Ecdysis: building new systems for growth
What we can learn from lobsters about scaling business and systems.
Because the shell of a lobster is hard and inelastic it must shed its shell in order to grow. Ecdysis, commonly called shedding, occurs when a lobster extrudes itself from its old shell.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
The overall process of preparing for, performing, and recovering from ecdysis is known as molting. Unlike animals that are soft-bodied and have skin, a lobster’s shell, once hard, will not grow much more.
Lobsters show intermediate growth; that is, they grow throughout their lives and therefore spend much of that time preparing for, or undergoing ecdysis.
