The Robust Company
Hamant, O., Charbonnier, O. & Enlart, S. (2025). L’Entreprise robuste. Pour une alternative à la performance. Odile Jacob
Our opinion
This month, we have selected a book that explores what might constitute the “robustness” of companies in the face of the violent fluctuations of the world to come. It argues for a radical rethinking of the current model of robustness — one grounded in economic health and, ultimately, in “performance”. The book examines possible alternatives and turns to the example of living systems, which have endured 3.5 billion years of turbulence thanks to a robustness built on the interplay between stability and adaptability. Its central thesis is that this form of robustness is not only independent from the need for performance, but actually founded on non-performance. Drawing inspiration from living systems would therefore mean fundamentally rethinking our economies and societies to break free from their addiction to performance. The book discusses the validity, realism, and social acceptability of such a perspective. It is not without contradictions or debatable assertions, but it genuinely stimulates reflection—and we strongly recommend reading it.
Our Summary
This month’s recommended reading is a book published by Éditions Odile Jacob in January 2025, titled L’entreprise robuste (The Robust Company), with the subtitle For an alternative to performance. It is co-authored by three writers:
- Olivier Hamant, a biologist and researcher at INRAE (the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment), who also directs the Michel Serres Institute.
- Olivier Charbonnier, CEO of the Interface Group and co-founder of Dsides, who advises organizations on transformations in how we work and learn.
- Sandra Enlart, research director in education sciences at Paris Nanterre University. She has also been a professor at the University of Geneva and CEO of Entreprise & Personnel, an HR network association.
The book offers a reflection on what constitutes — or could constitute — the “robustness” of companies in the context of the profound and turbulent fluctuations of our times. Its central thesis revolves around the tension, and therefore the inevitable trade-off, between “performance” and “robustness”, metaphorically illustrated through the history and logic of living systems.
Introduction
In the introduction, performance is defined as the sum of effectiveness (a system’s ability to achieve its objectives) and efficiency (its ability to do so with the fewest possible resources). For the authors, robustness is the system’s capacity to maintain itself in a stable state (in the short term) and a viable one (in the long term), despite fluctuations.
Once we accept this chosen terminology (to which the authors return later), the book raises a question that feels more urgent than ever — no pun intended: what can generate the resilience — or rather, the “robustness” — of companies in the face of the violent disruptions ahead? And can we take inspiration from living systems, which have survived 3.5 billion years of extreme transformations in their environments — climatic, chemical, and geological alike?
Chapter One
The first chapter begins by reminding us that humanity has never before experienced the kinds of fluctuations that lie ahead. Agriculture and sedentary life, which are at most 10,000 years old, developed during the Holocene — an anomaly of climatic stability. The coming fluctuations will be socio-ecological in nature and will affect every facet of our civilization: economic, financial, social, and geopolitical. The authors also underline how inadequate our current societal response is, comparing the impact of the warnings issued by the IPCC, IPBES, or IUCN to the distracted indifference that greets the “brace, brace” instruction during airplane safety demonstrations.
The chapter then offers explanations for this twofold observation and explores its societal implications. The central explanation is what the authors call the performance trap. In seeking to secure its living conditions against predators and to go beyond mere subsistence, humanity mastered fire, invented pottery, and domesticated animals — thus creating a degree of abundance. Yet, as the authors note, “biology shows that living beings generally respond to resource abundance through competition”. Competition, in turn, drives the pursuit of ever-greater performance — through rationalization and innovation, through the boundless exploitation of resources, and through forms of domination aimed at increasing and capturing social surplus by means of coercion. Performance and abundance thus enter into a dynamic of mutual amplification, one that became exponential with the Industrial Revolution and capitalism, and later with its successive variants: liberalism, neoliberalism, and ultraliberalism. Like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, “the race for optimization has no finish line”. The societal implications include the ongoing development of productivist autonomy and an overexposed availability of individuals —eroding what the authors call the “last frontier” (the home and the body) — all within paradoxically expanding systems of indirect control, intensified by digitalization and, more recently, by artificial intelligence.
Chapter Two
In contrast, the second chapter offers a very interesting summary of the mechanisms of robustness in living systems. Rather than engaging in a constant struggle against nature, exhausting resources through predation, and fostering generalized competition, life is built on interaction with and adaptation to the environment, circular exchanges, and cooperation. Contrary to the widespread fascination with the supposed efficiency and effectiveness of living systems, and contrary to what the current excitement around biomimetic design and innovation might suggest, life is — except in a few cases—not performant. The vast majority of species operate on solar energy, either directly (photosynthetic organisms) or indirectly (all others). Yet, the efficiency of photosynthesis — the conversion of solar energy into metabolic energy — is generally less than 1%. The rest of the food chain is hardly more efficient: energy loss at each successive level (herbivores, carnivores) is around 90%. Therefore, “life is not performant at all”, and this is precisely “because it has created conditions in which waste is not a problem”: all the biomass produced reenters the living cycle.
