Innovation and Evolution

The question: What do misconceptions about evolution have to do with marketing and innovation?

I love it when something you’re reading that is theoretically miles away from the your job/life/field of interest jumps off the page and gives you’re a flash of unexpected insight that hits close to home.

This happened to me recently on a flight back from Oklahoma (long story). The unexpected source was an interview (unfortunately only excerpted online) with Mary Midgley in The Believer.

I had previously never heard of Mary. It turns out she is an English moral philosopher and the author of many books, including Evolution as Religion. The basic premise of that book appears to be something like this:

We’ve come to think of evolution as more of a myth or religion than a scientific theory. This fact, combined with some common misconceptions about the theory itself, have lead us astray in some unexpected and important ways.

As someone who is always on the lookout for fresh, commonsense ideas that challenge conventional business and marketing thinking, I was struck by two points that Mary made in the interview.

Here’s the first . . .

“The idea that growth—for instance, economic growth—is natural and required is a mythical idea. This can’t be right, because things do not grow indefinitely in nature; they grow until they’re big enough.”

This reminded me of Jason Fried at 37Signals and his views on the perils of buying into the religion of growth for growth’s sake. It also reminds me of a recent client, who saw their stock tumble dramatically due to small dip in growth.

Here’s the second quote . . .

“The other main misunderstanding is the one which says the universe is run by a hostile competition between individuals . . . (the idea that) if you had enough savage competition eventually things would come right.

But this is a fantasy about how life was made because organisms cooperate constantly. And the sort of “competition” by which they get ahead very often has nothing to do with fighting anything, but finding a new place. You find a new food source, or you start photosynthesis, or something of that sort."

So you’re saying that scrapping it out over that same turf is not nearly as effective as changing the rules and “finding a new place”? Sounds like innovation to me.

Time for Mary to add “business guru” to her resume.