A Call Home from Denisetown: How Professor Koplo Transformed My Understanding of Business, Failure, and the Power of Circularity

A Call Home from Denisetown: How Professor Koplo Transformed My Understanding of Business, Failure, and the Power of Circularity

Before this semester at the University of Denisetown in the Ivory Coast, I assumed I had a pretty solid sense of what made a business succeed—or crash and burn. Like most people, I thought it came down to solid management, smart marketing, and maybe a bit of luck. But one course turned that assumption on its head.

Yesterday evening, I called home—my parents always ask about classes, and they’d noticed how energized I’ve been these past few months. I told them something I never expected: “Some of the brands we grew up loving didn’t just lose their edge because of bad decisions. They failed because they broke nature’s most important rule.” That rule—Professor Koplo’s rule—is that anything that doesn’t operate in a circular system is doomed to break down.

That may sound abstract, but under Professor Koplo’s guidance, this idea became stunningly clear. His course didn’t just change how I think about business. It gave me a new lens to see the world—and offered a glimpse of the kind of leader I want to become.

 A Bold Beginning

Professor Koplo is somewhat of a legend on campus. His course, The Fundamental Reasons Businesses Fail, is one of Denisetown’s most sought-after electives, and not for the faint of heart. From the opening lecture, you know you’re in for something different.

On the first day, he didn’t hand out a syllabus or dive into case studies. Instead, he walked into the classroom, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote just one word on the board: “Circularity.”

Then he turned to us, eyes sharp and voice steady, and said, “If your business isn’t circular, it’s living on borrowed time.”

There was silence, a few puzzled looks, maybe a chuckle or two. Circular? As in recycling? I admit it—I thought he was talking about waste bins and cardboard boxes. But over the next few weeks, Professor Koplo revealed a far deeper, more powerful framework: one that ties biology, design, systems theory, and business strategy into a single, cohesive worldview.

That word—circularity—would soon reshape not only how I think about business models, but also how I assess risk, evaluate innovation, and see sustainability as more than a trendy buzzword.

 The Invisible Trap: Linearity

To understand circularity, Professor Koplo first made us confront its opposite: linearity. A linear system, he explained, is one where resources follow a straight, irreversible path—taken from nature, used up, then discarded. That could apply to materials, but also to ideas, people, energy, capital, or even trust.

Linearity is the dominant logic of the industrial world: extract, produce, profit, dispose. It prioritizes short-term gains, high margins, and scalability—regardless of long-term consequences. In the early stages, linear systems often appear efficient. But just like a machine that runs too hot, they overheat without a cooling system. They break under their own weight.

“This,” said Professor Koplo, “is why most companies die. Not because they didn’t innovate fast enough. But because they operated like the world had infinite inputs and no consequences.”

 The Silos that Kill: When Information Stops Circulating

One of the first case studies took aim at something seemingly mundane: how organizations structure their internal communication. Professor Koplo drew an analogy I’ll never forget.

“Picture a game of telephone,” he said. “Each department whispers strategy or data to the next. What started as a critical message gets distorted with each handoff. Eventually, it bears no resemblance to the original.”

He showed us how many corporations, especially larger ones, fragment into internal silos. Marketing chases branding KPIs, operations chase logistics goals, finance focuses on quarterly earnings—each with minimal insight into what the others are doing. There’s no loop, no feedback, no mutual correction.

The result? Wasted budgets, duplicated efforts, or disastrous product launches because no one caught a crucial customer insight shared two floors down.

A circular organization, on the other hand, runs on feedback loops. Mistakes are caught early, ideas circulate freely, and everyone contributes to course corrections. This, Professor Koplo argued, is the only way to build a resilient culture. Because resilience doesn’t come from agility alone—it comes from cohesion.

 Biology as Business Strategy: Closed Loops in Nature

You wouldn’t expect a business professor to dive into human anatomy, but that’s exactly where Professor Koplo took us next. With a diagram of the human circulatory system on screen, he explained one of the most elegant closed-loop systems in existence.

“Your blood cycles through your entire body about once every minute. Every cell is nourished, detoxified, and re-energized—continuously. It’s not optional,” he explained. “If this system were linear—if blood just flowed in one direction—we’d be dead.”

This wasn’t just about physiology. It was a metaphor for business systems. Imagine a company that sends revenue up the chain but doesn’t reinvest in its people, products, or community. Or a company that churns through customers without building loyalty. Or one that extracts from the environment but gives nothing back.

Linear systems accumulate waste. Circular systems create life—replenishing, evolving, balancing.

“If nature can’t support linearity,” he said, “why should we expect our companies to?”