This leads to the argument that underpins the book’s central thesis: “the robustness of living systems is built against performance”, starting at the molecular level. Here, the authors summarize the many forms of energetic “waste” present in life: the predominance of heterogeneity (“diversity is the hallmark of life”), redundancies, numerous uncertainties, delays, and slow cycles (e.g., hormonal cycles) that generate phase shifts; “errors at every turn. Random mutations in proteins of the immune system make them more or less effective, but it is precisely this diversity that enables them to respond to unexpected pathogens”.
An important point follows: “In living networks, there are numerous amplification loops, which allow for high reactivity […], but these amplification loops are always paired with inhibitory loops. It is a bit like having your foot on both the brake and the accelerator at the same time. What could be the evolutionary advantage of such biological incoherence? It […] allows for oscillating behaviors that can not only stabilize internal dynamics but also resist external fluctuations”.
The following paragraphs draw several potential lessons from this analysis of living systems. For example:
- “The study of life tells us that the best shield against an unstable world is not consolidation, but perpetual inconsistency and contradictions.”
- “Living systems do not avoid fluctuations; on the contrary, they exist through and for fluctuations. To be alive is to be variable.”
- “In the short term, stability is indeed favored by low-performance behaviors that feed robustness. In the long term, it is no longer stability but viability that is favored by the same mechanisms.”
- “Performance makes sense in a stable world, with abundant resources and peace. It has no meaning in an unstable world, one with resource scarcity, or in a state of conflict. We will not be able to inhabit the turbulent world ahead with more performance. We should not respond to the negative consequences of performance with more performance. Paradoxically, it is performance itself that fosters conservatism, trapping us in a comfortable and secure short-term path, yet one that is fragile in the medium term.”
Chapter Three
This chapter provides a sort of inventory of current corporate adaptation and risk management mechanisms. It begins with the observation that one should not naïvely oppose the fragilizing performance of companies to the non-performance of living systems, which generates their robustness. Companies are far from operating optimally or achieving very high performance. More often than not, they exhibit endemic inefficiency, and sometimes even absurd functioning. This kind of non-performance does not generate robustness.
Admittedly, in terms of adaptation, organizational and managerial models focused on flexibility have multiplied in recent decades, both to meet market flexibility requirements and to secure production systems: “project-based organization, agile methods, simplification initiatives.” Yet the results often fall short of the promises and reflect flexibility rather than robustness. “The aim is still high productivity and competitiveness”, while taking “into account certain unstable parameters in the economic equation”.
So, is risk management the true antidote to turbulence? The answer is no, because “the unprecedented socio-ecological crisis we are experiencing is primarily one of slow risk.” Changes — even violent ones — to ecosystems (e.g., agricultural land consolidation) only result in negative feedback for humans long afterward. Risk management tools are not designed to operate on such long time horizons. They break risks down into multiple categories, losing sight of their systemic interactions. They accumulate constraints around known risks, thereby rigidifying corporate operations at the expense of adaptability in a hyper-fluctuating world..
The chapter concludes by questioning the role of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility): is it a true avenue to integrate social and environmental responsibility into corporate risk portfolios, or is it more of an opportunity to optimize brand image and tax reporting? In a well-argued discussion, the authors find — unsurprisingly — that the answer leans toward the latter, whereas it urgently should aim for the former.
Comment by Jean Pariès, editor of this reading recommendation
The reader becomes aware, in the course of this discussion, that a certain ambiguity surrounds the notion of risk in this chapter. Which system, which disturbances—and which associated risks — are being referred to when discussing the “robustness” of companies? Are we talking about their economic survival? The consequences of the ecosystemic crisis (for example, the rise of NaTech risks)? The harm they themselves inflict on the environment and society through their activities? This is not specified. One gets the impression that it is all of these at once, without any explanation of how these risks relate to one another.
However, at the level of an individual company, all of these risks indeed coexist, and there is therefore not one but several forms of “robustness”, partially in conflict. Companies must arbitrate between these different robustesses to find a “resilient” compromise (optimizing their chances of survival). The logic of this arbitration is necessarily first and foremost chrono-logical: no one can survive in the long term without first surviving in the short term.
