Gradual changes in the player squad over a long period of time had no effect on the team as such. Rather, it was several major changes in the team's surroundings that led to the team being transformed from Quebec Nordiques to Colorado Avalanche.

Purpose and starting point of the analysis

In this example, we analyze what happens to an organization over time as it changes, both in its content and its surrounding. The purpose is to understand what changes lead to the formation of a new organization, and what changes do affect the object, but not to a sufficient extent for it to become a new organization.

The starting point is the problem and the principles and assumptions described in the article on Holistic starting point.

Description aspects in Prime Arch

In Prime Arch, there are three different aspects to describe an organization: composition, collaboration and surrounding.

The composition is used to describe an object's hierarchical structure, in this case the organization's structure with players, coaches, etc.

Collaboration describes, as the name implies, how the object interacts with other objects from other dimensions, usually in the form of flows. Collaboration in this case could, for example, describe how the team collaborates with other NHL teams in the selection of new players, the so-called "draft".

The third and final descriptive aspect Surrounding involves placing the object in the middle and placing surrounding objects around it in order to analyze dependencies and relationships.

In this example, we will first look at the organization's surroundings, then study its composition and conclude by re-analyzing the surrounding. We have chosen the example of the hockey team Quebec Nordiques for two reasons: partly there are many interesting details in the team's development that give us good insights about an organization's change over time, and partly many people know the team where both Mats Sundin and Peter Forsberg started their professional careers.

Let's start by studying which objects in the team's surroundings are relevant in our analysis of the organization's change over time: From the strategy inventory, we choose Business Concept, Offer, Objectives, Rule Group and Operational Ability. From the business inventory, we select other organizational objects in the form of the Stakeholder Group. Finally, we select objects from other dimensions that are important to include in the analysis: Plateau (to describe the time aspect), Location and Physical facility.

Meta objects in Prime Arch

Quebec Nordiques

1972-1979

The Quebec Nordiques were one of the eight teams that were originally awarded a place in the WHA, the World Hockey Association, which was set up in 1971. The place was actually intended for the San Francisco Sharks, but when the club was hit by financial problems early on, Marcel Aubut and five other businessmen left Quebec together and bought over the team to Quebec.

The surrounding map below is a visual description of a number of different aspects of the team:

• IM23 Plateau shows the current time period, 1972-1979.
• S12 Business concept is to "play ice hockey".
• S24 Value Proposition is "sports entertainment".
• S21 Goal is to "win the Stanley Cup".
• R21 Rule group is "WHA's rule book".
• F21 Business Capability is of course several different abilities, but perhaps the most important is "ice hockey playing".
• O22 Stakeholder group shows both the owner and the connection to the WHA.
• X10 Location is the city of Quebec in Canada.
• FD21 Physical facility is the home arena "Colisée de Quebec".

This is the starting point for our analysis of an organization in change.

1980-1994

In 1980, the negotiations between the WHA and the NHL were completed, which led to the transfer of the WHA law to the NHL.

The team's surrounding was thus changed by having a new stakeholder group (O22) and a new rulebook (R21).

But otherwise everything was as usual and the organization remained the same.

We move on to study the players, ie the team's composition. We focus on the Swedish players and see that Göran Högosta was the goalkeeper, Anders Eldebrink was one of the defenders and Bo Berglund played forward during the period 1979-1983.

A few years later, in 1992, these players were gone and replaced by Mats Sundin and Niklas Andersson. Another couple of years later, in 1994, Peter Forsberg and Tommy Sjödin arrived, while Mats remained.

The team remained Quebec Nordiques all the time, despite the fact that all players were replaced during the past 25 years. It can thus be stated that in the same way as the planks are replaced on Theseus' ship, the players are replaced in the team, but it still remains the same team in everyone's eyes.

Colorado Avalanche

1995-2019

In 1995, something happened that caused the team to change its name to the Colorado Avalanche. Let's study what happened to the composition.

Peter Forsberg joined the squad and Mats Sundin was sold (to the Toronto Maple Leafs where he played for a total of 14 years!).

10 years later, Forsberg was still there and was joined by goalkeeper Tommy Salo.

Until very recently, there were a total of 4 Swedes in the player squad with team captain Gabriel Landeskog in the lead.

Analysis of the changes

The player squad

When you study the player squad's development for a total of 40 years with Swedish players in focus, you see that despite player changes over long periods, the team does not change until 1995 when it was transformed into the Colorado Avalanche. Peter Forsberg was with both before and after so it is hard to believe that the change came from within as a result of player changes. It was instead something else that led to the change.

The surroundings

In 1995, the team was sold to new owners, COMSAT. It is worth noting that the team has long struggled with declining profitability as a result of having too little base of supporters. All other NHL teams had English as their language and could therefore relatively easily attract supporters both across the North American continent and from Europe. Quebec, on the other hand, is a city dominated by French speakers, and even the matches were commented on in French. The conclusion was that they had to look for a new supporter base and the solution was to move the whole team to Denver, Colorado and at the same time change the name to Colorado Avalanche with the home arena Ball Arena.

It was thus several major changes in the team's surroundings that led to the team being transformed from Quebec Nordiques to Colorado Avalanche. Gradual changes in the player squad over a long period of time had no effect on the team as such. We can draw the same conclusion from the problem with Theseus' ship: it is not the exchange of planks that leads to it being a new ship, but rather something else in its surroundings is required for it to be perceived as a new ship.