A while back, I came across a great article by Aidan McCullen, the host of the excellent Innovation Show podcast, about Stresswood.
In an Arizona research facility called Biosphere 2, opened in 1991, researchers tried to create a completely sealed-off ecosystem to see if a man-made biosphere could produce enough fresh water, oxygen and ecosystem growth to support a human population. Inside the domes, researchers also found that they could study ways to improve how trees grow.
They found that due to the sheltered conditions (the domes for example blocked out all natural wind), some types of trees grew much faster than they would in the wild.
However, while they would grow much faster, they were also much more likely to break, fall over and die when they reached maturity.
What was causing trees which apparently had ideal conditions to develop, and showed to grow faster, to die so much younger?
Stresswood
When certain types of trees grow in challenging conditions, such as where there is significant wind which bends their trunk and branches, those areas which are affected by the stresses grow differently. They develop harder, denser wood, called reaction wood or stresswood.
This results in a tree trunk with wood which is not uniform, and sometimes misshapen.
However, this also makes the tree more resilient to future stresses, such as not breaking in further winds.
Without these strong parts, the tree may have grown faster, but it is also more fragile and prone to breaking when conditions become harder.
So the stresses which the tree endured growing up are exactly what makes it resilient to change and stresses in the future.
Growing too fast
I like this metaphor for antifragility which applies just as well to companies and people, as it does to trees.
Some startups think that the only way to become successful is to grow as fast as is possible when the market is going well, literally pushing recruitment, marketing and everything to their limits. In some cases, when venture capital money was easily available, this was possible, and resulted in many companies growing to “unicorn” status in only a few years.
However, when conditions change, such as when interest rate increases make venture capital and debt more expensive, these companies can rapidly tumble. This happened to me personally at one of my previous employers, who tried to double their headcount, only to let thousands of people go just weeks later when they began to miss revenue projections.
And even if the company does not collapse, growing so quickly can result in management structures and communications / administrative channels which had no time to be refined and improved so that they work at the larger scale. This results in a terribly ineffective place to work, where change is even harder than it needs to be.
People can also struggle if they grow up in “ideal” environments. There are countless examples of people who grow up privileged, but then struggle to adapt when they need to be more independent and they begin the face the challenges and stresses that come with everyday life.
Antifragility
“Antifragility” is a phrase to help explain how going through stresses and failures not only helps you accept change, it can actually make you stronger than you were before the stresses happened. It was coined in the book Antifragile.
The classic example is in muscle growth. When we lift weights past comfortable levels, our muscles actually get microscopic damage and small tears in their fibres. These tears and then healed, making the muscles larger and stronger than they were before.
In essence, antifragility goes beyond concepts like robustness, which are about being able to withstand challenges without breaking. Antifragility is about growing precisely because of those challenges to be stronger than beforehand.
So if a tree can become stronger and develop stresswood due to bending in the wind, how can you or your company become stronger thanks to the challenges you are facing now?
Creativity & Innovation expert: I help individuals and companies build their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you can develop the next breakthrough idea which customers love. Chief Editor of Ideatovalue.com and Founder / CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Author / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the most influential innovation bloggers.