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“The FT Global 500 list is a snapshot of capitalism’s Darwinian struggle, in which the fittest companies thrive.”
So began the FT’s most recent survey of the world’s leading companies. It is a measure of the extraordinary influence of Darwin that readers will instantly grasp the reference to his theory of evolution with its emphasis on the “survival of the fittest”. If companies, like natural organisms, find they can flourish in a particular environment, they will have a propensity to grow in number, until the population is checked by scarcity of resources and predators.Growth leads inevitably to a competition for survival, which is relentless, impersonal, self-interested and severe. Darwinian evolution is a dynamic model, and the dynamic process – natural selection – is one where adaptation through “profitable variation” leads to survival. Profitable variations are naturally occurring, differentiating innovations that are preserved and developed by the elimination of the uncompetitive, so that distinctive and
specialised species survive.
And so in Darwin’s natural world, we find growth, competition, scarce resources, innovation, differentiation and the pursuit of self-interest. As a starter pack of things we need to know about management and business, that is a pretty good list.
Fast growing bubbles, which eventually burst, provide the story line for investments over the past 250 years in tulips, canals, railroads, and the recent dotcom bonanza. At a time of annual bonus fever, there can be no doubt that self-interest is alive and well.
Differentiation in product markets is a competitive driver in financial services, electronics, and beverages. Acquisition and retention of the scarcest of resources, senior management talent, provides the storyline for many an FT article on what accounts for survival and success or demise and failure.
In the MBA classroom, we praise Toyota as the exemplar for “continuous improvement”. This could have been Darwin’s subject when he wrote of natural selection, as “daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good.”*
Darwin’s theory proposes that evolution is fastest where competition is greatest, which has direct analogies with contemporary debates about globalisation, barriers to entry, industry consolidation and the dominance of supply chain management as a determinant of global competition.
And what better learning environment than the natural world is there for today’s networked economy? It is remarkable that our notion of “co-opetition” – which we use to describe value-creating strategies of co-operation among competitors, notably in sectors such as telecomS and healthcare – is self-evident in behaviour patterns in nature.
At Cambridge, Darwin’s alma mater, Judge Business School is benefiting from partnerships with colleagues in other faculties as we develop our own evolutionary strategy as “a great business school at the heart of Cambridge”. We work on corporate governance incollaboration with the faculties of law and economics, on finance with mathematicians and economists, on health and pharma with biotechnologists and clinical specialists, and with colleagues from physical and biological sciences and technology on innovation and entrepreneurship, which is one of our areas of competitive advantage.All our students through business plan competitions, special projects, and
networking events will encounter the local technology cluster of 350 companies that functions as an ecosystem of money, transactions, multiple professional advisers, 10 venture capital and four angel networks and, above all, productively chaotic sets of willing buddies, who will share contacts and lessons from hard knocks and heart throbbing success, as well, of course, as that great dynamic force of ideas within and around the university.
Cambridge is the premier cluster in Europe for venture capitalists. In 2004, 10 per cent of European venture funds came to within a few miles of the university’s ancient centre, to a region which at the time contained 0.1 per cent of the population of Europe.
These developments would not surprise Darwin; he was alert to the benefits of clusters. Noting that very rare plants are often abundant wherever they occur, Darwin observed “the necessity of a large stock of the same species for its preservation” and concludes that “a plant could exist only where the conditions of its life were so favourable that many could exist together, and thus save each other from utter destruction.”*
Experience shows that most start-up technology companies fail, some succeed, and a few hit the jackpot. But while failure of an individual company is likely, failure of a cluster is farless so, because profitable variation is more likely, given the infrastructure, externalities and inter-dependencies of the cluster. By the reallocation of resources, the benefits of the variation can in effect be shared by the community as a whole.
The smart business angel knows that she does not preside over a series of calculable net present values, but rather over the outcome of a Darwinian struggle and – often with the help of a Judge Business school specialist in real options or portfolio management – she will create an investment portfolio.
So, can we not only start but also finish our management course with Darwin? Does he say it all? Not quite, but he does gives a hint of where we need to look for further illumination.
For Darwin, nature provides the most demanding benchmark, and he challenges: “Can we wonder, then, that nature’s production?.?.?.?should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?*. But what accounts for that stamp of winning workmanship in business?To answer this question, one needs to look beyond the Darwinian emphasis on inevitability, chance and “naturally occurring” innovations to explain business success. Innovation does indeed drive competition and there will be an
element of serendipity and luck in lighting on the winning brand image, electronic gizmo, or pharma-chemical compound. But beyond luck, there is human agency, judgment, talent and creativity, that can alter some “naturally occurring path”.
The talent may lie in exploiting scientific discovery, or in creating motivational strategies which compel a competitive commitment to service quality, or in developing the capacity for extreme and rare cultural sensitivity that allows one to reap clear benefits of cross-border alliances and acquisitions if only the social issues can be solved. In short, people can make a profound difference to the “naturally occurring path”.
What is more, those of us engaged in business education believe we can help people be better equipped to make a difference. For this we can build on Darwin: to understand the immanent laws of the market; to understand that survival will be secured through tough competition, to understand the role of innovation and differentiation and to be smarter and better and thereby to create more value for our customers than our competitors.
Yet at the same time we cannot rely on chance; the forces in business are not what Darwin called impersonal, they are above all human creations, which among other trends are now pointing to the long term business benefits of collaboration and even altruism to complement those that arise from competition and narrow self-interest.*Charles Darwin (1859), The Origin of Species (reprinted in Penguin Classics
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发表于 2006-2-10 15:29:00
