Rule of 3 and 10

Biological Parallel

The square-cube law dictates that at 3x scale, surface area can no longer support volume; at 10x, entire systems fail. A mouse scaled to elephant size would collapse under its own weight—bone strength increases with cross-section (radius²) while body mass increases with volume (radius³). Organizations hit the same mathematical wall: at 3x, coordination costs exceed linear scaling; at 10x, the original architecture becomes physically impossible. This isn't management failure—it's geometric inevitability.