Customer Reviews

The Natural Laws of Business: How to Harness the Power of Evolution, Physics, and Economics to Achieve Business Success

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This is definitely a good book with numerous powerful laws illustrated and associated with business practice, strategy and development. Having studied this book, you will get ideas on how to survive or climb the ladder in the rat race, no matter you are an entreprenur or just an employee. And see how irrational the nowaday-rational-men are.

For the well educated (ie from a quantitative discipline) that have studied physics, chemistry and mathematics at some time, this book is a gold mine of insights into the way that reality drives outcomes, not wishful thinking.

The Laws of the natural world exist and cannot be discounted no matter how inconvenient they are to our assumptions. Knowing how things come together allows us to better see solutions.

The best section is the Pareto Optimum - nature is not democratic and 50/50 outcomes are the exception so never expect the law of averages to help you - it does not work that way.

A very good read - those with a science background will get the most out of it but that is not critical.

My Profile: 42 to, sales engineer, enterpreneur to-be

I bought this book before the 80/20 since I assumed what this principle was all about ( I was so pleased I bought it afterwards).

I was very pleasantly surprised by the approach taken not only is observing similar 80/20 patterns in many fields of our natural and man-made world, but also by the pragmatical aspect of viewing evolution, quantum theory and complexity in a way to make it applicable to your own business. This has allow me to train my eyes on a wider vision than those found in traditional books.

The author is well resaerched and pragmatical and shares his wisdom generously and in a veru accesible manner.

Do not miss this book, I find it incredible that is not availaible as a new edition!

Richard Koch follows up his best-selling The 80/20 Principle with this engrossing look at science's universal principles (biological, physical and non-linear) at work in the business world. Richly detailed and splendidly written, this page-turner will change the way you look at every aspect of business. Koch shows you how innovation and success happen when you work with Mother Nature, and not against her. Don't worry if you slept through high school and college science classes, the author guides you smoothly through scientific theories as he applies them to business. We from getAbstract highly recommend this soon-to-be-classic to everyone in the business world, even if you are a former physics flunkie.

Richard Koch's premise that the knowledge of how pure science works can provide us with the underlying rationale of how business works in fundamental ways is insightful and important. My grad students found The Natural Laws to be challenging and exciting to read and discuss. It is possible to take Koch's discussion on natural selection and combine it with quantum physics to understand the complex movements of markets and competition. The Natural Laws of Business is written with a clarity that belies the complexity of the many scientific theories discussed. Because business is a part of the universe that we are attempting to describe via science, then business ought to behave according to the fundamental laws of science that we have discovered. Koch opens the door to understanding such behavior.

Richard Koch has encapsulated the essence of scientific thought, and shows how our best understanding of natural law governs the behavior of businesses and individuals. His insights are remarkable ! All I can say is ..."WOW !".

In this book, the transfer of scientific theory into a practical working business philisophy has never been seen expressed in such a concise and readable way.

As both a scientist and business person,it rings of truth. It is one of the best books I have read !

A must read for anyone that is interested in human nature, science, business and the relationship with the rest for the word.
I learnt a lot about business, stratergy, human nature ,science and myself.
I am 2/3 of the way through the book at the moment and can`t wait for my 2nd and 3rd read of the wealth of information that it contains.
My one and only complaint is that so much valuable information was packed into just one volume book.
"This book is a winner"

I was not sure exactly what to expect from this book or whether ther information would be relevent. I was pleasantly surprised to find to that it had many insightful thoughts and did an excellent job of relating science to business. Not only did it relate the theories of Einstein, Darwin and Newton, but also included some of the popular business theories as well. I guess to that extent it was kind of a do-it-all book of theories. I have read quite a few business books and usually can summarize what was useful in a chapter or 2. This book actually made me think throughout. Granted, some of the relationships are vague at best. However, it provided a new way of looking at some of todays business issues such as expansion, competition and outsourcing. In conclusion, this book was very thought provoking and insightful.

This book is an exceptional and unique blend of the worlds of science and busines - two worlds that are closer than they appear. You will come away from this book with valuable knowledge and a new perspective. Rife with guiding principles and the theory and data to back it up, everything in this book *makes sense*. The insights you will gain are invaluable.

Listen to Richard Koch. He knows what he's talking about.

Going into Richard Koch's "The Natural Laws of Business", I was a little wary. Applying scientific principles to the business world seemed like a great idea, which is what interested me in this book originally, but I wasn't entirely convinced it would be effective in practice. When I saw Richard Koch's credentials on the back cover as only "an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur... and consultant" with no mention an academic or professional history in the sciences, I feel I was understandably nervous. Would he even have the ability to explain advanced biology and physics principles, let alone be able to apply them in new ways to the seemingly unrelated realm of the business world?

As it turns out, my fears were completely unfounded. Richard Koch uses a broad understanding of genetics, evolution, relativity, particle physics, and other scientific principles to first educate the reader with a broad overview of the theories, then apply them to the business world in a very effective manner.

Part I of Koch's work dealt primarily with principles of biology applied directly to the business world, and this section was very strong. For example, he first talked about genetic encoding in human and animal DNA, and the ability of the strongest, most successful genes to be carried on to future generations. He then made a definition for "business genes", successful units of economic information (Koch p48), and made parallels about generations of products and services "inheriting" successful business genes from previous generations. All in all, this section was very effective and made for an interesting read.

Part II of "The Natural Laws of Business" The sections on physics were probably the weakest facet of his work. While the content was generally solid, some of his connections of post-Newtonian physics were tenuous at best. In particular, his section on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. He dismissively says General Relativity "is very hard even for physicists to understand, so I am not going to try to describe it" (Koch p131). He then mostly applies "relativity" as more personal perception, rather than as a property of moving bodies. In this sense, his application of relativity to business is an oversimplification at best, and misleading at worst. That said, however, his applications to business make intuitive sense and are useful for understanding how to deal with customer perception, if not relativity itself.

Part III involved more non-field-specific scientific principles, ranging from the Entropy to the 80/20 principle. The section on the 80/20 principle was one of the strongest, most convincing of the book. However, this may be due to a certain amount of recycling of his previous work "The 80/20 Principle", so that detracts slightly from the perceived effectiveness of the section. However, this section is still very effective and logically organized.

All in all, I feel Richard Koch's work was effective in its goals, specifically in its ability to explain scientific principles, apply them effectively to the business world, and above all keep the reader's attention. As a recreational student of science myself, I particularly enjoyed the scientific slant throughout this book. This kept me interested, and it also forced me to see the business world in a new way I would not have experienced otherwise. Despite a few shortcomings, I would recommend this work to anyone with an interest in science and business...