Questions
Start with the problem you're trying to solve
Instead of browsing by topic, start with the question you're actually trying to answer. Each question connects to the biological mechanisms, heuristics, and frameworks that can help you think through it.
Growth & Scale
Questions about when and how fast to grow, and what changes as you scale
How fast should I grow?
It depends on environmental stability. Unstable markets reward fast, experimental growth (r-selection). Stable markets reward slow, quality-focused growth (K-selection). The question isn't 'how fast?' but 'what kind of environment am I in?'
Explore answer →When does complexity become a liability?
Complexity becomes a liability when coordination costs exceed the benefits of integration. Biology shows that scaling requires structural changes - not just more of the same. At certain thresholds, you need modular architectures, hierarchical organization, and specialized subsystems.
Explore answer →Organization
Questions about structure, teams, incentives, and coordination
What's the right team size?
Team size should optimize for coordination cost vs. capability. Small teams (5-8) minimize coordination overhead but limit capability. Larger teams increase capability but with diminishing returns per person. The 'right' size depends on task complexity and interdependence.
Explore answer →When should I centralize vs. decentralize?
Centralize when consistency, efficiency, and global optimization matter more than speed and local adaptation. Decentralize when speed, local knowledge, and experimentation matter more than consistency. Most organizations need both - the question is what to centralize and what to decentralize.
Explore answer →How should I structure incentives?
Align individual incentives with organizational outcomes through skin in the game. Those who make decisions should bear the consequences. But beware of metrics that can be gamed - good incentive systems measure outcomes, not activities, and include mechanisms to detect gaming.
Explore answer →Competition
Questions about defensibility, competitors, and market dynamics
How do I build defensibility?
True defensibility comes from occupying a niche that competitors cannot easily occupy - through network effects, accumulated advantages (data, brand, trust), ecosystem lock-in, or continuous adaptation that stays ahead of competition. The strongest moats often come from making yourself essential to an ecosystem, not just hard to copy.
Explore answer →When should I compete vs. cooperate?
Compete when you're fighting for the same scarce resource and cooperation wouldn't increase the total available. Cooperate when the combined value exceeds what either party could capture alone, and when cheating can be detected and punished. Most business relationships involve elements of both.
Explore answer →How do I respond to disruptive competitors?
First, determine if the disruption is real (are they actually serving a growing need better?) or illusory (different segment, not actually competitive). If real, your response depends on your assets: can you serve the new need better, or should you double down on what you do well and let some market go?
Explore answer →Sustainability
Questions about longevity, adaptation, and avoiding obsolescence
How do I balance short-term vs. long-term?
Maintain reserves for uncertainty while investing for growth. The ratio depends on environmental volatility - more uncertain environments require larger reserves. Never sacrifice the ability to survive a downturn for short-term efficiency, but also don't hoard resources that could compound if invested.
Explore answer →When should I pivot?
Pivot when the feedback signals that your current approach cannot succeed in the current environment - but distinguish between poor execution (fixable) and wrong strategy (fundamental mismatch). A pivot should be toward something you have evidence for, not away from something that's failing.
Explore answer →How do I avoid becoming obsolete?
Stay in the coevolutionary race. Your customers, competitors, and environment are constantly changing - you must change at least as fast to avoid falling behind. Build sensing mechanisms that detect early signals of change, and maintain the organizational capacity to respond.
Explore answer →Strategy
Questions about focus, diversification, and strategic choices
Foundations
Musings
Curious questions about biology that reveal surprising insights
Why do humans have earlobes, and why are they so stretchy?
Here's the thing about earlobes: they're the only part of your ear with no cartilage whatsoever. Just skin, fat, and the quiet resignation of evolution. They're basically biological afterthoughts - which is precisely why humans have spent 5,000 years poking holes in them. But the real question isn't why earlobes are stretchy. It's why ears exist at all. And the answer involves elephants using theirs as air conditioning units.
Explore answer →Why do we yawn, and why is it contagious?
Nobody actually knows why we yawn. This is genuinely embarrassing for science. We've sequenced the human genome and landed robots on Mars, but we cannot definitively explain why you're about to yawn right now just because I mentioned it. What we do know is that yawning is ancient, universal, and weirdly social - and that tells us something profound about how groups synchronize without anyone being in charge.
Explore answer →Why do we have an appendix?
For decades, the appendix was medicine's favorite example of evolutionary junk - a useless vestige of our leaf-eating ancestors, good for nothing except exploding and killing you. Turns out we were wrong. The appendix is a safe house. And understanding why changes how you think about 'unnecessary' redundancy in any system.
Explore answer →Why do we get goosebumps?
Your body is trying to make you look bigger to scare off a predator. This would be a perfectly reasonable response if you were a porcupine, or a cat, or literally any mammal with fur. You are not. You are a largely hairless ape whose skin is attempting an intimidation display that hasn't worked in about five million years. The predator is not intimidated. The predator, if it existed, would be confused.
Explore answer →Why do we hiccup?
The leading theory - and this is genuinely the leading theory, not a fringe position - is that hiccups are a vestigial reflex left over from when our ancestors breathed through gills. You are experiencing a 370-million-year-old breathing pattern for underwater respiration. Your body has not noticed that you are no longer a fish. There is no cure. Medicine's official position is 'wait.'
Explore answer →Why do some people sneeze when they look at the sun?
Between 18 and 35 percent of humans will sneeze when exposed to bright light. This is a heritable genetic trait that serves no known purpose, confers no known advantage, and has no known explanation. Scientists have named it ACHOO syndrome - Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst. They named it this on purpose. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Explore answer →Why do we blush?
Humans are the only species that blushes. Darwin called it 'the most peculiar and most human of all expressions,' and then spent considerable effort trying to figure out why evolution would install an involuntary confession system in our faces. He never solved it. Neither have we. You are equipped with a face that automatically betrays your internal state to anyone watching, and no one knows why.
Explore answer →Why are scientists shooting mushrooms into space?
In 1997, cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir discovered something unsettling. Fungi were everywhere. Growing on the air conditioners. Corroding the control panels. Digesting the window seals. The same organism that colonises your shower grout had followed humanity into orbit and was methodically eating a spacecraft. NASA's response to this crisis? They are now deliberately launching mushrooms into space. The thing that nearly destroyed Mir might be exactly what we need to build on Mars.
Explore answer →Why do moths fly into flames?
Moths navigate by the moon. They evolved to keep a celestial light source at a constant angle - a strategy that works beautifully when the only bright light in existence is 384,400 kilometres away. Then humans invented fire. The moth's navigation system, honed over 190 million years of nocturnal evolution, suddenly became a suicide protocol. This is an ecological trap: when environmental signals that once reliably indicated 'good' now reliably indicate 'death.' The global electric vehicle industry just flew into one.
Explore answer →