through four divisions: dairy (Activia, A...
DoorDash
Food Delivery
DoorDash processed $80 billion in gross order value across 2.6 billion orders in 2024, generating $10.72 billion in reve...
D2L
EdTech - LMS
D2L's Brightspace learning platform adapts like neural plasticity - reshaping educational pathways based on how students...
Dabur India
FMCG
Dabur packages Ayurvedic medicine like plants encoding chemical defenses in compounds. Its consumer products extract tra...
Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering
Shipbuilding
Daewoo builds vessels like coral polyps secreting calcium carbonate shells - slow accretion of steel plates welded into...
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-Mart
Retail
South Korean retail giant competing with e-commerce—hypermarket format blending grocery and general merchandise like omn...
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
After energy generation and distribution separated through regulatory unbundling, E.ON became Europe's circulatory syste...
E2open
Supply Chain Software
Supply chain software connecting manufacturers to suppliers—mycelial networks transmitting signals across industrial eco...
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 commands 48% of India's e-commerce market by gross merchandise value as of mid-2025, outpacing Amazon India's 3...
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
General Motors produced 189,000 battery electric vehicles in North America during 2024 yet simultaneously shut down its...
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 Motors
Automotive Manufacturing
General Motors held the #1 global automaker position for 77 years - until it didn't. The company that defined industrial...
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL)
Consumer Goods (FMCG)
HUL demonstrates adaptive radiation identical to Darwin's finches, with one critical enhancement: the ability to rapidly...
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...
Hollywood Video
Video Rental
Hollywood Video is mentioned as one of Blockbuster's traditional competitors. Blockbuster's selective membrane served th...
HP
Technology & Printing
HP is mentioned briefly as the company that dominated the printer market when Kodak attempted a late pivot from photogra...
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
With 320,000 employees and $19.3 billion in FY25 revenue, Infosys demonstrates how pioneer species create conditions tha...
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...
J.Crew
Retail - Apparel
J.Crew's 2020 bankruptcy was the first major retail casualty of COVID-19, demonstrating how weakened companies die first...
JAFCO
Venture Capital
JAFCO is Japan's institutional memory of venture capital—founded in 1973, it has witnessed and survived every boom-bust...
Janus Henderson Group
Financial Services
Janus Henderson Group is a global asset management company offering investment solutions including equities, fixed incom...
Japan Airlines (2010)
Aviation
Japan Airlines' 2010 bankruptcy was the largest non-financial corporate failure in Japanese history - ¥2.3 trillion ($25...
Jawbone
Consumer Electronics
Jawbone's 2017 liquidation ended a hardware company that raised $930 million but never achieved sustainable sales. The c...
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
US$69.1 billion in revenue for fiscal 2024/25—a 21% leap and the second-highest in company history—validates Lenovo's sc...
Professional Networking / Social Media
LinkedIn's success came from understanding germination timing: launching early in the right environment beats launching...
Louis Vuitton
Luxury Fashion
LVMH reported €84.7 billion revenue in 2024 despite 2% year-over-year decline, with Louis Vuitton maintaining alpha stat...
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
Retail & Technology
Ocado is a technology-focused online grocery retailer and solutions provider. The company operates automated warehouses...
Occidental Petroleum
Oil & Gas
The largest Permian Basin acreage holder produces 800,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from the formation alone—ter...
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 began in 2010 as a Bangalore taxi-booking service and evolved into India's most ambitious mobility organism - a case...
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 achieved the impossible in 2020—partnering with BioNTech in January, investing $2 billion at-risk before approval...
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 transforms through controlled autophagy. The Dutch health technology company generates €18 billion in annual rev...
Pinduoduo
E-commerce
Pinduoduo mastered what Amazon discovered: the same organism can run fundamentally different metabolisms in separate env...
Quibi
Streaming / Entertainment
Quibi raised $1.75 billion - the largest pre-launch funding for a media startup - with Hollywood royalty (Jeffrey Katzen...
Qualcomm
Semiconductors
When mobile phones consumed too much power for x86 chips, Qualcomm's ARM-based processors filled an ecological niche Int...
Qualtrics
Enterprise Software/Experience Management
Ryan Smith and his co-founders built Qualtrics from 2002, creating the 'experience management' category. SAP acquired it...
Quiznos
Restaurants - Fast Casual
Quiznos' 2014 bankruptcy followed years of decline from 5,000 locations to under 1,000, illustrating how franchise confl...
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
Gerald Ratner destroyed £500 million in shareholder value in April 1991 with a single sentence. Speaking to 6,000 Instit...
Reliance Industries
Conglomerate (Energy, Petrochemicals, Retail, Telecom)
India's largest conglomerate with ₹9 trillion (~$110 billion) revenue demonstrates vertical integration as fractal depth...
Roche Holding AG
Pharmaceuticals/Diagnostics
Roche's $68.3 billion revenue (2024) flows from a mutualistic integration unmatched in pharma: pharmaceuticals ($46.2B)...
RadioShack
Electronics Retail
RadioShack's slow death across two bankruptcies (2015, 2017) and ultimate liquidation illustrates how an organism can lo...
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
A €34.18 billion enterprise software organism operates as ecosystem engineer at global scale, where 77% of transaction r...
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 made a decade-long bet on 300mm wafer manufacturing when competitors hesitated, investing $5-7 billion...
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...
Unilever
Consumer Goods & FMCG
Unilever generated €60.8 billion revenue in 2024 ($65.7B USD), up 1.9% with 4.2% underlying sales growth driven by 2.9%...
United Airlines
Aviation
United Airlines solved the hardest communication problem in business - then forgot the lesson when it mattered most. On...
UBS Group AG
Banking
UBS absorbed rival Credit Suisse for CHF 3 billion (March 2023) in a state-brokered rescue, instantly creating a financi...
Ulta Beauty
Beauty Retail
Ulta Beauty's 2024-2025 performance demonstrates resource partitioning mastery—occupying the niche between Sephora's pre...
Ultimate Electronics
Retail
Ultimate Electronics' 2011 liquidation closed a chain of 46 electronics stores after years of decline. The company compe...
Under Armour
Athletic Apparel
Under Armour generated $5.7 billion revenue in fiscal 2024, down 3% as the brand retreated from mass-market competition...
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...
Volocopter
Aerospace / Urban Air Mobility
German electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) developer that filed for insolvency in December 2024, becoming the...
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...
Valero Energy
Refining
Fifteen refineries spanning the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom process 3.2 million barrels per day—metabolic...
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...
Watson Health
Healthcare Technology
IBM Watson Health was IBM's healthcare AI division, launched in 2015 with the acquisition of health data companies Phyte...
Western Union
Financial Services
Western Union generated $4.1 billion in revenue for 2024 (up 1% on reported basis), but the headline figure masks metabo...
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...
Yalla Group
Social Media
Yalla Group is a leading voice-centric social networking and entertainment platform in the Middle East and North Africa....
Yara International
Chemicals & Agriculture
The Norwegian state owns 36.2% of a company that does for agriculture what rhizobia bacteria do for legumes: fix atmosph...
Yik Yak
Social Media
Yik Yak's 2017 shutdown collapsed an anonymous social app that once achieved $400 million valuation. The app spread vira...
YouTube
Video Platform/Technology
Video platform hosting hundreds of millions of videos, enabling micro-niche content where even videos with dozens of vie...
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
Fashion platforms face the paradox of abundance: more inventory attracts more customers, but excess choice paralyzes dec...
Zapier
Technology/Automation
Distributed-first automation company that designs remote work topology intentionally, emphasizing asynchronous communica...