Arie de Geus

De Geus was born in Rotterdam in 1930. He joined Royal Dutch/Shell in 1951 and remained there until his retirement in 1989. During his tenure as head of Shell’s Strategic Planning Group, the department made important advancements to the ideas of portfolio analysis (i.e. Directional Policy Matrix) and scenario planning. Other key members of the team were Kees van der Heijden, Peter Schwartz, Pierre Wack.

Since he retired he has been a visiting fellow of London Business School and has worked with MIT’s Center for Organizational Learning.

With a wealth of experience gained as a top level corporate strategist, Mr. de Geus has earned a reputation as an excellent speaker with great insight into management planning and organizational learning.

Arie de Geus Books The living company

Amazon.com Review

The average life span of a Fortune 500 company is less than half a century, yet there also are corporations around the world that have been in business for 200, 500, even 700 years. Arie de Geus, a retired Royal Dutch/Shell Group executive, maintains after studying both extremes that the most enduring treat their companies as “living work communities” rather than pure economic machines. The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment persuasively outlines his resultant prescription for organizational longevity. 

From Library Journal

According to a study conducted by Royal Dutch Shell, where the author worked for 38 years, the average life expectancy of Fortune 500 firms is 40 to 50 years. Many such companies don’t survive beyond a few years, while others have existed for over 200. Why? De Geus, widely credited with originating the concept of the learning organization, writes: “Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations’ true nature is that of a community of humans.” He summarizes the components of the long-lived company as sensitivity to the environment, cohesion and identity, tolerance and decentralization, and conservative financing. In this insightful study, he describes how today’s managers and staff should strive to develop a living company and increase its life expectancy. An important work; recommended for academic libraries.?Lucy T. Heckman, St. John’s Univ. Lib., Queens Village, N.Y.