ABSTRACT
Many experts of corporate strategy and innovation management focus on building systems that make it possible to run businesses under discontinuous conditions. Men and organizations are not helpless in front of complexity. Any living being which is not flexible enough, which is incapable of quick adaptation to changing conditions in its environment, will be unable to survive. Complex and rapidly changing environments require open and flexible structures to allow for re-orientation and radical change, and sometimes just allowing mere survival. Just like complex biological systems that constantly transform to adapt to the external environment and sometimes to create it, organizations are called upon to seize the moment and identify weak signals in time: this is why preserving flexibility is crucial. High reliability organizations (HROs) are resilient organizations par excellence, which routinely operate in turbulent environments and are, by nature, ready to face the unexpected.