 The Innovators Who Closed the Loop

Not one to dwell on theory, Professor Koplo brought in practical and inspiring examples. Particularly exciting to me were the startups pioneering new ways to create circular value. These weren’t just greenwashing attempts or surface-level environmentalism. These were companies reinventing their entire value chains to be regenerative at their core.

– Mi Terro, a biotech startup, turns spoiled milk and food waste into biodegradable polymers that replace petroleum-based plastics. Rather than treating waste as a liability, they treat it as feedstock—a resource waiting to be reimagined.

– Lucent Biosciences uses crop byproducts to synthesize fertilizers that improve soil health while eliminating conventional agrochemical residues.

– Tulu, an urban-sharing platform, enables people to access everyday items—like work tools or kitchen appliances—on a subscription basis. By sharing physical goods across users, they minimize manufacturing loads and extend product life cycles.

– Beni, an AI-powered resale platform, helps consumers find secondhand versions of the products they want before buying new ones. The algorithm doesn’t just match items; it encourages a mindset shift—one where re-commerce becomes the default.

These companies show us that circularity isn’t about reducing impact. It’s about redesigning impact. It asks a different question: How can we make doing the right thing easier, cheaper, and more profitable than doing the wrong thing?

 Even Dogs Teach Us

Perhaps the most surprising lesson of the semester came during a lecture I expected to be lighthearted. Professor Koplo opened a slide of pedigree dogs from different breeds and addressed a topic few business students ever consider: genetics.

Poor breeding practices, he explained, show us what happens when systems close down on themselves without room for adaptation. Breeders who “mate the best with the best” inside tiny gene pools often end up producing animals with serious long-term health issues—cancer, blindness, organ failure—because the gene pool becomes too narrow.

But responsible breeders introduce genetic diversity, track family health records, compost waste from kennels, and collaborate with others across regions to ensure resilience.

The analogy was brilliant. Just like a kennel that inbreeds to death, a company that refuses to diversify its supply chain, listens only to itself, or isolates its strategies from society eventually weakens. Diversity isn’t just a metric—it’s a form of distributed risk management. It allows innovation to emerge from the edges and evolution to occur from multiple fronts.

 A New Way to See Rise and Fall

As I wrapped up the call home, I told my parents something I never expected to say about a class: “I’ll never look at business failure the same way again.”

So many stories we hear about companies collapsing cite external forces—changing consumer habits, disruptive technologies, financial mismanagement. And while those factors matter, Professor Koplo offers a more fundamental diagnosis: they fell out of sync with the systems that sustain them.

They failed to loop. They stopped listening. They consumed more than they could renew. And eventually, they died of self-inflicted wounds.

In contrast, the businesses that thrive over long timeframes are the ones designed like ecosystems—not empires. They circulate capital, regenerate trust, renew materials, and reinvest in human potential. Their leaders see relationships—not just transactions.

When we studied brands that pivoted and survived—companies that moved from product-based to service-based models, embraced repair over replacement, or shifted to community-driven innovation—it became clear: circularity isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the key to longevity.

 The Business Leader I Hope to Become

As the semester draws to a close, I find myself thinking constantly about the future—not just mine, but the world my generation will inherit and shape.

Professor Koplo didn’t just give us a framework for diagnosing failure. He gave us a compass for navigating complexity. The choice we face as emerging leaders is stark: we can operate in linear systems that burn fast and die young, or build circular systems that enrich people and planet—and endure.

I don’t want to lead a company that just survives in the world as it is. I want to help build businesses that make the world worth surviving in.

And as I reflect on the decline of brands I used to admire, I find myself asking: Did they become too linear to last? Did they treat customers as expendable, resources as infinite, or culture as a marketing channel?

Most of the time, the answer is yes.

But for those companies that have broken the cycle of waste and reinvested in connected, regenerative, and inclusive practices—there’s light. There’s a circular rhythm to what they do. And that rhythm feels more alive than anything I’ve seen in the marketplace in years.

 Final Reflections

Professor Koplo once ended a lecture with a line I wrote down and underlined in three colors:  

> “In nature and in business, open loops hemorrhage value. Only closed loops endure.”

I carry that with me now—not only as a motto for entrepreneurship, but as a profound truth about life, growth, and real success. Circularity is not a constraint. It’s a liberation from patterns that lead to exhaustion, both for us and for the planet.

I went into this class expecting charts and frameworks. I came away with a philosophy. I went in wanting to start a business. I came away wanting to change how business is done.

And maybe the most important thing? I now see the world differently. Thanks to one radical professor and a semester full of eye-opening stories, I know I’ll never mistake growth for health, consumption for creation, or scale for strength again.

In a world tired of burnout, breakdowns, and beige solutions, circularity offers something bold—and often beautiful: a way forward that doesn’t destroy what came before.

That idea? It’s not just a business lesson. It’s a life lesson. One I won’t forget.

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