And in the vast majority of cases, short-term survival relies on economic performance. This, at a higher level, indeed undermines the sustainability of that economy. Tragedy of the commons: no one wants to die sustainably…
Chapter Four
This chapter addresses the book’s central question: “Is the analogy between living systems and companies relevant?” In other words, “Could the robustness of living systems, built against performance, provide a new and stimulating perspective for rethinking how the world of business and work should approach its own transformation?” Up to this point, a positive answer had been strongly suggested, but the authors now seek to clarify the limits of the metaphor.
After recalling the appeal of the analogy within companies themselves — particularly in managerial training and various imported models (consultants, athletes, military, etc.) — the authors discuss the interest in thinking about (self-)organization and cooperation in the light of living systems. However, they also highlight the limits of the analogy — comparison is not reasoning — by describing the singularities of our socio-technical systems in relation to the logic of living systems.
“Interaction, circularity, and cooperation are three essential characteristics of living systems. The strength of these mechanisms lies in a self-organized system, without the need to impose a controlling hierarchy. […] So, can we imagine a company that operates by integrating, invisibly and without hierarchy, a kind of emergent program allowing for continuous adaptation? Could we, for example, consider that the core of managerial responsibility lies precisely in the design of this invisible programming?”
Several arguments against the analogy are presented. First, unlike humans and their societies, biological life is not teleological (it pursues no goal and follows no plan of action), even if its increasing complexity over time can, from an external perspective, give the illusion of purpose or design. Moreover, “what holds a social group together are myths, language, culture, norms, often inefficient or even absurd social habits, imagination, religions—in short, a series of behaviors and practices that have no justification in living systems.” Consequently, setting, for example, a scarcity goal to stimulate cooperation by mimicking living systems would “certainly not be realistic or desirable.” Furthermore, human institutions are never merely emergent outcomes of self-organization processes. They are always simultaneously the result of projects, design, decisions, power dynamics, and conflicts. Finally, the prospect of adopting the major characteristics of living systems — “chance, redundancy, waste, fluctuations, incoherence, slowness and hesitation, errors and imprecision, incompleteness and imperfection” — would pose significant challenges in terms of social acceptability. “Even in the name of a well-understood higher interest, how could one make acceptable in 21st-century society what can only be perceived as a regression, a social aberration, and a major source of inequality?”
The final section of this chapter is titled “Should we abandon the analogy with living systems?” As might be expected given the preceding arguments (though somewhat surprising in the context of the book so far), the answer is… rather “yes, we should abandon the analogy.” Yet it remains ambiguous: one should “instead use the rules of living systems as a means of intellectual openness and stimulation, in order to rethink business questions differently.”
Comment
In a collective work, it is often fruitful when an incomplete articulation of individual thoughts allows contradictions to surface and enables the reader to synthesize ideas independently. But here, a certain frustration diminishes that fruitfulness. The answer given to the question very clearly posed by the title of Chapter 4 is vague, and the prevailing impression is that a more explicit and open debate among the authors would have clarified the ideas, and at least the terminology.
Indeed, what does it mean to “establish an analogy” between a company and “living systems”? And which form of life is being discussed? Much of the “characteristics” of living systems described in this book pertain to biological life, mainly cells. But the discussion also touches on individual organisms (…the pistol shrimp and its giant claw…), animal societies (schools of fish, flocks of birds, insect colonies — “ants do not have corporate projects”), and, of course, companies, human societies, and even humanity as a whole and the Earth’s ecosystem.
It seems clear that with such changes in scale, potential “analogies” can only exist at the level of fundamental principles and very high levels of abstraction. It makes no sense to directly transpose the notion of “scarcity” in biological life into “scarcity of consumer goods” or “lack of public services”.
Chapter Five
This chapter then presents examples of organizations aiming for “robustness”. We will not elaborate on these examples here for reasons of space and refer interested readers to the book. However, the overall impression is one of a disconnect between the examples described and the application of the core principles of robustness — the analogy with living systems — as developed in the early part of the book. The case studies do indeed feature flatter hierarchies, greater self-organization, and a distancing from competitiveness obsessions, but in all cases, these are small-scale organizations with atypical status (cooperatives, villages, university laboratories). Their primary form of “robustness” lies in sustainability (circular economy, resource economy) rather than durability.
Chapter Six
This chapter revisits and condenses the transformations suggested by the analogy of living-system robustness for “Becoming a Robust Company”.
