An enterprise exists to facilitate commerce between a marketplace and supplierplace.

An enterprise consists of two or more people taking action with limited resources to produce result(s) that will trigger rewards from stakeholders. Enterprises range in size from two people to more than 200,000 people in commercial enterprises and more than 1,000,000 people in larger nation-states.

An enterprise is intelligent when it exhibits four behaviors:

• measuring both the value of the results to stakeholders and the conformance of results with respect to principles of systems and society,
• being precisely aware of enterprise situation with respect to their enterprise goals
• improving goal achievement and sustainable worth by adapting and aligning the enterprise to changes in its context and capabilities, and
• ensuring enterprise integrity even when all factors are changing unpredictably.

An enterprise exhibits various degrees of intelligence over time and in comparison to other enterprises.

An enterprise with greater intelligence can accommodate a greater rate of change and a greater range of change without loss of integrity. Rate of change means the frequency at which it must adapt and align, also called its change proficiency. Range of change means the variety of stimuli to which the enterprise can respond and garner rewards, also called its repertoire of capabilities and ability to learn.

An enterprise’s degree of intelligence is influenced by how well its architecture harmonizes it size and technological proficiency, the latter including not only thermodynamics and informatics but also teleonomics and social dynamics. The need for initializing enterprises and continuously improving each intelligent enterprise (IE) is pervasive. IE’s are initialized and evolved by qualified personnel using policies, principles and practices which some call systems engineering but others call organization development, strategic planning, marketing, product planning, supply chain management, composing, screen writing, lawmaking, practicing medicine, etc.

Created on ... January 28, 2006