Until fairly recently, human beings weren’t that interested in the inner world of the octopus, unless it related to epicurean delights from Asia or the Mediterranean. We started to factor in the intelligence of these creatures back in 2008, when the German football team’s dependence on Paul the octopus to predict football pairings and results made the news.
Then, in 2020, South Africa got in on the act with Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed’s Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher, which inspired a sharp shift in consumer behaviour as viewers connected with the seeming intelligence and emotional capacity of the octopus. Opposition to commercial octopus farming grew, with Spanish researcher Pedro Domingues dashing these views as “fiction” and “all the fault of a Netflix documentary”, while slamming the South African documentary makers for speaking “without knowledge of the cause. There are those who say that since octopuses have three hearts, they suffer more. This is nonsense.”
Nonsense or not, plans for a 1 000-tank facility in Spain were recently abandoned following a five-year public campaign and increased consumer awareness of the distress caused by octopus farming.
Then, just to deliver the final body blow to anyone still sitting on the fence, American film star Sally Field’s Remarkably Bright Creatures was released, reaffirming what a growing body of evidence is claiming: that the octopus is sentient, intelligent, a consummate problem solver, and a master of transformation and regeneration.
Having survived five mass extinction events, including the meteor impact that claimed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the octopus has become “a master of rapid, continuous transformation”, according to the authors of AI And The Octopus Organization, futurist Jonathan Brill and strategic consultant Stephen Wunker. “When its environment was thrown into chaos, it changed its biological processes to thrive.”
Leading with three hearts
That’s not all the octopus – and its 330-million-year evolutionary headstart – has going on to intrigue and inspire human observers. The octopus is capable, according to researchers, of cooperating with other species – something many human managers are still battling to finetune within their own organisations and species. Plus, those three hearts that Domingues spoke of all have a distinct role to play while also having the capability to back each other up during crunch times.
Dipping a toe into the fascinating world of biomimicry, where humans learn from nature, Brill and Wunder make a case for an octopus-inspired management style – a three-hearts model, if you will – that would help the modern artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled organisation shift between management approaches as and when required.
First, the company’s analytical heart is the precise, data-led, reflective organ – and a logical place in which to lean on and incorporate AI. The agile heart gives that adrenaline boost when action is needed quickly – a good alliance point between AI speed and human decision-making autonomy and insight. The aligned heart keeps the organism pulling in the same direction – which, much like the Norwegian football fans’ “Viking row” during the recent World Cup, is best achieved with human firepower and an appreciation for culture and organisational purpose. The end result is a three-heart approach that makes room for new innovations, like AI, by adding malleability into decision-making and leadership.
Given the current rate of change and technological innovation in the world today, this evolutionary approach will, one assumes, stand these so-called “octopus organisations” in good stead when the next disruptor emerges, calling out for a new management style.
The octopus notion of “decentralised decision-making, real-time information flow, and adaptive leadership”, has certainly been well-received by the likes of Euro Beinat, global head of AI for Prosus Group and Naspers, who highlights how this “biological metaphor works well because it focuses on survival and adaptation, not just efficiency gains”. It’s a great example of biomimetic thinking as a means of transforming leadership and changing the way we manage and run our companies.
The question now hanging over exponents of nature-inspired insights is what happens when the challenge shifts or the environment changes again? Where do we as leaders look to next for inspiration? Do we seek to integrate the symbiosis of the deep-sea Pompeii Worm? The regenerative abilities of the African Spiny Mouse? Or the flexibility of the Spekboom?
If the story of octopus tells us one thing, it’s that adaptation never stops and evolution does not sleep. Neither should we.