The first disruption is to “Derail”: opening decision-makers’ mental framework to a fluctuating world. It involves challenging the dominant idea among leaders that by becoming more efficient, larger, and stronger, a company automatically becomes more robust. This assumption only holds in a stable world with abundant resources. In a fluctuating world, profitability correlates primarily with robustness rather than performance. The chapter also emphasizes questioning products that are often absurd outcomes of performance and its deleterious consequences, such as violence. Leaders are encouraged to accept uncertainty, abandon the illusion of total control, value serendipity, and learn to “grow without expanding, to resist the temptation of growth at any cost.”
A second transformation involves reversing the spatial and temporal framework in which work and its organization have been structured since the Industrial Revolution. The increase in prescription and monitoring, along with the acceleration imposed by urgency, generates constraint and pressure, locking organizations into socio-ecological fragility and stagnation. It is necessary to allow buffer zones to emerge and create room for maneuver. The company may lose performance in the short term but will gain robustness. This requires changes in governance and managerial practices, moving toward a “deliberative company” in the sense of a place where collective deliberation takes precedence, emphasizing the common good and cooperation.
It also involves inverting the relationship between activities and the environment: in the world of performance, concern focuses on the impact of activities on the environment (sustainability issues); now the question should be reversed: the impact of the environment on our activities.
Species evolution also proceeds through the introduction of disruptions generated by random variations in genetic code and the selection of what is survivable. The robustness of living systems suggests “stopping the piling on of layers” of modernity (e.g., digitalization) on aging social structures, and “simplifying through and for cooperation” by rethinking organizational and production models to promote shared practices (designing shared tasks, adaptable rules, etc.). More broadly, it is about not avoiding fluctuations but building upon them, and promoting diversification.
Finally, the last suggested transformation inspired by the analogy with living systems is to “anchor activities in the local territory”, strengthen connections to local resources to secure supply chains, and reinforce interactions with the environment instead of distancing and artificially modifying it.
Conclusion
This book openly acknowledges that it has three authors. It does not claim to provide a fully synthesized vision of their thoughts, and retains some approximations, even contradictions.
We have already noted a certain ambiguity regarding the object of “robustness.” Is it about making companies individually robust in the face of major upcoming fluctuations (climatic, economic, geopolitical, etc.)? Or, symmetrically, about collectively integrating them into a civilizational paradigm shift capable of halting the march toward catastrophic fluctuations? These are not the same form of “robustness,” nor the same relationship to performance, nor the same interpretation of the analogy with living systems. This ambiguity may partly stem from a lexical problem. Speaking of “performance” (defined as a system’s ability to achieve its goals) in relation to living systems, which have no goals, presents a challenge. Similarly, opposing “performance” (defined as effectiveness + efficiency) to “robustness” is problematic when efficiency itself is a form of robustness (the invariance of effectiveness despite resource scarcity). These semantic approximations explain part of the difficulty in establishing the analogy between corporate robustness and the robustness of living systems.
Surprisingly, for a book inspired by biology, the authors take care to distinguish their approach strongly from the notion of “resilience”. Yet “resilience” is the established term in most relevant scientific disciplines (ecology, adaptive complex systems theory, safety sciences…) for what they call “robustness”: a system’s capacity to adapt, readapt, and survive in the face of all destabilizing factors. In contrast, “robustness” usually refers to the invariance of a systemic property with respect to a specific perturbation. In other words, resilience integrates trade-offs between different robustness requirements.
The literature on the resilience of complex adaptive systems describes most of the characteristics presented in this book: sub-optimality (rather than anti-performance) to generate and maintain margins, diversity, generation of deviations that create potentially virtuous diversity, dynamic and adaptable structure-function correspondence, homeostasis through compensation of fluctuations within the adaptation (or design) domain, “coping” mechanisms extending compensatory capacities, gradual rather than abrupt degradation of behaviors near the boundaries of the adaptation domain, the decisive role of cooperation, the ability to redefine the hierarchy of goals and values, the capacity for “sacrificial” decision-making (the firefighters’ “share of the fire”), and so on.
Yet in the managerial world, the term resilience seems to have been considerably diluted, primarily understood in its psychological sense. This is regrettable. But if, in order to capture managers’ attention, it must be replaced by the term robustness, perhaps we must accept this compromise.
So what does this book contribute that is new or different regarding the analogy between living systems and companies? It undeniably offers a deep reflection on the performance-robustness (resilience) relationship, a highly pedagogical exposition on the “non-performance” of living systems that indeed provokes thought, and a salutary discussion on the limits of the metaphor.
At the end of reading this work, which we strongly recommend, one is reminded of what the book itself says about living systems: it is their incompleteness, imperfection, approximations, and contradictions that constitute their strength.
