Cut Me Some Slack: What I learned about the bioeconomy from Cal–Stanford and “The Play”

November 20, 1982. The Play. Four seconds left. Stanford has the lead. The entire 1980s college era of order and structure says: Game over. The formality of a final Stanford squib kickoff comes. Then, Cal comes alive. A lateral keeps the game alive. Then another, and it looks like the player’s downed — Stanford players and band rush the field in their joy.

Only… the runner isn’t quite down, and he flips another desperate lateral. Then another. Then another. Cal players are running into the Stanford band. Stanford has 22 players on the field and I think 100 of the band. It’s chaos. One more lateral, and a Cal runner knocks over a trombone player while scoring. The Play. One of the most insane, glorious, impossible moments sport has ever produced. Not football by the book. Survival by improvisation. Chaos found a way.

In the bioeconomy, the world we’re heading into looks like that chaos. Then as now, no one cares who’s ahead with 0:04 to go — who has the Heisman winner, the most future NFL players, the most beautiful first-half stats. Policy shifts mid-drive. Feedstock costs skyrocket. Catalysts sputter. Investors demand a new CEO by Monday. A tax credit vanishes.

The real world is five laterals and no time on the clock. The question isn’t how brilliant is your playbook — it’s whether you have a way to keep the ball alive. Yet the bioeconomy — optimizing for a perfect day, modeling steady state, designing for predictable feedstock and policy, assuming the whistle blows when we expect it — is Stanford when it needs to be Cal.

Slack Science: Why Cal Lived and Stanford Didn’t

What happened in those final four seconds wasn’t luck. It was physics — the physics of persistence.

Systems survive chaos when three things hold:

1. Identity stays intact
2. Resources remain usable
3. Adaptability stays alive

In the General Theory of Evolutionary Systems & Information, we call  these γ, κ, and ε — three survival variables that decide who keeps going and who breaks for good. You might call it slack. Here’s how those variables decided The Play…and the bioeconomy.

1. γ — Coherence / Identity

The Play:
Every Cal player shared one mission: Keep the ball alive. If you’re going down, lateral.

Bioeconomy:
Know what business you are really in—conversion platforms that pivot with markets.

Failure mode: Drift. Confusion. An offense that can’t decide what to run.

2. κ — Capacity / Structure

The Play:
Six lateral-capable players on the field. Room to maneuver.

Bioeconomy:
Redundant feedstock basins. Infrastructure that sustains the drive, not just starts it.

Failure mode: Depletion. Stranded assets with a scoreboard stuck at zero.

3. ε — Recoil / Slack

The Play: Zero time + five laterals + a road through the marching band = ε maxed out.

Bioeconomy: Multi-product flexibility. Market pivots. Spare capacity. Cheap, abundant feedstock. Contingency capital. One more lateral when the script dies.

Failure mode: Collapse. Season over. Project over. Game over.

Ψ = Identity × Capacity × Adaptability
Perfect execution won’t save you. Slack will.

When the feedstock turns wet, the policy expires, the investor calls on Wednesday — do you have one more move? That is the entire game.

The Play Never Died — Because Slack Made It Immortal

Let’s run it again — but imagine Stanford had slack. Just one player defends the lateral. Just one fingertip deflects the ball. Just one defender knocks over the band before Cal can use them for the pick-and-roll. Playing for chaos instead of ten guys in on a tackle.

And the game ends. Band plays Victory. Footnote in a dusty media guide. No trombone collision. No myth. But Stanford was built to protect a plan. Cal was built to survive the end of one. Slack is the variable between trivia and legend. College football has rebuilt itself a dozen times: new rules, new economics, new offenses, new energy. It bends — so it never breaks.

The bioeconomy deserves the same destiny. Not spotlight projects that collapse the first time the ball hits turf — but Cal-in-’82 projects that keep coming, coming, coming. We need:

• Five ways to stay alive when one fails

• Systems that adjust when the band appears mid-field

• Slack that turns chaos into a highlight reel

Because the world doesn’t reward who led with four seconds left. It rewards who’s still winning when the clock hits zero. Slack wins. Slack lasts. Slack becomes legend.

Happy New Year! Enjoy the bowl games.