Aha Autonomy

Agile fosters speed, autonomy, and innovation at the team level, but organizations often struggle to preserve these strengths as they scale. Coordination overhead increases, decision-making slows, and the agility that once fueled success begins to erode. This paper introduces an approach to scaling by drawing on Robotics Subsumption Architecture, a model originally developed to build adaptive, autonomous robots. Building on the late Mike Beedle’s pioneering work in applying these robotics principles to organization design, we reimagine how to design systems that grow without sacrificing local autonomy or real-time responsiveness. This approach offers scalable agility by embedding sensing, decision-making, and action into every layer—resulting in organizations that are resilient, decentralized, and capable of surviving today’s VUCA market.