All nodes are connected to other nodes through communicative processes. Other than mechanical machines that are isolated from one another, the very nature of the ecological environment is its connectedness. The uniqueness of each nodes, the fact that every node embeds a singular combination of connections to other nodes, ties them into one large shared environment in which all elements are interdependent. Information results from relationships between two otherwise meaningless pieces of data, it relates both side of the flow to each other. The economy in an integrated environment does not produce isolated products, such as soybeans or rolled steel, but local groupings of products that support them each other.
Companies exist in mini-ecologies structured by strategic alliances and synergetic partnerships.
The flows of information are infinitely malleable. It is their intrinsic property to change their direction and quality instantaneously, a characteristic greatly accelerated by electronic media. Out of such changes new relationships arise that bring supposedly independent nodes into a sudden interdependency. Mergers and outsourcing are but one of the results of the changes of information flows. Change, however, is neither additive nor subtractive in an integrated environment.