Recently, I moved into a new space with way more natural light.
For years, I’ve been living in spaces where I’ve tried growing plants, but they keep dying on me. (Though as I learn more about the science and finesse of houseplant care I’ve come to realize it was my lack of knowledge that sent them to an early grave.)
In my new space, I’m encouraged to make use of the generous sunlight to grow things. When I think through my growing knowledge of houseplant care, what I continue to observe is a lifetime of learnings from the kingdom of plantea beyond making sure my plants don’t go kaput on me too soon.
I’m currently fascinated by these aspects about plants:
- There is so much variety and diversity in plants. Plants that grow under and above other plants. Plants that grow on other plants. Strange.
- Houseplants have a dual purpose of being living and decorative at the same time.
- Propagation is both awe-some and creepy.
- Plants are often “invasive”.
Much about seeing plants grow is also analogous to growing businesses, products, companies and communities.
One of my favourite shareholder letters is Warren Buffett / Berkshire Hathaways 2018 edition. In it, he describes Berkshire as made up of five groves, each collection of businesses represents one grove. He then describes, by way of analogies, the diversity of the “flora” of the conglomerate. Massively fascinating — read it here.
There’s another company out there that I’ve very fond of called Constellation Software. Recently they announced that they are forming a spinoff out of the parent company (Topicus.com). Spinoffs seems like propagation to me.
And mergers … are well … (not sure yet). Incidentally, both Berkshire and Constellation have a strict policy of buying companies and letting them run as they were without amalgamation. Just like one would when adding a new houseplant to your home, they’re not uprooting them and repotting them in the same pot. Maybe they both learned this from the plant world.
Lastly, check out Amazon Spheres if you haven’t already. There’s a great walkthrough of the space here. Talk about a business that is growing “groves”.