“Business is biology.”
	--The Wall Street Journal

Living Systems are ecosystems. They involve an ongoing interdependent relationship among the organisms and the environment. Success is based on cooperation, collaboration, creativity, and a sustained relationship of unified and interdependent parts. In Living Systems, the health of whole is dependent on the health of every part. Some obvious examples of Living Systems are your physical body, a meadow, a flowing river, the sandy dessert, a coral reef, a summer vegetable garden, and tide pools at the beach. The health of these Living Systems, like the summer vegetable garden, is governed by the same ageless, universal principles, whether the garden is in San Francisco, California; Boulder, Colorado; or Paris, France. Some of these universal principles are:

• The parts are interdependent and interconnected
• A change in one part of the system creates a change in the rest of the system
• The system has diversity
• The system is self-organizing 
• The system is continuously creating
• The parts are continuously communicating among each other across boundaries
• Power and authority is distributed 
• Parts are empowered to participate
• The needs of the different parts are continuously being negotiated
• The system is self-sustaining
• The parts are continuously transforming the environment they occupy
• The system has rhythmic growth cycles of death and rebirth
• Energy is efficiently conserved—there is no waste
• The system negotiates uncertainty
• Systems evolve from simple to complex, immature to mature