Scale : The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

Fascinated by aging and mortality, visionary physicist Geoffrey West applied himself to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. What he found was that despite the riotous diversity in mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from its food intake to its lifespan. West made the bold move of exploring his work's applicability to cities and businesses, only to discover that the same laws of scalability held true with an eerie precision-an insight that led him to understand why some businesses fail while others thrive and shed light on the uncertain relationship between global sustainability and accelerating innovation. What makes West's discovery so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the diverse phenomena of living systems. A thrilling scientific adventure, Scale shows us how cities, companies, and biological life alike dance to the same simple and powerful tune. Book jacket.