Over the last ten years, the sciences of complexity and chaos, as well as new theories in biology, have not only overturned the way we view natural phenomena but also the way we understand the organization and management of businesses.

Theories of chaos help us better understand why businesses often develop defensive behaviors and resist changes, thereby reducing their adaptive capacity in a constantly changing environment. They also invite us to see uncertainty in a different light: not as a negative that should be avoided, but as a necessary anthropological condition for the emergence of the new.

Quantum theory highlights the inevitable participation of the observer in micro-atomic phenomena and, by analogy, the indelible influence of the observer on the social phenomena in which they are involved. Management is necessarily a participatory affair.

The theory of self-organization in physics emphasizes the spontaneous organization of systems that are engaged in energy exchanges with their environment and, by analogy, sheds light on how the production and diffusion of information in a social system similarly contributes to its reorganization.

The role of the leader in a closed system is relatively straightforward: to predict, to plan, and to give orders. The role of the leader in an open system is much more complex because it is more indirect: to inspire, to persuade, to be a catalyst for change, to create the context in which self-organization and creativity of their collaborators emerge.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]