| Can Dependence Make Us More Capable? "Success exposes the limits of the structure that made it possible." "My income, I rely on you." Yacuobuo, a mango farmer in Togo, said these words to me in 2018 after seeing the results of our fruit-fly control intervention in his orchard. His words caught me off guard, because although I wanted to continue working with him the following year, the service depended on project financing whose continuation I could not guarantee. The President of Togo and the University of Kara had requested the project, with the university managing its implementation funds; Yacuobuo could not afford to pay for the service himself. Knowing how much his livelihood depended on our work, while being unable to promise that we would return, left me uneasy in my own skin. What should have felt like a professional achievement had suddenly become a personal responsibility I was not sure I could fulfill. Only later did I recognize that my unease might reflect a problem larger than the uncertainty of a single project: a technology could work, while the arrangements needed to sustain its benefits were still missing. In recent columns, our investigation into the Universal Law of Increasing Complexity (ULIC) has explored why better technologies, additional resources, and improvements within existing systems do not necessarily produce lasting prosperity. Our inquiry has increasingly led us to the relationships and Structures through which new Capabilities develop. We value independence, yet much of what we achieve relies on the contributions of other people and organizations, sometimes in ways we barely notice. What determines whether those relationships give us the confidence and freedom to develop further, or leave our future dependent on support that may disappear? Dependence In 2017, fruit-fly infestation was so severe that Yacuobuo could not sell any mangoes from his orchard. With no income from the harvest, he began burning the trees that had sustained his livelihood for years. The following year, his orchard became one of the sites where Biofeed and researchers from the University of Kara tested and refined our fruit-fly control technology and its implementation protocol under local conditions. By the end of the 2018 season, our assessment found infestation in only about 3% of the fruit examined there. The results showed that his mangoes could be protected, reopening the possibility of earning income from an orchard he had already begun to destroy. For Biofeed and researchers from the University of Kara, the fieldwork was an experiment; for Yacuobuo, it was a chance to save his orchard and restore his income. These different objectives were initially compatible, since the same fieldwork could serve both. Yet the project's resources, responsibilities, and financing were organized to conduct and evaluate the experiment, not to maintain a service in subsequent seasons. Once the intervention succeeded, that difference became consequential: the researchers had achieved their immediate objective, while Yacuobuo still needed to know whether his orchard could be protected the following year. The experiment had shown what was possible, but it had not established an arrangement to continue the work. I came to understand the economic obstacle more fully as I learned how limited Yacuobuo's total income from his orchard was. Although our technology and implementation protocol had proven effective, a program organized and financed like our experiment was beyond his budget. The challenge was no longer primarily to establish whether fruit flies could be controlled, but to determine how reliable protection could be provided year after year at a cost farmers like him could afford. This required a different commercial and organizational model, one that could make the service accessible to growers with limited incomes while remaining economically viable for those providing it. Over time, I came to understand that the challenge extended far beyond fruit-fly control. Farmers could substantially improve their production and still struggle to build profitable businesses if the specialized functions linking their harvests to markets were unreliable or failed to work together. Dependable access to buyers, quality management, logistics, and other services was essential, but so was coordinating their contributions through commercial relationships that made continued participation worthwhile for both growers and service providers. This understanding contributed to my decision to establish Dream Valley, a commercial company that designs and manages the Capabilities and commercial relationships needed to connect growers with premium markets. Yacuobuo already knew how to grow mangoes, and further developing his farming business did not require him to perform every other function himself. What he needed was dependable access to complementary Capabilities that could help turn his harvests into sustained income. The Choice Long before I met Yacuobuo in Togo, I had experienced the benefits of dependable support as a professional fruit grower in the kibbutz's orchard branch. Our team drew on services and technologies from other branches, while outside suppliers and organizations provided resources and expertise, including water, electricity, agrochemicals, machinery, professional knowledge, packing, and marketing. What mattered was that these functions were reliable and available at costs we could sustain. This dependable foundation allowed me to dedicate more time, resources, and attention to developing the Capabilities we needed, including integrated pest management (IPM) in conventional orchards and biological control in organic orchards. The orchard branch depended on others for essential functions, yet that dependence gave me greater freedom to develop as a grower. While working in the kibbutz orchards, I began developing and testing a technology in 1994 that I hoped would control fruit flies without sprays. The experiments gradually became the central focus of my work, and I realized that developing a reliable solution would require substantial time, investment, and sustained commitment. Although the kibbutz's existing arrangements had served me well as a grower, its priorities became increasingly difficult to reconcile with the demands of this new ambition. In 2000, I left the kibbutz and the security it provided to pursue the technology independently, accepting considerable financial risk. Only afterward did I establish Biofeed, where most of the technology's development has taken place. Clayton Christensen described a different approach to the organizational challenge I had faced. While established computer manufacturers struggled to develop personal computers within their existing businesses, IBM gave a small team in Florida considerable autonomy from its mainframe operations. That freedom allowed the team to bypass conventional procedures and bring its PC to market quickly, helping IBM become a leader in the new industry. IBM could create that freedom within the company, whereas I had to leave the kibbutz to pursue my vision. Taken together, these experiences challenged the idea that dependence and freedom necessarily pull in opposite directions. The dependable services