Organisations Are Built to Break - Make Sure Yours Doesn't

Organisations don’t fail because of a single disaster. They don’t collapse overnight.

They crack.

Slowly, at first. A technology shift here. A policy change there. A once-reliable revenue stream begins to dry up. The cracks spread, but on the surface, everything still looks fine—until one day, the structure snaps.

Not because the work was weak. But because the business model was.

Brittleness isn’t about bad luck. It’s what happens when an organisation is too dependent on one way of making money, one type of funding, one linear path to growth.

Strong organisations don’t just survive change. They feed on it—because their model is built for expansion, not fragility.

Take CSL, one of Australia’s greatest biotech success stories. In 1994, when CSL was privatised, it was fragile—scattered across too many research areas, reliant on government funding, with no clear commercial engine.

Its first move? Extreme focus. CSL doubled down on plasma-derived therapies and vaccines, developing world-leading expertise.

But here’s what made CSL resilient instead of brittle: it didn’t stop at focus. Once its foundation was strong, CSL expanded deliberately—not by chasing new research grants, but by acquiring global companies, developing adjacent technologies, and creating new revenue streams. It didn’t just react to industry shifts. It controlled them.

Contrast this with The Roslin Institute, the research centre that cloned Dolly the sheep. Despite its world-changing breakthroughs, Roslin stayed locked into the academic funding cycle. Government priorities shifted, grants became more short-term, and without an independent growth engine, the cracks spread. By the time the institute was incorporated into the University of Edinburgh, its ability to control its own destiny was gone.

It’s not that Roslin wasn’t innovative. It’s that its business model was brittle.

Most people assume brittleness happens when an organisation is too specialised—too dependent on one funding source, one client, one technology. And that’s true.

But under-specialisation is just as dangerous.

An institute that spreads itself too thin—chasing every possible grant, working across too many areas—lacks deep expertise. It wins funding in the short term but gets hollowed out in the long run.

A business that tries to be everything to everyone might seem adaptable—until a competitor with real focus takes its market share. Without a core strength, there’s nothing to build on.

But the real issue isn’t just what you focus on. It’s how you ensure that focus leads to compounding strength over time.

The most resilient organisations don’t just deliver services or secure funding. They design models where success builds on itself, creating exponential value rather than incremental gains.

• A strong research institute doesn’t just secure grants—it builds a self-sustaining innovation engine. Instead of functioning as a cost centre, it operates as a hub for breakthrough ideas, spinning out startups, licensing technology, and creating self-reinforcing ecosystems.
• A great consulting firm doesn’t just sell time—it turns expertise into scalable tools. Knowledge becomes subscription platforms, frameworks, or equity partnerships, expanding impact without increasing effort.
• A leading biotech company doesn’t just develop drugs—it builds a portfolio. It partners, licenses, and invests in adjacent innovations, ensuring long-term leverage rather than one-time wins.

This is the difference between linear growth (one project, one contract, one grant at a time) and non-linear growth (where each success creates the conditions for the next).

The problem isn’t that research institutes and businesses don’t innovate. The problem is that too many fail to turn their innovation prectices into a system that strengthens itself over time.

Brittleness punishes excellence. Some of the best organisations collapse not because they aren’t good at what they do, but because their structure makes them vulnerable.

A strong strategy doesn’t just chase efficiency. It designs for exponential resilience.

It starts with depth—developing expertise, securing core strengths, and establishing a business model that doesn’t depend on a single funding stream. Then, it expands in a way that reinforces rather than undermines that foundation.

For research institutes, this means breaking free from project-by-project survival and thinking in portfolios. It means moving beyond a dependency on grants and designing for spinouts, partnerships, and compounding revenue streams.

For businesses, it means resisting the urge to scale too fast in too many directions. Growth should be structured so that each new move reinforces the whole—not just adds to overhead.

This isn’t about doing more. It’s about designing better.

If your organisation is always reacting, always scrambling for the next contract, the next funding round, the next product launch—stop. Look deeper.

Where are you mistaking stability for strength? Where are you optimising for today at the cost of tomorrow? Where are you trying to do more when you should be compounding value?

The organisations that will dominate the next decade are the ones that don’t just survive shifts—they create them.

Make sure yours is one of them.

Want to explore how portfolio thinking could strengthen your institute or business? Let’s talk.