My upcoming book — The Complexity Paradigm: Using System Science to Drive Business Success — considers the effect of paradigms in business. While such paradigms are rarely discussed by those doing business, they are critical to all business efforts. Most critically, the traditional paradigms in business do not — and cannot — comprehend many issues which are critical for success. Fortunately, the complexity paradigm comprehends what traditional business science cannot.

To understand the business challenge, consider a key truth: Experienced business women and men know there is a chasm between how they have been taught business works and how it really works. Time after time they will have done what they “should” only to discover paths of “should” lead to mediocrity, at best, and often to failure.

There is, then, a vast chasm between what businesses expect and what those doing business encounter; between what academics claim and how business works; between what the press publishes or authors proclaim to sell books and the realities encountered by those in the trenches.

That this chasm is no smaller today than it was 70 years ago is a critical sign of paradigm failure — indicating the fundamental assumptions guiding business practice are in crisis. To be clear, in this context I use the term paradigm referring to sets of assumptions which are cultural artifacts — assumptions about how the world works which are shared within groups focused on an endeavor. That businesses take up these assumptions does not mean the paradigms make businesses healthier as they are often taken up because members benefit through career growth while their companies suffer.

Lists of what businesses “should” do, then, fail because the paradigms on which they are based are incomplete, false, and/or misleading. There is subtlety, though, in this failure. Many ideas taken into traditional paradigms of doing business are valuable in the right place and time. They do great damage, though, once assumed to be universal ways business works — when one business succeeding while “doing X” turns into a claim that every business who “does X” will be successful.

This error is not harmless. The efforts most critical to business health and success lie beyond the reach of today’s business paradigms.

Paradigms in Science

I did not lightly choose the term “paradigm” for these sets of cultural assumptions. Before committing to the idea I tried out other terms — like the idea of an “ontology” which I used in this blog post. Yet only the term “paradigm” effectively captures and communicates the powerful, but hidden and unspoken, assumptions which influence action within an area of endeavor.

That said, some may have encountered the term paradigm in fields like economics or mathematics where it refers to mental models taken up or set down at will. This application led to a business fad where managers claimed success with simple, overt “paradigm changes.” While practitioners can make tremendous progress shifting among models, these are merely models — they are not the deeply held paradigms which influence human action. The paradigms of which I write do not change in such simplistic and effortless ways and are often unknown by those who act on their ideas.

My use of the term owes a great deal to scientist and historian Thomas Kuhn and his blockbuster book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) — now one of the most highly referenced books in history. In that work, Kuhn documented the influence of hidden, unspoken, and deeply held assumptions within science and called these sets of assumptions paradigms. They become so deeply held that many scientists remain blind to the degree that assumptions dominate their work. In part, Kuhn noted that paradigms are not directly taught but are picked up through key examples (exemplars), by working with others, through feedback on research work, and even become embedded in scientific machinery.

Kuhn suggested most scientific effort is “normal science” — work which stays strictly within paradigm assumptions and extends the proven knowledge within that paradigm. Paradigms have tremendous value enabling this work. Yet he also found that scientific revolutions evolve when select groups of scientists struggle because paradigm assumptions no longer explain what is observed in the world. Out of such struggles scientists will discover they can only progress in understanding or describing how the world works with a new paradigm — an understanding of how the world works which had not been known or had been known but rejected.

The revolutions of Copernicus (1500s) and Newton (late 1600s), for example, led to dramatic changes in scientific paradigms. Note, though, that such revolutions are not instant and easily recognizable results. While a new paradigm eventually emerged from these (primarily) physics discoveries, it didn’t dominate science and public perception of science until after 1700.

Today — in 2026 — scientists are proceeding through another revolution — a revolution of scientific complexity. While this revolution has been gestating since at least 1800 in fields like ecology, evolution, and geology, the need for paradigm change grew clearer through the course of the 20th century. In the 1980s the study of complexity science uncovered insights into natural and socio-economic behaviors which revealed where and why the older paradigm failed. Complexity is now changing every area of natural and social science.

My Career Challenging the Traditional Business Paradigm

I’m an unexpected businessman — a scholar, mathematician, artist, and historian — who thrives doing business but did set out to challenge traditional business assumptions. I had, though, been introduced to complexity science (aka Complex Systems Science) in 1982 within my undergraduate work in mathematics at the University of Colorado. Informally, I also encountered complexity in my secondary studies of history. From that point, I never expected doing business to follow the linear and orderly paths of traditional business science. From running my companies to introducing products in retail markets, my teams delivered results exceeding those possible for businesses handcuffed to traditional paradigms.

As an outlier consulting with many companies (vast and small), I observed how unspoken and deeply hidden paradigms affect both businesses and practitioners of business. The abuse of metrics offers a good starting point. Business don’t realize that all metrics enforce hidden assumptions — especially that the things which matter most are those which can be measured. Having set goals, companies tend to believe success is ensured. That metrics fail, though, has been known for well over half a century as W. Edwards Deming reminded us “It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.”  More recently, Jerry Z. Muller wrote “metric fixation has elements of a cult. Studies that demonstrate its lack of effectiveness are either ignored or met with the assertion that what is needed is more data and better measurement. Metric fixation, which aspires to imitate science, too often resembles faith.”

Today metrics are created without concern for the vast range of assumptions embedded in their presence — assumptions which are highly damaging to companies. Another deeply buried assumption of business malpractice is Management by Objective or MBO — the idea that companies are best managed when measurable top-level goals are split, then split again until every individual has their own measurable micro-goals. The idea was never researched before it was put in place, though. Returning to statistician Deming, he bluntly told companies to abandon MBO. And a fascinating study for MBO found “research support for MBO was found to be inversely related to the degree of research design sophistication.” (Kondrasuk, 1981) In other words, well constructed research found MBO mostly ineffective.

What We Need to Understand of Complexity 

Having closed my primary company in 2018, it was a tremendous pleasure to begin writing a book about complexity and doing business. My research into business and complexity, though, was disappointing. While there is extensive business literature considering complexity science, this literature primarily treats complexity as a hot-house flower — an exotic idea used to sell books or consulting services. My business experience, though, had shown me that complexity needs to affect all aspects of doing business from the C-suite to the front lines.

Lacking the needed foundation of business literature, my work dug deeply into scientific writings about complexity. Three critical truths emerged from this work:

1. Businesses cannot gain the power of complexity if they remain bound to traditional paradigm assumptions.
2. Complexity offers radical new understanding of how the world works — understanding missing entirely from traditional paradigms.
3. Every business which is successful today has succeeded because of complexity — most often by accident or instinct.

Readers wanting to consider how complexity must change our assumptions about doing business will be able to do so in my upcoming book. Before then, they can explore the inherent complexity of doing business as discussed on this blog — perhaps starting with this recent post.

Be well and be safe. And please follow my blog as I continue to explore the inherent complexity of doing business.

©2026 Doug Garnett — All Rights Reserved

My upcoming book, The Complexity Paradigm: Using System Science to Drive Business Success, will be available through Columbia Business School Publishing in January 2027 and can be pre-ordered today.

You can read more about my unusual background (math, aerospace, supercomputers, consumer goods & national TV ads) at www.Protonik.net. Through Protonik LLC I consult with companies as they design and bring to market new and innovative products. Since 2001 I have taught marketing, consumer behavior, and advertising at Portland State University and I am an active member of the RetailWire.com Braintrust with regular discussions of unusual retail challenges. Together with my podcast partner Shahin Khan, current issues in marketing and business are discussed on The Marketing (And Everything Else) Podcast — available on Google, Spotify, the OrionX website, and Apple Podcast.