supporting my orchard work had given me room to develop specialized Capabilities, while pursuing my fruit-fly control vision required greater autonomy over priorities and long-term commitments. Yet leaving the kibbutz did not eliminate my dependence on others, since expertise, resources, and cooperation remained essential to the technology's development. What changed was my freedom to organize that work around the Direction I wanted to pursue. Why could an arrangement that supported one kind of development become unsuitable for another? Realignment An arrangement may perform exceptionally well at its established purpose while lacking the relationships and resources needed to support a different one. Sometimes a new objective emerges only after earlier success; at other times, several objectives coexist from the beginning, but their different requirements become apparent only as development advances. Neither situation means the original arrangement was poorly designed or unsuccessful. The limitation arises when its responsibilities, relationships, and resources cannot support the Capability participants now seek to develop. Because existing activities may continue to perform successfully, those involved may overlook the mismatch, judging the arrangement by what it already accomplishes rather than recognizing what it cannot enable next. ULIC helps us understand this mismatch by distinguishing how Direction emerges from how it influences subsequent development. We have explored how Energy enables Structure to emerge, within which Direction can develop. Yet this sequence describes emergence, not a fixed order of influence: once Direction exists, it helps identify the relationships, responsibilities, and sources of Energy needed to further develop Capabilities. Whether these requirements can be met still depends on available resources and organizational possibilities. In human systems, the challenge often involves participants pursuing different Directions. A farmer seeking sustained profitability, a technology provider seeking commercial returns, and a buyer seeking dependable supply do not need to adopt one another's objectives. However, developing a collective Capability requires a Structure that makes their contributions sufficiently compatible, dependable, and economically worthwhile, enabling them to achieve together what their separate activities cannot. These experiences suggest that realignment is not simply a choice between greater dependence and greater independence. The orchard branch developed by relying on dependable supporting services, whereas pursuing Biofeed's technological vision and developing IBM's PC business required greater organizational freedom. In Togo, the remaining challenge was to establish commercial relationships that could sustain fruit-fly control beyond a funded experiment. Each situation raised a different question about decision-making authority, dependable contributions, and how the necessary Energy could be sustained. The knowledge, technologies, and experience already accumulated did not lose their value when those requirements changed. What needed reconsideration was the Structure through which existing Capabilities could support further development. When the relationships needed for a new Capability have not been established, development may stall before it even begins. Developing that Capability requires commitments before its benefits can be realized, yet those commitments may depend on decisions others have yet to make. A farmer may hesitate to invest without dependable buyers, while buyers may be unwilling to commit without a reliable supply, and service providers may need sufficient demand before establishing their operations. Each decision may be reasonable, yet all three parties can end up waiting for one another. They may already possess the knowledge, technologies, and Capabilities needed for their individual roles, but no dependable arrangement enables those contributions to work together. The limitation can remain almost invisible: there may be no failed investment to examine because the commitments needed to undertake it were never made. The existing Structure therefore influences not only what participants can accomplish today but also which future Capabilities they can realistically undertake to develop. The developmental deadlock we have identified changes how I think about Directed Development. When progress stalls, we must determine whether the obstacle lies within an existing activity or in the relationships needed to coordinate multiple activities. We begin by identifying the Capability we want to develop and the Direction it should serve, then examine the functions, participants, and commitments required. From there, we can ask what Structure and sources of Energy would make those contributions dependable and economically worthwhile. Commercial agreements, coordinated investments, or an organization managing the relationships may enable commitments that no participant could reasonably make alone, without requiring everyone to operate under a single authority. Available resources and organizational possibilities may also require us to reconsider the intended Direction. The resulting diagnosis helps determine whether progress calls for improving existing Capabilities or developing a new Capability at the Level of the system connecting them. Prosperity Returning to the global challenge of smallholder poverty, I can now see a possible reason why even successful agricultural interventions do not always lead to sustained economic progress. A program may demonstrate an effective technology, improve cultivation practices, or increase yields, and these can be meaningful achievements for the farmers involved. Its immediate objectives may also align with farmers' aspirations, yet the resources and relationships organized to achieve them may not support what comes next. Farmers seeking to build profitable businesses need dependable arrangements that keep specialized services and commercial commitments available beyond an initial intervention. Without those arrangements, higher productivity may not translate into sustained income or provide a reliable foundation for further development. For Yacuobuo, the Capability needed for sustained income might have to develop beyond his orchard, within the agricultural value chain connecting growers to markets. We showed that his mangoes could be protected, but turning that achievement into dependable income required ongoing services and commercial relationships that our experiment had not established. Public support or outside investment might help create those arrangements, but sustaining them would require an economic foundation that made continued participation worthwhile. Even a commercially successful value chain would not necessarily make its growers prosperous unless its agreements let them retain enough value, manage risks, and invest in further development. When Yacuobuo told me, "My income, I rely on you," I felt the weight of a responsibility I could not promise to fulfill. I now understand his words differently: he didn't need independence from others, but dependable relationships through which his orchard could become a foundation for lasting prosperity. |
