Strawberry

Wild strawberries spread via stolons - above-ground runners that produce new plants at their tips. A single parent plant can produce dozens of stolons per season, each rooting to form new rosettes that then produce their own stolons. The clonal network can spread meters per year with minimal investment per new plant.

The stolon strategy differs from rhizome strategy in visibility and vulnerability. Stolons run above ground, making them faster to deploy but more exposed to damage. A stolon can be severed without killing parent or daughter, unlike connected rhizome systems. Each rooted stolon quickly becomes independent - clone as franchise rather than clone as integrated organism.

Strawberry's strategy includes sexual reproduction as well. When stolons are insufficient - when the clone needs genetic diversity or long-distance dispersal - the plant flowers and produces fruit. Birds disperse seeds far beyond stolon range. The plant hedges between clonal dominance of nearby space and sexual colonization of distant opportunities.

The business insight is that modular expansion with independent units creates different risk profiles than integrated expansion. Strawberry's stolons create independent plants quickly; damage to one doesn't threaten others. Companies that expand via franchising, licensing, or spin-offs create similarly independent units - the parent-offspring relationship is transient, and failure of one doesn't cascade.