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actor creates a change in the context and influences the subsequent
actions of all other actors. This is called co-evolution.
Monitoring Context

From a business perspective, this constant adaptation of
context explains the need for continuous monitoring of the context
and attempts by players to modify the context deliberately (called
strategy). Monitoring the context, and predicting the complex effects
of one's own actions and the actions of others is both difficult to pull
off and expensive in time, attention, and funding. Also, there is a
natural tendency to focus on one's own activities and underplay the
actions of others, particularly those that are part of your enacted
context where it is easy to assume one is fully briefed. Hence,
Research in Motion/Blackberry with a B2B mindset could be
blindsided by Apple coming out of 'left field' and redefining the
'smartphone' from a business tool to a consumer must-have art form
and a platform to reshape the world. It is easy to pay lip service to the
idea of monitoring the context; but, we 'see' that which we are
conditioned to see. So IBM engineers 'saw' the emergence of the
graphical user interface, but discounted it as less 'serious' than DOS.
Effect on Business Culture

The need to monitor and the need to adapt form the axes of, perhaps,
the most recognized classification of business culture; Quinn's
Competing Values Framework. Using a classic two-by-two matrix
Quinn et al defined four broad business cultures. A brilliant
framework, Quinn recognized that every firm of any size will contain
within it a mix of employees with different cultural preferences, but
that a firm overall will tend to one of the categories. The tool can be
used to raise awareness of the strategic implications of culture

Building Adaptation into the Business System

Task level
The latest trend to 'Agility' is the current attempt to build a capacity to
adapt into the task level of a system. Agility is rooted in the software
creation process and resolves the problem of endless opportunities to

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