Fish or starve

Purpose – To provide the author's opinions about key issues in strategy and the future to the readership. Design/methodology/approach – This article is an opinion column. Findings – There are good analogies between the survival or failure of societies and the survival or failure of companies. Research limitations/implications – Based not on rigorous research but on the author's experience of planning engagements across a wide variety of private and public enterprises. (Based largely on reading of Jared Diamond's book Collapse .) Practical implications – Illustrates critical survival techniques of businesses. Originality/value – Expresses opinions that the author believes have not been expressed in quite this way before.