Reading List · Foundational
Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life
A physicist's exploration of why size matters - from cities to companies to organisms
"Companies are more like organisms than cities. They're not open-ended. They have a finite lifespan."
- Geoffrey West
Why It Matters
West's work demonstrates that scaling laws aren't metaphors - they're mathematical constraints that govern biological and organizational systems. His research on why companies die while cities persist is foundational to understanding organizational sustainability.
Key Ideas
- Metabolic rate scales with body mass to the 3/4 power across all organisms
- Cities exhibit superlinear scaling - doubling size increases output by 115%
- Companies scale sublinearly and eventually die, unlike cities
- The same mathematical laws govern phenomena across vastly different scales
How It Connects to This Framework
Book 7 (Scale & Complexity) draws heavily on West's scaling laws. Concepts like Kleiber's Law, metabolic scaling, and the mathematics of growth are directly informed by this work.