Boundless

9Shared Success: Experiences | Technologies | Business Models

“There is symbiosis at every single level of living things, and you cannot compete in a zero-sum game with creatures upon whom your existence depends.”

—Richard Powers (2020)

We opened the introduction of this book with a discussion of Chef José Andrés and his crisis-relief organization, World Central Kitchen (WCK). We started there because he so neatly encapsulates the Boundless mindset and the kind of value outcomes that all leaders and all organizations, regardless of industry and classification, can achieve when they design themselves and their offerings on the Boundless principles we have laid out across Chapters 3–8.

Chef Andrés has shown us that there is a model for providing relief that operates on a different premise to the conventional one. The premise is not about the efficient use of an organization's own resources, maximizing output and minimizing unit cost. It is about the effective use of an ecosystem's resources, maximizing value for all of its members. It scales differently, with greater flexibility and adaptability, and can work alongside the traditional model in some cases and perhaps even replace it in others.

Production is decentralized and distributed, marshaling community-based resources—namely, local restaurants—with their existing infrastructures built specifically to serve and feed the local community. It can be scaled up and, crucially, scaled down as needed without significant cost ...