Programmed death boosts business

Mimicking nature could help business survive the credit crunch

As credits crunch, recession bites, and business struggle to stay primed, researchers in Spain suggest that a more surgical approach to management and business practice is needed if a company is to survive. Writing in the International Journal of Management Practice from Inderscience Publishers, the team explains how businesses could take a cue from nature to them restructure.

Palmira López-Fresno of "STIGA" in Barcelona is working with Fernando Fernández-González of the Hospital Central de Asturias in Oviedo to demonstrate how a process analogous to apoptosis, or programmed cell death, could help companies, and organisations, such as hospitals, removed malfunctioning or ineffective parts of their business and operations and so prevent the spread of commercial decay that could spread throughout an organisation and lead ultimately to its demise.

Programmed cell death, known in biological circles as apoptosis, is a natural process in which damaged, diseased, or otherwise unwanted cells are stimulated to undergo spontaneous self destruction. Apoptosis is a very useful process. Under normal conditions, it models the foetus, allowing growing fingers to separate for form tiny hands, for instance. Apoptosis also allows the body to eradicate errant cells that could be destructive if left to their own devices. It also keeps cell replication in check and prevents the kind of runaway cell replication that would otherwise lead to cancer.

López-Fresno and Fernández-González explain that Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has become a fashionable and effective approach to increasing productivity through reduced process time and cost, improved quality, and greater customer satisfaction. The core emphasis of BPR is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business process to achieve dramatic improvements in critical areas, they say.