On Emergent and Deliberate Strategies
Two ways to create: one like nature, one like man. Best interwoven synergistically.
I first became fascinated with emergent strategy when I learned of the existence of Neri Oxman, a gorgeous, brilliant materials ecologist who had a lab at MIT and grows buildings out of things like silk worms instead of constructing them with beams. If you’re looking for an inspiration, you’re welcome. She’s been a formative one for me.
Over time, I’ve learned more about emergent strategies and allowed related philosophies around emergence, integral theory, and improvisation to lead more aspects of my life. I’ve found emergence to be more true than other strategies I’ve studied, because it’s how nature works, and therefore sustainable and regenerative. I now use this approach in wide ranging aspects of my life: emergent principles show up in how I create offerings, how I advise founders, how I navigate relationships, and even the way I express myself through dance.
I believe it’s time the startup world catches on, so here’s a primer.
Emergence is how nature start-up’s
Emergence is how nature grows things. Not up-and-to-the-right, but spiraling in ever-increasing complexity and amplification. When you see a fern unfurling, a gorgeous spiral shell in the sand, or the corkscrew of an impending hurricane, you’re seeing the same thing — nature creating powerfully, through the pattern of emergence.
We — and our economy — have much to learn from the emergent model. We get to integrate emergent and deliberate processes as we build businesses, make art, and transform into new people.
I hope this inspires you to apply emergent principles to your life. If you’re a woman creating a business, brain-child, or personal reinvention and find yourself interested in applying emergent principles to your process, I invite you to explore Creatrix, a 4 month creative incubator rooted in emergent & embodied principles.
What is Deliberate Strategy?
First, we must understand the typical default approach to strategy, and emergent strategy’s complement: Deliberate Strategy. This is the approach where we set a goal, define a starting point, and work backwards. We strategize, create plans, execute them, and pressure ourselves (and others) to achieve to get there. Because success is pre-determined ahead of time, control and performance matter.
What is Emergent Strategy?
How nature grows things. Here, we attune to what a nascent thing needs, we give it that nourishment, and support how IT wants to unfurl over time. To “succeed”, we need to sense, attune, and evolve WITH it in real time. It’s how a seed grows into a tree, or how a sea creatures builds its shell home bigger over time.
With EMERGENT strategy, we do not have a preconceived outcome. Success is to enable the creation to become the fullest expression of itself. We follow instinct, desire, joy as north stars. Unlike DELIBERATE strategy, surrender, patience, and sensitivity are key traits that will enable us to create emergently.
There are key thinkers who have created philosophies around EMERGENCE – from science to activism, philosophy to dance. To name a few:
Emergent and deliberate strategies work beautifully in synergy. It is not always one or the other. But in the fields of early stage startups, innovation, identity formation, and creativity, I find emergence to be the true and best way to create in ways that result in authentic, meaningful, and lasting creations.
adrienne marie brown’s school defines 9 key emergent principles. I’ve taken the liberty to summarize them for you:
Small is all. Big change starts small and ripples outward.
Change is constant. Adaptation is the only way forward.
Trust time. There’s always enough time for the right work.
Be present. Less prep, more listening, more aliveness.
Move at the speed of trust. Depth before speed.
What you focus on grows. Attention is generative.
Never a failure, always a lesson. Mistakes are information.
There is a conversation in the room only these people can have. Find it.
Trust the fractal nature of change.
Emergent strategy requires creating in relationship with the unknown.
It honors that the most powerful visions aren’t forced into being through control or willpower, but revealed through deep listening, iteration, and alignment with life itself. Instead of contorting ourselves to fit inherited models of success, we allow the process to shape us as much as we shape it. We sense, respond, and adapt in real time—integrating all our intelligences. It is inherently feminine: relational, nonlinear, and generative. It invites wholeness over fragmentation, mystery over certainty, and possibility over prescription.
Up-and-to-the-right is not wrong; it is partial. To create paradigms that move beyond extraction, dominance, and patriarchy, we must embody emergence AND integrate with deliberate ways, too. I believe the INTEGRATION of both will create the authentic maturation of self and society in a time of change.
If you’re a woman creating a business, brain-child, or personal reinvention and find yourself interested in applying emergent principles to your process, I invite you to explore Creatrix, a 4 month creative incubator rooted in emergent & embodied principles.