By Dr. Saat Shukri Embong, President and Group Chief Executive Officer, MIMOS Berhad
In today’s volatile business ecosystem, institutions face a stark evolutionary choice: adapt or perish. A paper by Dr. Evelyn Thorne, an organisational palaeontologist and founder of Evolutionary Leadership Group, has long observed a critical dichotomy in organisational structures, the centralised ‘Dinosaur’ model, characterised by bureaucratic inertia and hierarchical control, versus the decentralised ‘Piranha’ model, built on autonomous micro-teams united by a shared purpose.
The history of business is littered with the fossils of giants who prioritised size over agility. Industrial titans like Motorola, once commanding 60% of the global mobile market, exemplified the Dinosaur archetype. Its complex, layered hierarchies and slow innovation cycles, measured in years rather than weeks, ultimately rendered it incapable of adapting to market shifts. Engineers trying to solve a simple hardware error had to navigate a ‘labyrinthine’ hierarchy, and this ‘operational sclerosis’ was a fatal pathology that a competitor like Nokia could easily outmanoeuvre.
The Piranha model offers a blueprint for survival. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he rejected the monolithic structure and re-architected the company as a ‘constellation of start-ups’. The iPad, for instance, was developed by a core team of just two engineers who reported directly to him, enabling terrifying speed and agility. This ‘piranha swarm’ structure prioritises decentralised execution and a radical focus on mission and customer value. The result was the coordinated ferocity that built a trillion-dollar empire.
Rewiring Malaysia’s Innovation DNA
As Malaysia’s national applied research agency, MIMOS faced its own ‘dinosaur trap’, the risk of breakthrough technologies becoming trapped in bureaucratic quicksand. Our solution was to strategically fragment our operations into specialised ventures, imbued with private-sector agility. This shift from a traditional ‘Dinosaur’ structure toward a decentralised ‘Piranha Ecosystem’ is transforming us from a monolithic entity into a swarm of mission-driven ventures.
Leap 1: Launching Ventures, Not Departments
When blockchain emerged as a national priority, we didn’t form a committee; we created a strategic joint venture, My Blockchain Infrastructure Sdn Bhd (MBISB), with Zetrix AI. This entity was tasked with building Malaysia’s first national blockchain infrastructure, a common, interoperable platform for multiple blockchain players. The hybrid structure enabled private-sector partnership, allowed rapid decision-making, and within 18 months, we deployed a secure, scalable backbone that now supports government and commercial applications nationwide. This approach has proven to be significantly faster than our pre-transformation deployment speeds and has helped secure partnerships with global players like Web3Labs, positioning Malaysia as a key blockchain gateway in Asia.
Leap 2: The Swarm’s Nervous System
To provide oversight without stifling autonomy, we established MIMOS Holdings Sdn Bhd. This entity acts as the central nervous system for our ‘piranha swarm,’ providing essential corporate and management services, IP management, and investment facilitation for all our ventures. More importantly, it operates under a Limit of Authority (LoA) framework, which allows ventures to bypass the MIMOS Berhad board for operational decisions, escalating only strategic matters. This framework is what allowed MBISB to approve a pivot to integrate zero-knowledge proof protocols in a single session, without the need for interdepartmental consultations.
Leap 3: Fuelling the Ecosystem
Our industrial accelerator, MIMOS Technologies Sdn Bhd, is the fuel for our ecosystem. It offers shared facilities and services, including our Semiconductor Technology Centre (STC), as well as talent development through MIMOS Academy’s industry-certified programmes. Through flagship initiatives like I4TAP (Industry4 Technology Adoption Programme) and IR4DAP (Industrial Revolution 4.0 Demonstration Adoption Programme), we have successfully engaged over 400 industry partners, from SMEs to multinationals, providing them with access to advanced manufacturing technology and talent pipelines. Through these programmes, we have deployed AI-driven predictive maintenance across 47 factories, reducing downtime by 35%.
The Piranha Playbook in Action
Our transformation at MIMOS is guided by five evolutionary leaps:
- Ownership over Committees: We have adopted Apple’s ‘Directly Responsible Individual’ (DRI) model, where each blockchain module, for example, has one owner with end-to-end accountability, eliminating consensus paralysis.
- Resource Fluidity: We reallocate resources and budgets quarterly, allowing us to quickly shift focus to programmes with surging demand within weeks, not years.
- Ecosystem Symbiosis: We actively license our patents and technologies to industries, SMEs, and start-ups through revenue-sharing models, which allow them to access our facilities while we generate royalty revenue. We now have 42 active licenses from 2023 to 2024.
- Talent Revolution: We are fostering a culture where engineers lead ventures with the potential for equity stakes. Six of our employees have already become venture CEOs.
- Market-Led Iteration: Our programmes, like I4TAP and IR4DAP, use real-time factory data to refine solutions weekly, not through annual reviews. This ensures we are always responsive to market needs and can make rapid adjustments.
These efforts have yielded a significant, measurable impact. Since 2023, we have attracted over RM160 million in venture co-investment and served more than 400 industry partners. This is a testament to our commitment to grow ecosystems, not empires. We have replaced bureaucratic machinery with a self-replicating organism, with ventures operating at the velocity of the private sector.
Motorola’s fossils are a stark warning that no institution is immune to extinction. Yet, Apple’s resurrection and our own metamorphosis prove that agility and speed will always triumph over sheer mass. We are not just adapting; we are igniting Malaysia’s innovation big bang through a thousand targeted bites.
As I often say,
“Yesterday’s strength was scale. Tomorrow’s is speed. We choose velocity”.
Conclusion: Charting a New Innovation Trajectory
At MIMOS, the adoption of the Piranha Principle is not just a strategy; it’s a declaration of intent. In an era defined by speed, adaptability, and impact, our transformation demonstrates that legacy institutions can evolve, lead, and thrive. We’re not just building technologies, we’re building an innovation culture that is fast, fearless, and future-ready.
As Malaysia charts its course toward becoming a high-tech nation, the lesson is clear: Agility must replace bureaucracy, and ecosystems must replace empires.
We welcome collaborators, disruptors, and visionaries to join us in this mission, not to preserve the past, but to shape the future.
Because in this new age of velocity, the future belongs not to the biggest, but to the fastest.
