Health care - Netherlands - 9,000 employees - Nonprofit

For Buurtzorg, its purpose- to help sick and elderly patients live a more autonomous and meaningful life- is paramount, so much so that Jos de Blok, its founder, has documented and published Buurtzorg's revolutionary ways of operating in great detail, to invite competition to imitate him. He accepts all invitations from competitors to explain his methods. He and a colleague are deeply involved as advisors to ZorgAccent, a direct competitor, and don't ask to be compensated for it. From an Orange perspective, this attitude makes no sense. Buurtzorg's breakthrough organizational innovations are its equivalent to Coca-Cola's secret formula: a competitive advantage that should be locked up in a vault. But from an Evolutionary-Teal perspective, the defining purpose is not Buurtzorg's market share or Jos de Blok's personal success. What matters is patients living a healthy, autonomous and meaningful life. De Blok says, "In my perspective, the whole notion of competition is idiotic. It really makes no sense. You try to figure out how you can best organize things to provide the best care. If you then share the knowledge and the information, things will change more quickly".^[12]